Esta pesquisa analisa alguns tópicos sobre a metodologia de acordo com a filosofia da ciência de Larry Laudan, além de examinar, na área da educação, esta proposta de interpretação filosófica. Trouxemos como elementos algumas considerações e definições sobre a metodologia em Laudan, isto é, da metodologia como um instrumento para a realização da axiologia (que são as metas e os valores cognitivos), porém, apresentando também interessantes relações para com as teorias específicas, como o de justificar as teorias específicas e (...) de ser restringida por elas. A metodologia é também, dentro do modelo reticulado de Laudan, justificada pela axiologia. Para além desta análise, há também uma defesa da metodologia enquanto o estudo dela própria, o que permite encontrarmos conexões interessantes em teorias da educação, como no caso da investigação-ação, onde vemos que estamos diante de uma tradição de pesquisa nos moldes defendidos pela filosofia da ciência de Laudan, por reconhecermos que temos um modelo reticular composto por teorias específicas, metodologias e axiologia também na área da educação. Veremos também que a metodologia em Laudan possui um caráter dinâmico, tensionando e sendo tensionada pelos componentes da tradição de pesquisa, caracterizando o modelo reticulado de racionalidade proposto pelo filósofo. Este debate em Laudan, juntamente com a tradição de pesquisa da investigação-ação da área da educação serão investigados neste artigo. Como base para a construção deste texto, utilizamos as seguintes obras de Laudan: The Progress and its problems: towards a theory of scientific growth (1977), Science and Values (1984a), Explaining the success of science: beyond epistemic realism and relativism (1984b), Methodology’s prospects (1986), Progress or Rationality? The Prospects for Normative Naturalism (1987a), Aim-less Epistemology? (1990a) e Normative Naturalism (1990b). (shrink)

Neste trabalho abordamos as contribuições de Larry Laudan para a questão do progresso científico. O modelo proposto, baseado na eficácia das teorias na resolução de problemas, serve de ponto de partida para uma breve reflexão sobre a influência contemporânea que as dificuldades de visão do mundo exercem sobre o desenvolvimento das ciências. Este trabalho foi realizado no âmbito da disciplina de Filosofia das Ciências II, parte do curso de Filosofia da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal.

A pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar aspectos/elementos da cosmologia de Aristóteles a partir da filosofia da ciência de Larry Laudan. A tentativa é apresentar neste artigo uma interpretação possível sobre o processo evolutivo da cosmologia da época sob o enfoque da filosofia de Laudan, baseado nas tradições de pesquisa, teorias específicas, modelo reticulado, progresso científico, metodologia, axiologia, etc. Abordaremos sobre a questão da aceitação das teorias específicas, a questão da eficácia na resolução de problemas, entre outras questões importantes para (...) a interpretação mencionada. O recorte histórico será importante enquanto elemento que permitiria visualizar esta interpretação filosófica e sobre como seria possível pensar em um modelo de reticulação neste contexto, na tentativa de apresentar os tensionamentos entre os componentes da tradição de pesquisa, como forma de destacar a necessidade de revisão constante destes elementos historicamente, dentro do processo evolutivo das tradições de pesquisa. Utilizaremos como base especialmente as obras O progresso e seus problemas: rumo a uma teoria do crescimento científico (2011) [1977] e Science and Values (1984). (shrink)

