This paper addresses the debate concerning the nature of Aristotelian phronêsis and the objects to which it is directed. After a preparatory distinction from other intellectual virtues, I elucidate phronêsis’s connection to character-virtue and deliberation, highlighting the crucial role of perception. Focusing on moral sensibility serves to underscore the particular nature of the objects of phronêsis, and introduces its aspect of self-knowledge. This determination, finally, helps characterize the project of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as an indirect education in phronêsis.

For many years Simone Weil and Ludwig Wittgenstein have been placed side by side. Little of that work has tried to explicitly compare the two. Direct comparisons can, however, be made between Weil and Wittgenstein, which can show that the ways they approached philosophy shared numerous traits and ideas. Both thinkers rejected philosophical systems, both admitted that serious philosophical work did not try to reject all contradictions internal to it, and, in fact, both sought to make facing contradictions and seeming (...) contradictions central to their method. Both wrote of the world with a sense of mystery that surrounds human life, a sense of transcendent good. Both engaged the problems with talking about such a good that cannot be neatly fit into language. Both also saw the task of philosophy as one concerned with meaning. Both also saw philosophy as a matter of “work on oneself.” This essay will examine what it means to say that philosophy is a matter of work on oneself. To do so, I want to examine primarily two essays, one from each philosopher, essays which bear remarkable similarity to each other in the sort of problem they deal with.They are section xi of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment, and Weil's “Essay on the Concept of Reading.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Giving an Account of OneselfChris LundbergGiving an Account of Oneself. Judith Butler. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Pp. x + 149. $18.95, softcover.Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler's recent foray into moral philosophy, is a lucid interrogation of the problem of responsibility in the wake of contemporary critiques of the subject. In it, Butler moves beyond her concern with the conditions of (...) subjectivity and its performances towards a fuller consideration of life with others. Butler proffers an answer to the problem of post-subjective responsibility that resonates with the best elements of the rhetorical traditions, [End Page 329] though perhaps Butler's project might also benefit from a more thorough engagement with the problem of rhetoric in its specificity.Though works such as Gender Trouble earned a reputation (perhaps unfairly) for being theoretically dense to the point of obscurity, Giving an Account of Oneself is clearly and elegantly argued. Butler's argument is that moral philosophy relies on the ability of subjects to give an account of themselves and their actions. Such an account seems difficult in the face of blistering critiques of an autonomous, self-possessed, transparent, and naturally given subject of intention. How can one affirm responsibility in the post-subjective moment? As Butler puts it: "does the postulation of a subject who is not self-grounding … whose conditions of emergence can never fully be accounted for, undermine the possibility of responsibility and, in particular, of giving an account of oneself" (19)? What are the assumptions latent in critiques of the humanist subject that might deny the possibility of giving an account of oneself? Inspired by Foucault's interrogation of a naturalized truth of the subject, Lacan's account of a subject produced and dispossessed by the Symbolic Order, and Derrida's critique of presence, such critiques locate the subject as an effect of the operations of discourse, conceived broadly. Despite the force of these critiques, Butler claims that a view of the subject nested in and dispossessed by discourse provides possibilities for ethics. Butler's reframing of ethics draws on two assumptions that underwrite "post" accounts of the subject: that the subject is both an effect of discourse and of differential relation to others.The first assumption is that a subject produced within discourse is also a subject that is dependent on and interpenetrated by others. Drawing on her continuing engagement with Hegel, the work of Adriana Cavarero, Levinas's conception of alterity and Laplanche's theory of seduction, Butler argues that the subject is endowed with a "fundamental sociality" (33). The markers of fundamental sociality differ for each of these theorists: Hegel relies on the concept of recognition; Cavarero appropriates Arendt's space of appearance; Levinas argues for the priority of an ethical relation to the other over ontology; and Laplanche conceives of the emergence of subjectivity as a primal seduction of a child by the adult world. But each of these framings of the subject is united by a basic commitment that subjects are produced in relation to others both as a generative point and as a horizon.The second assumption is that when a subject dependent on other subjects attempts to give an account of itself, it does so within a structure of address. A subject makes a claim for itself only in the presence of others—an account of oneself both aims at the self but also simultaneously aims at presenting the self to another. On this reading, accounts of oneself are not transparent descriptions [End Page 330] of a subject's interiority: rather, an account of oneself must be a narrative, a discursive gathering of the self that can never fully recover the conditions of its emergence. Narrative is not simply a mode of communicating the content and intentions of a self to the other. Narrative is simultaneously the precondition for a subject naming and providing retroactive order to its own subjectivity. But where there are narratives, there is always the risk of narrative closure, or that the narrative is repeated without interruption. Put in terms of Butler's concern with ethics, is there not always a risk that a narrative becomes a self... (shrink)

In Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis combines his passion for pagan mythology with his knack for communicating Christian truths via story, powerfully illustrating a number of theological and moral positions that are prominent in many of his other writings. This article examines two major themes in TWHF that are also emphasized heavily within Lewis’s prose: maintaining faith in the face of various emotionally-driven temptations to doubt; and recognizing that pride prevents us from knowing God and corrupts the (...) love we have for others into a jealous hatred. The article uncovers a variety of ways that Lewis masterfully paints a picture via the characters and the story of TWHF that exemplifies religious and ethical insights within these two themes. (shrink)

Rosalind Hursthouse wrote in 1999 (On Virtue Ethics, pp. 5-7) of a gap in virtue ethics in the shape of the virtue of justice. Many years on, that gap persists. Our aim is to make a beginning on that virtue, but here we find an obstacle in its treatment by Aristotle, whose thinking about the virtues we otherwise find so rich. Whereas Aristotle took the virtue of justice to be concerned exclusively with one’s treatment of others, we begin instead (...) with the idea that justice also concerns how one treats oneself. Like Hursthouse, we think virtues are corrective of human failings. We argue, first, that being unjust to oneself is a failing that is not only perilous but all too frequent in human experience. The idea that justice is strictly other-regarding gets going only on the assumption that the way humans are prone to fail in their dealings with others is in taking too much interest in their own welfare. Taking inspiration from the work of Jean Hampton, we argue that a pernicious type of self-abnegation—what Hampton called “the loss of self”—is also a common failing among humans, both in their relations with others and in their own practical reasoning about their lives. This failing—a failing of giving persons their due—is a failing for the virtue of justice to correct. We then examine Aristotle’s rejection of the possibility of being unjust to oneself, in Nicomachean Ethics V. Aristotle’s arguments rest on demonstrating the impossibility of committing injustice against oneself in any of the forms characteristic of strictly interpersonal injustice. Rather than arguing that Aristotle begs the question, though, we argue that his approach rests on its starting assumption that the failings for the virtue of justice to correct are failures to give others their due. But considering the human proneness also to self-abnegation, we heirs of Aristotle’s should hope for an understanding of the virtue of justice that is rich enough to include giving oneself one’s due as well. Lastly, we outline the virtue of justice understood as correcting the failure of not giving persons their due, including oneself. Our approach centers on the idea of advocacy, focusing on the duty that parents have to advocate for the fair treatment of their children and, as those children mature, the transference of this duty to those children to be advocates for themselves. We conclude by exploring the extent to which such an account would fit an otherwise broadly Aristotelian approach: the sense in which such a virtue is a “mean,” the emotions and desires with which it is concerned, and its status as a particular virtue as opposed to virtue as a whole. We hope to honor Rosalind Hursthouse by continuing in her philosophical spirit, confronting Aristotle where we are surprised to find ourselves disagreeing considerably with a philosopher we generally find insightful, on an issue we find deeply important. -/- . (shrink)

In this article I want to alert investigators who are familiar only with our neuropsychological investigations of self-knowledge to our earlier work on model construction. A familiarity with this foundational research can help avert concerns and issues likely to arise if one is aware only of neuropsychological extensions of our work.

