This chapter offers an overdue philosophical model of flirting. Flirting, I argue, is a conversational game involving two moves; push moves, which involve presupposing an intimacy that does not yet exist, and pull moves, which involve playfully pretending to block those presuppositions. As flirters perform rallies of these moves, they gradually increase the intimacy between them through a process known by philosophers of language as accommodation. This model illuminates a common social ritual and it can be marshaled against (...) abuses of the notion of flirting by perpetrators of harassment and assault. (shrink)

This sentence is almost longer than the romp I go on with science and philosophy in this brief paper.

At various occasions Popper states that in order for a theory to show its strength “certain amount” of dogmatism must precede the critical testing phase. He even argues that dogmatism is a necessary precondition of criticism. These are alarming statements, undermining Popper’s methodological imperative of falsification. Critical rationalism is based on a strict opposition to dogmatism for logical reasons, for evolutionary reasons, and for ideological reasons. Popper cannot provide any objective criterion defining the proper dosage of dogmatism and thus opens (...) doors to its uncontrolled expansion. Criticism thus ceases to be the non-negotiable normative principle and the inviolable standard of rationality. (shrink)

Lecture on Nietzsche's relativism and perspectivism given at a conference on the 'crisis of reason' in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, October 26, 1991. Nietzsche claims that truth does not exist and knowledge is not possible, because knowledge serves life and is bound to an organic position. In fact, this is a paradox that refutes itself. Knowledge has evolved precisely because organisms must have limited, perspectivistic knowledge of their environment from a subjective point of view. In science, subjectivity can even be transcended (...) to some extent by making models that take into account the effects of our subjective experience of the world. The fact that theories are ‘just models’, ‘just interpretations’ does not mean that knowledge is impossible, because models and interpretations can be improved, corrected and be more or less adequate. In fact, Nietzsche relativism is incompatible with his metaphysical, psychological and ethical claims which implicitly claim a kind of philosophical or scientific progress. (shrink)

Microaggressions are seemingly negligible slights that can cause significant damage to frequently targeted members of marginalized groups. Recently, Scott O. Lilienfeld challenged a key platform of the microaggression research project: what’s aggressive about microaggressions? To answer this challenge, Derald Wing Sue, the psychologist who has spearheaded the research on microaggressions, needs to theorize a spectrum of aggression that ranges from intentional assault to unintentional microaggressions. I suggest turning to Bonnie Mann’s “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies” for inspiration. Building from Mann’s (...) richer theoretical framework will allow Sue to answer Lilienfeld’s objection and defend the legitimacy of the concept, ‘microaggression’. (shrink)

The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is (...) asking. I go on to articulate a theory of what I call existential grounding, a notion which explains the role that prospective children play in the lives of many would-be parents. Procreative ethicists who want their work to have real practical relevance must, I claim, start to engage with this markedly first-personal kind of practical consideration. (shrink)

According to a widespread view, Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific development would relegate rationality to a second plane, openly flirting with irrationalist positions. The intent of this article is to clarify this aspect of his thinking and refute this common interpretation. I begin by analysing the nature of values in Kuhn’s model and how they are connected to rationality. For Kuhn, a theory is chosen rationally when: i) the evaluation is based on values characteristic of science; ii) a theory (...) is considered better the more it manifests these values; and iii) the scientist chooses the best-evaluated theory. The second part of this article deals with the thesis of the variability of values. According to Kuhn, the examples through which epistemic values are presented vary for each person, and for this reason individuals interpret these criteria differently. Consequently, two scientists, using the same values, can come to a rational disagreement over which theory to choose. Finally, I point out the limitations of this notion of rationality for the explanation of consensus formation, and the corresponding demand for a sociological theory that reconnects individual rationality with convergence of opinions. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore what painful art can tell us about the nature and importance of human welfare. My goal is not so much to defend a new solution to the paradox of tragedy, as it is to explore the implications of the kinds of solutions that I find attractive. Both nonhedonic compensatory theories and constitutive theories explain why people seek out painful art, but they have troublesome implications. On some narrow theories of well-being, they imply that painful art (...) is bad for us. Accordingly, we may rightly wonder if it rational for people to watch melodramas or to listen to love songs. One might think that we should generally avoid unpleasant works of art. This implication flirts with absurdity. I show how it can be avoided by making a distinction between well-being and worth. (shrink)

In the essay I intend to revalue the descriptive principle in the contemporaryAmazonian geography, as presented to us by the geographer from Pará EidorfeMoreira (1960). Laterally, I call the attention of Amazonian geographers to thesensitivity of his work, which is not present in the bibliography of the training coursesin Geography in Pará. The methodological strategy is descriptive-interpretative with aphenomenological tone. I conclude: the refusal of the description is installed by aprejudiced effect of our current formation in relation to the procedures (...) consideredtraditional; the production of knowledge, eager for explanation/analysis, can produceethical violence; the abstraction - which flirts with abstractionism - imposed by thehasty generalization of certain ideas about the Amazon, from geographical studies,installs an artificial cut between the symbolic and the emotional in the act of makinggeography in our region. (shrink)

While William James and Charles Sanders Peirce are considered the two fathers of American Pragmatism, Peircian Pragmatism is often being presented as the comparatively ‘objective’ alternative to metaphysical realism, with the Jamesian version being castigated as an overly ‘subjective’ departure from Peirce’s position. However, while James clearly does put more of an emphasis on ‘subjective’ factors than does Peirce, his doing so is often the result of his simply drawing out consequences of the framework that Peirce presented in an 1872 (...) meeting of their ‘Metaphysical Club’ where James and Peirce famously discussed the core ideas that have been associated with pragmatism ever since. In particular, while Peirce was still flirting with idealism at the time, James drew out some of the consequences that followed from those 1872 discussion once they were placed more firmly in a naturalistic, particularly Darwinian, framework. Peirce was never comfortable with these consequences, and in later work tried to distance himself from a number of positions defended in his earlier papers. James, by contrast, never rejected that early framework, which resulted in the increasing differences between the versions of pragmatism developed by the two. These differences show up most clearly in their conflicting conceptions of both when our beliefs are rationally justified, and what it would take for those beliefs to be true. (shrink)

Philosophically engaged fiction often employs ideas in ways that reflect the exploitation-exploration dilemma in developmental psychology: by exploiting well articulated theories by enacting their conflicts, or by exploring the uncertainties of puzzling ontologies or moral complexities. We can see this in action in many works, but some novels of ideas seek to defy such categorization, with lessons for readers and writers. This paper analyzes two recent works – The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) and Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen (2016) (...) – to show how they deal with related concerns and settings through very different approaches. While Powers offers an enactment, its complexity seeks to evade the book becoming a simple polemic. McKenzie’s protagonist explores her muddled identity, philosophy and much else while flirting with the enactment of ideas when she does not comprehend. (shrink)