This paper defends a principle I call Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of a belief is determined in precisely the same way as the rationality of any other state. For example, if wearing a raincoat is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value, then believing some proposition P is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value. This contrasts with the popular view that the rationality of belief is determined by evidential support. It also contrasts (...) with the common idea that in the case of belief, there are two different incommensurable senses of rationality, one of which is distinctively epistemic. I present considerations that favor Equal Treatment over these two alternatives, reply to objections, and criticize some arguments for Evidentialism. I also show how Equal Treatment opens the door to a distinctive kind of response to skepticism. (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics (...) with contingent creaturehood, it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that all—or almost all—logical rules have exceptions. In particular, it is argued that this is a moral that we should draw from the semantic paradoxes. The idea that we should respond to the paradoxes by revising logic in some way is familiar. But previous proposals advocate the replacement of classical logic with some alternative logic. That is, some alternative system of rules, where it is taken for granted that these hold without (...) class='Hi'>exception. The present proposal is quite different. According to this, there is no such alternative logic. Rather, classical logic retains the status of the ‘one true logic’, but this status must be reconceived so as to be compatible with (almost) all of its rules admitting of exceptions. This would seem to have significant repercussions for a range of widely held views about logic: e.g. that it is a priori, or that it is necessary. Indeed, if the arguments of the paper succeed, then such views must be given up. (shrink)

This paper revisits Giorgio Agamben’s text The Time That Remains and through a comparative analysis contrasts the author’s reading of St Paul’s Romans to relevant Derridean thematics prevalent in the text. Specific themes include language, the law, and the subject. I illustrate how Agamben attempts to revitalise the idea of philosophical anthropology by breaking away from the deconstructive approach. Agamben argues that language is an experience but is currently in a state of nihilism. Consequently, the subject has become lost; or, (...) more specifically, the subject and its object have not disappeared in language but through language. The resuscitation of experience is thus required to defeat this condition: only in language does the subject have its site and origin. Unlike deconstruction, which highlights an inherent paradox within a situation unearthing a questionable foundation, Agamben argues that, by investigating the “exception,” one finds neither a norm nor an inherent truth of the situation, but the confusion which surrounds them both. (shrink)

When faced with a rule that they take to be true, and a recalcitrant example, people are apt to say: “The exception proves the rule”. When pressed on what they mean by this though, things are often less than clear. A common response is to dredge up some once-heard etymology: ‘proves’ here, it is often said, means ‘tests’. But this response—its frequent appearance even in some reference works notwithstanding1—makes no sense of the way in which the expression is used. (...) To insist that the exception proves the rule is to insist that whilst this is an exception, the rule still stands; and furthermore, that, rather than undermining the rule, the exception serves to confirm it. This second claim may seem paradoxical, but it should not, once it is realized that what does the confirming is not the exception itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be an exception; and that what is confirmed is not the rule itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be a rule. To treat something as an exception is not to treat it as a counterexample that refutes the existence of the rule. Rather it is to treat it as special, and so to concede the rule from which it is excepted. The point comes clearly in the original (probably 17th Century) Latin form: Exceptio probat (figit2) regulam in casibus non exceptis. Exception (i.e. the act of excepting) proves (establishes) the rule in the cases not excepted. Clearly this form of reasoning cannot apply when the rule that we are considering has the form of a simple universal generalization. Here there can be no exceptions, only counterexamples. So what we need, and what will be developed.. (shrink)

Exceptions are often cited as a counterargument against formal causation. Against this I argue that Aristotle explicitly allows for exceptions to essences in his biological writings, and that he has a means of explaining them through formal causation – though this means that he has to slightly elaborate on his general case theory from the Posterior Analytics, by supplementing it with a special case application in the biological writings. Specifically for Aristotle an essential predication need not be a universal predication. (...) Rather an essential predication is where a property belongs essentially to a species or genus. This essential predication serves a causal and explanatory role, and is not dependent on a corresponding universal predication. (shrink)

This piece criticizes Fodor's argument (in The Elm and the Expert, 1994) for the claim that Frege cases should be treated as exceptions to (broad) psychological generalizations rather than as counterexamples.

This paper argues that Spinoza held substances other than God to be inconceivable. It uses this claim to develop a novel response to the Problem of Other Substances, the problem of explaining why some of Spinoza’s proofs for God’s existence cannot be used to prove the existence of a non-divine substance instead.

Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather than (...) disposition attributions, but which is otherwise similar to inferentialist versions of dispositionalism. I argue that it can handle all the exceptions discussed in the literature without recourse to ceteris paribus clauses. Psychological exceptions are handled by suitably undemanding requirements (unlike that of giving the sum of any two numbers) and by setting the following two preconditions upon someone’s making the inference: that she considers the inference and has no motivating reason against it. The non-psychological exceptions, i.e., cases of neural malfunctioning, are handled by requiring that the counterfactuals be true sufficiently often during the relevant interval. I argue that this accommodates some important intuitions about concept possession, in particular, the intuition that concept possession is vague along a certain dimension. (shrink)

Non-uniformed combat morally infringes on civilians’ fundamental right to immunity and exacts an impermissible form of unofficial conscription that is morally prohibited even if the civilians knowingly consent to it. It is often argued that revolutionary groups burdened by resource disparities relative to the state or who claim alternative sources of political legitimacy (such as national self-determination or the constitution of a political collective) are justified in using unconventional tactics such as non-uniformed combat. Neither those reasons nor the provision of (...) public goods, however, are sufficient to justify such rights violations and this form of conscription, and it calls into question the suitability of current international legal protections for the non-uniformed. (shrink)

There has recently been an expansion of anti-abortion measures in the United States. Within these various measures there is a divide over certain exceptions: some States permit abortion for pregnancies caused by rape while other States do not. This paper explores the underlying moral justification for such exceptions. I argue that within the dominant moral framework for reproductive ethics these exceptions are incoherent by their own lights. But this is not a defense of an exceptionless anti-abortion position. Rather, because the (...) typical way of making such exceptions is incoherent, this shows why the anti-abortion movement is dangerous: as these incoherencies are acknowledged, this may lead to ever stricter measures being put in place. I end by suggesting that those who are sympathetic to these exceptions should find it easier to move to a pro-choice position rather than to a more extreme, exceptionless one. (shrink)

This addendum expands upon the arguments made in the author’s 2020 essay, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence: Citizenship as the Exception to the Rule”, in an effort to display the significance human augmentation technologies will have on (feasibly) inadvertently providing legal protections to artificial intelligence systems (AIS)—a topic only briefly addressed in that work. It will also further discuss the impacts popular media have on imprinting notions of computerised behaviour and its subsequent consequences on the attribution of legal protections (...) to AIS and on speculative technological advancement that would aid the sophistication of AIS. (shrink)

It is shown that the superposed wave function of a measuring device, in each branch of which there is a definite measurement result, does not correspond to many mutually unobservable but equally real worlds, as the superposed wave function can be observed in our world by protective measurement.

After nearly 76 years following the UN Charter, the dominant feature of the multilateral international order has shifted from a focus on states’ sovereignty to the rights of the individual. It is now widely accepted that human rights are not the province of any one state’s domestic affairs, but of importance to the entire international community. The UN Security Council sits atop the supra-state order, and holds the ultimate authority to initiate consensus-based, collective action so as to limit or prevent (...) gross human rights violations. Yet, many times the Security Council is slow to act, and consensus is exceedingly rare. This begs the question: in the face of gross human rights violations and Security Council inaction, is unilateral humanitarian intervention justified? The present state of international law on the matter is unsettled and controversial to many. What follows is a discussion on the development of international law relating to unilateral humanitarian intervention, the permissibility of intervention for gross human rights violations, and justification for intervention under existing international law. I conclude that under the present multilateral regime, unilateral humanitarian intervention is legally justified, despite fears that the principle may be invoked for the purposes of cloaking acts of aggression. (shrink)

The intersection between philosophy and psychedelics is explored in the book “Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience”. The authors aim to develop a dialogue between the two disciplines and explore the various frameworks for understanding exceptional experiences that psychedelics have afforded human beings. The book delves into foundational, ontological, and epistemological questions, including the hard problem of consciousness, the metaphysical understanding of the self, and the aesthetic meaning of the sublime in psychedelic experience. The book provides valuable exploration of (...) questions concerning prevailing metaphysical frameworks, epistemic belief structures, and modes of inquiry, and the effort made by the authors to bring into dialogue multiple dialectics and practices, perspectives and methods is commendable. (shrink)

