In May 2021, Alan Bechaz, Racher Du, Will Cailes and Thomas Spiteri interviewed Sandra Leonie Field for UPJA’s Conversations from the Region. A series of discussions that invites philosophers from or based in Australasia to share their student and academic experiences. The segment looks into what inspires people to study philosophy, how they pursue their philosophical interests, and gives our audiences a better idea of philosophy as an undergraduate.

Throughout the 20th century, market capitalism was defended on parallel grounds. First, it promotes freedom by enabling individuals to exploit their own property and labor-power; second, it facilitates an efficient allocation and use of resources. Recently, however, both defenses have begun to unravel—as capitalism has moved into its “platform” phase. Today, the pursuit of allocative efficiency, bolstered by pervasive data surveillance, often undermines individual freedom rather than promoting it. And more fundamentally, the very idea that markets are necessary to achieve (...) allocative efficiency has come under strain. Even supposing, for argument’s sake, that the claim was true in the early 20th century when von Mises and Hayek pioneered it, advances in computing have rekindled the old “socialist calculation” debate. And this time around, markets—as information technology—are unlikely to have the upper hand. -/- All of this, we argue, raises an important set of governance questions regarding the political economy of the future. We focus on two: How much should our economic system prioritize freedom, and to what extent should it rely on markets? The arc of platform capitalism bends, increasingly, toward a system that neither prioritizes freedom nor relies on markets. And the dominant critical response, exemplified by Shoshana Zuboff’s work, has been to call for a restoration of market capitalism. Longer term, however, we believe it would be more productive to think about how “postmarket” economic arrangements might promote freedom—or better yet, autonomy—even more effectively than markets, and to determine the practical steps necessary to realize that possibility. (shrink)

Discussions about singular cognition, and its linguistic counterpart, are by no means exclusive to contemporary philosophy. In fact, a strikingly similar discussion, to which several medieval texts bear witness, took place in the late Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to partly reconstruct this medieval discussion, as it took place in Parisian question-commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, so as to show the progression from the rejection of singular intellection in Siger of Brabant to the descriptivist positions of John (...) Duns Scotus and John of Jandun, and finally to the singularism of John Buridan. All these authors accept some kind of intellectual access to individuals. Therefore, the conundrum is not whether we have some kind of intellectual knowledge of individuals, but rather whether we can know them singularly. This article begins by presenting the crucial obstacle to singular intellection in Siger. Thereafter, the author shows that Jandun and Scotus depart in fundamental ways from Siger’s account, but that for them the intellection of individuals is of a general character. Finally, she proposes that Buridan is a genuine singularist. (shrink)

Since approval of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, it has been widely and repeatedly claimed that the GDPR will legally mandate a ‘right to explanation’ of all decisions made by automated or artificially intelligent algorithmic systems. This right to explanation is viewed as an ideal mechanism to enhance the accountability and transparency of automated decision-making. However, there are several reasons to doubt both the legal existence and the feasibility of such a right. In contrast to the (...) right to explanation of specific automated decisions claimed elsewhere, the GDPR only mandates that data subjects receive meaningful, but properly limited, information (Articles 13-15) about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of automated decision-making systems, what we term a ‘right to be informed’. Further, the ambiguity and limited scope of the ‘right not to be subject to automated decision-making’ contained in Article 22 (from which the alleged ‘right to explanation’ stems) raises questions over the protection actually afforded to data subjects. These problems show that the GDPR lacks precise language as well as explicit and well-defined rights and safeguards against automated decision-making, and therefore runs the risk of being toothless. We propose a number of legislative and policy steps that, if taken, may improve the transparency and accountability of automated decision-making when the GDPR comes into force in 2018. (shrink)

To create fair and accountable AI and robotics, we need precise regulation and better methods to certify, explain, and audit inscrutable systems.

