This paper assesses the first-person authority account (FPA) of gender, according to which X's self-identification of what X's gender is, is the final say on what X's gender is, such that if others disagree, they are mistaken. One main reason in support of FPA is respecting X's autonomy—that is, overriding X's self-identification amounts to denying X's autonomy. Ozturk criticizes this view using analogies of religious and patriotic self-identifications, such that there are cases in which someone can permissibly claim that another (...) is not, say, a true Muslim or a true patriot. This implies that there might also be cases of permissible rejections of gender self-identification. Ozturk offers instead the negotiative theory of identity, according to which it is permissible to reject a self identification as long as three constraints are satisfied: no harm is done to the self-identifier, and their privacy and dignity are not violated. (This essay is a slightly revised version of that found in the 7th edition of The Philosophy of Sex.). (shrink)

We show how to embed a framework for multilateral negotiation, in which a group of agents implement a sequence of deals concerning the exchange of a number of resources, into linear logic. In this model, multisets of goods, allocations of resources, preferences of agents, and deals are all modelled as formulas of linear logic. Whether or not a proposed deal is rational, given the preferences of the agents concerned, reduces to a question of provability, as does the question of (...) whether there exists a sequence of deals leading to an allocation with certain desirable properties, such as maximising social welfare. Thus, linear logic provides a formal basis for modelling convergence properties in distributed resource allocation. (shrink)

The problem of moral disagreement has been presented as an objection to contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, since it is not clear that contextualism can accommodate or give a convincing gloss of such disagreement. I argue that independently of our semantics, disagreements over ‘ought’ in non-cooperative contexts are best understood as indirect metalinguistic disputes, which is easily accommodated by contextualism. If this is correct, then rather than posing a problem for contextualism, the data from moral disagreements provides some reason to adopt (...) a semantics that allows contextual variance in the meanings of ‘ought’. (shrink)

Negotiation is mainly treated as a process through which counterparts try to satisfy their conflicting interests. This traditional, subjective approach focuses on the interests-based relation between subjects and the resources which are on the bargaining table; negotiation is viewed as a series of joint decisions regarding the relation of each subject to the negotiated resources. In this paper, we will attempt to outline an intersubjective perspective that focuses on the communication-based relation among subjects, a relation that is founded (...) upon communicative rationality mechanisms which are inherent in social activity. Much in contrast to the concept of interests which describe the relationship of each subject alone to the resources, we will use the concept of ?claim-rights? which are properly formed and validated only vis-à-vis negotiating partners and on the basis of the communication that develops among them. We will offer a step-by-step account of the creation of claim-rights and argue that their validation does not necessarily lie in the parties? interests, but in the communication mechanisms that induce consensus and result in mutually acceptable outcomes. (shrink)

Negotiation research primarily focuses on negotiators? interests in order to understand negotiation and offer advice about the prospective outcome. Win-win outcomes, i.e., outcomes that serve the interests of all negotiating parties, have been established and promoted as the ultimate goal for any negotiation situation. We offer a perspective that draws on Aristotle's philosophical program and discuss how the outcome is not defined by the parties? interests, but by the intersubjective validity of claims, which can essentially be treated (...) as representative of the ?truth.? (shrink)

Although moral relativists often appeal to cases of apparent moral disagreement between members of different communities to motivate their view, accounting for these exchanges as evincing genuine disagreements constitutes a challenge to the coherence of moral relativism. While many moral relativists acknowledge this problem, attempts to solve it so far have been wanting. In response, moral relativists either give up the claim that there can be moral disagreement between members of different communities or end up with a view on which (...) these disagreements have no “epistemic significance” because they are always faultless. This paper introduces an alternative strategy: accounting for disagreement in terms of “metalinguistic negotiation”. It argues that this strategy constitutes a better solution to the challenge disagreement poses for moral relativists because it leads to a nuanced understanding of the epistemic significance of moral disagreement between members of different communities. The upshot is a novel account of disagreement for moral relativists that has consequences for how moral relativism should be understood. (shrink)

