This article addresses Simon Lohse’s and Daniel Little’s responses to my article “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?.” In that article, I present a pragmatic and deflationary view of the priority of social ontology to social science methodology where social ontology is valued for its ability to promote empirical success and not because it yields knowledge of what furnishes the social world. First, in response to Lohse, I argue that my view is compatible with a role for ontological (...) theorizing in the social sciences. However, the view that results instrumentalizes social ontology. Second, in my response to Little, I argue that the same considerations I made in my article apply to naturalistic attempts to motivate a non-deflationary view, repeating some of the central issues of that article. (shrink)

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since (...) intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others. (shrink)

Global ignorance about Africa continues to sustain inappropriate global interventions to resolve public health crises, often with disastrous consequences. To explain why this continues to happen, I marshal two theorems that predict basic statistical properties, called ‘the doctrinal paradox’ and ‘the discursive dilemma’, which underlie scientific consensus formation and evidence-based decision making on a global scale. These mathematical results illuminate the epistemic and material injustices committed by the protocols of medical research conducted at the highest level of global knowledge production (...) in the service of international humanitarian aid for Africans. These social choice theorems reveal that a global scientific consensus projecting claims and proposing policies about Africa’s disease burden is likely to yield a low degree of reliability, in that the probability of its accuracy is less than chance. The solution to this anomaly is to remove from the global scientific agenda the statistically unrealisable demand of satisfying too many multinational corporate and foreign governments’ priorities as equally entitled to benefit from the knowledge produced to improve Africa’s public health sector. Instead, foreign funding targeted to support medical science and policy in Africa should be directed by those specialists in situ who are most familiar with their own national health challenges and potential solutions, rather than relying upon foreign decision makers to interpret Africa’s emergency public health care needs. Keywords Doctrinal paradox, discursive dilemma, scientific consensus, epistemic trust, global health ethics, group agency. (shrink)

This is a superb anthology that questions the value and even the existence of honor in the contemporary world. Although readers have had the benefit of excellent works on this concept from mainly a...

In his collection of articles, "Where Are We Now - The Epidemic as Politics", Giorgio Agamben appears to make some very startling (if not downright outrageous) claims concerning the political situation in Italy and elsewhere in Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this piece [in German] I analyse how these claims are rooted in the philosophy of Agamben's "Homo sacer" project. Focussing on three central notions (Schmitt's "state of exception", Foucault's "biopolitics", and Agamben's very own "bare life"), I show how (...) Agamben's illegitimate identification of the bare life with the subject of biopolitics leads to the derailment of his theory as well as to some of the grave political misjudgments he makes regarding the pandemic. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the first systematic definition of the concept of literary studies (Literaturwissenschaft) as formulated by Ernst Elster, the essay explores the question to what degree literary studies can be conceived as a discipline that inquires after the principles of literature.

There is in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit a relatively brief passage at the beginning of Chapter IV, “Self-Consciousness,” which may well be one of the most difficult passages in the whole Hegelian corpus, but which is also of supreme importance for coming to grips with the movement of Hegel’s thought, not only in the Phenomenology but in the entire “system.” It is precisely the difficulty of the passage, it would seem, that explains why it has not been given by commentators (...) an attention proportionate to its significance. So much attention has been focused on the “independence of self-consciousness,” expressed in the sections on “Lordship and Bondage,” “Stoicism and Skepticism” and “The Unhappy Consciousness” — which are, it is true, important and which lend themselves most readily to extended interpretation — that not enough attention has been given to the introductory section, entitled “The Truth of the Certainty of Self,” in which are enunciated the principles which regulate the whole movement of Hegel’s thought. The section might be described as the indispensable transition from those forms of consciousness, which are merely “objective” yet try to give themselves off as authentic knowing, to what Hegel considers to be the only possible way of authenticating the objectivity of human consciousness, i.e., the self, which claims to know, progressively coming to know itself, a self-knowing which will be knowing at all only if it culminates in “absolute knowing.” Only in the light of this section will the preface be intelligible; only in its light will the whole of the Phenomenology hang together. (shrink)

Recent contributions to the philosophy of the social sciences have motivated ontological commitments using appeals to the social sciences (_naturalized_ social ontologies). These arguments rely on social scientific realism about the social sciences, the view that our social scientific theories are approximately true. I apply a distinction formulated in metaontology between ontologically loaded and unloaded meanings of existential quantification to argue that there is a pragmatic approach to naturalized social ontology that is minimally realist (it treats existence claims as true (...) or false) but that is ontologically austere. I argue that the extant arguments may be construed in terms of this pragmatic approach. The result is an approach to social ontology that is deflationist about naturalized social ontology. (shrink)

Several philosophers have attempted to identify how it is that “social structure” can explain phenomena. Some of the most prominent of these philosophers have posited that what we call “social structures” are sets of constraints acting on individuals that guide and regulate their actions, either coercing agents into making choices, raising the probability that they will make certain choices, or making those actions reasonable or rational. Others have argued that social structures are factors that “program” for social outcomes. Examining historical (...) work in quantitative sociology, I argue that both views are too narrow. I present Peter Blau’s distinction between microstructure and macrostructure, articulate their differences, and then argue that for some social scientific questions, macrostructural explanations are better positioned to supply answers. Macrostructural explanations abstract away from the relata between individuals and so do not involve constraints. Further, macrostructural explanations draw on facts about population structure, and so do not fit the form of programming explanations. I motivate this category of explanation by considering social scientific research that comports with macrostructural explanation. (shrink)