Para desarrollar este trabajo, en el primer capítulo caracterizaré con cierta extensión dos de las principales posturas funcionalistas del progreso científico, a saber, la defendida por Thomas S. Kuhn y Larry Laudan, respectivamente. Posteriormente, haré un análisis crítico de estas posturas. En particular, mostraré que un modelo de progreso científico basado en la resolución de problemas no puede pasar por alto explicar cómo es que se genera un problema científico y cómo puede ser medida no sólo la importancia cognitiva (...) de los problemas científicos a resolver; sino la importancia cognitiva que tienen las soluciones a los problemas que enfrenta la ciencia. En el segundo capítulo caracterizaré y analizaré la postura realista metafísica sobre el progreso científico desarrollada por Philip Kitcher. El análisis del modelo de Kitcher es pertinente para el presente estudio debido a que este autor integró muchas de las críticas que se le hicieron a las posturas funcionalistas anteriores a su propuesta. Sin embargo, como sugeriré en la conclusión de ese capítulo, la postura defendida por Kitcher en torno al progreso cognitivo de la ciencia fluctúa entre la defensa de un realismo de corte metafísico (Kitcher 1993 y 1995) y un realismo de corte semántico (Kitcher 2001a, 2001b, 2002 y 2007) que hace difícil entender con precisión y a cabalidad su postura. Con los anteriores elementos, en el tercer capítulo revisaré el debate entre las posturas funcionalistas y las posturas realistas sobre el progreso cognitivo de la ciencia en el marco del llamado Realismo Epistemológico Convergente, con el objetivo de evaluar si otras posturas realistas pueden explicar de mejor manera el progreso cognitivo de la ciencia. Como mostraré, el realismo epistemológico convergente requiere para su defensa de una definición conceptual precisa en relación a lo que debe entenderse por “verdad” – o “aproximación a la verdad” – y su conexión con el éxito científico; así como la relación de referencia entre las entidades y organismos teóricos observables e inobservables que la ciencia postula y el mundo natural. Para analizar estas conexiones, en este capítulo revisaré varios argumentos anti-realistas en contra de la relación cognitiva que los defensores del realismo epistemológico convergente pretenden establecer entre el éxito empírico y la verdad, por un lado, y el éxito empírico y la referencia, por el otro. Posteriormente, analizaré los contra-argumentos realistas más importantes que a mi juicio se han elaborado para defender el realismo epistemológico convergente. Finalmente, mostraré que los contra-argumentos realistas no logran ser lo suficientemente sólidos para evadir con éxito los ataques anti-realistas en torno al progreso cognitivo de la ciencia. El cuarto capítulo de este trabajo lo dedicaré a caracterizar y analizar la postura fundacionista defendida por Alexander Bird. Este autor sostuvo que la ciencia progresa cuando muestra “acumulación de conocimiento justificado”. Para validar su postura, este autor contrastó sus ideas con los conceptos sobre el progreso científico construidos precisamente por Kuhn y Laudan, respectivamente. El objetivo de Bird fue mostrar que el criterio de “resolución de problemas” defendido por estos autores es regresivo y, por ello, anti-intuitivo. En este capítulo analizo los argumentos de Bird, muestro en qué fallan para, finalmente, evaluar su postura a partir de sus propios fundamentos epistemológicos. En el quinto y último capítulo del libro ofreceré algunas conclusiones que pueden ser inferidas del presente estudio. (shrink)

Esta obra compila los estudios presentados en las I Jornadas de Filosofía del Instituto CEU de Humanidades Ángel Ayala y está prologada por Abelardo Lobato, O. P. Los filósofos tienen el deber de buscar y alcanzar la verdad apelando a las fuerzas de la razón, la cual, por cierto, no impide otras vías genuinas de conocimiento, como la fe. La búsqueda intelectual exige un trabajo de análisis que debe afinarse ante las obcecaciones que a menudo se interponen en el horizonte (...) de la existencia humana. En no pocos momentos de la historia ha habido claudicaciones generalizadas ante esa búsqueda, olvidos más o menos conscientes de que las verdades se alcanzan si se mantiene la esperanza de sabiduría y el amor a ella. El relativismo y el escepticismo se presentan casi como el polo opuesto de esa esperanza y ese amor; como una consecuencia de la “con-fusión” cultural, de las mentiras interesadas y de la desidia moral de algunas sociedades. La nuestra, la europea occidental, es una de ellas. El relativismo afecta al modo de pensar y de comportarse del hombre y es habitual que le lleve por vericuetos que a la postre terminan dañándole a él y a sus congéneres. En este libro se analizan algunos errores que han llevado a suscribir las tesis del relativismo y a rechazar la posibilidad de dar con algunas verdades comunes para todos. La obra tiene dos partes, una histórica y otra temática. Las páginas con enfoque histórico estudian las tesis que sobre el relativismo han mantenido algunos pensadores o corrientes de la filosofía. De su lectura se puede extraer la conclusión de que el fenómeno del relativismo es tan viejo y tan actual como el propio hombre y su apertura inteligente a la verdad. Filósofos de la época antigua de la talla de Protágoras, Pirrón o los “Académicos” coetáneos de San Agustín; modernos como Descartes; contemporáneos como Wittgenstein o Kuhn han dejado huellas que luego abrieron el camino hacia un régimen de pensamiento en que el hombre abandona la posibilidad de admitir verdades universales. Algunos argumentos favorables al relativismo —y, más aún, algunas actitudes “propedéuticas” de él— se han ido instalando culturalmente hasta consolidarse de manera cada vez más indiscutida. La segunda parte analiza el relativismo de forma temática, como un asunto abordable desde las diversas ramas del saber filosófico. Así, se tratan las repercusiones que tiene esta forma de pensamiento en la pragmática, la lógica, la estética o la religión, y se intentan desenmascarar los tópicos y falsos argumentos que justifican un comportamiento ético o religioso “abierto a todas las opciones”. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total impotence and total omnipotence—an analysis that maps remarkably well onto the climate zeitgeist. Thus, while Arendt (...) used the concept of “totalitarianism” to foreclose alternatives to liberal capitalist democracy, the climate impasse suggests that the totalitarian label more properly belongs to the prevailing system itself. (shrink)

