This chapter focuses on how Kierkegaard criticizes both eudaimonism and Kantian autonomy for failing to account for unconditional obligations and genuine other-regard. Like Kant, Kierkegaard argues that eudaimonism makes moral virtue contingent on prudence. Kierkegaard views eudaimonism as an anthropocentric and self-regarding doctrine, which he contrasts not with Kantian autonomy but with theocentrism and proper other-regard. Kierkegaard then criticizes Kantian autonomy in much the same way as he criticizes eudaimonism. Whereas eudaimonism makes morality contingent on prudence, autonomy makes morality contingent (...) on decisions that may be revoked, he argues. As a result, human autonomy can account for hypothetical imperatives but not categorical imperatives. This line of reasoning seems problematic, however, since Kierkegaard takes Kantian autonomy to not only represent a form of moral constructivism, but also a form of moral relativism and decisionism. Still, Kierkegaard’s critique of autonomy indicates that morality and practical rationality need unconditional commitment towards what is objectively good. (shrink)

Many of Søren Kierkegaard's most controversial and influential ideas are more relevant than ever to contemporary debates on ethics, philosophy of religion and selfhood. Kierkegaard develops an original argument according to which wholeheartedness requires both moral and religious commitment. In this book, Roe Fremstedal provides a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness in the context of his views on moral psychology, meta-ethics and the ethics of religious belief. He shows that Kierkegaard's influential account of despair, selfhood, ethics and religion (...) belongs to a larger intellectual context in which German philosophers such as Kant and Fichte play crucial roles. Moreover, Fremstedal makes a solid case for the controversial claim that religion supports ethics, instead of contradicting it. His book offers a novel and comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard, drawing on important sources that are little known. (shrink)

This paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source (...) without validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself. (shrink)

By comparing the theories of evil found in Kant and Kierkegaard, this article aims to shed new light on Kierkegaard, as well as on the historical and conceptual relations between the two philosophers. The author shows that there is considerable overlap between Kant's doctrine of radical evil and Kierkegaard's views on guilt and sin and argues that Kierkegaard approved of the doctrine of radical evil. Although Kierkegaard's distinction between guilt and sin breaks radically with Kant, there are more Kantian elements (...) in Kierkegaard than was shown by earlier scholarship. Finally, Kierkegaard provides an alternative solution to the problem of the universality of guilt, a problem much discussed in the literature on Kant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify Kierkegaard’s concept of demonic despair (and demonic evil) and to show its relevance for discussions of the guise of the good thesis (i.e. that in f-ing intentionally, we take f-ing to be good). Contemporary discussions of diabolic evil often emphasise the phenomena of despair and acedia as apparent counter-examples to the guise of the good. I contend that Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair is relevant to these discussions, because it reconciles demonic (extreme) despair (...) and acedia with the guise of the good. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard provides an influential, systematic account of despair that relates evil, despair, and acedia to each other. Michelle Kosch argues that this account goes beyond Kierkegaard’s German predecessors by introducing a concept of diabolic evil and despair. By contrast, the present paper argues that Kierkegaard takes diabolic evil to be impossible, although he offers a rich analysis of the demonic that resembles diabolic agency. Still, Kierkegaard’s analysis rests on ontological assumptions about the nature of the good that belong to a Platonico-Christian tradition that is controversial today. (shrink)

This article deals with hope – and its importance – by analysing the little-known analysis of hope found in Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard present hope as essential to moral agency, arguingthat hope should never be given up, even if it is not supported by experience. This articlegives an interpretation of the strong claims about the necessity of hope found in Kierkegaardwhich tries to reconstruct some of Kierkegaard’s central claims, arguing that Kierkegaard can be used to sketch a distinction between justified and unjustified (...) hope. (shrink)

