Showing papers in "Philosophy in 2001"

Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship

Abstract: PART L. THE EVOLUTION OF MINORITY RIGHTS DEBATE 1. The New Debate over Minority Rights 2. Liberal Culturalism: An Emerging Consensus? 3. Do We Need a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights? REPLY TO CARENS, YOUNG, PAREKH, AND FROST PART LL. ETHNOCULTURAL JUSTICE 4. Human Rights and Ethnocultural Justice 5. Minority Nationalism and Multination Federalism 6. Theorizing Indigenous Rights 7. Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice 8. The Theory and Practice of Immigrant Multiculturalism 9. A Crossroad in Race Relations PART LLL. MISUNDERSTANDING NATIONALISM 10. From Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism to Liberal NATIONALISM 11. Cosmopolitanism, Nation-States, and Minority Nationalism 12. Misunderstanding Nationalism 13. The Paradox of Nationalism 14. American Multiculturalism in the International Arena 15. Minority Nationalism and Immigrant Integration PART LV: DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP IN MULTIETHNIC STATES 16. Education for Citizenship 17. Citizenship in an Era of Globalization: Commentary on Held 18. Liberal Egalitarianism and Civic Republicanism: Friends or Enemies?

The Indispensability of Character

Abstract: Gilbert Harman has argued that it does not make sense to ascribe character traits to people. The notion of morally virtuous character becomes particularly suspect.How plausible this is depends on how broad character traits would have to be. Views of character as entirely invariant behavioural tendencies offer a soft target. This paper explores a view that is a less easy target: character traits as specific to kinds of situation, and as involving probabilities or real possibilities. Such ascriptions are not undermined by Harman's arguments, and it remains plausible that the agent's character often is indispensable in explanation of behaviour. Character is indispensable also as processes of control that impose reliability where it really matters.

Future pasts : the analytic tradition in twentieth-century philosophy

Abstract: This collection of previously unpublished essays presents a new approach to the history of analytic philosophy, one which does not assume at the outset a general characterization of the distinguishing elements of the analytic tradition. The distinguished contributors, including luminaries John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, pay close attention to the historical contexts in which analytic philosophers have worked, revealing multiple discontinuities and misunderstandings, as well as a complex interaction between science and philosophical reflection.

Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology

Abstract: The problem of free will arises because of the conflict between two inconsistent impulses, the experience of freedom and the conviction of determinism. Perhaps we can resolve these by examining neurobiological correlates of the experience of freedom. If free will is not to be an illusion, it must have a corresponding neurobiological reality. An explanation of this issue leads us to an account of rationality and the self, as well as how consciousness can move bodies at all. I explore two hypotheses. On the first, freedom is a complete illusion. On the second, it is not an illusion, and there is a corresponding indeterminism at the neurobiological level. This can only occur if there is in fact a quantum mechanical element in the fundamental neurobiology of consciousness.

Making Sense of Retributivism

Abstract: This paper explicates and challenges John Rawl's argument concerning a rule-utilitarian theory of punishment. In so doing, it argues in favour of a retributivist theory of punishment, one that seeks to justify, not only particular forms of punishment, but the institution of punishment itself. Some crucial objections to retributivism are then considered: one regarding the adverse effects of punishment on the innocent, another concerning proportional punishment, a third pertaining to vengeance and retribution, a Marxian concern with retributive punishment, and a concern with the concept of desert. Each objection is deflected in order to ward-off what seem to be the most serious criticisms of a retributivist view of punishment and to clarify the depth of the retributivist position.

Morality and Feeling in the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract: This paper argues that a recurrent mistake is made about Scottish moral philosophy in the 18th century with respect to its account of the relation between morality and feeling. This mistake arises because Hume is taken to be the main, as opposed to the best known, exponent of a version of moral sense theory. In fact, far from occupying common ground, the other main philosophers of the period—Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie—understood themselves to be engaged in refuting Hume. Despite striking surface similarities, closer examination reveals a deep difference between Hume's and Reid's conception of ‘the science mind’ which marked the philosophy of the period. Properly understood, this difference shows that mainstream Scottish moral philosophy, far from subscribing to Hume's dictum about morality being ‘more properly felt than judged of’, held that morality is ‘more properly judged than felt of’.