Sexual lust – understood as a feeling of sexual attraction towards another – has traditionally been viewed as a sort of desire or at least as an appetite akin to hunger. I argue here that this view is, at best, significantly incomplete. Further insights can be gained into certain occurrences of lust by noticing how strongly they resemble occurrences of “attitudinal” (“object-directed”) emotion. At least in humans, the analogy between the object-directed appetites and attitudinal emotions goes well beyond their psychological (...) structure to include similar ways in which their occurrence can be introspectively recognized, resulting in similar extensions of their functionality and meaningfulness to the subject. I conclude that although further research is needed, given the strength of the analogy, the ability of lust to satisfy some general requirements for being an emotion, and perhaps certain neurological findings, lust may somewhat uniquely straddle the line between appetite and emotion. (shrink)

In this article, I present some worries about the possible impact of global efforts to aid the needy in some of the world’s most desperate regions. Among the worries I address are possible unintended negative consequences that may occur elsewhere in a society when aid agencies hire highly qualified local people to promote their agendas; the possibility that foreign interests and priorities may have undue influence on a country’s direction and priorities, negatively impacting local authority and autonomy; and the related (...) problem of outside interventions undermining the responsiveness of local and national governments to their citizens. -/- Another issue I discuss is the possibility that efforts to aid the needy may involve an Each-We Dilemma, in which case conflicts may arise between what is individually rational or moral, and what is collectively rational or moral. Unfortunately, it is possible that if each of us does what we have most reason to do, morally, in aiding the needy, we together will bring about an outcome which is worse, morally, in terms of its overall impact on the global needy. -/- The article ends by briefly noting a number of claims and arguments that I made in my 2017 Uehiro Lectures regarding how good people should respond in a world of need. As I have long argued, I have no doubt that those who are well off are open to serious moral criticism if they ignore the plight of the needy. Unfortunately, however, for a host of both empirical and philosophical reasons, what one should do in light of that truth is much more complex, and murky, than most people have realized. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither the (...) subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

This paper develops an understanding of climate denial as an expression of alienation in the sense described by Marx. We first argue for an expanded and differentiated conception of climate denial, theorizing four distinct types that go beyond the simple rejection of an anthropogenic warming trend: naturalist denialism, technological denialism, gradualist denialism, and politicized denialism. We then claim that these forms of climate denial illustrate and are illustrative of Marx’s concept of alienation from species-being (Gattungswesen). The article is intended as (...) a contribution to the growing literature on climate denial as a social and ideological problem rather than as an individual epistemic or moral issue. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to measure various prevailing democratic theories against an argument that Carl Schmitt advances in the first chapter of his ‘Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy’. In practice, he claims there, democratic politics is compelled to introduce a distinction between ‘the will of the people’ and the behaviour of the empirical people, thus justifying the bracketing and unlimited suspension of the latter in the name of the former, even to the point of dictatorship. I argue that no contemporary (...) approach to democracy as a fundamental value is able to mount a compelling response to this critique and that we should therefore reconsider the status of democracy as a normative commitment. I proceed by carefully and closely reading Schmitt’s chapter and then by juxtaposing various currents of democratic theory (including liberal, deliberative, epistemic and various hybrids thereof) with the trajectory of Schmitt’s argument. This essay is therefore less of a contribution to Schmitt scholarship, in the sense that it does not take a panoramic view of his corpus to determine his final stance on democracy, and more of an intervention into contemporary democratic theory using Schmitt’s argument as a kind of lever. (shrink)