Speaking the Truth about Oneself is composed of lectures that acclaimed French philosopher Michel Foucault delivered in 1982 at the University of Toronto. As is characteristic of his later work, he is concerned here with the care and cultivation of the self, which becomes the central theme of the second and third volumes of his famous History of Sexuality, published in French in 1984, the month of his death, and which are explored here in a striking and typically (...) illuminating fashion. Throughout his career, Foucault had always been interested in the question of how constellations of knowledge and power produce and constitute subjects. But in the last phase of his life, he became especially interested not only in how subjects are constituted by outside forces but in how they constitute themselves. In this lecture series and accompanying seminar, we find Foucault focused on antiquity, starting with classical Greece, the early Roman dynasties, and concluding with fourth- and fifth-century Christian monasticism. Foucault's claim is that, in these periods, we see the development of a new kind of act-"speaking the truth" (about oneself)-as the locus of a new form of subjectivity, which he deemed important not just for historical reasons but also as something modernity could harness anew or adapt to its own purposes. (shrink)

This paper addresses two interrelated questions. The first question is our relation, as the modern westerners that we are, to Greek philosophy in its historical context. The second question is the relation between Greek philosophical conceptions of the self and what we moderns take ourselves to be when we try to think about the world objectively. My inquiry is motivated by the belief that what a philosopher of the distant past can say to us is influenced by our own independent (...) viewpoint, a viewpoint which may enable us to use that philosopher as a contributor to debates of which he himself had no inkling. Greek philosophers were innocent of the Cartesian tradition and the problems it has generated concerning the connection, if any, between an individual subject of consciousness and the so-called 'external world'. However, I argue that early Greek speculation about the physical world was inward as well as outward looking. Their attempts to think about the world objectively raised issues about the nature of the self — the inquiring (or non-inquiring) subject — issues that, in the case of Heraclitus, are quite explicit. Following up my earlier point about linking modern viewpoints to ancient insights, I make a comparison beween parts of Thomas Nagel's book, The View from Nowhere, and the philosophy of Heraclitus. In particular, I argue that Heraclitus adumbrates a concept analogous to Nagel's 'objective self and shares some of Nagel's interests in integrating that perspective with the practice of being a person in the everyday world. In the final part of the paper I comment briefly on Plato's and Aristotle's criticism of Heraclitus, a criticism that, from a modern perspective, seems to me misconceived. I also offer the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was influenced by Heraclitus, as an excellent example of what it could mean to combine an objective viewpoint with one's ordinary humanity. More generally, the paper may be read as a defence of objectivity — not in the sense that we can hope to understand the world independently of our own concepts or culture (I sidestep any questions about objective truth), but in the sense, rather, that trying to get beyond an irreducibly personal view of things is a basic human propensity (property of the self) even though our use of it seems bound to be (and perhaps should be) selective. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how the idea of self-rule is dramatised and articulated in the Protagoras and the Gorgias with respect to the apparently different treatments of hedonism. Looking at the former dialogue, I describe how the hedonist premise develops from a dramatic image of disorder, specifically the absence of self-rule. I then consider whether the evidence from that dialogue has any bearing on the Gorgias’ discussion of hedonism. I conclude that the Socratic rejection of hedonism in that (...) text is about the Calliclean abandonment of any concern for self-rule, an abandonment that actually masquerades as a commitment to self-rule. This analysis is used to present a more general account of what Socrates considers to be the capacities required for good citizenship. (shrink)

We can think about ourselves in a variety of ways, but only some of the thoughts that we entertain about ourselves will be thoughts which we know concern ourselves. I call these first-person thoughts, and the component of such thoughts that picks out the object about which one is thinking—oneself—the self-concept. In this thesis I am concerned with providing an account of the content of the self-concept. The challenge is to provide an account that meets two conditions (...) on first-person thought. The account must show how we are aware of ourselves when we entertain first-person thoughts, so that we have an account that establishes the cognitive significance of first-person thoughts. But, in addition, this awareness must be as robust as the thinker’s ability to entertain first-person thoughts if our account is to respect the guaranteed referential success of the self-concept. I introduce both the subject matter of the thesis, and the constraints on a satisfactory account of that subject matter in the first chapter. In the second chapter I then set up a further problem: much of our self-knowledge is knowledge of our current mental states and it is often argued that we know about and can ascribe those mental states on the basis of introspection alone. The first constraint on an account of first-person thought described in the preceding paragraph requires that we be aware of ourselves in some way if our thoughts are to have the special cognitive significance of first-person thoughts. Yet, I argue, we neither do nor can introspectively observe a subject of thought and experience when we come to know about our mental states and experiences. The failure of introspection to supply us with perceptual information about a subject of thought presents us with the further potential problem. According to Fregean semantics sense determines reference: we count on the content of the elements of thought to determine the reference of terms that are used to express those elements. If we do not introspectively observe a subject of thought then we seem to be at a loss to account for the concept and we are at risk of having to accept that neither the self-concept nor the first-person pronoun are referential. In the remainder of my thesis I consider various responses that we can offer to this problem. First, I examine whether we can avoid the problem with an alternative account of first-person reference according to which reference is fixed by a reflexive rule, and whether we can also base an account of first-person thought on this account of first-person reference. Secondly, I look at the descriptivist view of first-person thought which could potentially provide both an account of first-person thought and first-person reference. These two suggestions must be rejected on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the special cognitive significance of first-person thought. A third approach to first-person thought argues that we employ an objective self-concept when we think about ourselves, a concept that is informed by bodily experience, rather than by introspective observation of a subject. Yet such an account cannot make sense of first-person thoughts in which we question our own embodiment. Lastly I consider whether it is possible to explain the cognitive significance of first-person thought in terms of non-conceptual first-person contents. (shrink)

This paper examines social media platforms as spaces fostering their user’s self-transformation. This paper argues that the ethics of (illegitimate) technological influence can be expanded and enriched with a concept of situated agency and an enactive evaluation of adaptability afforded by an environment. The paper proposes a taxonomy to evaluate social media platforms as environments for self-transformation by using the concept of situated agency and a notion of enactive normativity. Using a situated concept of agency, we should look into (...) how an agent is afforded or even pushed to undergo transformative experiences while inhabiting a certain technical environment. To coin this taxonomy, the types of transformative experiences from Carel and Kid were used to show that one agent can effectively have four modes of formative agency in any given situation, namely how one responds to the pressures of an environment. However, since it could be argued that any kind of adaptation is legitimate since we become who we change into, this taxonomy adds an explicit normative dimension pertaining to the environment that fosters the agent’s transformation of the self: borrowing from the terminology of enactive theories of cognition, how an environment responds to an agent’s adaptation is also important and can make the difference between a hostile environment and a flourishing-conducive one. The paper shows how one can apply this taxonomy of formative agency to evaluate some of the most concerning cases of self-transformation triggered by social media platforms: online self-radicalisation, habit acquisition, and identity rigidification. (shrink)