In post-Gricean pragmatics, communication is said to be successful when a hearer recovers a speaker’s intended message. On this assumption, proposals for ‘what is said’ – the semantic, propositional meaning of a speaker’s utterance – are typically centred around the content the speaker aimed to communicate. However, these proposals tend not to account for the fact that speakers can be deliberately vague, leaving no clear proposition to be recovered, or that a speaker can accept a hearer’s misconstrual even though the (...) speaker didn’t intend it. In such cases, identifying ‘what is said’ is more contentious, even though communication is arguably no less successful. Building on recent interactionist approaches to meaning, this chapter offers a proposal for ‘what is said’ that can account for cases of ‘imperfect’ communication in which the recovery of a speaker’s intention goes awry. This involves taking ‘what is said’ as the co-constructed meaning that the speaker and hearer jointly agree on, giving ‘grounded meanings’ – those mutually and manifestly accepted into the discourse by speaker and hearer – higher precedence in a theory of communication than simply the speaker’s intended meaning. In such cases, rather than speaker and hearer converging at the level of explicit utterance content, communication is expected to be successful as long as the hearer recovers a proposition which is compatible with the speaker’s higher-order discursive goal. The hearer’s uptake is then allowed to override the content of the speaker’s intended meaning in the process of negotiating ‘what is said’. (shrink)

When trust is broken, how should we determine who is at fault? Previous discus- sions of broken trust typically attribute the fault to trusters who place trust foolishly or trustees who act in an untrustworthy manner. These discussions take for granted the ability of the truster and trustee to communicate and understand the boundaries of what is being entrusted, that is, the domain of trust. However, the boundaries of entrusted domains are not always clear to either party which can result (...) in broken trust despite the best efforts of both truster and trustee. In this paper, I argue that deter- mining who to blame when trust is broken is a messy affair in which disagreements over fault regularly arise. I introduce three features of trust domains that take center stage in negotiations regarding who is at fault when trust is broken: scope, rigidity and ordering. (shrink)

The metalinguistic approach to conceptual engineering construes disputes between linguistic reformers and linguistic conservatives as metalinguistic disagreements on how best to use particular expressions. As the present paper argues, this approach has various merits. However, it was recently criticised in Cappelen’s seminal Fixing Language. Cappelen raises an important objection against the metalinguistic picture. According to this objection – the Babel objection, as I shall call it – the metalinguistic account cannot accommodate the intuition of disagreement between linguistic conservatives and reformers (...) who are speaking different languages. The objection generalises to metalinguistic approaches to e.g. moral disagreements. This paper discusses the Babel objection and shows how to dispel it. (shrink)

Philosophers of language and metaethicists are concerned with persistent normative and evaluative disagreements – how can we explain persistent intelligible disagreements in spite of agreement over the described facts? Tim Sundell recently argued that evaluative aesthetic and personal taste disputes could be explained as metalinguistic negotiations – conversations where interlocutors negotiate how best to use a word relative to a context. I argue here that metalinguistic negotiations are neither necessary nor sufficient for genuine evaluative and normative disputes to occur. A (...) comprehensive account of value talk requires stronger metanormative commitments than metalinguistic negotiations afford. (shrink)

The use of lexical signs like ‘knowledge’ has consequences. Not only do they have direct psychological resonances, but people ascribe beliefs and act based on their semantics. This paper proposes that such consequences are up for negotiation, and introduces a formal framework from financial theory to suggest constraints on those negotiations and implications of those constraints. The upshot is that changing language will be easier sometimes than others, and philosophers’ projects of linguistic change should be aware of those conditions.

Some international researchers assume that there is a lack of ethical review of research in many countries of the Global South. However, numerous African countries have recently introduced local and national research ethics guidelines. This article unpacks how ethical reviews of research in education are negotiated in a higher education institution in Ethiopia. It employs a critical analytical lens to challenge some of the assumptions of Beaty’s (2010) Institutional Review Board (IRB) stakeholder model. The article begins with a discussion of (...) the limitations inherent in the IRB model. Critical analyses of institutional documents and non-confidential, off-the-shelf IRB minutes are also conducted. The analysis shows that researchers within the medical and health sciences disciplines have well established organisational engagement when it comes to handling issues related to research ethics. However, limited representation of the educational and social and behavioural science disciplines remains a challenge. Furthermore, ethical issues in conducting educational research are hardly addressed in the national guidelines for granting research ethics approval. This results in further marginalisation of the contributions of educational research to knowledge production. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper considerations than its recent critics recognize, (...) and that much would be lost in opting for the explanation of normative disputes as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