It has been argued that the fundamental laws of physics do not face a ‘problem of provisos’ equivalent to that found in other scientific disciplines (Earman, Roberts and Smith 2002) and there is only the appearance of exceptions to physical laws if they are confused with differential equations of evolution type (Smith 2002). In this paper I argue that even if this is true, fundamental laws in physics still pose a major challenge to standard Humean approaches to lawhood, as they (...) are not in any obvious sense about regularities in behaviour. A Humean approach to physical laws with exceptions is possible, however, if we adopt a view of laws that takes them to be the algorithms in the algorithmic compressions of empirical data. When this is supplemented with a distinction between lossy and lossless compression, we can explain exceptions in terms of compression artefacts present in the application of the lossy laws. (shrink)

As is well known, research on generics is represented by three approaches: majority- based (Cohen 1996, 1999, 2004), normalcy-based (Nickel 2006; 2009; 2010a, b; 2013; 2016; 2018), and cognition-based (Leslie 2007a, b; 2008; 2013; 2017) approaches. Two recent approaches proposed by van Rooij and Schulz (2020) and Tessler and Goodman (2019) are more elaborated theories on generics, although neither of these approaches nor the three representative theories can fully account for various generics data, as argued by Yoon (2021). On the (...) other hand, Nguyen (2020) proposes another theory of generics, the so-called ‘radical’ theory, which argues that the generic operator has no semantic content, and that the various quantificational interpretations of bare plural generics are determined contextually. In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of some recently published analyses, including Nguyen’s theory, and to analyze non-conventionalized generics. While conventionalized or conceptualized generics have received much attention from researchers, non- conventionalized generics have not been studied as extensively. It will be argued that Nguyen’s theory simply transfers the burden onto pragmatics, and that non- conventionalized as well as conventionalized generics tend to be interpreted based on people’s perceptions of their exceptions, in line with Yoon (2021). This position will be supported by experimental results. (shrink)

Many proponents of the Harm Principle seem to implicitly assume that the principle is compatible with permitting the free exchange of goods and services, even if such exchanges generate so-called market harms. I argue that, as a result, proponents of the Harm Principle face a dilemma: either the Harm Principle’s domain cannot include a large number of non-market harm cases or market harms must be treated on par with non-market harms. I then go on to discuss three alternative arguments defending (...) the status of market harms as exceptions to the Harm Principle and discuss why these arguments also fail. (shrink)

This study seeks to critically explore the link between sovereignty, violence and war in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. From a brief rereading of Leviathan’s main arguments that explicitly revolves around the Aristotelian distinction between actuality/ potentiality, it will conclude that Hobbesian pre-contractual violence is primarily based on what Hobbes terms “anticipatory reason” and the problem of future contingency. Relying on Foucauldian insights, it will be emphasized that the assumption of certain potentialities suffices in leading to (...) Hobbes’s well-known conclusion that the state of nature is a “condition of Warre.” In a second step, this study considers some of Agamben’s arguments to account for how pre-contractual violence as envisioned by Hobbes cannot be rendered impotent through the integration of a sovereign. In specific, Agamben’s claims shed light on an irreducible, inextricable entwining between the state of nature and the state of law as “Siamese twins” (Virno). On a meta-level, Agamben thus implicitly shows how the “Hobbesian problem” cannot be merely reduced to a “problem of order” (Parsons). With regard to the current functioning of the stratagems of financial markets and the mechanisms of future-colonization underpinning global politics, this study finally argues that Hobbes ought to be reevaluated in particular regarding the problem of the future in his account. Partly responding to Agamben’s critical investigations, I suggest that a careful exploration of what will be coined “the prospects of an actualization of the potentiality not-to-be” might serve as a first theoretical step towards a productive form of criticism. (shrink)

I argue that it’s quite comprehensible to get upset about metaethical nihilism, to indulge what I call nihilistic despair. When we lose the objective moral or normative point of view, we lose the promise of luck-immune guidance and categorical importance, things many of us hope for. This is all quite Williams-friendly, but I reject his puzzling but suggestive remarks that nihilistic despair must be a self-pitying muddle. Finally, I argue that internalism about reasons is even more depressing than outright nihilism, (...) in one way at least. (shrink)