Amidst the challenges that teachers are facing nowadays, teachers resiliency in this new tough learning environment seemed to be an unexplored area. Thus, it is crucial to conduct studies that would explore factors that increase teachers resiliency particularly amidst teachers work-related stress and emotional exhaustion. This study explores the moderating effect of social support to self- efficacy and stress management strategies toward teachers resiliency employing descriptive-correlational with moderation design. teachers resiliency. The respondents were one hundred one (101) public elementary school (...) teachers who are currently associated with the four (4) public elementary schools in San Francisco District for the school year 2022-2023 using online survey questionnaire as the main instrument in gathering the data. The findings revealed that both teachers self-efficacy and stress management strategies have a significant relationship in teachers resiliency. This suggests that teachers must also be persistent in strengthening their self-efficacy and developing their stress management strategies to sustain their resiliency. Results also showed that social support effectively moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and teachers resilience. At the same time, it indicated that the higher self-efficacy of teachers was associated with a lower level of social support. Likewise, social support effectively moderates the relationship between stress management strategies and teachers resilience. Results also indicated that the higher level of stress management strategies was associated with lower level of social support. Individuals in the workplace especially supervisors and co-workers must consider providing their colleagues especially those with lower level of self- efficacy and stress management strategies with the necessary social support that they need to be resilient. (shrink)

Niels Bohr acuñó la idea de complementariedad porque se encontraba, a causa del postulado cuántico, ante representaciones heterogéneas que no accedían a síntesis final. La Modernidad se caracterizó por su razón totalizante. En la actualidad, la crisis de la Modernidad nos impele a dar paso a la diferencia, que expresa la plurivocidad de la experiencia humana. La complementariedad se presenta como un paradigma de pensamiento adecuado para dar respuesta, sin perder los logros de la Modernidad, a las demandas posmodernas. Aquí (...) se presentan algunas ideas que ayudan a la definición y prolongación del mismo. (shrink)

The era of AI-based decision-making fast approaches, and anxiety is mounting about when, and why, we should keep “humans in the loop” (“HITL”). Thus far, commentary has focused primarily on two questions: whether, and when, keeping humans involved will improve the results of decision-making (making them safer or more accurate), and whether, and when, non-accuracy-related values—legitimacy, dignity, and so forth—are vindicated by the inclusion of humans in decision-making. Here, we take up a related but distinct question, which has eluded the (...) scholarship thus far: does it matter if humans appear to be in the loop of decision-making, independent from whether they actually are? In other words, what is stake in the disjunction between whether humans in fact have ultimate authority over decision-making versus whether humans merely seem, from the outside, to have such authority? Our argument proceeds in four parts. First, we build our formal model, enriching the HITL question to include not only whether humans are actually in the loop of decision-making, but also whether they appear to be so. Second, we describe situations in which the actuality and appearance of HITL align: those that seem to involve human judgment and actually do, and those that seem automated and actually are. Third, we explore instances of misalignment: situations in which systems that seem to involve human judgment actually do not, and situations in which systems that hold themselves out as automated actually rely on humans operating “behind the curtain.” Fourth, we examine the normative issues that result from HITL misalignment, arguing that it challenges individual decision-making about automated systems and complicates collective governance of automation. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites or mass movements. However, the book argues that these (...) understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

The work presented has the following approach: starting from the Pope's reflection on the planet and ecological problems, it is intended to show the philosophical influences that underlie Francisco's exposition. These influences make it possible to describe a philosophical profile present in the encyclical Laudato si’. In addition, since philosophy claims to know, it is not exhausted only in knowledge, but tries to know in order to act; therefore, the presence of an ethical proposal follows; and since all ethics leads (...) to action, it follows that action cannot be without some indicators, without an axiology on which human action on the planet revolves. The result is that Francisco offers an ethic of otherness that feels the other as an authentic neighbor, even those who are in the future. It is an ethic of common benefit and caring for the other whose fundamental axis is the person and for this reason he reflects the phenomenon of human life within life on Earth, with which its philosophical approach seems personalist, from a point of Christian view. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2014). 'Hobbes and the question of power'. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52(1), 61-86. Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such (...) a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to this authority might be achieved. Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de mostrar la idea de sociedad y de convivencia política de los ciudadanos en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill desde su perspectiva utilitarista, en la cual el objetivo es la felicidad de las personas.