In ordinary conversation, speakers disagree not only about worldly facts, but also about how to use language to describe the world. For example, disagreement about whether Buffalo is in the American Midwest, whether Pluto is a planet, or whether someone has been canceled, can persist even with agreement about all the relevant facts. The speakers may still engage in “metalinguistic negotiation”—disputing what to mean by “Midwest”, “planet”, or “cancel”. I first motivate an approach to metalinguistic negotiation that generalizes (...) a Stalnakerian theory of communication by including linguistic commitments in the conversational common ground. Then, I turn to cases where the very status of a disagreement as metalinguistic or factual is unclear or contested. For example, after the publication of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, some responses claimed to identify factual errors, while others took those same “errors” to be matters of interpretation. I’ll consider how to extend our theorizing about metalinguistic negotiation to this type of (even more) “meta” disagreement, using the discussion following the 1619 Project as a case study. On my view, in most such cases, there will be a metalinguistic negotiation going on. Still, I explain several ways in which, despite a dispute being metalinguistic, the factualist side can sometimes receive important vindication. I also discuss why it can make sense for speakers to contest the status of a dispute. (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The USA's climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes (...) a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

Climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have so far failed to achieve a robust international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Game theory has been used to investigate possible climate negotiation solutions and strategies for accomplishing them. Negotiations have been primarily modelled as public goods games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, though coordination games or games of conflict have also been used. Many of these models have solutions, in the form of equilibria, corresponding to (...) possible positive outcomes—that is, agreements with the requisite emissions reduction commitments. Other work on large-scale social dilemmas suggests that it should be possible to resolve the climate problem. It therefore seems that equilibrium selection may be a barrier to successful negotiations. Here we use an N-player bargaining game in an agent-based model with learning dynamics to examine the past failures of and future prospects for a robust international climate agreement. The model suggests reasons why the desirable solutions identified in previous game-theoretic models have not yet been accomplished in practice and what mechanisms might be used to achieve these solutions. (shrink)

Negotiation is often treated as an attempt to reconcile conflicting interests. Instead, I define negotiation as an attempt to produce a convergence of will. Based on a distinction initially made by Rawls (1955), I draw attention away from summary rules that are introduced during negotiation, including win-win interest prescriptions, and put the emphasis on the practice rules that are validated by the final agreement. The term convergence of will refers to the co-adoption of practice rules that define (...) the interaction that is the subject of negotiation. It essentially refers to the negotiating parties establishing the normative or “ought” standards of the interaction they are negotiating about. Moving from the subjective view of Kant to the intersubjective view of Habermas, I offer an approach that examines how agreement validates the “ought” requirements of that interaction, going beyond underlying interests. (shrink)

Vast archives of fragmentary structural brain scans that are routinely acquired in medical clinics for diagnostic purposes have so far been considered to be unusable for neuroscientific research. Yet, recent studies have proposed that by deploying machine learning algorithms to fill in the missing anatomy, clinical scans could, in future, be used by researchers to gain new insights into various brain disorders. This chapter focuses on a study published in2019, whose authors developed a novel unsupervised machine learning algorithm for synthesising (...) missing anatomy in extremely sparse clinical MRI scans of thousands of stroke patients. By approaching the study from a media-theoretical perspective, I analyse how its authors dis-cursively negotiated the anatomical and operative plausibility of the unobserved anatomy that their black-boxed algorithm reconstructed from the existing sparse data. My analysis fore-grounds the processual, relational, context-dependent, and essentially unstable character of the thus established plausibility of the algorithmically synthesised neuroanatomy. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue in responsible innovation (RI) processes. The problem with most concepts of communication is that they rely on ideals of openness, alignment and harmony, even while these ideals are rarely realized in practice. Based on the work of Burke, Habermas, Deetz and Levinas, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue that is able to deal with fundamentally different interests and value frames of actors involved in RI processes. We distinguish four main (...) characteristics of stakeholder dialogue. Dialogical responsiveness (1) enhances self-criticism, (2) is characterized by the constitution and the destruction of the self or identity of the actors involved, (3) consists only in the actual enactment of the dialogue and (4) is primarily responsive to the grand challenges of our time. Based on our findings, we provide a novel conceptualization of the central notion of responsiveness in the RI literature. (shrink)

Review of the book Negotiation of Identity in Multilingual Contexts, Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds.) 2004.