The present article deals with religious faith by comparing the so-called double movement of faith in Kierkegaard to Kant's moral faith. Kierkegaard's double movement of faith and Kant's moral faith can be seen as providing different accounts of religious faith, as well as involving different solutions to the problem of realizing the highest good. The double movement of faith in Fear and Trembling provides an account of the structure of faith that helps us make sense of what Kierkegaard means by (...) religious faith in general, as well as to understand better the relation between philosophy and Christian thinking in Kierkegaard. It is argued that previous scholarship has described the relation between Kierkegaard and Kant in a misleading manner by interpreting Kant as an ethicist and overlooking the role of grace in Kant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore a pragmatic approach to hope and the ethics of belief that allows rational hope against hope. Hope against hope is hope that goes beyond what the evidence supports by hoping for something that is both highly unlikely and highly valuable. However, this could take different forms. One could either hope against the evidence or merely go beyond it; the evidence could be inconclusive or conclusive, conflicting or clear, misleading or plain, absent or (...) neutral. Hope against hope then covers everything from hoping for something that appears unlikely to hoping for something that appears impossible, judging by the available evidence. However, there is a very long tradition of criticizing hope for being false or irrational. But hope can only be false or irrational if it is subject to rational assessment. This presupposes that it is appropriate to ask for a reason or a justification for hoping, since one can be answerable or responsible for hoping. Moreover, this typically assumes that hopes can be changed in response to reasons. False hopes, notably, should be given up (if possible). However, if hope is subject to rational assessment, it is also possible for hope to be rational or justified. Indeed, I will explore how practical reasons or pragmatic considerations may justify hope against hope, sketching criteria for rational hope that allow hope against hope. Section I introduces evidentialism and pragmatism regarding belief. Sections II and III discuss whether or not rational hope against hope is compatible with evidentialism, favoring a pragmatist approach to hope and belief. Section IV discusses evidentialism and pragmatism, whereas sections V-VII sketch constraints on pragmatism and rational hope. (shrink)

This essay tries to show that there exist several passages where Kierkegaard (and his pseudonyms) sketches an argument for the existence of God and immortality that is remarkably similar to Kant's so-called moral argument for the existence of God and immortality. In particular, Kierkegaard appears to follow Kant's moral argument both when it comes to the form and content of the argument as well as some of its terminology. The essay concludes that several passages in Kierkegaard overlap significantly with Kant's (...) moral argument, although Kierkegaard ultimately favors revealed faith over natural theology in general and Kant's moral faith in particular. Whereas Kant uses the moral argument to postulate the existence of God and immortality, Kierkegaard mainly uses it as a reductio ad absurdum of non-religious thinking. (shrink)

This thesis provides a novel account of arrogance and applies it to both individuals and collectives. In Chapter 1, I introduce and summarise the main aims and contributions of the thesis and note its omissions. In Chapter 2, I introduce a variety of plausible examples of individual arrogance and survey extant philosophical accounts of the trait. I argue, contra two contemporary accounts, that arrogance is an essentially interpersonal vice. I also argue for the novel view that arrogance can not only (...) involve feelings of superiority to or uniqueness from others but also feelings of similarity. In Chapter 3, I elaborate a novel approach to arrogance, understood as principally involving making undue assumptions of license. I explain how this account can disaggregate moral and epistemic forms of arrogance and argue that even highly domain-specific manifestations of arrogance can be conceived of as character traits. In Chapter 4, I use the analysis developed in earlier chapters to assess how we should understand the arrogance of groups. I argue that claims of group arrogance found in the extant philosophical literature involve sub-agential groups that are not paradigmatic group agents. An account of collective arrogance that caters to such groups is therefore required. The chapter proceeds to argue that prominent approaches to collective epistemic vice do not adequately account for these cases. In Chapter 5, I aim to fill this gap in our understanding by offering a novel account of collective arrogance. I argue that the dispositions of sub-agential groups can be understood in terms of the social norms that operate within them; that social norms underlie the arrogant dispositions of putatively arrogant groups. I conclude, in Chapter 6, by summarising the thesis’ key contributions and considering some of the questions that they raise for future research. (shrink)

This article investigates the convergence between Kierkegaard’s concept of despair and Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism. The piece argues that (1) both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche rely on an internal critique of ways of life which collapse on their own terms; (2) both despair and nihilism involve a radical, existential aporia and double-mindedness which can be (3) either conscious or non-conscious; (4) there is some overlap between the main types of nihilism and the different types of inauthentic (non-conscious) despair; (5) finally, a (...) comparison with Nietzsche makes it possible to make sense of inauthentic despair without resorting to theological presuppositions or a twentieth century depth psychology notion of the unconscious. (shrink)