El artículo de investigación rememora en 2019 el 150 aniversario de la publicación de John Stuart Mill titulada La Esclavitud Femenina (1869). Recorre los principales ejes temáticos del autor acerca de su idea de mujer, de la necesidad de liberar a la mujer e igualarla al varón en los terrenos de la familia, laboral, educativo y político.

La fuerza del movimiento español se debe bastante a su constitución como tecnopolítica. La capacidad demostrada de construir dispositivos que transitan entre la calle y la red torna el movimiento potente en ambos los espacios y tiene ayudado en la movilización de la sociedad española. Ese uso táctico de las nuevas tecnologías de comunicación y de la internet permiten que el #15M forme una especie de consciencia de red, o mejor, la subjetividad de red hace parte de la actuación dentro (...) de él. De cierta forma, la visualización del #25S en Twitter nos revela éso. A pesar de ser solo una parte de toda la red del movimiento, que es constituida también por blogs, sites, perfiles individuales y colectivos en el Facebook, etc., la configuración de esa red presenta un poco como es la actuación colectiva de los sujetos. La narrativa colaborativa construida por medio de hashtags es también un de los mecanismos del movimiento usado para aprovechar una parte de su inteligencia colectiva. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genevieve Lloyd argues that when we follow Spinoza in understanding reason as a part of nature, we gain new insights into the human condition. Specifically, we gain a new political insight: we should respond to cultural difference with a pluralist ethos. This is because there is no pure universal reason; human minds find their reason shaped differently by their various embodied social contexts. Furthermore, we can use the resources of the imagination to bring this ethos about. In my response, (...) I offer a friendly challenge to Lloyd’s characterisation of the lessons of Spinoza’s philosophy. I argue that Lloyd’s Spinoza remains excessively unpolitical, even in the moment that he is brought to bear on contemporary politics. An unpluralistic attitude may well be rationally inferior, but is it really explained by insufficient or inappropriate imagination? To the contrary, a properly Spinozist account of reason must include an account of the concrete determinants of reason’s imperfect realisation in the world. In Spinoza’s own oeuvre, this is carried out through an ever-increasing—and ever more sociological—interest in the political structures within which individual reason flourishes or withers. (shrink)

Although high-performance human resource practices do not directly affect corporate social performance strengths, they do positively affect CSP strengths in companies that are highly innovative or have high levels of slack. High-performance human resource management practices also directly and negatively affect CSP concerns. Drawing on the resource-based view and using secondary data from an objective, third-party database, the authors develop and test hypotheses about how high-performance HRM affects a company’s CSP strengths and concerns. Findings suggest that HRM and innovation are (...) important capabilities because they create and enhance other capabilities. (shrink)

According to a recent interpretive orthodoxy, Spinoza is a profoundly democratic theorist of state authority. I reject this orthodoxy. To be sure, for Spinoza, a political order succeeds in proportion as it harnesses the power of the people within it. However, Spinoza shows that political inclusion is only one possible strategy to this end; equally if not more useful is political exclusion, so long as it maintains what I call the depoliticised acquiescence of those excluded.

How did the Franciscan friars translate Scotism to the New Spain? And Which controversies did it created? In this work we pretend to build the Scotistic Tradition in the New Spain by searching the bibliographical works used to teach and spread the ideas of John Duns Scotus since 1531 to 1780.

It may be time to question analytic philosophy’s structural ignorance of the methods of ordinary language philosophy. Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? upsets the analytic tradition to this end, pursuing a “linguistic phenomenology” that focuses on ordinary language use as a resource for describing the world. Cavell thereby entrusts the tradition with a more ambitious and concrete philosophical task.

El estudio que se desarrolla aquí muestra los aspectos generales del pensamiento de John Stuart Mill relacionados con la religión, tales como la existencia de Dios, los atributos de Dios, características del Cristianismo y cuestiones similares. Igualmente muestra la hipótesis de la utilidad de la religión para las personas.

Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to this authority might be achieved. (...) Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

Jusqu'à maintenant, il semble qu'on n'ait pas établi de lien entre le rejet par Bolzano de la notation quantificationnelle des propositions universelles de la logique traditionnelle et l'articulation inédite de sa notion de validité universelle. C'est ce que je veux faire ici. En particulier, dans la mesure où l'analyticité est un cas spécial de la validité universelle, j'ai l'intention de défendre l'idée qui veut que la notion bolzanienne d'analyticité cherche à résoudre des problèmes qui sont intrinsèquement liés à la théorie (...) traditionnelle de la quantification universelle tels qu'ils surviennent, notamment avec le traitement kantien de l'analyticité. It seems that the connection between Bolzano's rejection of the traditional quantificational notation for universal propositions and the articulation of his notion of universal validity has remained, until today, perfectly unnoticed. In this paper, I will show that there is such a connection. Particularly, since analyticity is a special case of universal validity, my intention is to show that the problems to which Bolzano's perfectly original account of analyticity seeks to find an answer are intrinsically related to the traditional conception of universal quantification as it arises in the context of Kant's treatment of analyticity. (shrink)

This paper is aimed at understanding one central aspect of Bolzano's views on deductive knowledge: what it means for a proposition and for a term to be known a priori. I argue that, for Bolzano, a priori knowledge is knowledge by virtue of meaning and that Bolzano has substantial views about meaning and what it is to know the latter. In particular, Bolzano believes that meaning is determined by implicit definition, i.e. the fundamental propositions in a deductive system. I go (...) into some detail in presenting and discussing Bolzano's views on grounding, a priori knowledge and implicit definition. I explain why other aspects of Bolzano's theory and, in particular, his peculiar understanding of analyticity and the related notion of Ableitbarkeit might, as it has invariably in the past, mislead one to believe that Bolzano lacks a significant account oï a priori knowledge. Throughout the paper, I point out to the ways in which, in this respect, Bolzano's antagonistic relationship to Kant directly shaped his own views. (shrink)

It is common to assimilate Marx’s and Spinoza’s conceptions of democracy. In this chapter, I assess the relation between Marx’s early idea of “true democracy” and Spinozist democracy, both the historical influence and the theoretical affinity. Drawing on Marx’s student notebooks on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, I show there was a historical influence. However, at the theoretical level, I argue that a sharp distinction must be drawn. Philosophically, Spinoza’s commitment to understanding politics through real concrete powers does not support with Marx’s (...) anti-institutional conception of true democracy. And as a matter of social theory, the gap between civil society and the state which so troubles Marx is a development of modernity that has not entered Spinoza's premodern field of view. Marx’s true democracy was also influenced by his study of Rousseau, and theoretically, it is just as close if not closer to Rousseau as to Spinoza. (shrink)

El trabajo que se presenta intenta mostrar, por un lado y siguiendo a Ortega y Gasset, la complejidad del fenómeno de la política; y por otro lado, a partir de la constatación anterior, la necesidad de una ética que haga de la política una actividad presidida por el diálogo, la integración y la búsqueda de soluciones a las complejidades de la sociedad actual. Son relevantes en este aspecto Apel y Habermas.

The European Hobbes Society Online Colloquium featured my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics, with critical commentaries from Alissa MacMillan, Chris Holman, and Justin Steinberg. This is my response to their commentaries.

El artículo trata de mostrar las influencias de los ideales de la Ilustración en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill. Así, puede comprobarse como en esos ideales de libertad, igualdad, tolerancia, respeto a la diferencia que propugna la Ilustración están presentes en el pensamiento de Mill y vertebran su filosofía.