This article responds to four critics of Democracy in Spite of the Demos and reiterates its central thesis. Christopher Holman and Théophile Pénigaud attempt to maintain the critical value of democracy by invoking different elements of the deliberative tradition, while Benjamin Schupmann answers my charges by appealing to a strong liberal constitutionalism. I argue that these attempts repeat the ambivalence described and criticized in the book: democracy is taken as an end in itself, but with asterisks that introduce conditions and (...) qualifications. As long as democracy is only desirable given certain caveats, the critical weight is placed on these caveats and not on the figure of democracy. Andrew Norris takes a different approach, interrogating the book’s use of ideology critique and the concept of “socially necessary delusion.” This intervention presents difficulties to the concluding suggestion of the book, but I maintain that that these difficulties can be productive and generative rather than limiting or prohibitive. (shrink)

This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the unfolding climate catastrophe demands a conception of critical theory more in line with the first disposition, and (...) that the relevance of the skeptical disposition is likewise seriously undermined if climate change is taken into account. (shrink)

[This paper was presented at the APA Eastern Division Conference in New York City, January 2024] -/- Can one reasonably doubt that one is voluntarily making a commitment, even when one is doing so? Given that one voluntarily makes a commitment if and only if one (personally) knows that one is doing so, the answer appears to be “No.” After all, knowing implies justifiably believing, and it seems impossible that one could (synchronically and from a single personal perspective) reasonably doubt (...) what one justifiably believes. Indeed, assuming that one reasonably doubts that P only if one has sufficient evidence to believe that not-P, traditional epistemologists may hold that such “epistemic ambivalence” entails one’s believing a contradiction, while some Bayesians should hold that it entails violating “probabilism” (the norm that credences must conform to the axioms of probability). However, I argue that in at least some cases of romantic commitment-making, such ambivalence may not only be epistemically permissible, but even required, and perhaps best dealt with pragmatically. (shrink)

Charles Mills adhered to the highest standards of philosophical scholarship, while seeing his work firmly as a contribution to the cause of social justice. He had a deep appreciation for historical context and a history of ideas approach to racial/philosophical questions. He was one of the foremost Rawls interpreters or our time, though only a few years before his passing was he so recognized. He channeled his analytic training in his habit of demonstrating how a view is strengthened when an (...) author shows how objections can be systematically replied to. I wish he had tried to integrate class and race into a larger theoretical system, of both an explanatory and normative character. Class is sometimes an unnoted presence in his explanation of white supremacy. Charles saw himself contributing to a collective scholarly social justice project and was happy to acknowledge the greater expertise of others in allied areas to his. (shrink)

Can one’s belief that one romantically loves another be false? If so, under what conditions may one come to reasonably doubt, or at least suspend belief, that one does so? To begin to answer these questions, I first outline an affective/volitional view of love similar to psychologist R. J. Sternberg’s “triangular theory”, which analyzes types of love in terms of the degrees to which they include states of passion, emotion, and commitment. I then outline two sources of potential bias that (...) may cause one to believe that one romantically loves another when one does not. Partly on the basis of those potential sources of bias and partly on the basis of more specific issues, I then argue that at least to the extent that one is aware of these issues, one may reasonably doubt that one is experiencing romantic love’s emotional feelings, and one may reasonably doubt that one is making romantic love’s commitments. Finally, I order by relative dubitability the propositions that must be true about one’s passions, emotions, and commitments toward another in order for one to romantically love them. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 368-378, September 2021.

An ongoing debate in the philosophy of emotion concerns the relationship between two prima facie aspects of emotional states. The first is affective: felt and/or motivational. The second, which I call object-identifying, represents whatever the emotion is about or directed towards. “Componentialists” – such as R. S. Lazarus, Jesse Prinz, and Antonio Damasio – assume that an emotion’s object-identifying aspect can have the same representational content as a non-emotional state’s, and that it is psychologically separable or dissociable from the emotion’s (...) affective aspect. Some further hold that emotions have no object-identifying aspects of their own, and can properly be said to be about things only in virtue of their associations with other mental states (such as beliefs or perceptions). By contrast, “blenderists” – such as Peter Goldie, York Gunther, and Matthew Ratcliffe – insist that the two aspects are indissociable, because the affective aspect “infuses” the object-identifying aspect, altering the subject’s concept or percept of the object. As a result, an emotion’s object-identifying aspect cannot possibly have the same representational content as any non-emotional state’s. I argue that the strongest blenderist arguments fail to rule out plausible componentialist alternatives, and that the blenderists’ broader motivations are orthogonal to structural issues. (shrink)