This article aims to show that in his little-known work Denkbewegungen (MS 183), Wittgenstein sketchesan existential philosophy that has been influenced by Kierkegaard. While earlier interpretations of Denkbewegungen stress that this is a diary and tend to favour a biographical orpsychological approach to the diary, I try – with a thematic andhistorical approach − to show that this book sheds new light upon how Wittgenstein was occupied with Kierkegaard (and Christian-ity) on the one hand, and ethics, religion, and existential philoso-phy (...) on the other. Because of this, Denkbewegungen can provideus with a better understanding of how Wittgenstein, during animportant period in the 1930s, developed his thinking. (shrink)

The present text deals with the question of the meaning of life in theexistentialist theory oft heNorwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe(1899–1990). In his book On the Tragic (1941), Zapffe sketched a theory of the human condition where the meaning of life plays a decisive role together with the human need for justice. This paper aims to reconstruct the central elements of Zapffe’s analysis and to discuss them critically by focusing on his claim that human beings need a fundamental meaning of (...) life as a whole that transcends meaning in life. I pay particular attention to Zapffe’s claim that life is meaningless, since the meaning of life is fundamentallylacking.I conclude that Zapffe’s analysis is problematic for reasons both internal and external to his theory. (shrink)

This chapter deals with German philosophy from Leibniz to Fichte, which formed an important part of Kierkegaard's intellectual background. In this period German philosophy came to dominate Danish philosophy. However, Kierkegaard's attitude toward his German predecessors is generally ambivalent, involving both critique and admiration. Although Kierkegaard was fluent in German and very familiar with classic German philosophy, his use of this philosophy is somewhat eclectic and assimilated to his own ends. Kierkegaard uses his German predecessors to develop a distinction between (...) the spheres of existence and thought and to reinforce what he took to be genuine Christian faith. (shrink)

Kierkegaard differs from his contemporaries Schopenhauer and Nietzsche by emphasizing the value of hope and its importance for human agency and selfhood (practical identity). In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard argues that despair involves a loss of hope and courage that is extremely common. Moreover, despair involves being double-minded by having an incoherent practical identity (although it need not be recognized as such if the agent mistakes his identity). A coherent practical identity, by contrast, requires wholehearted commitment towards ideals and (...) the hope that our ideals are realizable. Kierkegaard develops an existential account of hope that emphasizes the interrelation between hope and despair (hopelessness), seeing both as crucial for human agency and selfhood. More specifically, Kierkegaard defends the strong view that we should always hope for the good, no matter how bad the situation might be. Put differently, Kierkegaard sees hope against hope as necessary for human agency and selfhood. His emphasis lies not so much on a description of what hope is as an analysis of what justified hope is. More specifically, Kierkegaard argues that justified hope is interrelated with charity and religious faith, and has the highest good (eternal bliss) as its proper object. As such, it belongs not only to a Judeo-Christian tradition that focuses on the Pauline triad of faith, hope, and charity but it also belongs to a philosophical tradition from Augustine and Kant that views the highest good (the summum bonum), a synthesis of virtue and happiness, as the ultimate object of hope. However, Kierkegaard goes beyond his forerunner by developing a via negativa approach to hope that starts with hopelessness and despair before it proceeds to hope. Indeed, Kierkegaard argues that proper hope, hope against hope, both presupposes and overcomes despair at every instant. (shrink)

This article provides a critical assessment of Habermas’s recent work on religion and its role in the public sphere by comparing it to Kant’s phi-losophy of religion on the one hand and that of Kierkegaard on the other. It is argued that although Habermas is in many ways a Kantian, he diverges from Kant when it comes to religion, by taking a position which comes closer to the Kierkegaardian view that religiousness belongs to private faith rather than philosophy. This has (...) implications not just for the conception of religion but also for the very roles of communication, validity, rationality, and philosophy. (shrink)

The present text focuses on what resources Kierkegaard offers for dealing with the question “Why be moral?” I sketch an approach to this question by presenting Kierkegaard’s methodology, his negative arguments against the aesthete and the motive he offers for being moral. I conclude that Kierkegaard does provide motivation for assessing ourselves in moral terms, although his approach is more relevant to deontological ethics and virtue ethics than consequentialism.