I tend to think of myself as bodily. Probably, so do you. Philosophically this takes some explaining. A candidate explanation is this: The bodily self is a physical agent. Knowledge of oneself as bodily is fundamentally knowledge of oneself as agentive; such knowledge is grounded in both experience of oneself as instantiating a bodily structure that affords a limited range of actions; and experience of oneself as a physical agent that tries to perform a limited range (...) of actions over time. By contrast René Descartes famously argued that all self-knowledge is grounded in, and cannot extend beyond, knowledge of oneself as a mental entity. If correct this would preclude the possibility of any knowledge of a bodily self, for such a thing would ex hypothesi not exist. Accordingly, this dissertation serves a dual purpose: to demonstrate why a Cartesian theory of self-knowledge is no threat to an account of bodily self knowledge; and to provide such an account. This dual purpose is achieved over the course of three chapters. The first chapter will set up the remaining two, by introducing the notion of self-identifying judgements, providing an argument in favour of bodily self knowledge on its basis, and noting two failures of this argument in light of a Cartesian response. The second and third chapter are respective attempts to address these two failures. The second chapter is explicitly concerned with the Cartesian, but is overall devoted to giving an account of the relationship between bodily experience and action. The third chapter is more programmatic, comprising a consistent set of suggestions concerning the sense of agency and its role in an account of bodily self knowledge. (shrink)

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can (...) be applied to other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti-institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language-games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities. (shrink)

Does DBS change a patient’s personality? This is one of the central questions in the debate on the ethics of treatment with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). At the moment, however, this important debate is hampered by the fact that there is relatively little data available concerning what patients actually experience following DBS treatment. There are a few qualitative studies with patients with Parkinson’s disease and Primary Dystonia and some case reports, but there has been no qualitative study (...) yet with patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. In this paper, we present the experiences of 18 patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) who are undergoing treatment with DBS. We will also discuss the inherent difficulties of how to define and assess changes in personality, in particular for patients with psychiatric disorders. We end with a discussion of the data and how these shed new light on the conceptual debate about how to define personality. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the problem of integrating deference to experts with thinking for oneself from a layperson’s perspective. This integration requires more than acknowledging that proper deference always involves epistemic agents who decide for themselves whether and how to defer in any concrete situation. This would only suffice to show that deference and thinking for oneself are interwoven in such a way that whenever a layperson forms deferential beliefs about some proposition, she must also think (...) for herself about some other proposition. However, an adequate reply to the target problem requires an explanation of how it is possible to defer and to think for oneself concerning the very same proposition. As argued here, this is possible only if we distinguish between beliefs and acceptances: the former being deferential, the latter being responsive to thinking for oneself. I motivate this distinction and inquire into how it can be fruitfully applied to solve the problem. (shrink)

How should you update your (degrees of) belief about a proposition when you find out that someone else — as reliable as you are in these matters — disagrees with you about its truth value? There are now several different answers to this question — the question of `peer disagreement' — in the literature, but none, I think, is plausible. Even more importantly, none of the answers in the literature places the peer-disagreement debate in its natural place among the (...) most general traditional concerns of normative epistemology. In this paper I try to do better. I start by emphasizing how we cannot and should not treat ourselves as `truthometers' — merely devices with a certain probability of tracking the truth. I argue that the truthometer view is the main motivation for the Equal Weight View in the context of peer disagreement. With this fact in mind, the discussion of peer disagreement becomes more complicated, sensitive to the justification of the relevant background degrees of belief (including the conditional ones), and to some of the most general points that arise in the context of discussions of scepticism. I argue that thus understood, peer disagreement is less special as an epistemic phenomenon than may be thought, and so that there is very little by way of positive theory that we can give about peer disagreement in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Hypothesis Concerning the Character of Islamic ArtAsli GocerWhy Islamic art has the distinctive features it has continues to generate clashing explanations. The Islamic visual treasury has no figural images, for instance, and three-dimensional sculpture or large scale oil painting, but instead contains miniatures, vegetal ornaments, arabesque surface patterns, and complex geometrical designs. To account for the phenomena the following radically opposing theories have been offered: the influence of (...) Judaism, the Quranic prohibition against making images, 1 Islamic resentment of the glory of Byzantine icons, 2 logocentricism of classical Islam, 3 the spiritual dimension of Islam, 4 tacit Islamic assertion of “otherness,” 5 and contingency of history. 6 The merits of these theories have been roundly discussed in the literature, and so I will not repeat the task here. I will insist that none of these theories offer a coherent explanation for all arts, but my presumption is that such an explanation is possible. In nonvisual arts the Muslim prefers simple tunes over that of the symphony, for instance, whirling dervishes over the ballet, and lyric poetry over dramatic literature. In my view what explains the common characteristic of all these arts is a certain kind of Islamic attitude informed by a certain philosophical outlook. Although it would be hasty to suggest the existence of a monolithic [End Page 683] Islamic art, it would be equally rash to deny some striking commonalities among its diverse examples. 7The following observation by a Muslim scholar is notable in this regard: “Whether in the great courtyard of the Delhi Mosque or the Qarawiyyin in Fez, one feels oneself within the same artistic and spiritual universe despite all the local variations in material, structural techniques, and the like.” 8 Some cite geometry as what mediates that feeling to the observer despite the cultural divergences in style. 9 Even those who have given up the search for the universal or the spiritual in Islamic art cannot help but see in it the classical ideal of beauty. 10 It is this classical heritage that in fact holds one of the important keys to the puzzle at hand. In particular I shall claim that Islamic art is the living image of what Plato has in mind for art in a theocratic state. Clearly, to refer to Plato and art in the same breath invites trouble. As is well enough known, giving a general interpretation of Plato’s views on the nature of art is a very complex endeavor. 11 Even in the face of grave difficulties in textual exegesis, however, there is sufficient evidence that Plato has some settled views on art. Those pertinent to our discussion here involve two claims, that beauty and goodness are divine and that all human endeavor (including artistic creation) must imitate the divine. 12 Although Platonic strain in Islam has been noted in other areas, its persistent legacy has been overlooked in art. 13 I shall argue that the Platonic influence on Islamic thought can be traced not only to political philosophy 14 and geometry, 15 as it has been commonly accepted, but also aesthetics. 16 A philosophical explanation of the Islamic attitude toward art may therefore be derivable from the Platonic axiom that god is the paradigm of beauty, which is the cosmological principle of [End Page 684] order and harmony; and as all created things, art, too, must reflect the divine paradigm.Before defending this ahistorical hypothesis on the character of Islamic art so reviled in recent literature, a few caveats are in order. “Islamic art” contains redundant terms. Strictly speaking all art in Islam is “Islamic,” because for the Muslim art is a crucial point of contact with the divine. That art should direct the mind to the divine is also Plato’s view. 17 Second, the categories that have traditionally been used to describe Islamic art such as “aniconic” and “nonrepresentational” are unhelpful for the problem at hand. 18 When it comes to the issue of iconography in Islamic arts, there is no consensus, for Islamicists are notably divided on the semiotic dimension of the Islamic visual language. The question of whether the geometric surface pattern is essentially iconography, for instance, is yet... (shrink)