Human subjects seem to have a type of introspective access to their mental states that allows them to immediately judge the types and intensities of their occurrent emotions, as well as what those emotions are about or “directed at”. Such judgments manifest what I call “emotion-direction beliefs”, which, if reliably produced, may constitute emotion-direction knowledge. Many psychologists have argued that the “directed emotions” such beliefs represent have a componential structure, one that includes feelings of emotional responses and related but independent (...) representations of what those feelings are about. I argue that such componentiality may help to explain how emotion-direction knowledge is achievable. I begin by developing a hybrid view of introspection that combines David Chalmers’ phenomenal realism with Alvin Goldman’s “partial redeployment” account of meta-belief content. I then provide a process-reliabilist account of introspectively gained emotion-direction knowledge that outlines the minimum conditions of reliably forming emotion-direction beliefs, and specifies several ways in which the warrant of such beliefs could be defeated by relevant counterfactual alternatives. The overall account suggests how distinct introspective processes might be epistemically synergistic. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)

Barbara Fried described John Rawls’s response to libertarianism as “the unwritten theory of justice.” This paper argues that while there is no need for a new theory of justice to address the libertarian challenge, there is a need for an additional chapter. Taking up Fried’s suggestion that the Rawlsian response would benefit from a revised list of primary goods, I propose to add employment to the list, thus leading to adoption of a full employment principle in the original position that (...) ensures that anyone who wants to work will be able to do so. I argue that although Rawls famously proposed government as employer of last resort, he never integrated that comment into his theory, which lacks a full employment principle and says nothing about the injustice of involuntary unemployment in its ideal theory. I first refute the received view of Rawls’s treatment of employment as required by its importance for citizens’ self-respect, then show that in fact, the full employment assumption is the result of the role of general equilibrium theory in Rawls’s model of a well-ordered society, and indicate why developments in economic theory and economic policy support the proposed revision. (shrink)

Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary status in the history of capitalist development (which we term the ‘origins-subsistence’ approach). This paper offers an alternative account (...) of the relationship between capitalism and the transhistorical status of ‘patriarchy’. In aid of a ‘unitary theory’ of Marxist Feminism, we argue that the transhistorical status of patriarchy is better understood through an application of Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption. A modified version of these concepts can illuminate not only capitalist appropriation of antecedent social and economic forms, but also its capacity to produce new forms of gendered exploitation and oppression. (shrink)

Among moral philosophers, general disapproval of genetic enhancement has in recent years given way to the view that the permissibility of a eugenic policy depends only on its particular features. Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler have extensively defended such a view. However, while these authors go so far as to argue that there are conditions under which parents are not only permitted but also obligated to procure genetic treatments for their intended child, they stop short of arguing that there are (...) conditions under which parents are required to procure enhancements. By contrast, David Heyd argues that parents are required to procure treatments or enhancements for their future child, but only if the intervention would not alter the future child’s personal identity. In this paper I take the case for genetic enhancement a step further by arguing that there are conditions under which parents are morally required to procure genetic interventions for their intended child, regardless of whether the intervention is a treatment or an enhancement, and regardless of whether it would alter the child’s personal identity. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the workplace and (...) wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizations induced by climate change cannot be navigated justly from within the present social-political-economic system. We disagree, however, on which of the non-capitalist orientations (...) is better suited for generating viable alternatives to the worst dystopian futures. The article thus stages a debate to elucidate the theoretical and political divergence between Climate X and Climate Mao. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