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even holds that awareness (...) of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

This chapter relates Kierkegaard’s views on anthropology and selfhood to Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical anthropology. It focuses on Kierkegaard’s contribution to anthropology, and discusses the relation between philosophical and theological anthropology in Kierkegaard. The chapter gives a synopsis of these issues by focusing on The Sickness unto Death, although important elements of this work are anticipated by Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. After an historical introduction and brief remarks on Kierkegaard’s method, the chapter moves to human (...) nature, selfhood, and despair in The Sickness unto Death. We will see that human nature is interpreted as a synthesis of opposites, whereas selfhood requires self-consciousness and higher-order volition. Nevertheless, The Sickness unto Death approaches selfhood and anthropology negatively by focusing on despair, a deficient form of agency that involves double-mindedness. Kierkegaard argues that despair can only be overcome by wholeheartedness and religious faith. Whereas Part I of The Sickness unto Death provides a philosophical anthropology that distinguishes between inauthentic (non-conscious) and authentic (conscious) despair, Part II develops a theological anthropology that focuses on faith and despair before God. Part I analyses and criticizes various forms of despair on their own terms, whereas Part II identifies despair with sin on the presupposition of divine revelation. Overall, The Sickness unto Death provides a systematic analysis of despair that has been influential in continental philosophy and theology. It is a fascinating contribution to anthropology and theories of selfhood because of its typology and negativistic phenomenology. On the one hand, the analysis of non-conscious despair provides an intriguing account of self-deception, facticity, and freedom. On the other, the analysis of demonic despair—which does evil because it is evil—appears to challenge the widespread idea that all intentional action is prompted by something that appears good). (shrink)

This chapter sketches a reconstruction of the concept of hidden inwardness that argues that the concept refers to ethico-religious characters that are expressed in deeds and words, rather than a private inner world. By relying on the distinction between morality and legality, I argue that “hidden inwardness” is not compatible with all kinds of behavior and that it is better described negatively than positively. The concept of hidden inwardness need therefore not be as problematic as is often assumed, since it (...) mainly involves the idea that we do not know hearts and minds. Still, Kierkegaard’s later works use “hidden inwardness” in a different manner than the earlier pseudonymous writings. However, I argue that this change in use of the term involves more a change of emphasis, which prevents misuses of “hidden inwardness,” than any significant change of theoretical position. Finally, I show that “hidden inwardness” sheds light on the controversial theses “Subjectivity is truth” and “Subjectivity is untruth” in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss and reject both the idea of a moral order, in which morality and prudence generally coincide, and the idea of a tragic world, in which morality and prudence generally collide. I then discuss and defend an intermediary position in which morality and prudence converge substantially. It is argued that moral agency presuppose friction that prevents morality from coinciding perfectly with prudence. Still, morality and prudence should not be thought of as being fundamentally incompatible, because this (...) would lead to an objectionable dualism of practical reason as well as demoralization. (shrink)

While it is commonly held that natural evil and suffering undermine religious belief, Kant and Kierkegaard both argue that religion and ethics presuppose discontentment, hardship, and uncertainty. Both argue that moral purity requiresthat this world be imperfect both in the sense of having restricted knowledgeand in the sense that virtue does not lead to happiness. Thus, both thinkersmake constitutive assumptions about the moral structure of the world on prac-tical grounds. But whereas Kant insists that there must be some connection inthis (...) world between morality and happiness, Kierkegaard tends to deny this, portraying this world either as amoral (in 1843–46) or as evil (in 1850–55). (shrink)

This article deals with how moral freedom relates to historicity and contingency by comparing Kierkegaard's theory of the anthropological synthesis to Kant's concept of moral character. The comparison indicates that there are more Kantian elements in Kierkegaard's anthropology than shown by earlier scholarship. More specifically, both Kant and Kierkegaard see a true change in the way one lives as involving not only a revolution in the way one thinks, but also that one takes over—and tries to reform—both oneself and human (...) society. Also, Kierkegaard relies on the ideality of ethics and the doctrines of moral rigorism and radical evil. However, Kierkegaard can be seen as trying to find amore systematic role for historicity and contingency than Kant by developing the concept of facticity and by analyzing the so-called “despair of possibility.”. (shrink)