Reflecting on the past is often a critical ingredient for successful learning. The current research investigated how counterfactual thinking, reflecting on how prior experiences might have been different, motivates effective learning from these previous experiences. Specifically, we explored how the structure of counterfactual reflection – their additive (‘‘If only I had”) versus subtractive (‘‘If only I had not”) nature – influences performance in dyadic-level strategic interactions. Building on the functionalist account of counterfactuals, we found across two experiments that generating additive (...) counterfactuals about a previous negotiation produced an advantage for negotiators over their previous performance compared to subtractive counterfactuals, both in terms of obtaining value for oneself and conceiving creative agreements. Additive counterfactuals enabled negotiators to more effectively extract lessons from past experiences to improve their current negotiation performance. (shrink)

What is the nature of reality? The truth is that no academic anywhere in the world really knows the answer to this question. As long as this remains the case, one can exclude neither the possibility that parallel universes, spirit ontologies, or telepathy exist nor the possibility that reality could be a time-space transcending non-local awareness. Neither scientists nor scholars can, therefore, ever reject epistemologies based on any of these presumptions. Enlightenment-based rationalists and empiricists, however, did just that. The point (...) of departure of Roothaan’s deconstructionist environmental philosophy is, on the contrary, that since reality itself is unknown, the question of what nature remains undefined at best. Human relationships towards nature in various cultures and eras can then be perceived as the outcome of an ongoing negotiation. In this way, Roothaan aims to open up a space for intercultural philosophical and dialogical thinking about the contributions and limitations of various epistemologies that philosophers and others have used to discuss the relations to their environment. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 has significantly impacted businesses, regardless of size or industry. The hybrid and remote working models have moved all meetings with potential and existing suppliers to an online environment. This also applies to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have had to adapt themselves to the new situation and implement the solutions necessary to survive on the market. On the other hand, clients have become more aware of the environment and its changes. Customers are (...) trying to be more eco-friendly, by choosing and moving towards Green IT. Thus, this needs to be considered. The acquisition of management information systems (MIS) in the pandemic era is based only on virtual meetings. The main goals of this paper were the identification of the changes in the negotiations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the transformation of this process into virtual environment, discussion of the possibility of using Green IT in addition to Management Information Systems, and the changes caused by the pandemic. The article was prepared based on the results of qualitative research using the case study method. The comparative analysis includes purposely selected cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems’ acquisition processes, presented from the clients’ perspective. The research was conducted in 2021, based on the authors’ practical experience, and presents four cases. This research illustrates the negotiations concerning an acquisition transaction pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. Finally, the conclusions and main differences caused by the pandemic in the acquisition transaction process of management information systems (MIS) are presented. (shrink)

Cooperation in wrongdoing is an everyday matter for all of us, though we need to discern when such cooperation is morally excluded as constituting formal cooperation, as opposed to material (unintended) cooperation whether justified or otherwise. In this paper, I offer examples of formal cooperation such as referral of patients for certain procedures where the cooperating doctor intends an intrinsically wrongful plan of action on the part of the patient and a medical colleague. I also consider a case of formal (...) cooperation where the cooperator intends a choice on the part of another person that is not intrinsically wrong, but wrong in the circumstances because the person believes it will cause serious uncompensated harm. (shrink)

I consider Kathleen Stock’s response to trans-rights claims which appeals to the concept of immersion in a fiction. I propose that some fictional personas, however artificial they seem, are fixed points within a subject’s system. That fiction is there come what may.