Each of the standard outlooks in the philosophy of perception --phenomenalism, direct realism, indirect realism, scepticism -- has thus been viewed as Hume's own considered position in the eyes of informed commentators. I argue that Hume does not ascribe univocally to any one of the traditional stances in the philosophy of perception, nor does he leave us only a schizophrenic or 'mood' scepticism. Hume attempted to resolve the traditional philosophical problem (or perhaps more accurately, to set it aside on principled (...) grounds) by transforming the issue from one of theoretical consistency to one of pragmatic coherence. Hume's moderate scepticism and his systematic naturalism entail a reflective 'return' to the vulgar (cp. T 223), a qualified normative endorsement of the directly realist beliefs of common life. The interpretive challenge is to understand the subtle nature of that endorsement, and to explain how it arises out of genuinely Humean doctrines. The account offered here attempts both to capture Hume's own considered position and to explain the attractions and shortcomings of each of the competing interpretations. After laying out the elements of Hume's account of perceptual belief (section I), I proceed to examine in some detail two recent attempts to interpret Hume as a realist (sections II-III). I contend that these revisionary accounts ascribe unHumean doctrines to Hume. The interpretation of Hume as an irreducible 'mood' sceptic or as a phenomenalist are in that respect both closer to the mark, but Hume's reflective return to the vulgar has recast the nature of the problem and leaves us with a position that is not reflected in the more traditional interpretations (section IV). (shrink)

Adorno and Heidegger are frequently aligned because of apparent similarities in their critiques of modern epistemology. This alignment fails, however, to appreciate the substantial differences in the philosophical presuppositions that inform those very critiques. I distinguish Adorno's negative dialectic from Heidegger's fundamental ontology under the respective designations of critical versus phenomenological forms of transcendental philosophy. I argue that only by understanding Adorno's negative dialectic as a revised version of epistemology (namely a dialectical epistemology, committed to subject-object and transcendental argument) can (...) we make sense of, first, the profound differences between Adorno and Heidegger on the question of epistemology and, second, the philosophical motivations behind Adorno's trenchant rejection of Heidegger. Key Words: being-in-the-world • - dialectics • - empiricism • - epistemology • - idealism • - identity • - immediacy • - irrationalism • - mediation • - project • - subject • -object • - transcendental. (shrink)

This article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labour market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labour disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power to interfere. I propose an alternative capabilitarian conception of domination as (...) the arbitrary power to determine access to capabilities necessary for relationships of equality between citizens. This approach allows us to diagnose domination in the workplace and the labour market but does not capture unfreedom arising from the wider socio-structural position of workers. Thus, I supplement this capabilitarian account of the domination of workers with a structural account of dominating power, which reveals a richer set of conditions under which employers dominate workers. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân trong đại đô thị Vinhomes Grand Park. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra 6 nhân tố: (1) Thái độ hướng đến bảo vệ môi trường; (2) Chuẩn chủ quan; (3) Chất lượng sản phẩm tốt; (4) Giá cả sản phẩm; (5) Truyền thông xã hội đều có ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm (...) thân thiện với môi trường. Qua đó, tác giả đề xuất hàm ý quản trị nhằm nâng cao chiến lược phát triển thị trường sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân. (shrink)

The project of this paper is to deliver a semantics for a broad subset of bare plural generics about racial kinds, a class which I will dub 'Type C generics.' Examples include 'Blacks are criminal' and 'Muslims are terrorists.' Type C generics have two interesting features. First, they link racial kinds with ​ socially perspectival predicates ​ (SPPs). SPPs lead interpreters to treat the relationship between kinds and predicates in generic constructions as nomic or non-accidental. Moreover, in computing their content, (...) interpreters must make implicit reference to socially privileged​ ​ perspectives which are treated as authoritative about whether a given object fits into the extension of the predicate. Such deference grants these authorities influence over both the conventional meaning of these terms and over the nature of the ​ objects ​ in the social ontology that these terms purport to describe, much the way a baseball umpire is authoritative over the meaning and metaphysics of 'strike'/​ strike ​. Second, terms like 'criminal' and 'terrorist' receive default ​ racialized ​ interpretations in which these terms conventionally token racial or ethnic identities. I show that neither of these features can be explained by Sarah-Jane Leslie's influential 'weak semantics' for generics, and show how my own 'socially perspectival semantics' fares better on both counts. Finally, I give an analysis of 'Blacks are criminal' which explores the semantic mechanisms that underlie default racialized interpretations. (shrink)

The article reflects on where AI is headed and the world along with it, considering trust, ethics and safety. Implicit in artificial thinking and doomsday appraisals is the engineered divorce from reality of sublime human embodiment. Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Soeffner, and Larry Stapleton, four scholars associated with AI & Society, address these issues, and more, in the following exchange.