Este artículo se propone indagar acerca de la distinción entre el Decir y lo Dicho en la obra de Emmanuel Levinas. Esta distinción sirve a Levinas para proponer una comprensión ética del lenguaje, en la que la significación y la expresión sean capaces de superar las limitaciones y determinaciones del lenguaje sistemático de la ontología, del ser y las esencias. Sobre la base de que el “lenguaje de la ontología” es impertinente para comprender, expresar o comunicar esa “experiencia ética” fundamental (...) del encuentro “cara a cara” con el Rostro del Otro: la experiencia misma de la significancia misma, Levinas propone una comprensión pre-ontológica del lenguaje. Esta comprensión pre-ontológica sería capaz de dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cuál es el lenguaje, la palabra propia, de ese sujeto pasivo, de ese sujeto que es rehén del Otro , que está sujeto a él? ¿Cuál es el lenguaje del dar-se, qué palabra puede hacerse cargo de lo que es siempre in-apropiable? ¿Cómo será ese lenguaje que intenta decir lo otro del ser, ese lenguaje capaz de “traducir” la significancia que se da en la experiencia ética originaria, aquella en la que la “unicidad insustituible de una persona se expone a otra persona”? En este sentido, proponemos que el Decir es, con respecto a lo dicho, su tener-lugar, la posibilidad misma de comunicación y expresión, en la que se expone la condición pasiva del sujeto. Por otra parte, en la medida en que el Decir es la expresión de la significancia que adviene en la proximidad con el Otro, el Decir es siempre testimonial.This text proposes an inquiry regarding the distinction between the Saying and the Said in Emmanuel Levinas works. Levinas uses this distinction to propose an ethical understanding of language, where significance and expression are capable of overcoming the limitations of ontology`s systematic language, of the being, and the essences. On the basis of that “the language of ontology” is impertinent to understand, express, or communicate this “ethical experience” fundamental for the “face to face encounter” with the Face of the Other: the experience of significance itself, Levinas proposes a pre-ontologic understanding of language. This pre-ontologic understanding would be capable of answering the following questions: What is the language, the word itself of that passive subject, that subject who is a hostage of the Other who is attached to him? Which is the language of giving oneself, which word can take charge of what is always non appropriable? What kind of language will it be that tries to say the other of the being, that language able to “translate” the significance given in the original ethical experience, that where the “irreplaceable uniqueness of a person is being exposed to another person”? In this respect, we propose that the Saying is, regarding the said, its having-occurred, the possibility itself of communicating and expressing, where the passive condition of the subject is exposed. On the other hand, in the measure that the Saying is the expression of the significance which occurs in the proximity with the Other, the Saying is always testimonial. (shrink)

In this paper, I articulate two Hobbesian models of interpersonal power relations that can be used to understand gender relations in society: what I will call the dominion model and the deference model. The dominion model discerns vertical subjection to another's will, whereas by contrast the deference model places individuals in a complex and shifting webs of favor and disfavor. Hobbes himself analyses gender relations through the dominion model. Indeed, more broadly this is the most prominent model of interpersonal power (...) relations throughout his texts. It is this model which is also reflected in the very rich existing feminist literature on Hobbes. However, the deference model, emerging only late in Hobbes's oeuvre, offers a superior general rubric for understanding interpersonal power relations. In particular, in light of its ability to grasp informal and diffuse relations of power, I argue that it offers useful insights for thinking about gender relations in our post-coverture era. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un extracto de la Tesis Doctoral leída en la Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad de Oviedo el 16 de abril de 2010 titulada Educación para la Libertad en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill. Este artículo recoge de forma resumida, a lo largo de sus páginas, los aspectos más destacables de dicha Tesis Doctoral. Se subraya el aspecto de la educación como elemento fundamental en el pensamiento del filósofo inglés John Stuart Mill, en el sentido (...) de mostrar la educación como aquello que permite sacar al exterior las capacidades, talentos, destrezas que la persona posee. Al mismo tiempo es la educación, en el marco de la cultura, la que afina y refina a la persona, ayudándola a construirse como una persona que se incorpore a la ciudadanía con derechos y deberes y que ejerza esa ciudadanía responsablemente en aras del bien común. La educación hace al ser humano más libre, y la libertad es la esencia de la persona en el pensamiento de Stuart Mill. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2012). 'Democracy and the multitude: Spinoza against Negri'. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 59(131), 21-40. Translated by María Cecilia Padilla and Gonzalo Ricci Cernadas. Negri celebra una concepción de la democracia en la que los poderes concretos de los individuos humanos no se alienan sino que se agregan: una democracia de la multitud. Pero ¿cómo puede actuar la multitud sin alienar el poder de nadie? Para contestar esta dificultad, Negri explícitamente apela (...) a Spinoza. Sin embargo, en este trabajo, sostengo que la filosofía de Spinoza no respalda el proyecto de Negri. Por el contrario, argumento que la multitud spinozista evita la jerarquía interna por medio de la mediación de las instituciones políticas y no a pesar de ellas; de la misma manera, estas instituciones tampoco simplemente emanan de la multitud tal cual es, sino que estructuran, contienen y canalizan sus pasiones. En particular, las instituciones requeridas no son las de la democracia simple y directa. Puede ser que existan otros argumentos no spinozistas en los cuales Negri pueda basar su teoría, pero no puede defender legítimamente su concepción de la multitud democrática apelando a Spinoza. (shrink)