This article describes various ways actors in Kashmiri carpet weaving practice deploy a range of artifacts, from symbolic, to material, to hybrid, in order to achieve diverse cognitive accomplishments in their particular task domains: information representation, inter and intra-domain communication, distribution of cognitive labor across people and time, coordination of team activities, and carrying of cultural heritage. In this repertoire, some artifacts position themselves as naïve tools in the actors’ environment to the point of being ignored; however, their usage-in-context unfolds (...) their cognitive involvement in the tasks. These usages-in-context are shown through artifact analysis of their routine, improvised, and opportunistic uses, where cognitive artifacts like talim—the central artifact of this practice—are shown to play not only multifunctional roles beyond representation, but are also complemented by trade-specific skills bearing strong cognitive implications in a task. (shrink)

Game theorists tend to model climate negotiations as a so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. This is rather worrisome, since the conditions under which such commons problems have historically been solved are almost entirely absent in the case of international greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I will argue that the predictive accuracy of the tragedy model might not stem from the model’s inherent match with reality but rather from the model’s ability to make self-fulfilling predictions. I then sketch some possible (...) ways to dispel the tragedy, including (1) recognizing some ways the assumptions of the model fail, (2) taking seriously recent work suggesting that increasing greenhouse gas emissions is not in most nations’ own self-interest, and (3) preferring alternative models like collective risk dilemmas, bargaining games, or cooperative models. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of this book argued that moral philosophy should be based on seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences. Chapter 2 argued that these principles support basing normative moral philosophy on a particular problem of diachronic instrumental rationality: the ‘problem of possible future selves.’ Chapter 3 argued that a new moral principle, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, is the rational solution to this problem. Chapter 4 argued that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three equivalent formulations akin to but superior to (...) Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Chapter 5 argued that my principle’s three formulations make it rational to adopt a Moral Original Position to derive moral principles. The present chapter derives Four Principles of Fairness from the Moral Original Position--principles of coercion minimization, mutual assistance, fair negotiation, and virtue—and unifies them into a single principle of rightness: Rightness as Fairness. Finally, this chapter argues that Rightness as Fairness entails a novel approach to applied ethics called ‘principled fair negotiation’, illustrating how the theory provides a plausible new framework for addressing applied cases including lying, suicide, trolleys, torture, distribution of scarce resources, poverty, and the ethical treatment of animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has become standard to conceive of metalinguistic disagreement as motivated by a form of negotiation, aimed at reaching consensus because of the practical consequences of using a word with one content rather than another. This paper presents an alternative motive for expressing and pursuing metalinguistic disagreement. In using words with given criteria, we betray our location amongst social categories or groups. Because of this, metalinguistic disagreement can be used as a stage upon which to perform a social (...) identity. The ways in which metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way diverge in character from metalinguistic negotiations are described, as are several consequences of the existence of metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way. (shrink)

An extensive literature on pragmatism and compromise, as well as their relationship to civic and political leadership, can be found in the field of Public Administration (hereafter PA). PA is broadly defined as that discipline of study addressing the development, institutionalization and reconstruction of bureaucratic-governmental organizations as well as the policies they are tasked to implement—or more “[s]imply stated . . . the management of government agencies." However, the literature is not limited to the works of PA scholars and practitioners. (...) It also encompass the writings of philosophers, and specifically philosophical pragmatists, who can contribute “a kind of methodological sophistication that either sharpens the issues at point in public controversy or discloses the absence of real or genuine issues, thus clarifying the options open for decision." In this literature, questions arise as to how unelected leaders in governmental bureaucracies are guided by pragmatism or pragmatic ideas to (i) negotiate with stakeholders to fashion appropriate compromise agreements, (ii) solve policy problems within a zone of legally mandated authority, (iii) clearly articulate the scope and content of that body of knowledge considered PA scholarship, (iv) understand the origins of PA as a distinct discipline and (v) bridge between the abstract principles offered by PA theorists and the concrete practices of bureaucratic-governmental organizations and public administrators. Classified thematically, these issues fit into four areas: first, controversy over whether administrative action is legitimate (i and ii); second, the PA’s identity crisis as a discipline (iii and iv); third, the gap between theory and practice (v); and fourth, the difficulty of integrating pragmatism and PA (i through v). (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that truth is always evaluated using our actual linguistic conventions, even when considering counterfactual scenarios in which different conventions are adopted. This principle has been invoked in a number of philosophical arguments, including Kripke’s defense of the necessity of identity and Lewy’s objection to modal conventionalism. But it is false. It fails in the presence of what Einheuser (2006) calls c-monsters, or convention-shifting expressions (on analogy with Kaplan’s monsters, or context-shifting expressions). We show that c-monsters naturally (...) arise in contexts, such as metalinguistic negotiations, where speakers entertain alternative conventions. We develop an expressivist theory—inspired by Barker (2002) and MacFarlane (2016) on vague predications and Einheuser (2006) on counterconventionals—to model these shifts in convention. Using this framework, we reassess the philosophical arguments that invoked the conventional wisdom. (shrink)