Over 1000 companies have either curtailed or else completely ceased operations in Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, a mass corporate exodus of a speed and scale which we’ve never seen. While corporate withdrawal appears to have considerable public support, it’s not obvious that it has done anything to hamper the Russian war effort, nor is it clear what the long-run effects of corporate withdrawal as a regularised response to war might be. Given this, it’s important the (...) evaluate the ethical merits of such a response. In this paper I critique what I take to be the two most common arguments given in favour of voluntary corporate withdrawal, which I label ‘the instrumental argument’ and ‘the clean hands argument’ respectively. After illustrating their shortcomings, I reframe corporations’ predicament as a ‘spattered hands’ case—one where they may do good by remaining in a war-waging state, but where they contribute indirectly to grave wrongdoing by doing so. Drawing on ideas from the ‘Business for Peace’ and ‘Business and Human Rights’ literature, I highlight the potentially positive role of corporate presence within war-waging countries, before highlighting four considerations which corporations ought to bear in mind when determining whether to withdraw, or whether it is the lesser evil to stay and to let their hands be spattered. (shrink)

While much has been written about the functional profile of intentions, and about their normative or rational status, comparatively little has been said about the subjective authority of intention. What is it about intending that explains the ‘hold’ that an intention has on an agent—a hold that is palpable from her first-person perspective? I argue that several prima facie appealing explanations are not promising. Instead, I maintain that the subjective authority of intention can be explained in terms of the inner (...) structure of intention. In adopting an intention the agent comes to see herself as criticizable depending on whether she executes the intention. This allows us to explain in first-personal terms why the agent becomes disposed to act and deliberate in ways that are characteristic of intention. As intention-formation involves profound changes to reflexive evaluative attitudes, this is the ‘Self-Evaluation’ view of the subjective authority of intention. (shrink)

This essay asks what it is about the practice of trade that grounds duties of justice between states as trade partners. The answer advanced is that such duties are grounded in the dependence that trade generates. The essay puts forward four conditions that a plausible account of grounding in trade must meet: it must admit of degrees, explain the distinctly international character of trade justice, ground both procedural and distributive duties, and it must be a necessary feature of all trade (...) relationships which generate duties of justice. A dependence account of grounding meets all four conditions, and does so in an intuitively compelling way. While other accounts of what grounds duties of trade justice can meet some of the conditions, none can meet all of them. Relative to rival candidates, then, the dependence account provides a firmer foundation for the ongoing attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of trade justice. (shrink)

China’s rise to global power status is set to be amongst the primary shapers of politics and life more broadly in the 21st century. Yet despite its immense significance, political philosophers have been surprisingly quiet on the normative implications of China’s rise. This, I will argue, is a mistake. Not only does China’s rise generate interesting normative questions in its own right; it also upends some basic assumptions that many of us have hitherto adopted in our thinking about international distributive (...) justice. In the philosophical literature, the international order is often characterised by two sorts of states – developed and developing – with the former owing demanding duties and the latter having expansive permissions to further their own development. China’s status as both a genuine superpower and a middle-income country facing significant development challenges calls into question the continued functionality of such simplifying assumptions. Against the backdrop of China’s rise – and, to a lesser extent, that of other large emerging economies – this paper develops a more fine-grained account of how to conceive of states’ differential levels of advantage, distinguishing between states that are incapable, precariously capable, and robustly capable of realizing a minimally decent standard of domestic justice. This account reaffirms the assignment of the most onerous international duties to developed states, but also assigns duties and claims to developing states in a scalar fashion, with the upshot that better-off developing states in particular bear positive duties of international justice, owed to least-developed countries (LDCs). (shrink)

The Cyrenaics assert that (1) particular pleasure is the highest good, and happiness is valued not for its own sake, but only for the sake of the particular pleasures that compose it; (2) we should not forego present pleasures for the sake of obtaining greater pleasure in the future. Their anti-eudaimonism and lack of future-concern do not follow from their hedonism. So why do they assert (1) and (2)? After reviewing and criticizing the proposals put forward by Annas, Irwin and (...) Tsouna, I offer two possible reconstructions. In the first reconstruction, I explain claim (1) as follows: happiness has no value above and beyond the value of the particular pleasures that compose it. Also, there is no "structure" to happiness. The Cyrenaics are targeting the thesis that happiness involves having the activities of one's life forming an organized whole, the value of which cannot be reduced to the value of the experiences within that life. I explain claim (2) as follows: a maximally pleasant life is valuable, but the best way to achieve it is to concentrate heedlessly on the present. In the second reconstruction, the good is radically relativized to one's present preferences. The Cyrenaics assert that we desire some particular pleasure, e.g., the pleasure that results from having this drink now. Thus, our telos -- which is based upon our desires -- is this particular pleasure, not (generic) 'pleasure' or the maximization of pleasure over our lifetime. As our desires change, so does our telos. I conclude that the scanty texts we have do not allow us to decide conclusively between these reconstructions, but I give some reasons to support the second over the first. (shrink)