Drawing on the epistemology of logic literature on anti-exceptionalism about logic, we set out to investigate the following metaphilosophical questions empirically: Is philosophy special? Are its methods (dis)continuous with science? More specifically, we test the following metaphilosophical hypotheses empirically: philosophical deductivism, philosophical inductivism, and philosophical abductivism. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we searched through a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (N = 435,703) to find patterns of (...) argumentation. The results of our quantitative, corpus-based study suggest that deductive arguments are significantly more common than abductive arguments and inductive arguments in philosophical texts overall, but they are gradually and steadily giving way to non-deductive (i.e. inductive and abductive) arguments in academic philosophy. (shrink)

How much surveillance is morally permissible in the pursuit of a socially desirable goal? The proportionality question has received renewed attention during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, because governments in many countries have responded to the pandemic by implementing, redirecting or expanding state surveillance, most controversially in the shape of collection and use of cell-phone location data to support a strategy of contact tracing, testing and containment. Behind the proportionality question lies a further question: in what way does a state of (...) emergency affect the proportionality of morally permissible surveillance? On the qualitative difference view, a state of emergency has the effect of suspending or altering at least some of the constraints on morally permissible action that apply under ordinary circumstances. On the quantitative difference view, the only difference between states of emergency and ordinary circumstances is that the stakes are greater in a state of emergency. If the qualitative difference view is true, then there are situations, perhaps such as the current Coronavirus pandemic, during which the proportionality condition employs a much less demanding ratio between social goods achieved and the badness of the surveillance performed. The overall objective of this article is to argue against the qualitative and for the quantitative difference view. I proceed by first setting out in somewhat greater detail how we must understand the qualitative difference view (section two). I then present a series of problematic implications of adopting the qualitative difference view and argue that jointly these give us sufficient reason to reject it (section three). This entails that our account of morally permissible surveillance should be unexceptional, i.e. the quantitative difference view: there is no morally significant difference between proportionality in ordinary circumstances and proportionality in emergencies, simply a spectrum of smaller to greater potential goods and bads of surveillance. In order to flesh out the implications of the quantitative view, I briefly sketch an unexceptional theory of proportional surveillance in exceptional circumstances (section four). The last section (five) summarises and concludes. (shrink)

Susanna Rinard has recently offered a new argument for pragmatism and against evidentialism. According to Rinard, evidentialists must hold that the rationality of belief is determined in a way that is different from how the rationality of other states is determined. She argues that we should instead endorse a view she calls Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of all states is determined in the same way. In this paper, I show that Rinard’s claims are mistaken, and that evidentialism (...) is more theoretically virtuous than its opponents sometimes give it credit for. Not only does evidentialism not make an exception for belief, but it fits naturally into a unified, explanatorily powerful account of the rationality of intentional mental states. According to such an account, the rationality of all intentional mental states, including belief, is determined by the right kind of reasons for those states. Since the right kind of reasons for belief just are evidential considerations, this unified account entails evidentialism. I conclude, contra Rinard, that evidentialism can be situated within a general account of rationality that is at least as theoretically virtuous as pragmatism, if not more so. (shrink)

According to existing accounts of indicative conditionals, any argument of the following form is valid: ϕ → ψ, ( ϕ ∧ ψ ) → χ ∴ ϕ → χ. Here, I present a set of counterexamples to show that there exist invalid arguments of this form. I argue that this data poses serious problems to variably strict accounts of conditionals, as such accounts are structurally unable to accommodate it. Dynamic strict accounts, however, are a different story. While existing dynamic strict (...) accounts do not accommodate the data, they are in principle able to, and I propose a modified dynamic strict account, drawing from von Fintel, that does. The key modification is this: whereas existing dynamic strict accounts take into account only the effects of conditional antecedents in changing the semantic context, the data shows that we must also take into account the effects of conditional consequents in changing the semantic context. (shrink)

It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exemplified in the 17th century by Descartes, and in the 20th century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Darwin’s Descent of Man, according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, not in kind. Thoroughgoing naturalistic explanation of these capacities is (...) made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind, toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness. (shrink)

Law is ‘sovereign’, it has been said. Since the poet Pindar expressed this fulminating thought in the 6th century B.C., the whole western tradition, from Aristotle to Cicero, from Heidegger to Schmitt, hasn’t stopped raising questions about the ambivalent relationship connecting law, strength and violence...