I develop an expressivist account of verbal disagreements as practical disagreements over how to use words rather than factual disagreements over what words actually mean. This account enjoys several advantages over others in the literature: it can be implemented in a neo-Stalnakerian possible worlds framework; it accounts for cases where speakers are undecided on how exactly to interpret an expression; it avoids appeals to fraught notions like subject matter, charitable interpretation, and joint-carving; and it naturally extends to an analysis of (...) metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

This paper sets out the felicity conditions for metalinguistic proposals, a type of directive illocutionary act. It discusses the relevance of metalinguistic proposals and other metalinguistic directives for understanding both small- and large-scale linguistic engineering projects, essentially contested concepts, metalinguistic provocations, and the methodology of ordinary language philosophy. Metalinguistic proposals are compared with other types of linguistic interventions, including metalinguistic negotiation, conceptual engineering, lexical warfare, and ameliorative projects.

Conceptual engineering involves revising our concepts. It can be pursued as a specific philosophical methodology, but is also common in ordinary, non-philosophical, contexts. How does our capacity for conceptual engineering fit into human cognitive life more broadly? I hold that conceptual engineering is best understood alongside practices of conceptual exploration, examples of which include conceptual supposition (i.e., suppositional reasoning about alternative concepts), and conceptual comparison (i.e., comparisons between possible concept choices). Whereas in conceptual engineering we aim to change the concepts (...) we use, in conceptual exploration, we reason about conceptual possibilities. I approach conceptual exploration via the linguistic tools we use to communicate about concepts, using metalinguistic negotiation, convention-shifting conditionals, and metalinguistic comparatives as my key examples. I present a linguistic framework incorporating conventions that can account for this communication in a unified way. Furthermore, I argue that conceptual exploration helps undermine skepticism about conceptual engineering itself. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how the dynamic nature of words’ meanings plays a role in a philosophical theory of meaning. For ‘dynamic nature’ we intend the characteristic of being flexible, of changing according to many factors (speakers, contexts, and more). We consider meaning as something that gradually takes shape from the dynamic processes of communication. Accordingly, we present a draft of a theory of meaning that, on the one hand, describes how a private meaning is formed as a mental (...) state of individual agents during a lifetime of experiences, and, on the other hand, shows how a public meaning emerges from the interaction of agents. When communicating with each other, agents need to converge on a shared meaning of the words used, by means of a negotiation process. A public meaning is the abstract product of many of these processes while, at the same time, the private meanings are continually reshaped by each negotiation. Exploring this dynamics, we have been looking at the work done by computer scientists dealing with problems of heterogeneity of sources of information. We argue that a suitable solution for both disciplines lies in a systematic characterization of the processes of meaning negotiation. (shrink)

This paper proposes a distinctive kind of agency that can vindicate the agency of members of marginalised groups while accommodating the autonomy-undermining influences of oppression. Socially-embedded agency—the locus of which is in the exercise of our ability to negotiate between different social features—is compatible with, and can explain, various phenomena, including double-consciousness and white fragility. Moreover, although socially-embedded agency is neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy, exercising it is practically necessary for autonomy, at least for members of marginalised groups in (...) our non-ideal world. (shrink)

This article argues that philosophers and laypeople commonly conceptualize moral truths or justified moral beliefs as discoverable through intuition, argument, or some other purely cognitive or affective process. It then contends that three empirically well-supported theories all predict that this ‘Discovery Model’ of morality plays a substantial role in causing social polarization. The same three theories are then used to argue that an alternative ‘Negotiation Model’ of morality—according to which moral truths are not discovered but instead created by actively (...) negotiating compromises—promises to reduce polarization by fostering a progressive willingness to ‘work across the aisle’ to settle moral issues cooperatively. This article then examines potential methods for normatively evaluating polarization, arguing there are prima facie reasons to favor the Negotiation Model over the Discovery Model based on their hypothesized effects on polarization. Finally, I outline avenues for further empirical and philosophical research. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against what I label as "Lightweight interpretation of ontological disputes". This interpretation criteria sees ontological disputes as metalinguistic negotiations concerning the pursuing of practical objectives. I have developed an argument, called "That's not the issue", which shows that this interpretation criteria is inapplicable to most ontological disputes.