Some people insist that they are dead. Rather than starting with the usual assumption that delusions are ‘false beliefs about external reality’ I want to consider how interpreting their claim as a report of a certain kind of anomalous experience assists us in understanding why they are certain, why their claim is immune from evidence to the contrary, and why they do not act in ways we would expect were they to believe their claim to be true of the world. (...) While this helps us understand cases where people do not act on their delusions, more must be said about the people who do act on their delusions. I shall attempt to describe a process where an intense anomalous experience leads to a context-specific narrowing of attention. The ultimate result of this is that the appearance / reality distinction becomes lost in the context of the anomalous experience. The sense of conviction that would be appropriately associated with a report of experience thus becomes inappropriately associated with a claim about external reality. While there have been efforts to provide cognitive therapy for delusional subjects such therapy seems to be based on the notion that confronting them with their contradictions will assist in weakening their sense of certainty about the delusional utterance. I consider whether more progress could be made via empathetic validation of the sense of certainty which is appropriate when associated with the person’s anomalous experience. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Preservationism is a dominant account of the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of memory. According to preservationism, a memory belief is justified only if that belief was justified when it was initially held. However, we now know that much of what we remember is not explicitly stored, but instead reconstructed when we attempt to recall it. Since reconstructive memory beliefs may not have been continuously held by the agent, or never held before at all, a purely preservationist account (...) of memory does not allow for justified reconstructed memory beliefs. In this essay, I show how a process reliabilist account can maintain preservationism about reproductive memory beliefs while accommodating the justification of reconstructive memory beliefs. I argue that reconstructive memory is an inferential process, and that therefore the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. Accordingly, my process reliabilist account combines a preservationist account of reproductive memory with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I end by defending this view against objections. (shrink)

In this chapter, Marie Collins Swabey critiques naturalism and defends a rationalistic conception of knowledge.

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights (...) Reserved. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

The “born this way” narrative remains a popular way to defend nonnormative genders and sexualities in the United States. While feminist and queer theorists have critiqued the narrative's implicit ahistorical and essentialist understanding of sexuality, the narrative's incorporation by the state as a way to regulate gender identity has gone largely underdeveloped. I argue that transgender accounts of this narrative reorient it amid questions of temporality, race, colonialism, and the nation-state, thereby allowing for a critique that does justice to the (...) enmeshment of categories of difference. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

This paper argues that an addressee's failure to recognize a speaker's authority can constitutes another form of silencing.

In this paper I develop a new account of the philosophical motivations for Descartes’s theory of judgment. The theory needs explanation because the idea that judgment, or belief, is an operation of the will seems problematic at best, and Descartes does not make clear why he adopted what, at the time, was a novel view. I argue that attending to Descartes’s conception of the will as the active, free faculty of mind reveals that a general concern with responsibility motivates his (...) theory of judgment. My account avoids some unappealing features of the standard interpretation, renders the theory more plausible than many have suggested, and explains why his theory does not fall neatly into any current-day position on the issue of the control we have over belief. (shrink)

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. (...) Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative. (shrink)

Reshaping our methodological research tools for adequately capturing injustice and domination has been a central aspiration of feminist philosophy and social epistemology in recent years. There has been an increasingly empirical turn in recent feminist and political theorization, engaging with case studies and the challenges arising from conducting research in solidarity with unequal partners. I argue that these challenges cannot be resolved by merely adopting a norm and stance of deference to those in the struggle for justice. To conduct philosophical (...) research in an engaged and solidaristic manner, I suggest that deference be supplemented by three methodological and normative principles: 1) epistemic humility, 2) accountability, and 3) co-producing knowledge. I situate these principles within contemporary philosophical work on solidarity, and show how they might help confront power imbalances and other methodological hazards that arise when conducting research in solidarity with others. I arrive at these principles in part by critically reflecting on my own attempt to conduct research in solidarity with women’s rights activists in Senegal. (shrink)

Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times when I have wanted to stress that philosophising is not just grand and elegant and difficult, but is also needed. It is not optional. The idea has caused mild surprise, and has sometimes been thought rather undignified. The question of dignity is a very interesting one, and I shall come back to it at the end of this article. But first, I would like to work the comparison (...) out a bit more fully. (shrink)

Descartes claims that the passions of the soul are “all in their nature good” even though they exaggerate the value of their objects, have the potential to deceive us, and often mislead us. What, then, can he mean by this? In this paper, I argue that these effects of the passions are only problematic when we incorrectly take their goodness to consist in their informing us of harms and benefits to the mind-body composite. Instead, the passions are good in their (...) motivational function, which they carry out by representing objects and situations as having various properties and thereby appearing to be “reasons of goodness.” Further, I argue that the main way in which the passions are problematic is merely an occasional physiological byproduct of a well- functioning system. I show, therefore, that the passions’ motivational function, representationality, and accompanying physiology are all significant and interrelated aspects of their goodness. (shrink)

This paper examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena and formalizing biological explanations. I point out that the causal graph approach reaches it limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, DNA-binding and -recognition of proteins, I argue that causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain causal phenomena in this field. The inadequacy of these models is due (...) to their failure to include relevant spatial and structural information in a way that does not render the model non-explanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory. (shrink)

This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much philosophy is there in the philosophy of science?” In Sect. 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish between two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We also briefly explicate (...) how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Sect. 2, we apply the distinctions of Sect. 1 to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded and a descriptive or normative style. (shrink)

There is already a long history of conversation between feminism and deconstruction, feminist theorists and Derrida or Derrideans. That conversation has been by turns fraught and constructive. While some of these interactions have occurred in queer feminism, to date little has been done to stage an engagement between deconstruction and transfeminism. Naysayers might think that transfeminism is too recent and too identitarian a discourse to meaningfully interact with Derrida’s legacy. On the other hand, perhaps Derrida’s work was too embedded in (...) second wave feminism, and in some cases implicit misogyny and transphobia, to meet transfeminism on its own playing field. And yet, I think both suspicions shortchange these discourses. In this article, I stage a conversation between Derrida and two writers working in the area of trans feminism: Paisley Currah and Julia Serano. I explore, in particular, how their conceptions of gender neutrality or gender pluralism are complementary and together change the so-called “question of woman,” from a philosophical and political perspective. (shrink)

In this article, I extend the feminist use of Friedrich Nietzsche’s account of memory and forgetting to consider the contemporary externalization of memory foregrounded by transgender experience. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals argues that memory is “burnt in” to the forgetful body as a necessary part of subject-formation and the requirements of a social order. Feminist philosophers have employed Nietzsche’s account to illuminate how gender, as memory, becomes embodied. While the account of the “burnt in” repetitions of gender allows (...) us to theorize processes of embodied identity on an individual level, analyzing gender today requires also accounting for how gender is externalized. I take up this question through the specific examples of identity documents and sex-segregated bathrooms. Returning to Nietzsche’s call to practice a resistant forgetting, I conclude by exploring the distinct strategies required to disrupt externalized memory. These strategies include contesting the use of past gender assignments in data collection and rewriting architectural reminders of gender. (shrink)