Why concern oneself with Otto Neurath’s economic thought in its historical context? Could anything be more out of fashion than a theory proposing a centrally managed planned economy? Than the views of a theorist whose ideas on in-kind economic planning drove the notion of economic planning to its utmost extreme ? Indeed, Neurath’s ideas appeared too radical and utopian even for the social democrats of the 1920s. So why give even a second thought to them today? Would (...) it not be better to follow the advice a colleague gave me in the 1980s and to pass over Neurath’s “youthful sins” silently so as not to tarnish the reputation that – finally, after a lengthy delay – has been accredited to Neurath for his impressive philosophical achievements within the framework of logical empiricism?In the years since the 1980s, however, Neurath’s economic writings have attracted much more interest than anyone would previously have suspected. Today we are aware of the fact that Neurath formulated ideas at an unexpectedly early stage that are currently relevant in ecological economy, social choice theory and developmental economy. And that his reflections vis-à-vis “associational socialism” could provide interesting impulses for a new theory of socialism. Viewed from this perspective, Neurath’s status is secure as a precursor of theoretical developments and debates that are in full swing today. But is that enough? After all, if the role of the precursor is an endearing one, isn’t it also quite thankless? For even in the areas in which Neurath can be regarded as a precursor, the relevant questions are posed today with far greater precision and with reference to current facts – so why should anyone concern oneself with a precursor whose fundamental assumptions differ so greatly from those of the overwhelming majority of economists working today? (shrink)

The paper aims to investigate some aspects of Ernst Mach’s epistemology in the light of the problem of human orientation in relation to the world (Weltorientierung), which is a main topic of Western philosophy since Kant. As will be argued, Mach has been concerned with that problem, insofar as he developed an original pragmatist epistemology. In order to support my argument, I firstly investigate whether Mach defended a nominalist or a realist account of knowledge and compare his view to (...) those elaborated by other pragmatist thinkers, such as W. James, H. Vaihinger and H. Poincaré. Secondly, the question of what does it mean, for Mach, to orient ourselves in science is addressed. Finally, it will be argued that, although Mach tried to keep his epistemology restricted to a mere operational and economical account of science, that question involves the wider plane of practical philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter charts a metamorphosis in Djarin's ethical decision‐making across the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Philosophy and psychology have centered on moral reasoning and developmental processes based on logic, reasoning, and a primary concern with oneself, sometimes tempered by respect for others. Female development typically orients women toward an “ethics of care”: People have responsibilities toward others as well as themselves. The Mandalorian is the story of one man's moral overhaul toward care. Early Mando's moral (...) decisions are based on hierarchy, status, rules, fairness, maximizing benefit, and values. The shift in Mando's decision‐making approach occurred gradually, beginning with the impact of a rampaging blurrg. The hypothetical scenario about the pharmacy illuminates something crucial for understanding Djarin's gradual adoption of ethics of care: often, our choice to frame an ethical dilemma through one perspective or another winds up determining our moral decision. (shrink)

Nella seconda parte del _Libro della condanna dello status e dell’ostentazione_ il ventottesimo libro della sua opera principale, _La rinascita delle scienze religiose_ – al-Ghazālī trae molta ispirazione da al-Muhāsibī, soprattutto dalla sua opera _al-Ri’āya al-huqūq Allāh _(_L’osservanza dei diritti di Dio_). Il fatto che al-Ghazālī menziona esplicitamente il nome di al-Muhāsibī non meno di quattro volte in questa sezione testimonia la sua ammirazione profonda per questo grande mistico delle origini. Un attento esame di questi riferimenti e del loro contesto (...) rivela una grande familiarità e un ampio uso della _Ri’āya_, così come un accesso diretto a un’altra grande opera di al-Muhāsibī, cioè il _Kitāb al-Wasāya_ (_Il Libro dei Comandamenti_). Inoltre, la scelta di al-Ghazālī di specifici versetti coranici e delle Tradizioni, sia profetiche che di storie, è molto debitrice della _Ri’āya_, come diventa chiaro sulla base di un esame del primo capitolo di questa seconda parte che consiste interamente in citazioni di versetti coranici e delle Tradizioni riguardanti la questione dell’ostentazione. Per quanto riguarda il secondo capitolo, che si concentra sui modi usati per attirare l’attenzione della gente su di sé sia negli atti religiosi che in quelli verbali, esso condivide molte caratteristiche con l’esposizione di al-Muhāsibī nella _Ri’āya_, compresa la copia quasi letterale di alcuni passaggi. Infine, l’uso che al-Ghazālī fa della _Ri’āya_ in ciascuno degli altri capitoli è brevemente indicato. Questo studio mostra che al-Muhāsibī non era solo una fonte importante per al-Ghazālī – un fatto già noto da quasi un secolo – ma _la_ fonte principale, almeno per questa sezione della sua _Rinascita_. Tuttavia, allo stesso tempo, questo studio chiarisce che al-Ghazālī non è colpevole di cieco plagio. In the second part of the _Book of the Condemnation of Status and Ostentation_ – the twentieth-eight book of his major work, _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_ – al-Ghazālī draws much inspiration from al-Muhāsibī, above all from his work _al-Ri’āya al-huqūq Allāh_ (_Eyeservice to God’s Laws_). The very fact that al-Ghazālī explicitly mentions al-Muhāsibī’s name no less than four times throughout this section clearly testifies to his profound admiration for this great early mystic. A close examination of these references and their context reveals a great familiarity with and an extensive use of the _Ri’āya_, as well as a direct access to another major work of al-Muhāsibī, i.e., _Kitāb al-Wasāya_ (_The Book of Commandments_). Moreover, al-Ghazālī’s choice of specific Qur’anic verses and of Traditions, both prophetic and stories, is much indebted to the _Ri’āya_, as becomes clear on the basis of an examination of the first chapter of this second part which consisting entirely of quotations of Qur’anic verses and Traditions concerning the issue of ostentation. As to the second chapter, which focuses on the ways used to draw people’s attention to oneself both in religious as well as in wordly acts, it shares many features with al-Muhāsibī’s exposition in the _Ri’āya_, including the almost verbatim copying of some passages. Finally, al-Ghazālī’s use of the _Ri’āya_ in each of the other chapters is briefly indicated. This study shows that al-Muhāsibī was not just a major source for al-Ghazālī – a fact already known for nearly a century – but _the_ major source, at least for this section of his _Revival_. However, at the same time, this study makes clear that al-Ghazālī is not guilty of blind plagiarism. (shrink)

L’interprétation de l’Antiquité gréco-latine que Michel Foucault développe dans ses derniers ouvrages publiés et ses derniers cours au Collège de France fait peu de place au néoplatonisme. L’Herméneutique du sujet, seul texte où il en soit question avec quelque attention, le présente comme un simple prolon­gement de la philosophie de Platon, relevant du « modèle platonicien » du souci de soi, que Foucault confronte aux modèles hellénistico-romain et chrétien. Pour­tant, c’est chez les commentateurs néoplatoniciens de l’Alcibiade que Foucault trouve certaines (...) distinctions, en particulier entre « politique » et « cathartique », qui fondent la construction de ces trois modèles et leur articulation. Ce rôle archi­tectonique des néoplatoniciens tardifs, par ailleurs, va de pair avec l’absence quasi totale d’un autre néoplatonisme, celui de Plotin, qui pourtant semblerait à pre­mière vue mieux trouver sa place dans une approche placée sous le signe des « exercices spirituels ». Le traitement du néoplatonisme est par là symptomatique de la lecture foucaldienne de l’histoire de la philosophie antique, qui se construit tout autant par ses exclusions que par ses focalisations. (shrink)

Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of one's moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one's moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one's moral experiences that is available to introspection is neutral with respect to the issue of whether such (...) experiences carry ontological objectivist purport. (shrink)

This study compares Philip Pettit’s account of freedom to Hegelian accounts. Both share the key insight that characterizes the tradition of republicanism from the Ancients to Rousseau: to be subordinated to the will of particular others is to be unfree. They both also hold that relations to others, relations of recognition, are in various ways directly constitutive of freedom, and in different ways enabling conditions of freedom. The republican ideal of non-domination can thus be fruitfully understood in light of the (...) Hegelian structure of ‘being at one with oneself (Beisichsein) in another’. However, while the Hegelian view converges with Pettit on non-domination and recognition, their comprehensive theories of freedom are based on radically different metaphysics. One key difference concerns the relationship between freedom and nature, and there is a further difference between Pettit’s (ahistorical) idea of the concept dependence of freedom, and the Hegelian (historical) idea of the conception dependence of freedom. -/- Keywords: Pettit; Hegel; freedom; non-domination; mutual recognition; republicanism; ‘being at one with oneself’; social freedom. (shrink)

The Groundwork is explicitly concerned with the formulation of the supreme principle of morality. Although happiness is, for Kant, a necessary aim of human action, it is not a duty to seek one's own happiness, since every man seeks his own happiness by nature in any case, and so does not have to be constrained to do so. The positive aspect of beneficence is mentioned by Kant in the derivation from the formula of humanity, where he remarks that to (...) take another person as an end in himself is to take his ends as one's own. There is one important strand in Kant's notion of treating humanity as an end‐in‐itself, and he brings this out in listing perfect duties to oneself and duties of respect to others. The initial implausibility of Kant's ethics is the thought that one can will something in the absence of any desire whatsoever. (shrink)

Logic-Based Therapy and Consultation (LBTC) employs the use of guiding virtues—productive thought patterns and beliefs- through the use of shame-attacking exercises. Many transgender individuals experience dysphoria, which involves an extremely negative rating of oneself due to the mismatch they experience with their internal identity and bodily construction. This results from several kinds of emotional reasoning, like damning the world for being bigoted and hateful, or feeling trapped and unable to push through these struggles due to the awfulness of (...) these experiences. The aim of this paper is first, to provide an expansive account of these issues while highlighting the emotional reasoning of these issues through the lens of LBTC, and second, to explicate effective remedies and shame-attacking exercises for common transgender issues. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on AI-based cognitive and perceptual enhancements. AI-based brain enhancements are already under development, and they may become commonplace over the next 30–50 years. We raise doubts concerning whether radical AI-based enhancements transhumanists advocate will accomplish the transhumanists goals of longevity, human flourishing, and intelligence enhancement. We urge that even if the technologies are medically safe and are not used as tools by surveillance capitalism or an authoritarian dictatorship, these enhancements may still fail to do their job for (...) philosophical reasons. In what follows, we explore one such concern, a problem that involves the nature of the self. We illustrate that the so called transhumanist efforts to “merge oneself with AI” could lead to perverse realizations of AI technology, such as the demise of the person who sought enhancement. And, in a positive vein, we offer ways to avoid this, at least within the context of one theory of the nature of personhood. (shrink)

This paper considers the following claim: In order to live well, your first concern must be with yourself. I show how the truth in this claim can be captured by a eudaimonist framework. I distinguish two sorts of self-concern: self-care and self-responsibility. I examine each of these notions. I also consider different senses in which either sort of self-concern might be one’s first concern. I identify the place of each of these ideas in a properly (...) developed eudaimonism. As part of my discussion, I respond to the egoism challenge to eudaimonism, and I outline a thoroughly non-egoistic form of eudaimonism. (shrink)

During the debates about the legalization of Voluntary Assisted Dying in Victoria, Australia, the presence of anti-VAD health professionals in the medical community and reported high rates of conscientious objection to VAD suggested access may be limited. Most empirical research on CO has been conducted in the sexual and reproductive health context. However, given the fundamental differences in the nature of such procedures and the legislation governing it, these findings may not be directly transferable to VAD. Accordingly, we sought to (...) understand how CO operates in the context of VAD. Prior to the implementation of the VAD legislation in June 2019, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seventeen health professionals with a self-declared CO to VAD, to explore what motivated their CO. Participants identified multiple motivations, which can be broadly categorized as: concerns for oneself; concerns for patients; concerns about the current Victorian legislation; and concerns for the medical profession. Participants’ moral commitments included personal, professional, and political commitments. In some cases, one’s CO was specific to Victoria’s current legislation rather than VAD more broadly. Our findings suggest CO motivations extend beyond those traditionally cited and suggest a need to better understand and manage CO in the healthcare context. (shrink)

In the recent debate on the nature of Kantian ‘content of cognition’, some scholars argue that Kantian judgments of taste bear a nonconceptual mental content because these judgments lack any conceptual determining functions of some kind. In this article, I challenge the latter standpoint for the very simple reason that judgments of taste are no propositions, but rather formative evaluations. This implies as well the fact that we are initially in possession of no aesthetic representation. Hence, neither propositionally nor non-propositionally (...) is an aesthetic representation eligible to be counted as mental content. Instead, as the representation of the beautiful just contents oneself with itself, it refers to its objects relationally, yet not representationally in the full-fledged sense. Regarding the properties of objects, it remains consequently always ineffectively monotonous. On the occasion of agreement of the relevant cognitive faculties, we may, however, count the representation of the beautiful as phenomenal content. -/- . (shrink)

If killing another human being is morally wrong on at least some occasions, what precisely makes it wrong on those occasions? I have framed the question thus to indicate that I shall not be considering the view that killing another human being is always and everywhere morally wrong. I take it as read that there are at least some morally justifiable killings. Once it is clear what is wrong with killing on some occasions it should become possible to explain (...) why it is not wrong on others. My immediate concern is with the killing of another human being, and with applying my answer to cases of voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, but light will be shed on whether and, if so, why it is wrong to kill oneself, to kill unborn human beings, and to kill non-human animals especially those whose life has most in common with the life of human beings. (shrink)

In some of Plato’s early dialogues we find a concern with correctly ascertaining the contents of a particular kind of one’s own psychological states, cognitive states. Indeed, one of the achievements of the elenctic method is to facilitate cognitive self-knowledge. In the Alcibiades, moreover, Plato interprets the Delphic injunction, ‘know yourself’, as crucially requiring cognitive self-knowledge, and ending in knowing oneself as subject to particular epistemic norms. Epistemic authority for self-knowledge is, for Plato, conferred on the basis (...) of correct application of norms to cognitive self-ascriptions, and not confined to the first-personal perspective. This implies first-personal plural epistemic authority for self-knowledge. (shrink)