The term 'covert mixed quotation' describes cases in which linguistic material is interpreted in the manner of mixed quotation — that is, used in addition to being mentioned — despite the superficial absence of any commonly recognized conventional devices indicating quotation. After developing a novel theory of mixed quotation, I show that positing covert mixed quotation allows us to give simple and unified treatments of a number of puzzling semantic phenomena, including the projective behavior of conventional implicature items embedded in (...) indirect speech reports and propositional attitude ascriptions, so-called 'c-monsters,' metalinguistic negation, metalinguistic negotiation, and 'in a sense' constructions. (shrink)

John Rawls’ gamification of justice leads him – along with many other monist political philosophers, not least Ronald Dworkin – to fail to take politics seriously enough. I begin with why we consider games frivolous and then show how Rawls’ theory of justice is not merely analogous to a game, as he himself seems to claim, but is in fact a kind of game. As such, it is harmful to political practice in two ways: one as regards the citizens who (...) participate directly in it, and the other as regards those who do no more than follow it. Similar harms, I then argue, come from taking politics too seriously, which is the attitude I ascribe to pluralist political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams. To them, the plural, incommensurable nature of values means that they cannot be reconciled and so that politics must be a matter of negotiating dirty, and often tragic, compromises. What we need instead, I conclude, is a third way, one that is neither monist nor pluralist but in-between the two extremes. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates that in order to reach a decision a leader must decide which persons should be involved in the process and when. A relatively common method of involving others is delegating the decision to a group. A main objective of this is often to generate as many innovative ideas as possible, and different techniques can be employed for this, including brainstorming. The proposal generated must then be validated by the group using different criteria on the basis of which (...) it is then relatively easy to filter out proposals that do not reach the goals that have been set. However, a leader needs to collect additional information in order to reach a decision. By the use of information technology vast amounts of information may be accumulated. Thus, different kinds of filtering or weeding methods must be used in order to quickly obtain relevant information. This information can help leaders create forecasts and minimize risks. They must also be able to present their ideas in the most attractive way possible in order to be heard and arrive at decisions. The design of the presentation is therefore critical. Sometimes it is not enough for leaders just to present an idea, they are then obliged to negotiate in order to reach a decision. -/- . (shrink)

Negotiating the relation between divine transcendence and divine immanence lies at the heart of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and of Kierkegaard's philosophical works. The purpose of the paper is to explore the manners in which they do so. I argue that despite various differences between them, both engage with the tension between divine transcendence and immanence by turning away from objectivity to subjectivity and, moreover, by placing paradox, riddle and secret at the heart of their philosophical works. In other (...) words, I argue that they do not attempt to solve or dissolve the great paradox of God's immanent transcendence but to present it in its most acute forms as the paradox within which the religious life is lived. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the process of compromising needs to be deliberative if a fair compromise is the goal. More specifically, I argue that deliberation is structurally necessary in order to achieve a fair compromise. In developing this argument, this paper seeks to overcome a problematic dichotomy that is prevalent in the literature on deliberative democracy, which is the dichotomy between compromise and deliberation. This dichotomy entails the view that the process preceding the achievement of a compromise is (...) essentially a process of negotiating or bargaining, which, I claim, should not be the case if a fair compromise is the goal. The reason for this claim is, in a nutshell, that negotiation or bargaining processes do not provide for an in-depth understanding of the reasons that each party has for holding their respective position. However, an in-depth understanding of each other’s reasons, is, as I will show, a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise. In contrast to negotiation or bargaining, the deliberative process, by its very structure, provides for mutual understanding and is therefore a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise. (shrink)

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of (...) tactics proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)