Showing papers in "Theoria in 2020"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss their recently published book, Territorial Sovereignty, and how that led them to be interested in this particular project that they dealt with in the book.
Abstract: 18 November 2019CH: Thank you for agreeing to do this. The prompt for the interview was to talk about your recently published book, Territorial Sovereignty, but I thought before we got into that you could say something about your earlier work and how that led you to be interested in this particular project that you deal with in the book.
46 citations
TL;DR: Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control, an introduction to the potentially suffocating reality of the nascent control society, was published in 1990 as mentioned in this paper, and it has been updated in the twenty-five years since.
Abstract: In 1990, Gilles Deleuze published Postscript on the Societies of Control, an introduction to the potentially suffocating reality of the nascent control society. This thirtyyear update details how Deleuze’s conception has developed from a broad speculative vision into specific economic mechanisms clustering around personal information, big data, predictive analytics, and marketing. The central claim is that today’s advancing control society coerces without prohibitions, and through incentives that are not grim but enjoyable, even euphoric because they compel individuals to obey their own personal information. The article concludes by delineating two strategies for living that are as unexplored as control society itself because they are revealed and then enabled by the particular method of oppression that is control.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a modified version of the Rational Threshold view is proposed to avoid the problem of statistical evidence: statistical evidence is often not sufficient to make an outright belief rational, no matter how probable the target proposition is given such evidence.
Abstract: According to the Rational Threshold View, a rational agent believes p if and only if her credence in p is equal to or greater than a certain threshold. One of the most serious challenges for this view is the problem of statistical evidence: statistical evidence is often not sufficient to make an outright belief rational, no matter how probable the target proposition is given such evidence. This indicates that rational belief is not as sensitive to statistical evidence as rational credence. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that, in addition to playing a decisive role in rationalizing outright belief, non-statistical evidence also plays a preponderant role in rationalizing credence. More precisely, when both types of evidence are present in a context, non-statistical evidence should receive a heavier weight than statistical evidence in determining rational credence. Second, based on this result, we argue that a modified version of the Rational Threshold View can avoid the problem of statistical evidence. We conclude by suggesting a possible explanation of the varying sensitivity to different types of evidence for belief and credence based on the respective aims of these attitudes.
9 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed the basic assumption of Anaximander's currently most widespread interpretation and underlined the critical need to find alternatives, highlighting especially the interpretations that assume the link between mythology and philosophy in the dawn of Greek thought.
Abstract: The text reviews the basic assumption of Anaximander’s currently most widespread interpretation. It points out some limitations of this reading and underlines the critical need to find alternatives, highlighting especially the interpretations that assume the link between mythology and philosophy in the dawn of Greek thought. The interpretation of Apeiron, based on its Greek mythical-poetic meaning, provides a different view of Anaximander’s usual image.
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that most African countries have unconsciously bought into international arguments that drive the legitimacy of building walls, visible and invisible, and the promotion of stringent migration policies that minimise the influx of African immigrants.
Abstract: This paper seeks to address the problem of strangeness within the context of migration in Africa. I draw on historical realities that inform existing international and African discourses on migration. I hope to show that most African countries have unconsciously bought into international arguments that drive the legitimacy of building walls, visible and invisible, and the promotion of stringent migration policies that minimise the influx of African immigrants. I draw on political and philosophical positions of African thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, among others, in my theorisation of strangeness and the need to dispel the potential negative conception of strangeness within Africa’s migration policies. I juxtapose these positions with Western political theories with the hope of emphasizing African humanism as a key conception worth considering when decolonising borders.
8 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that philosophers do not think enough about the many moral issues of road traffic and that road ethics can contribute to road safety, and they use the case study of speeding and not only philosophical literature but also state of the art traffic safety literature to support their claims and explanations.
Abstract: This paper aims to show two things. The first is to support a claim that philosophers should think more about the many moral issues of road traffic, namely Road ethics. The second is to try to explain why philosophers do not think enough about the many moral issues of road traffic. And yet, they need to think more. I will use the 'case study' of speeding and not only philosophical literature but also state of the art traffic safety literature to support my claims and explanations. Lastly, it will be shown how road ethics can contribute to road safety.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy is given, drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal article "A Unified Account of Three Phenomena".
Abstract: In this article I give a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. My aims are partly conceptual, partly evaluative. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal ana ...
7 citations
7 citations
7 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that state sovereignty justifies privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non-members in a third country to safeguard their own interests under the current migration governance of the...
Abstract: Can state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non-members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the ...
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critique of Thaddeus Metz's modal relational approach to moral status in African ethics is presented, arguing that the capability criterion inherent in moral relationalism is not only exogenous to African thought but also undermines the viability of MR and cannot account for the standing of species populations.
Abstract: This article is a critique of Thaddeus Metz’s modal relational approach to moral status in African ethics (AE). According to moral relationalism (MR), a being has moral status if it exhibits the capacity for communal relationship as either a subject or an object. While Metz defends a prima facie plausibility of MR as an African account of moral status, this article provides a fresh perspective to the debate on moral status in environmental and ethical discourse. It raises two objections against MR: (1) the capability criterion inherent in MR is not only exogenous to African thought but also undermines the viability of MR; and (2) MR cannot account for the standing of species populations. Both objections have severe implications for biodiversity conservation efforts in Africa and beyond.