Prolife theorists typically hold to the claim that all human beings possess equal moral status from conception and consequently possess a right to life. This, they believe, entails that abortion is impermissible in all circumstances. Critics characterize this as an extreme anti-abortion position, as it prima facie allows no exceptions, even in cases of rape. Here, I examine whether the prolife claim regarding equal moral status is compatible with a more attractive moderate stance that permits an exception in the (...) case of rape. I show that Judith Jarvis Thomson's analysis of rights can be used to modify the prolife position in this way, but that doing so involves concessions that prolife theorists are unlikely to find acceptable. (shrink)

Since at least the second half of the 19th century, the U.S. federal government has enjoyed “plenary power” over its immigration policy. Plenary power allows the federal government to regulate immigration free of judicial review and thereby, with regard to immigration cases, minimize the Constitutional protections afforded to non-citizens. The justification for granting the U.S federal government such broad powers comes from a certain understanding of sovereignty; one where limiting sovereign authority in cases like immigration could potentially undermine its legitimacy (...) and thereby lead to something like a Hobbesian “state of nature.” One of the potential downsides of allowing the federal government to have such broad powers, however, is the potential to place non-citizens in a situation analogous to what Giorgio Agamben has called the “state of exception.” This situation appears to leave us with the following dichotomy: without something like the plenary power doctrine a political community will end up with a state of nature, but with something like the plenary power doctrine they end up with a state of exception. This essay offers a two-part response to this dilemma. First, it argues that the plenary power doctrine goes against the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. Non-citizens, even undocumented immigrants, are entitled to more Constitutional protections than they currently enjoy. Second, since extending these protections is more consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, I argue that curtailing the federal government’s power over matters of immigration does not undermine its sovereignty, but promotes it. In short, with regard to immigration, it is a false but seductive dichotomy that constitutional democracies must choose between a state of nature and a state of exception. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt contends that liberal constitutionalism or the rule of law fails because it neglects the state of exception and the political, namely politics viewed as a distinction between friend and enemy groups. Yet, as a representative of liberal constitutionalism, Locke grapples with the state of exception by highlighting a magistrate prerogative and/or the right of the majority to act during a serious political crisis. Rather than neglecting the political, Locke’s state of war presupposes it. My thesis is (...) that Schmitt’s assault against Locke’s liberal constitutionalism is one-sided, and hence Locke’s militant liberalism can disarm it. In support of my thesis I shall argue (1) that Schmitt overlooks Locke’s distinction between liberty and license; (2) that, ironically, Schmitt’s conception of politics resembles Locke’s state of war; and (3) that Locke’s liberalism is militant rather than neutral because it excludes extremists from enjoying equal civil and political rights, as reasonable citizens do, to compete for political power. (shrink)

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, (...) it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this essay, it will be assumed that future artificial entities, such as Sophia the Robot, will be granted citizenship on an international scale. With this assumption, an analysis of rights will be made with respect to the needs of a non-biological intelligence possessing legal and civic duties akin to those possessed by humanity today. This essay does not present a full set of rights for artificial intelligence—instead, it aims to provide international jurisprudence evidence aliunde ab extra de lege lata for any future measures made to protect non-biological intelligence. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

The idea of the political, reconfiguring sovereignty and exception: Analysing theoretical perspectives of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben -/- Author / Authors : Meenakshi Gogoi Page no. 69-78 Discipline : Political Science/Polity/ Democratic studies Script/language : Roman/English Category : Research paper Keywords: Political, Sovereignty, Exception, Democracy, Rule of Law.

Contextuality and entanglement are valuable resources for quantum computing and quantum information. Bell inequalities are used to certify entanglement; thus, it is important to understand why and how they are violated. Quantum mechanics and behavioural sciences teach us that random variables ‘measuring’ the same content (the answer to the same Yes or No question) may vary, if ‘measured’ jointly with other random variables. Alice’s and Bob’s raw data confirm Einsteinian non-signaling, but setting dependent experimental protocols are used to create samples (...) of coupled pairs of distant ±1 outcomes and to estimate correlations.Marginal expectations, estimated using these final samples, depend on distant settings. Therefore,a system of random variables ‘measured’ in Bell tests is inconsistently connected and it should be analyzed using a Contextuality- by-Default approach, what is done for the first time in this paper.The violation of Bell inequalities and inconsistent connectedness may be explained using a contextual locally causal probabilistic model in which setting dependent variables describing measuring instruments are correctly incorporated. We prove that this model does not restrict experimenters` freedom of choice which is a prerequisite of science. Contextuality seems to be the rule and not an exception; thus, it should be carefully tested. (shrink)