In The Case for Rage, Myisha Cherry makes the case for a specific kind of rage, a qualified anger at racial injustice that she calls Lordean rage. Drawing on Audre Lorde's classic essay ‘The Uses of Anger’, Cherry develops the concept of Lordean rage as a productive, liberatory anger and defends it from a variety of objections, ranging from neo-Stoic concerns about anger's capacity for destruction to contemporary worries about the misuse of anger by white allies. The brilliance of the (...) book, I think, lies in its capacity to integrate a wide range of philosophical perspectives and arguments, including those from feminist and critical race theory and analytic philosophy of emotion, and present them in a way that speaks directly to our political and historical moment. The audience for this book is broad: anyone who has ever felt anger at racial injustice will have a stake in this book.Cherry begins with some philosophical distinctions to help delineate the contours of this kind of anger. Lordean rage has a particular object—racial injustice—and a specific motivational stance: ‘It aims at nothing less than transforming our world’ (p. 40). (She leaves it as an open, and interesting, question whether a variation of Lordean rage occurs in other cases of oppression.) For these reasons, Lordean rage demands a non-trivial degree of optimism and hope. It also requires a basic respect for both the victim and the perpetrator of racial injustice (p. 37). This last criterion distinguishes it from other motivating kinds of rage, such as ‘wipe rage’, which seeks to eliminate the object of the rage and ‘narcissistic rage’, which is only concerned with injustices that immediately effect oneself. These distinctions, and other helpful ones, are the subject of Chapter 1, which argues against the tendency to understand anger as a homogeneous or uniform phenomenon. We can’t, Cherry argues, paint anger in such ‘broad strokes’ but need a more nuanced account of how different kinds of angers are operative in different kinds of contexts. (shrink)

The topic of self-awareness has an impressive philosophical pedigree, and sustained discussion of the topic goes back at least to Descartes. More recently, selfawareness has become a lively issue in the cognitive sciences, thanks largely to the emerging body of work on “mindreading”, the process of attributing mental states to people (and other organisms). During the last 15 years, the processes underlying mindreading have been a major focus of attention in cognitive and developmental psychology. Most of this work has been (...) concerned with the processes underlying the attribution of mental states to other people. However, a number of psychologists and philosophers have also proposed accounts of the mechanisms underlying the attribution of mental states to oneself. This process of reading one’s own mind or becoming self- aware will be our primary concern in this paper. (shrink)

Marx’s vision of unalienated production is often thought to be subject to decisive objections. This article argues that these objections rely on a misinterpretation of Marx’s position. It provides a new interpretation of Marx’s vision of unalienated production. Unlike another well-known account, it suggests that unalienated production involves realizing oneself through providing others with the goods and services they need for their self-realization. It argues that this view is appealing and that it offers a more successful response to (...) objections than previous interpretations. In doing so, it hopes to put Marx’s concern with alienation and nonalienation back on the table. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Narrative Counts in Phenomenological Models of SchizophreniaThe author reports no conflicts of interest.Rosanna Wannberg (2024) offers an intriguing and novel critique of the predominant phenomenological model of schizophrenia, the ipseity disturbance hypothesis. According to this model, which was initially proposed by Sass and Parnas (2003), schizophrenia is best understood as arising from a disturbance or instability of minimal or basic self-hood, the sense of being present to (...) class='Hi'>oneself and one's experiences (Henriksen, 2022). This disturbance appears as various experiential anomalies, sometimes termed "anomalous self (or world) experiences" or "self disorders," which include such phenomena as alienation from subjective processes, doubt in the existence of the world or one's own existence, fluidity of boundaries between self and others or self and world, and many other phenomena. Many of these have been captured in the Examination of Anomalous Self Experience (Parnas et al., 2005) and the Examination of Anomalous World Experience (Sass et al., 2017).At the same time, some research reveals the presence of self disorders in nonpsychotic conditions like panic disorder (Madeira et al., 2017) and depersonalization/derealization disorder (Sass et al., 2013). There are also competing phenomenological models that posit schizophrenia instead as a disturbance of dialogical self (Lysaker & Lysaker, 2002) or as a disruption of automatic perceptual processing (Uhlhaas & Mishara, 2007). Such works contain implicit critiques of the ipseity disturbance hypothesis that focus on the specificity of self disorders, or else on the specific nature of the underlying disturbance in schizophrenia.Wannberg's critique is distinct from these others: by considering the validity and function of recovery narratives, she raises crucial epistemological and ethical questions about the phenomenological approach to psychopathology, asking not only whose narrative counts, but how narrative counts. In particular, Wannberg questions a phenomenology that, she suggests, might find any ongoing symptoms as evidence of continued alterations of subjectivity, and that would then be dismissive of recovery narratives—a phenomenology that would prioritize the authority [End Page 71] of consciousness, as Wannberg puts it, over the authority of the person.It is worth stating here that the standard phenomenological response would not be to distrust or dismiss accounts of recovery. Ideally, phenomenological models, along with their ongoing theoretical developments and empirical work, are based on a deep respect for patients' experience and self-descriptions, striving to attend to experiences as they are lived without imposing pre-defined constructs that would limit or alter the experiences in a fundamental way (Nordgaard et al., 2013).Questions about the nature of recovery might be addressed within phenomenology by considering the difference between minimal (or basic) self and narrative (or extended) self, a more complex self-understanding or self-interpretation that is founded on the more basic, pre-reflective sense of being alive in the world (Gallagher, 2000; Parnas, 2007). According to proponents of the ipseity disturbance hypothesis, disturbances of basic self-hood can contribute to disturbances of narrative self, such as confusion about one's future goals or difficulties making sense of one's life history, though it is unlikely for disruptions that originate in the narrative self to trickle down to the minimal self (Henriksen, 2022). Such a view might similarly suggest that it would be unlikely for work on the level of the narrative self to lead to improvements in minimal self. Recovery, according to this approach, might best be viewed as an understanding of and compensation for alterations in basic self-hood, such that a person can develop a relatively solid narrative self that accounts for and manages disturbances of minimal self—while the minimal self may also grow more solid through various therapeutic interventions (Skodlar & Henriksen, 2019).Wannberg finds a more transformative possibility in Wittgenstein's grammatical approach, which is concerned with the function and rules of discourse. According to her grammar of recovery, recovery narratives are not only the product of a process of meaning-making and self-understanding, but they can create meaning and new realities. Furthermore, this process, according to Wannberg, has an inherently social and normative quality to it: the self-work that occurs in recovery and the recovery narrative involves the development of agency, autonomy, and responsibility in a social world... (shrink)

Willard van Orman Quine once said that he had a preference for a desert ontology. This was in an earlier day when concerns with logical structure and ontological simplicity reigned supreme. Ontological genocide was practiced upon whole classes of upper-level or ‘derivative’ entities in the name of elegance, and we were secure in the belief that one strayed irremediably into the realm of conceptual confusion and possible error the further one got from ontic fundamentalism. In those days, one paid (...) more attention to generic worries about possible errors than to actual errors derived from distancing oneself too far from the nitty-gritty details of actual theory, actual inferences from actual data, the actual conditions under which we posited and detected entities, calibrated and ‘burned in’ instruments, identified and rejected artifacts, debugged programs and procedures, explained the mechanisms behind regularities, judged correlations to be spurious, and in general, to the real complexities and richness of actual scientific practice. (shrink)

Nietzsche proclaims the second essay of the Genealogy of Morality to be the “long history of the origins of responsibility,” but the immediate context in which this claim is made, coupled with GM II's broader aims and themes, makes interpreting this claim immensely difficult. Not only does Nietzsche endorse an ideal of responsibility in relation to the sovereign individual, while the rest of the essay is concerned with other topics, but also, and more problematically, this ideal appears to (...) be inconsistent with his denial of free will and moral responsibility in other works. Here, I propose a Strawsonian reading of GM II, contending that GM II analyzes the idea of “responsibility” naturalistically in terms of the practice of holding oneself and others responsible, as constituted by what Nietzsche calls the “reactive affects,” namely guilt. A consequence of this interpretation is that libertarian free will is not a condition of responsible agency. (shrink)