Over the past few years we have seen an increasing number of legal proceedings related to inappropriately implemented technology. At the same time career paths have diverged from the foundation of statistics out to Data Scientist, Machine Learning and AI. All of these new branches being fundamentally branches of statistics and mathematics. This has meant that formal training has struggled to keep up with what is required in the plethora of new roles. Mathematics as a taught subject is still based (...) in decades old teaching specifications and has not been updated centrally as a curriculum to include new technologies, coding or ethics. This subject area is firmly split between ICT and Mathematics in secondary school, continuing on to be split between Computer Science and Mathematics at University. As we move forwards with technology we see these once seperate fields becoming increasingly intertwined. We propose that existing provision for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility in analysis currently exist but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curriculum of School or University. This is partially due to the split between fields in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with Industry and its requirements. Principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling beginning at school level means that ethics and real-life modelling are introduced much earlier than normal. Integrating these concepts with philosophical principles of society and politics ensures a suitable background for future modellers and users of technology to draw on. Modelling is currently undertaken in technical sciences at University but the Subject Benchmark Statements are not current (Subject Benchmark Statements describe the nature of study and the academic standards expected of graduates in specific subject areas. They show what graduates might reasonably be expected to know, do and understand at the end of their studies). Even in 2019 the UK did not yet have Benchmark Statements that discuss the learning to be done in Higher Education around AI and advanced Machine Learning. Where there is provision for AI and Data Science within degree courses ethics is not generally highlighted as a key concept. As such there can be a lack of focus on the teaching of modelling or ethics as specific skills. The skills required to use a basic statistical model, for example would not be sufficient to start from scratch and build an ethical model reflecting real-world scenarios with which to inform policy or organisational decision making. This is a skill in itself and includes such aspects as awareness of data quality, ethics, user implementation problems, context and an understanding of the environment that the model is being created in. As the field of analytics has progressed so quickly in the last decade modules such as those covering AI have simply been bolted on to Maths or Computing degrees rather than being fully detailed as key areas of study or driving new, more integrated courses of study. This paper posits that gaps at primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels need to be addressed. Implementing and integrating key concepts from school level is essential so that areas such as assumptions, caveats, quality assurance and answering the right questions with constructive challenge become a cultural fixture. This not only helps developers of technology but users of rapidly developing technology also. In addition, leadership and soft skills as part of this education will ensure that a cultural shift can take place and promote continuous improvement in analysis within organisations. The addition of key concepts throughout the educational system and the updating of potentially outdated curriculums is key to ensuring a functional society. A society where every citizen is a user of tech and those that develop it can be ethical and socially responsible in its development. (shrink)

Marie Oldfield, Pro Bono Economics & Refugee Council. Over half the total applications for asylum the UK receives each year are initially rejected, yet nearly a third of these initial rejections are subsequently overturned on appeal. This process that fails to get decisions right first time imposes significant costs, not just on the applicants themselves, but also more widely on UK taxpayers. Asylum seekers are not entitled to welfare benefits nor employment except in some limited cases, and are often placed (...) in unsuitable conditions with lack of appropriate support to prepare their case for asylum. These unfortunate circumstances mean that they are unable to gather and present all the required evidence first time, even when the case for asylum is legitimate. As a result, the application is rejected and thus begins a cycle of appeals that might eventually lead to a successful outcome for the asylum seeker but will, in the process, burden the taxpayer with unnecessary administrative cost and cause the asylum seeker needless distress and prevent them from accessing suitable economic opportunities. • Our study estimates that there are approximately 4,000 initial rejections that are successfully appealed each year and, with each appeal incurring direct administrative costs of around £1,000, the price tag of incorrect initial decisions adds up to a hefty £4 million per year in unnecessary administrative costs alone. • There are other costs, too, that negatively impact asylum seekers and taxpayers, albeit in a more indirect manner. The longer the appeals process is dragged out, the more delay there is to successful asylum seekers entering the labour market which means lost economic activity and forgone tax revenue for the Exchequer. Long periods of unemployment also result in skills attrition and lower the probability of the asylum seeker successfully entering the labour market in the future. • A lengthy appeals process heightens stress and worsens mental health in asylum seekers, a group arguably already more vulnerable on this front. Unnecessary human suffering aside, there is also a monetary cost borne by the taxpayer should NHS mental health services become involved. Thus, there is a pressing and viable case for providing asylum seekers a stable environment in which to complete their applications for asylum. This would increase the likelihood of reaching correct decisions in the first instance, avoid unnecessary administrative costs of an arduous appeals process, enable successful asylum seekers to access the labour market and contribute to the Exchequer, and avoid placing extra demands on already strained NHS mental health services. (shrink)

We characterize four fruitful and underappreciated epistemic roles played by the concept of an individualized niche in contemporary biology, utilizing results of a qualitative empirical study conducted within an interdisciplinary biological research center. We argue that the individualized niche concept (1) shapes the research agenda of the center, (2) facilitates explaining core phenomena related to inter-individual differences, (3) helps with managing individual-level causal complexity, and (4) promotes integrating local knowledge from ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioral biology and other biological fields. We (...) thereby also challenge arguments that the niche concept is superfluous in ecology. (shrink)