Why did Locke exclude Catholics and atheists from toleration? Not, I contend, because he was trapped by his context, but because his prudential approach and practica ljudgments led him to traditiona ltexts. I make this argumentfirst by outlining the connections among prudential exceptionality, practical judgments, and traditional texts. I then describe important continuities betweenc onventional English understandings of the relationship between state and religion and Locke's writings on toleration, discuss Locke's conception of rights, and illustrate his use of prudential exceptions (...) and distinctions. I conclude by arguing that Locke's problems are relevant to assessingc ontemporary liberal discussions of tolerationa nd the separation of state and religion that lean heavily on practical justifications. (shrink)

Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such dejustifications can take place only by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with agonistic democracy. In doing so, Sovereignty and Its (...) Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an original philosophical theory of democratic practice. (shrink)

Abstract This essay will take a look at the notion of state of exception, ausnahmezustand in german original version, comparing Walter Benjamin’s and Carl Schmitt’s two main books which are Critique of violence and political theology that were written such as a polemic one another. We will also take into consideration an alternative violence form such as a pure violence defined by Benjamin that could be revolutionary to change this schmittian state of exception.

This paper cuts across three nineteenth-century Russian thinkers—Pyotr Chaadaev, Mikhail Bakunin and Nikolai Fedorov—to reconstruct a speculative trajectory that seeks to think an ungrounding and delegitimation of the (Christian-modern) world and its logics of violence, domination, and exclusion. In Chaadaev, Russia becomes a territory of nothingness—an absolute exception from history, tradition, and memory, without attachment or relation to world history. Ultimately, Chaadaev affirms this atopic void in its immanence, as capable of creating immanently from itself a common future. Bakunin (...) is antagonistic to political theology as an apparatus of transcendence spanning across nature and history, cannibalism and patriotism, abstraction and religious transcendence. Against these amalgams, and against Schmitt’s naturalist reading of Bakunin, we detect in him the idea of socialism or anarchism as what has never taken place in nature or history, and the image of an unnatural humanity affirmed as the common task linking an absolute futurity with a revolutionary nowness. Against the violence of nature and history in which the present is sacrificed, and death is justified, for future life, Fedorov (the founder of Russian Cosmism) seeks to think the apocalyptic common task of immanent resurrection—and the void as the cosmic void, the expanse of the universe to be inhabited in-common. For him, thought must proceed from death and the ashes (of history and the earth) as what we have in common. The resulting trajectory is ambivalent, caught between an ungrounding of modernity and world-history, and providential or theodical modes of its justification. (shrink)

There is a particular ressonance between the thinking of Walter Benjamin and that of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, including the fact that both analyse the 16th and 17th centuries in order to understand the 20th. Regarding this fact, the article attempts to clarify some themes that lead Schmitt’s work, i.e that of State of Exception, that of theologization of politics, the critique of parliamentarism as support of the Modern State, the tension between democracy and dictatorship, to explain how (...) the dialog between the two thinkers occurs, seeking thus for a better understanding of key works of Benjamin, specially The Origin of German Tragic Drama. (shrink)

Fifteen years after the September 11th terror attacks, the United States still exists in a state of exception or state of emergency, in which the executive branch claims extraordinary powers to carry out bombing strikes or drone attacks in foreign nations and to engage in surveillance against its citizens outside the boundaries of international and constitutional law. This blog-piece argues for a restoration of the constitutional limiuts on sovereign executive powers and a cessation of the war on terrorism.

This project retraces activations of Kierkegaard in the development of polit­ical theology. It suggests alternative modes of states of exception than those attributed to him by Schmitt, Taubes and Agamben. Several Kierkegaardian themes open themselves to 'something like pure potential' in Agamben, namely: living death, animality, criminality, auto-constitution, modification, liturgy, love and certain articulations of improbabilities. Attention is drawn to a modal ontology and auto-constitution at work in Kierkegaard's writings, as well as a complicated and indissociable operation between killing (...) and letting-live in legalist exceptionalism, comparable to similar functions found in Foucault regarding the biopowers and necropolitics of territorial and governmental apparatuses. It closes in consideration of Kierkegaard's critique of enumeration, large numbers, and statistical probability alongside contemporary tele-technoscientific social controls via the online datafication of people by surveillance or platform capitalisms. After Kierkegaard, such apparatuses are perhaps suspect as calculated to tranquilize humanity into more docile subhumans as it fools folk into becoming part of its numbers. (*Accompanying file includes only front matter, abstract, and endnotes*). (shrink)

Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a (...) mental condition where the affected person denies there is any problem. The theories of two eminent philosophers supporting the No-Progress view are also examined. The final section offers an explanation for philosophy 's inability to solve any philosophical problem, ever. The paper closes with some reflections on philosophy 's future. (shrink)

Except in extraordinary circumstances, patients' clinical care should reflect their preferences. Incapacitated patients cannot report their preferences. This is a problem. Extant solutions to the problem are inadequate: surrogates are unreliable, and advance directives are uncommon. In response, some authors have suggested developing algorithmic "patient preference predictors" (PPPs) to inform care for incapacitated patients. In a recent paper, Earp et al. propose a new twist on PPPs. Earp et al. suggest we personalize PPPs using modern machine learning (ML) techniques. In (...) this paper, I argue that, contrary to Earp et al.'s claim, personalized patient preference predictors are neither technically feasible nor ethically desirable. (shrink)

Some interesting exceptions notwithstanding, the traditional logic of economic efficiency has long favored hierarchical forms of organization and disfavored democracy in business. What does the balance of arguments look like, however, when values besides efficient revenue production are brought into the picture? The question is not hypothetical: In recent years, an ever increasing number of corporations have developed and adopted socially responsible behaviors, thereby hybridizing aspects of corporate businesses and social organizations. We argue that the joint pursuit of financial and (...) social objectives warrants significant rethinking of organizational democracy’s merits compared both to hierarchy and to non-democratic alternatives to hierarchy. In making this argument, we draw on an extensive literature review to document the relative lack of substantive discussion of organizational democracy since 1960. And we draw lessons from political theory, suggesting that the success of political democracy in integrating diverse values offers some grounds for asserting parallel virtues in the business case. (shrink)

Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative reasons? And if they do not, why think that mistakes of rationality are necessarily real mistakes? This paper gives a novel answer to these questions. I argue first that in the moral domain, there are objective duties of respect that we violate whenever we do what appears to violate our first-order duties. The existence of (...) these duties of respect, I argue, ensures that apparent moral reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. I then extend these arguments to the domain of overall reason. Just as there are objective duties of respect for moral reasons that explain moral blameworthiness, so there are objective duties of respect for reasons that explain blameworthiness in the court of overall reason. The existence of these duties ensures that apparent reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. (shrink)

Some exceptional and surprising mistakes of scholarship made in the writings of a number of feminist academics (Ruth Bleier, Ruth Hubbard, Susan Bordo, Sandra Harding, and Rae Langton) are examined in detail. This essay offers the psychological hypothesis that these mistakes were the result of political passion and concludes with some remarks about the ability of the social sciences to study the effect of the politics of the researcher on the quality of his or her research.

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology (...) with recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)

Lange argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations, the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich argue that Lange’s account of DME fails to exclude certain “reversals”. Lange has replied that his account can avoid these directionality charges. Specifically, Lange argues that in legitimate DMEs, (...) but not in their “reversals,” the empirical fact appealed to in the explanation is “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue” in the explanandum. I argue that Lange’s reply is unsatisfactory because it leaves the crucial notion of being “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement” obscure in ways that fail to block “reversals” except by an apparent ad hoc stipulation or by abandoning the reliance on understanding and instead accepting a strong realism about essence. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental question in folk metaphysics: how do we ordinarily view human agency? According to the transcendence account, we view human agency as standing outside of the causal order and imbued with exceptional powers. According to a naturalistic account, we view human agency as subject to the same physical laws as other objects and completely open to scientific investigation. According to exceptionalist naturalism, the truth lies somewhere in between: we view human agency as fitting broadly within the (...) causal order while still being exceptional in important respects. In this paper, I report seven experiments designed to decide between these three competing theories. Across a variety of contexts and types of action, participants agreed that human agents can resist outcomes described as inevitable, guaranteed, and causally determined. Participants viewed non-human animal agents similarly, whereas they viewed computers, robots, and simple inanimate objects differently. At the same time, participants judged that human actions are caused by many things, including psychological, neurological, and social events. Overall, in folk metaphysics, human and non-human animals are viewed as exceptional parts of the natural world. (shrink)