A question of silence : Feminist theory and women's voices

Abstract: This paper examines some recent trends in feminist epistemology. It argues that theories that make a priori claims to the effect that the structure of our body of knowledge must encode a masculine bias are both philosophically problematic and politically counterproductive, and it recommends a feminist methodology free from such general theoretical claims as best suited for the promotion of productive feminist thought and action.

How to take realism beyond foot-stamping

Abstract: Au-dela du debat sur la credibilite des resultats scientifiques et sur le realisme empirique, l'A. presente une autre version du realisme qui s'appuie sur le critere de la plausibilite ontologique, et qui permet a la science de remplir sa fonction mythologique.

The Virtues of Embodiment

Abstract: L'A. propose une interpretation de la relation esprit-corps definie par la philosophie contemporaine, dans le sens de l'harmonie des elements decrite par Platon, Aristote et Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Examinant les facteurs epistemiques, structurels et affectifs de l'incarnation humaine, l'A. montre que la constitution de la personne obeit a six vertus caracterisant la sensation, l'action, le physique et le mental, la composition et l'affect.

Reply to Bernard Williams' ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’

Abstract: In ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,’ Williams is mistaken in thinking that I accused him of thinking that that we can describe the world ‘as it is anyway’ without using concepts. Our real disagreement is over whether it makes sense to think that the concepts of physics do this. The central issue is this: the notion of ‘absoluteness’ is defined using at least one semantical notion (‘convergence’). If Williams' view is to work, I argue, at least one semantical notion needs to be absolute. But Williams himself concedes that semantical notions cannot be reduced to physical ones, and the ‘absolute conception’ is supposed to be given in terms of primary qualities alone.

Corlett on Kant, Hegel, and Retribution

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to critically appraise J. Angelo Corlett's recent interpretation of Kant's theory of punishment as well as his rejection of Hegel's penology. In taking Kant to be a retributivist at a primary level and a proponent of deterrence at a secondary level, I believe Corlett has inappropriately wed together Kant's distinction between moral and positive law. Moreover, his support of Kant on these grounds is misguided as it is instead Hegel who holds such a distinction. Finally, I attempt to refute the almost timeless retributivist rejection of deterrence-based theories of punishment on the grounds that the latter somehow would condone in some cases the punishment of innocent persons. These individuals almost always demand that no innocent person be punished as a rule of the highest order.

That Useless Time Machine

Abstract: Dear ‘Time Machine’ Research Group; if in order to travel to the past one has to have been there already, and if one can only do what has already been done, then why build a time machine in the first place? A quoi bon l'effort?

Embarrassment : A philosophical analysis

Abstract: This paper considers the sorts of evaluations that underlie the emotion of embarrassment, by questioning what unifies the various kinds of situations in which this emotion typically arises. It examines the difference between embarrassment and shame, and then addresses problems with the accounts of embarrassment proposed by previous authors, in particular Solomon, Taylor and Goffman. It proposes a new model, on which the emotion involves viewing an interpersonal situation, in which you are involved, as containing an exposure to which you are averse. This may either be your own exposure to others, or others' exposure to yourself. The emotion thus reflects the value we attach to placing limits on the sorts of interactions and contact we have with other people.

Wittgenstein: Science and Religion

Abstract: We are coming more and more to see Wittgenstein as a thinker whose most characteristic theses came out of the intellectual climate of Central Europe. His interest in the writings of Schopenhauer, Spengler, Weininger and many other German and Austrian authors has long been acknowledged and the traces of this influence brought to light by many commentators. The fact that he was equally or perhaps even better acquainted with the work of the physicists of the German tradition, especially Helmholtz, Hertz and Boltzmann has not yet received the attention that it deserves. Though Wittgenstein was engaged very deeply with Russell's philosophical and logical enterprises I believe he was unsympathetic to much of the philosophical background that Russell took for granted, not least the empiricism of the 'British' tradition. We must not forget that Wittgenstein was by training, and to some extent also by temperament, a physicist and engineer. He was technically competent in applied physical science. He understood the power of diagrams and working drawings. This source of influence on his later thought, and especially on his way of thinking about logic, has scarcely been touched on.' Yet I believe its traces are to be found everywhere in the Tractatus. In the first part of this paper I will be advancing some arguments to try to show that more of the Tractatus than has yet been realized can best be understood as a generalization of a number of important theses and doctrines developed in the writings of Helmholtz, Hertz and Boltzmann, apropos of the nature of physics as a way of creating a symbolic representation of the world. This interpretation stands over against the common view that the Tractatus is a highly refined version of logical atomism. There are few explicit mentions of any scholarly sources in Wittgenstein's writings, so it must be a matter of significance when we find the name 'Hertz' at a crucial point in the discussion of the relation between logic as providing the form of the general theory