What is self-deception? Does it constitute a form of falsehood or deceit? How can one deceive oneself and others if one is aware of what one wants to dissimulate? In order to address this apparent paradox, this essay employs case studies to examine various phenomena of self-deception. Thus, it becomes evident that self-deception does not concern the relationship one has with oneself, but rather a phenomenon that is anchored in interpersonal relationships. This is due to the (...) fact that it is intersubjectively induced and motivated. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to be concerned with the capacity of human beings to act jointly. In particular, I will focus on the phenomenal aspect of collective action. I shall suggest that the experience of being jointly engaged with another is complex: it comprises both a practical grasp of oneself and of the other person as single agents participating in the joint pursuit, and an experience of collective immersion in the activity, which includes a sense (...) of joint control. This suggestion gives rise to a number of puzzles: firstly, what is the relation between jointly engaged agents' awareness of self and other and their sense of a joint engagement? Secondly, how are we to substantiate the idea of a sense of joint control if it is also obviously true that I don't, however close our psychological and bodily attunements, have control over your doings? I shall argue that a satisfactory solution to these puzzles is possible only if we take seriously the notion of a perceptually constituted “intersubjective perspective” that is shared by the participants in joint activities and gives rise to an attitude of mutual trust. (shrink)

This study explored how women with a diagnosis of cancer (lymphoma) deal with moral concerns related to their responsibility as parents. Ten women with cancer and who had children living at home were interviewed. The interviews were analysed according to the constant comparative method used in grounded theory. In order to provide a focus for the analysis, the ethics of care and the concept of mothering were used as sensitizing concepts. The core concept ‘experience of dealing (...) class='Hi'>with moral responsibility of being a parent with cancer by redefining oneself as a mother’ was identified. The processes involved were: interrupted mothering; facing the life-threatening illness and children’s reactions; striving to be a good mother; attempting to deal with moral responsibility; and coming to terms with being a mother. (shrink)

From the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries, French writing is especially concerned with analysing human nature. The ancient ethical vision of man's nature and goal survives, even, to some extent, in Descartes. But it is put into question especially by the revival of St Augustine's thought, which focuses on the contradictions and disorders of human desires and aspirations. Analyses of behaviour display a powerful suspicion of appearances. Human beings are increasingly seen as motivated by self-love: they are (...) driven by the desire for their own advantage, and take a narcissistic delight in their own image. Moral and religious writers re-emphasize the traditional imperative of self-knowledge, but in such a way as to suggest the difficulties of knowing oneself. Operating with the Cartesian distinction between mind and body, they emphasize the imperceptible influence of bodily processes on our thought and attitudes. They analyse human beings' ignorance of their own motives and qualities, and the illusions under which they live their lives. Their critique of human behaviour is no less searching than that of writers who have broken with traditional religious morality, such as Hobbes and Spinoza. A wide range of authors is studied, some well-known, others much less so: the abstract and general analyses of philosophers and theologians are juxtaposed with the less systematic and more concrete investigations of writers like Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld, not to mention the theatre of Corneille, Molière, and Racine. (shrink)

In Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler demonstrates the priority of rhetoric to ethics, noting that any giving of an account already involves the scene of address: a relational dimension of language which supersedes the account itself . You demonstrate in The Telephone Book and elsewhere that you are called into being, that the call precedes you, indicating the priority of rhetoric to a certain pre-Heideggerian ontology. A major concern of this special issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric (...) involves the ways in which “the human” is constructed and/or deconstructed through this predicament of addressivity, particularly when the address comes in from or goes out to a nonhuman other: say, an animal, an .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comments on Margaret Watkins, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Jacqueline Taylor (bio)After David Hume’s death, Adam Smith wrote a letter to Hume’s publisher, William Strahan, to recount some of the final words and the attitude of “our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume.”1 Despite declining health and increasing weakness, Hume faced his approaching demise “with great cheerfulness” (EMPL xlvi). He had recently been reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, (...) and although feeling he had every reason “to die contented,” Smith describes the “jocular excuses” Hume might make to Charon to delay his death (EMPL xlv). He first requests more time so that he can see how the public responds to the latest corrections he had been making to his works, but Charon replied that this would only lead Hume to want more time to make further corrections. Hume tries another tack: “Have a little patience, good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition,” to which Charon replies, “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years... Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue” (EMPL xlvi). This imaginary dialogue makes evident Hume’s self-awareness as an author who cared greatly about both the correctness of his written works and the influence of these works on the public.In her book, Margaret Watkins argues that Hume’s concern to open the eyes of the public goes well beyond attempts to bring about the downfall of systems of superstition.2 She credits him with the broader aim of writing essays for a literate audience that would stimulate both public and individual improvement in various areas of human activity, including government, work, aesthetic experience, and intimate [End Page 155] relationships. The first three chapters of the book examine the case for Hume’s concern with public improvement. Chapter 1 focuses primarily on the political essays, and examines Hume’s account of governing and his criticism of the irrationality apt to arise with divisive political factionalism. Chapter 2 turns to inequalities of power and the circumstances that allow some to exercise to a greater degree the domineering tendency that is part of human nature. Watkins uses Hume’s essay on the population size of ancient and modern societies to reconstruct his view on the ills—to both masters and slaves—of ancient slaveholding. She complicates this discussion by looking at modern slaveholding in the colonies, and Hume’s puzzling lack of attention to this. In the ancient world, slaveholding resulted from war and conquest, and Watkins examines how ancient warfare also led to greater ferocity and anger in fighting and exacerbated cruelty (a trait Hume had deemed the worst vice in the Treatise [T 3.3.3.8]).3 This is another place where Watkins sees Hume taking stock of modern improvements. In the wide-ranging third chapter, entitled “Working,” Watkins considers economic circumstances as moral causes that can shape character, highlighting the importance for Hume of the commercial virtues, especially industry.4 She also shows that in the four essays on happiness, modeled on Hellenistic sects, each type of philosopher regards industry, or at least occupation, as essential to human happiness. Watkins concludes that the need for industry is thus something we are naturally motivated to seek out, and so an integral part of human nature. Chapter 4, on “Composing,” shows Watkins’s talents as a philosophical essayist in her own right, as she relates art and other forms of beauty to the cultivation of calm passions. We find here an insightful discussion of art, whether composing or consuming, as having particularly therapeutic effects on melancholy and other forms of nervous conditions. Chapters 5 and 6 take up, respectively, love for oneself and love for others. The former looks at the importance Hume places on both self-love and pride. Here Watkins draws primarily on Hume’s more morally theoretical works, both the Treatise and EPM, since they have more to say about self-valuing. Chapter 6 shows how we may fruitfully read... (shrink)