TL;DR: In this paper, a synthesis of the foundations, concepts and principles that articulate and give meaning to the existential phenomenology of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) establishing as a central axis of investigation his work and phenomenological production is described.
Abstract: The objective of this work is to describe a synthesis of the foundations, concepts and principles that articulate and give meaning to the existential phenomenology of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) establishing as a central axis of investigation his work and phenomenological production. To fulfill this general objective, first of all, the concept of intentionality will be reviewed, in light of the distancing our author takes from the father of phenomenology Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). This will serve as a ground of meaning for our second task, namely: to review and analyze the intimate relationship between the reformulation of intentionality, the ontological preeminence of the pre-reflective cogito and the constitution of the imaginary. It is important to carry out this step, since, as will be seen, it is fundamental for the future of Sartrean philosophy. In this way, we will be able to approach our third objective, to sustain and deepen our analysis toward the most radical thesis in Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought, namely: the absolute freedom of an existing conscience. Finally, we propose a synthetic review of the main precepts of Sartrean existential phenomenology, highlighting its links with the concepts addressed throughout the research. In other words, we will review the relationship between what Jean-Paul Sartre calls pour-soi, en-soi and neantisation.
Abstract:
TL;DR: In this article, the authors clarify the philosophical reasons for which Heidegger used, throughout all his work, three ways to write the word Being: Sein, Seyn and Seyn (crossed out).
Abstract: This paper seeks to clarify the philosophical reasons for which Heidegger used, throughout all his work, three ways to write the word Being: Sein, Seyn and Seyn (crossed out). It intends to understand which is the sense for each one of these three words, as well as their mutual relation, if there is between them overcoming, denial or complementarity. The proposed thesis is that each of them names a different aspect of the donation of being, each one approaches more than the previous one to the fund of the experience of being, but this does not mean that there is an overcoming, but the three designated instances they are in an intimate relationship of co-belonging. It will be shown that Sein refers to the philosophical project that search for the being as sense, as pre-ontological comprehension of human being. Seyn points out to the fact that human is not immediately linked to the more authentic essence of the truth of being, but he must be appropriated for it, so that the idea of Ereignis is alluded. Finally, as it is known, Seyn (crossed out) refers to the idea of the Fourfold (das Geviert), but besides that, the last published Black Notebooks let us see that the emergence of the third writing of Being is directly linked with two practically unknown ideas in the work published during the lifetime of the author: an eschatology of Being and an event of expropriation (Enteignis).
TL;DR: Tanabe as mentioned in this paper explores Tanabe's thoughts on collaborativity and solidarity as a dimension of nothingness in so far as they are possible from the perspective of the non-self (empty-self or empty subject) or the continuous death of the self.
Abstract: This paper explores Tanabe’s thoughts on collaborativity and solidarity as a dimension of nothingness in so far as they are possible from the perspective of the non-self (empty-self or empty subject) or the continuous death of the self, which is called metanoia and, as a way of thinking, metanoetics. For Tanabe, the continuity of metanoia allows for a historical form of existence that makes possible another mode of being in the world indicated by solidarity and collaborativity, also known as “returning to the world” (gensō, in Japanese). From the absolute nothingness, as a consequence, a kind of interstice with other societies and cultures opens up.
TL;DR: In this article, the relationship between the concept of single aspect similarity and proposed measures of similarity is analyzed, in terms of how they compare in the sense of how the similarity is defined.
Abstract: This article analyses the relationship between the concept of single aspect similarity and proposed measures of similarity. More precisely, it compares eleven measures of similarity in terms of how ...
TL;DR: In this paper, a panlogic interpretation of Leibniz's philosophy is presented, in which, through a metaphysics of calculus, a Harmonia praestabilita is imagined.
Abstract: Leibniz’s philosophy is considered by historians of philosophy in different and even opposite ways. In fact, there are those who consider Leibniz as “the great universal spirit of modernity” (Otto Saame) or as the past philosopher “of whom the greatest number of theses are in force today” (Jose Ortega y Gasset), but also those who consider that its importance is not “so enormous that the history of the human spirit cannot be conceived without it” (H. Glockner). Without falling into these descriptions, what I carry out in the article is an essay on understanding Leibniz’s philosophy according to which this would be a panlogicism in which, through a metaphysics of calculus, a Harmonia praestabilita is imagined.
TL;DR: The notion of resistance has become a central notion in political theory, standing at the heart of attempts to respond to the dilemmas of contemporary times as mentioned in this paper, and many accounts tend to ascribe to an idealised, heroic view.
Abstract: Of late, resistance has become a central notion in political theory, standing at the heart of attempts to respond to the dilemmas of contemporary times. However, many accounts tend to ascribe to an idealised, heroic view. In this view, resistance represents a clearcut action against injustice and stems from individuals’ conscious choice and their unwavering ethical commitment to the cause. Some liberal scholars, most notably Candice Delmas and Jason Brennan, have argued that citizens of democratic societies have a moral duty to resist state-sanctioned injustice. This resistance occurs either through ‘principled – civil or uncivil – disobedience’ or through ‘defensive actions’ (Delmas 2018: 5; Brennan 2019: 15). While acknowledging that pervasive injustice can compromise our cognitive and moral capacities, however, their articulation of our political obligation to resist refrains from a sustained examination of the moral dilemmas, uncertainties and risks that arise when fighting systemic oppression (Delmas 2018: 198–222; Brennan 2019: 28–59, 210–14).