On considère souvent, à la suite des ouvrages classiques de J. Bouveresse, que Wittgenstein veut opérer un rejet ou une critique de la subjectivité. Il semble cependant que les derniers textes de Wittgenstein consacrés à la philosophie de la psychologie permettent de modifier partiellement ce point de vue, et défaire place à une conception spécifique de la subjectivité, redéfinissant un sujet dépsychologisé voire désubjectivé, qui n'est plus le point sans étendue du Tractatus, ni le sujet métaphysique, ni le sujet de (...) la psychologie, mais simplement une voix ordinaire. Wittgenstein's later work is often held by critics in France, following e.g. Jacques Bouveresse's insights, to be operating a criticism of both interiority and subjectivity. A reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on the philosophy of psychology might somehow change such a point of view, and redefine a specific view — as a de-psychologized species — of subjectivity in Wittgenstein's writing, thus redefining the wittgensteinian subject in terms of an ordinary voice. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

Political protesters often don’t play by the rules. Think of the Occupy Movement, which brought lower Manhattan to a standstill in 2011 under the slogan, “We are the 99%”. Closer to home, think of the refugee activists who assisted a breakout from South Australia’s Woomera detention centre in 2002. Both are examples of contentious politics, or forms of political engagement outside the institutional channels of political decision-making. The democratic credentials of contentious politics are highly ambivalent. On the one hand, contentious (...) politics appears to have insufficient respect for democratic decision. Protesters are often forceful, uncivil and rowdy, aiming to disproportionately influence policy. But shouldn’t proposals be put forward with civility through the proper channels? And shouldn’t their proponents accept with good grace if they are democratically rebuffed? A closer look at the history of political thought can provide us with the framework to assess the case for and against the democratic reasonableness of contentious politics. (shrink)

El presente artículo trata, desde una perspectiva histórica, mostrar el debate entre la Razón y la Fe en la Historia de la Filosofía.

The European Hobbes Society Online Colloquium featured my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics. This is a précis of the book.

Hobbes’s science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as subjects of right and obligation, morally exhortable by appeal to the standards of reason. The science of politics proposes an absolutist model of politics. If this proposal is not to be idle utopianism, the enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. (...) In this paper, I argue that Hobbes's attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza. -/- Published with reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 221-224. Reprinted as: Sandra Field (2015), 'Hobbes and human irrationality', in T. Nardin (ed.) Rationality in Politics and its Limits, Abingdon: Routledge, 31-44. With reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 45-48. (shrink)

In October 2016, the White House, the European Parliament, and the UK House of Commons each issued a report outlining their visions on how to prepare society for the widespread use of artificial intelligence. In this article, we provide a comparative assessment of these three reports in order to facilitate the design of policies favourable to the development of a ‘good AI society’. To do so, we examine how each report addresses the following three topics: the development of a ‘good (...) AI society’; the role and responsibility of the government, the private sector, and the research community in pursuing such a development; and where the recommendations to support such a development may be in need of improvement. Our analysis concludes that the reports address adequately various ethical, social, and economic topics, but come short of providing an overarching political vision and long-term strategy for the development of a ‘good AI society’. In order to contribute to fill this gap, in the conclusion we suggest a two-pronged approach. (shrink)