Temperance, Temptation, and Silence

Abstract: Often a concern for truthfulness becomes the celebration of radical truthfulness, where this involves both the utter refusal of deception and that all moral and political beliefs be fit to survive publicity. An unfortunate consequence of this is that it has blinded us to a fair and accurate understanding of the nature and role of an important technique of virtue—temperance. Temperance implies a strategy of renunciation and withdrawal from the full content of our psychological lives. It involves us in pursuing and sustaining a practice of deliberative silence about those purposes and ends which, as we see things, threaten us with corruption and the world with evil.

The Virtues of Common Sense

Abstract: There's always empiricism, of course, and the various schools of analysis, the realists, idealism, then reductionism more generally or, instead, the belief in essences or substance or noumena. There's the romantics and the nominalists, phenomenology and the stoics, volition theorists, epiphenomenalists and panpsychics. Or someone, some throwback, rushes in with wild eyes, arms outstretched, and cries 'It's all one.' The vitalists and the vegetarians, the far political left or dead centre and the utilitarians or bead-counters and still, sometimes, the atomists of one kind or another. There's the formal, or the Formal, bug. The ontology above all else bunch-and the somewhat thinner epistemological crowd. Pragmatists. Rationalists. Truth merchants, some of the braver ones-whether they concern themselves with real certain absolute Truth or mere truth. And then the opposition, the sceptics and the postmodernists, the nihilists and nay-sayers. And then, then the apologists for, the upholders of, the insisters on, the dictates of common sense. What are these dictates? And who is the average, the model or exemplary individual whose dictates they are? Or, as we might put it, what sort of authority do we have to do with here?

Constraint, Empowerment, and Guidance: A Conjectural Classification of Laws of Nature

Abstract: This paper introduces a conjecture that laws of nature may be of different kinds, in particular that there may, in addition to laws which constrain outcomes (C-laws), be laws which empower systems to direct or select outcomes (E-laws) and laws which guide systems in such selections (G-laws). The paper defends this conjecture by suggesting that it is not excluded by anything we know, is plausible, and is potentially of great explanatory power.

Why there need not be any grue problem about inductive inference as such

Abstract: Entre logique formelle et epistemologie, l'A. etudie le probleme du bleu-vert (grue) chez N. Goodman et montre que celui-ci concerne a la fois le raisonnement predictif et l'inference inductive.

Was Wittgenstein a Plagiarist

Abstract: Laurence Goldstein has ‘re-created’ Wittgenstein's doctoral viva, arguing that had Wittgenstein's dissertation, his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ‘been judged by normal standards of originality and philosophical argumentation, it would have failed’. Goldstein claims that Wittgenstein ‘lifted’ central doctrines from Russell and from Bernard Bolzano. I point out that passages allegedly plagiarized from Russell are actually criticisms of his doctrines, and that there is no evidence that Wittgenstein even knew Bolzano's work, directly or indirectly. I argue that alleged similarities, substantial and stylistic, between his work and Bolzano's give no support even to a weaker claim of influence.

Intentions, Motives, and Causation

Abstract: We are all well aware that the concepts of intentions, reasons, purposes, and motives occupy essential positions in our descriptions of human behaviour and that we often need to use these terms in explanations of what we and others are doing or will do. The explanations are of the sort that 'throw light' on what they are supposed to explain by supplying certain contextual matters, as well as feelings, thoughts, and so forth, so they are unlike explanations that are supposed to tell us of the causes of behaviour or events. They draw on our knowledge and experience of the world. I will point out some difficulties with views of understanding human action in causal terms, views which have been widely adopted despite the rather obvious problems they generate. I will be concerned with what proponents of these views say about desires, beliefs, intentions, and such things, and primarily, what they say about explanations of actions. But I will discuss these views apart from their view that desires, beliefs, motives, and the like, are physiological states. Since many have been persuaded to adopt the causal views by their discussions of desires, beliefs, reasons, explanations of actions and the like, it seems worthwhile to comment on those discussions. Their basic idea, the 'Humean' view of reasons for acting, is that all we need to explain and understand any human action are desires and the related beliefs, broadly understood. These form the cause of the action. In the words of Smith and Jones:

The moral. The personal, and the importance of what we care about

Abstract: This paper challenges what I call ‘Frankfurt's Care-Importance Principle’ (or ‘the CIP ’), according to which, ‘If there is something that a person does care about, then it follows that it is important to him.’ Indeed, caring may generate genuine importance. I claim, however, that the agent's caring may have blinding effects too, it may blind him to what is really important to him. In this kind of case, caring does not generate genuine importance; rather, it reinforces the agent's false belief that what he cares about is really important to him. In the second part of the paper, I try to explain the philosophical urgency in correcting the CIP . I claim that Frankfurt's adherence to the CIP casts doubt upon the adequacy of his conceptual framework to deal with a special kind of conflict, namely, the conflict between the moral and the personal.

Emotions and incommensurable moral concepts

Abstract: Many authors have argued that emotions serve an epistemic role in our moral practice. Indeed, it seems likely that emotions do play such a role. But at least one author (John McDowell) has taken the epistemic connection to be so strong as to make creatures who do not share our affective nature unable to grasp our moral concepts. Further, this incommensurability, or inability to understand certain moral concepts, might lead to relativism: you might think that if I cannot follow your moral concepts, then those concepts are not binding on me, and it might even be the case that moral claims that are true for you are not true for me. I would like to discuss the alleged incommensurability introduced into morality by emotion’s epistemic role, and its feared consequences. I conclude that although emotion might play an epistemic role in our moral practice, this role does not lead to the incommensurability feared. In any case, such incommensurability would not entail moral relativism. Thus, if the argument of this paper is right, the epistemic role our emotions play in moral discourse does not relativize morality.

The Implications of Incommensurability

Abstract: Agents have aims. Any aim can be either simple or complex. If an aim is complex, then its different components make irreducibly different demands on the agent. The agent cannot rationally respond to all these demands by promoting all her different component aims at once. She must recognise a distinction between the rational response to any component aim of promoting it, and the rational response of respecting it. If the goods are incommensurable, then rational agents have complex aims. So if the goods are incommensurable, rational agents do not only promote whatever aims they recognise. But consequentialism tells agents only to promote whatever aims they recognise. So if the goods are incommensurable, consequentialism is wrong. I note applications of this argument to the writings of Robert Nozick, Philip Pettit, and John Harris.

On the Dismounting of Seesaws

Abstract: I am concerned to examine a mode of argumentation in recent analytic philosophy which, I claim, has its origin in Hegel's ‘dialectical’ method. I give examples of this mode of argumentation in McDowell and Wiggins, followed by a formal representation which distinguishes two possible models both of which have negative and positive aspects. I consider what the commitments of the negative aspect of this approach are, and argue that the desire to avoid naturalism constitutes a common goal. I turn then to its positive aspect, making explicit and criticising some of the metaphilosophical implications contained therein. Finally, I make brief contact with Hegel.

On the Lack of ‘True Philosophic Spirit’ in Aquinas: Commitment v. Tracking in Philosophic Method

Abstract: There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.'

Ethical, Necessity and Internal Reasons

Abstract: Against moral philosophers' traditional preoccupation with ‘ought’ judgments, Bernard Williams has reminded us of the importance of locutions such as ‘I must’, ‘I have to’ and ‘I can't’. He develops an account of the ethical necessity and impossibility these locutions are able to mark. The account draws on his thesis that all reasons for action are ‘internal’. I sketch the account, and then try to show that it is insensitive to important aspects of how the concepts of ethical necessity and impossibility inform our lives.

Time and Interrogative Logical Form

Abstract: L'A. mesure la possibilite d'une logique des formes interrogatives a l'exemple de la logique erotetique defendue par M. et A. Prior. Examinant la relation entre les questions/reponses et la conception du temps, l'A. montre que les formules interrogatives mesurent le degre d'indetermination du futur et le degre de determination du present.