Epicurus is strongly committed to psychological and ethical egoism and hedonism. However, these commitments do not square easily with many of the claims made by Epicureans about friendship: for instance, that the wise man will sometimes die for his friend, that the wise man will love his friend as much as himself, feel exactly the same toward his friend as toward himself, and exert himself as much for his friend's pleasure as for his own, and that every friendship is worth (...) choosing for its own sake. These claims have led some scholars to assert that Epicurus inconsistently affirms that friendship has an altruistic element. I argue that the Epicurean claims about friendship can be reconciled with egoism and hedonism in psychology and ethics. Friendship is valuable because having friends provides one with security more effectively than any other means, and having confidence that one will be secure in the future either is identical to ataraxia, or the grounds on which one has it. (shrink)

Trust not only disposes us to feel betrayed, trust can be betrayed. Understanding what a betrayal of trust is requires understanding how trust can ground an obligation on the part of the trusted person to act specifically as trusted. This essay argues that, since trust cannot ground an appropriate obligation where there is no prior obligation, a betrayal of trust should instead be conceived as the violation of a trust-based obligation to respect an already existing obligation. Two forms of trust (...) are evaluated for their potential to ground such a second-order obligation. One form counts as a gift to the trusted person only because it does not involve an expectation of trustworthiness; the other form cannot count as a gift but confers an honor because it does include an expectation of trustworthiness. Only trust that confers an honor generates a second-order obligation whose violation would be a betrayal of trust. -/- . (shrink)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

Appeals to nature are ubiquitous in Epicurean ethics and politics. The foundation of Epicurean ethics is its claim that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good and pain the sole intrinsic evil, and this is supposedly shown by the behavior of infants who have not yet been corrupted, "when nature's judgement is pure and whole." Central to their recommendations about how to attain pleasure is their division between types of desires: the natural and necessary ones, the natural but non-necessary ones, and (...) the vain and empty ones. Elsewhere, the Epicureans talk about the "natural goods" of political power and fame, and they contrast "natural wealth" with wealth as "defined by empty opinion." Finally, in their politics, Epicurus claims that the "the justice of nature is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, [i.e.,] neither to harm one another nor to be harmed." This paper explores two questions regarding these various appeals to nature. The first is: what is it for these things to be natural, i.e., what notion of "natural" or "nature" is at play here? (Furthermore, is there a single notion being used across these appeals, and if not, how are they related?) The second is: what normative work does a thing's being natural do? That is, what reason, if any, does a desire's being natural give me for pursuing the object of that desire and trying to fulfill that desire, as opposed to not doing so and trying to eliminate it, and similarly for the other appeals to nature? (shrink)

One striking oddity about Democritus and Epicurus is that, even though Epicurus' theory of perception is largely the same as that of Democritus, Democritus and his followers draw skeptical conclusions from this theory of perception, whereas Epicurus declares that all perceptions are true or real. I believe that the dispute between Democritus and Epicurus stems from a question over what sort of ontological status should be assigned to sensible qualities. In this paper, I address three questions: 1) Why were Democritus (...) and his followers skeptical? 2) How did Epicurus modify Democritus' metaphysics in order to avoid these skeptical conclusions? and 3) How successful was he? -/- 1) I argue that Democritus allows only the intrinsic properties of atoms into his ontology, and then runs into skeptical difficulties because of the relativity of perception. 2) I propose that Epicurus modifies Democritus' ontology by allowing dispositional and relational properties as real properties of bodies. Sensible qualities are conceptualized as dispositional properties of bodies to cause certain experiences in percipients. 3) I argue that Epicurus does not run into the same problems as Democritus. Finally, I consider how my interpretation of Epicurus' ontology helps to make sense of his claim that all perceptions are alethes--'true' or 'real.'. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)