Students often have difficulty connecting theoretical and text-based scholarship to the real world. When teaching in Asia, this disconnection is exacerbated by the European/American focus of many canonical texts, whereas students' own experiences are primarily Asian. However, in my discipline of political philosophy, this problem receives little recognition nor is it comprehensively addressed. In this paper, I propose that the problem must be taken seriously, and I share my own experiences with a novel pedagogical strategy which might offer a possible (...) path forward. Recent scholarship has championed an active learning approach, where students engage in their own research, and deliver outward-facing products that have a meaning and purpose beyond the confines of the student-professor relationship. In this spirit, I have put into practice a strategy of course design, where active learning is used to overcome students' disconnection with the course content. In particular, as a major component of course assessment, students are required to write an 'opinion piece', which is then showcased on a public website. The opinion piece must address a real-world issue which the student himself or herself selects and deems important; furthermore, it must build on the theoretical tools of the course and be written in a style which makes it accessible to a wider audience. I discuss the implementation of this strategy in two political philosophy courses, including strategies to avoid 'dumbing down' and ‘diluting’ the process of critical thinking. While no formal analysis of impact of the strategy on learning outcomes has been conducted, an anonymous pedagogical survey has yielded an overwhelmingly positive response for students' self-reported perceptions of the curricular innovations. (shrink)

Is there something about the deep logic of democracy that destines it to succeed in the world? Democracy, the form of politics that includes everyone as equals – does it perhaps suit human nature better than the alternatives? After all, surely any person who is excluded from the decision-making in a society will be more liable to rise up against it. From ancient thinkers like Seneca to contemporary thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, we can see some version of this line of (...) thought. Seneca thought that tyrannies could never last long; Fukuyama famously argued that liberal democracy is the end of history. I want to focus instead on the person credited with giving the most direct and uncompromising statement of this thought: Benedict de Spinoza. However, in this article, I argue to the contrary that Spinoza’s view of aristocracy should give pause to radical democrats. He does not see a historical movement towards democracy, nor does he see the superiority of democracy as written into human nature. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a heroic ideal: the person of integrity sticks to what they believe is right, regardless of the consequences. In this article, I defend a conception of ordinary integrity, for people who either do not desire or are unable to be moral martyrs. Drawing on the writings of seventeenth century thinker Huang Zongxi, I propose refocussing attention away from an abstract ideal of integrity, to instead consider the institutional conditions whereby it is made safe not to (...) be servile. (shrink)

Este libro es un ensayo filosófico que expresa la relevancia que para John Stuart Mill tiene la educación, hasta el punto de considerarla como un derecho fundamental de las personas, teniendo en cuenta que en su tiempo no existían los hoy conocidos Derechos Humanos. Stuart Mill se adelanta a nuestra época y presenta a la educación como ese derecho básico de toda persona que ha de ser protegido, potenciado y proporcionado por los diversos Estados.

El presente texto muestra, dentro del pensamiento de John Stuart Mill, una idea de ser humano diverso y distinto que vive en una realidad también diversa. La convivencia de seres diversos en las distintas sociedades requiere de una organización política en la que la democracia representativa juega un papel importante, pero también unida a la política está la ética, la cual en Stuart Mill ha de ser una ética cívica, esto es, una ética en la que los ciudadanos, sujetos de (...) derechos y de deberes, desplieguen sus capacidades de modo libre, sin más freno que el perjuicio al semejante. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es indagar acerca de la noción de “pasividad” que caracteriza al sujeto en el proyecto ético de Emmanuel Levinas. Un sujeto que es y está entregado al Otro, más allá de toda decisión voluntaria y de cualquier relación fáctica. La “pasividad” es la noción que permite comprender la contextura de la subjetividad levinasiana, su modo de constituirse, de “realizarse”, así como algo que denominaremos su “condición segunda”. La pasividad aparece en el pensamiento de Levinas como (...) la noción que le permite articular su ética, en tanto que ésta se funda en una responsabilidad que acontece en el extremo abandono de las certidumbres del “si mismo”, del “yo”. (shrink)

Important advances in biomedical and behavioral research ethics have occurred over the past few decades, many of them centered on identifying and eliminating significant harms to human subjects of research. Comprehensive attention has not been paid to the totality of harms experienced by animal subjects, although scientific and moral progress require explicit appraisal of these harms. Science is a public good and the prioritizing within, conduct of, generation of, and application of research must soundly address questions about which research is (...) morally defensible and valuable enough to support through funding, publication, tenure, and promotion. Likewise, educational pathways of re-imagined science are critical. (shrink)