Ought you to cultivate your own virtue? Various philosophers have argued that there is something suspect about directing one's ethical attention towards oneself in this way. These arguments can be divided between those that deem aiming at virtue for its own sake to be narcissistic and those that consider aiming at virtue for the sake of good behaviour to involve a kind of doublethink. Underlying them all is the assumption that epistemic access to one's own character requires an external (...) point of view that is, in principle, available to anyone. If cultivating virtue is concerned with forming one's dispositions as these appear to the external point of view, then these charges of narcissism and doublethink can be brought. However, there is another kind of access to one's own character. Since character is manifest in the practical structure of experience, reflection on that practical structure itself is reflection on one's character. Neither the charge of narcissism nor the charge of doublethink can be brought against this phenomenological cultivation of the practical structure of experience. Although not sufficient alone to provide all the information required for the task, phenomenological reflection is essential to the ethical cultivation of virtue. (shrink)

This article is concerned with three exceptional episodes in Descartes's life, each of which had a profound impact on the development of his thought; several arguments are advanced and new primary material uncovered to support our contentions. First, he did indeed visit Prague in November 1620 and his experiences there shaped his later views of mechanical automata, optical illusions, and the pseudosciences. Second, his encounter with the mysterious Sieur de Chandoux (identified here for the first time) in November (...) 1628 shows that Chandoux was not a reformer or a skeptic but a disguised cynic or erudite libertine. Third, he had close family connections with, and an informed report about, the demonic possessions of Loudun (near Poitiers) in 1634-36, and these shaped his version of the evil demon argument in the _Meditations. Through this argument and his 'new way of ideas' Descartes overthrew traditional notions about soul and mind, the status of the subject, and the evidence for truth. This permitted an understanding of the manner in which one can be an other for oneself and the manner in which certainty can be grounded with the 'objective' structures of consciousness. (shrink)

This article examines two issues related to essentialist beliefs, autonomy and education. The first issue concerns the conceptualization of the role of essentialist beliefs about selfhood in the development of a continually transformative relationship with oneself. We argue that Carol Dweck’s understanding of the regular causality of implicit beliefs about selfhood is too narrow, and that these beliefs are better understood as taking part in a complex relationship of belief. The second issue concerns the way that certain governmental (...) aspects of educational institutions might affect schools’ capacity to help students develop a healthy belief relationship with regard to identity essentialism. Our hypothesis is that further investment in teachers’ professional authority and attentional autonomy, which involves the creation of normative gaps, among other conditions, constitutes a key lever for creating schools in which non-essentialist beliefs are embodied, rather than explained or inculcated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 25-26 [Access article in PDF] Past Personal Identity Markus L. A. Heinimaa Keywords consciousness, Freud, Locke, personal identity, self-understanding Schechtman's paper presents us with two lines of reasoning, which deserve separate discussion. First, she proposes a novel reading of John Locke's well-known discussion of personal identity and, second, she suggests a way of surmounting difficulties she sees both Lockean view and psychological (...) continuity theories have in dealing with the notion of nonconscious experiences.The criticism that she makes on contemporary theorists basing their view on Locke's work on personal identity (in terms of psychological continuity) seems by and large valid. Schechtman aptly points out that by concentrating on memory as the main constituent of personal identity, they are compelled to appeal to intuitions that are the very target of Locke's criticism (Schechtman 2005, 9) and she proposes that we should focus on Locke's original contention that consciousness is the unifying feature of personal identity. In her reading, this is spelled out as self-referential intelligibility, as capacity to understand oneself as a coherent "process." As far as I can see this description certainly gives a truer reading of Locke than a memory-based account.The second line of reasoning concerns the seeming dilemma she faces when accounting for "unconscious experiences" impact on personhood, as they clearly are "part of our psychological lives" (Schechtman 2005, 16). Here she suggests that developing "Locke's insight in a more satisfying way" is possible in terms of "self-understanding view." She points out how this experiential intelligibility is threatened by in everyday life prevalent bafflement on some of the feelings we have and acts we do. Following Descartes and Freud's examples, this (apparent) unintelligibility is dealt by hypothesizing unconscious "memories or desires or motivations," which then impact our "psychological lives."A question arises here: Is Schechtman's account of personal identity really threatened by the notion of "unconscious experience"? As I see it, a certain streak of psychologism in her writing makes her otherwise coherent account vulnerable in this respect. When assuming that "experiences of which we are not conscious can be a part of our psychological lives" (Schectman 2005, 16), she effectively equates being a person with "psychological being" or being a "psychological subject" (Schechtman 2005, 17). But what work is the notion "psychological" doing here? As far as I can see it, Schechtman could account for Lockean conception of "personal identity" in terms of "consciousness" solely in terms of "process of self-understanding." Of course psychological accounts of personal identity or consciousness are readily available, but the suggested description of the logic of these concepts does [End Page 25] not necessitate them—any such an account is in a sense extraneous to the logic of these concepts.What is suggested here does not basically contradict Schechtman's account of the relation of unconscious to personal identity but only suggests that this account is superfluous. Further, her (mainstream) reading of Freud misses some interesting features of Freud's problematic. In his paper "Psychoanalysis and the personal," Morris Eagle (1988) proposes interpreting Freud's distinction between conscious and unconscious psychological phenomena as the distinction between what is experienced as belonging to one's person and what is experienced as alien in this respect—in terms of "ownership and disownership of mental contents" (Eagle 1988, 92) and concludes that Freudian psychoanalytic theory can be read as being primarily concerned with the problems a person encounters in trying to keep his experience of himself as a person coherent.This reading of Freud has implications for Schechtman's reinterpretation of Locke's conception of personal identity as self-understanding, as the question on the impact of nonconscious phenomena on personal identity would seem to lose its significance here. A more deep going probing into the logic of the Freudian concept of unconscious would be warranted in this context.All in all, Schechtman's account of "personal identity" clearly moves into a sound direction. Yet, one could focus even more closely on Locke's original work and ask about the... (shrink)

One of the moral questions concerning autonomous vehicles (henceforth AVs) is the choice between types that differ in their built-in algorithms for dealing with rare situations of unavoidable lethal collision. It does not appear to be possible to avoid questions about how these algorithms should be designed. We present the results of our study of moral preferences (N = 2769) with respect to three types of AVs: (1) selfish, which protects the lives of passenger(s) over any number of (...) bystanders; (2) altruistic, which minimizes the number of casualties, even if this leads to death of passenger(s); and (3) conservative, which abstains from interfering in such situations. We differentiate between scenarios in which participants are to make their decisions privately or publicly, and for themselves or for their offspring. We aim to answer two research questions: (1) whether the public visibility of the choice of an AV type choice make this choice more altruistic and (2) which type of situation makes it more difficult to choose altruistically: when choosing for society as a whole, when choosing only for oneself, or when choosing only for one’s offspring. Our results show that respondents exhibit a preference for an altruistic strategy for AVs and that it is reinforced when signaled to others. The altruistic preference is strongest when applies to everybody else, weaker when it reflects a solely personal choice, and weakest when choosing for one’s own child. We conclude that a public choice is considerably more likely to pressure consumers into accepting a more socially beneficial solution. (shrink)

Beginning with images of rampant destruction and violence in our day, Paul Ricœur’s reflections on the political paradox and his “little ethics” (contained in Oneself as Another) are responses to peace and understanding. Ricœur is concerned with questions not only of narrative and embodiment, but also of violence. In situating his theory of personal identity as well as narrative in a country’s identity, is there a role for overcoming violence in understanding oneself through one’s nationality? How (...) might the question of personal and national identity help us understand ethics and politics as mirroring one another, even in cases of religious peace-building? (shrink)