Affectionately known as "Lady Ruth" at the Jivamukti Yoga School in New York City where she teaches, Ruth Lauer-Manenti has presented dharma talks on daily life from a yogic perspective for many years (collected in An Offering of Leaves and Sweeping the Dust, both published by Lantern Books). Fell in Her Hands is an altogether more ambitious work: a commentary and reflection on the venerable yogic text, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali--written in the form of a series of interlaced (...) stories that grow out of the sutras, with the various characters evolving through the obstacles and challenges that are presented in the Yoga Sutra. Deeply personal, humane, expressive, and even humorous, Fell in Her Hands is a fresh and insightful examination of the yoga--the yoke--that ties us to our friends and family and acquaintances, to the past and the future, and to all creation. The result is a unique insight into the heart of yoga by a much-loved and compassionate practitioner. (shrink)

The predictive inadequacy of the social sciences is well documented, and philosophers have sought to diagnose it. This paper examines Brian Epstein’s recent diagnosis. He argues that the social sciences treat the social world as entirely composed of individual people. Instead, social scientists should recognize that material, non-individualistic entities determine the social world, as well. First, I argue that Epstein’s argument both begs the question against his opponents and is not sufficiently charitable. Second, I present doubts that his proposal will (...) improve predictive success for the social sciences, which I support with Edith Penrose’s resource-based theory of the firm. (shrink)

This article is about conditionalized modal statements whose antecedents concern a preferential attitude of an agent. The focus is on anankastic conditionals or, as they are known in the philosophical literature, hypothetical imperatives. We present a linguistically-motivated analysis of anankastic and related conditionals and use it to address challenges for semantic theories of natural language conditionals motivated by certain philosophical concerns about practical reasoning and the requirements of rationality.

This contribution explores correctives to several errors that Thomas Nagel seems to presuppose in his seminal defence of scepticism about global justice. I rely on lessons learned and conventions surviving in West African contemporary social and moral contexts, where people engage as a matter of course in divergent, historically antagonistic cultural and political traditions. On this view, global justice is a work in progress—not a fixed univocal formula but an on-going collaborative effort, a project in perpetual renovation and inter-cultural reconsideration (...) by successive generations which presupposes a diversity of values and ways of sanctifying human life. I consider ways in which an ethics of care, as suggested by Virginia Held, might have been anticipated by the time-honoured norms of governance and political culture surviving in complex African polities, cultures which have withstood the corrosion of external colonialism since early modernity. How might iconically African, universally fundamental moral notions of decency and fairness find their way back into the global marketplace of diplomatic discourse and economic policy design?To demonstrate the need to navigate towards some consensus within the diversity of indigenous concepts associated with justice and good governance in Africa, I discuss the fiasco displayed in a widely celebrated proposal for exercising globally principles of justice in the Western liberal political tradition applied to remedy Africans’ notorious resource curse. (shrink)

This book attempts to give a systematic account of the development of semantic holism within the philosophy of language in the 20th century. One of the things that might make it interesting is that it covers philosophers from the analytic tradition (Hilbert, Schlick, Sellars, Davidson, McDowell) as well as structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers (Saussure, Jakobson, Hjelmslev, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida). It is not only claimed that these philosophers address what can intelligibly be recognized as the same systematic questions concerning the constitution of (...) linguistic meaning, but also that the development of holistic approaches in the two traditions follows the same course, leading from formalist to post-formalist varieties of holism. This course implies the rejection of the myth of a pure or autonomous structure of language in favour of a view of language which sees linguistic practice as necessarily interwoven with the natural and social world. (shrink)

This paper (in German) is a contribution to the ongoing engagement of phenomenological authors with John McDowell's philosophy of perception (most prominent in the so-called Dreyfus-McDowell-Debate). First, I argue that McDowell and Merleau-Ponty share a common topic (the intentionality of perception), a common question (how is it possible?), a common position in the debate (neither empiricism nor intellectualism provide satisfactory answers to the question), and a common conviction (no epistemic intermediaries must be allowed in accounting for perceptual openness to the (...) world). However, Merleau-Ponty thinks that in order to understand openness to the world, we must understand perception as necessarily embodied, whereas McDowell thinks that we must understand it as necessarily conceptual. I call these approaches the embodiment claim and the conceptuality claim, respectively. I outline four elements of the embodiment claim which lead many phenomenologically oriented authors to suppose that it is incompatible with the conceptuality claim. I then go on to show, drawing on McDowell's writings, that the supposition is unwarranted in all four cases. I conclude that the embodiment claim and the conceptuality claim are compatible, they can be combined. I end by giving some rough hints why I think that they should, in fact must be combined in order to give a satisfactory account of perception. This will be the topic of another paper. (shrink)

This paper (in German) discusses the question of what is going on when large language models (LLMs) produce meaningful text in reaction to human prompts. Can LLMs be understood as authors or producers of speech acts? I argue that this question has to be answered in the negative, for two reasons. First, due to their lack of semantic understanding, LLMs do not understand what they are saying and hence literally do not know what they are (linguistically) doing. Since the agent’s (...) knowing what they are doing is a necessary condition of action, LLMs cannot be said to produce speech acts. Secondly, agency conceptually implies accepting accountability for one’s doings, which in turn implies some kind of practical commitment to live up to that accountability. Since LLMs lack any kind of practical commitment, they cannot be said to produce speech acts. I then assess two proposals of how better to understand the contribution of LLMs to human discourse. According to Anna Strasser and Eric Schwitzgebel, they should be understood as junior partners in asymmetric joint action. I claim that this suggestion founders on the same objections as rehearsed above. According to Alice Helliwell, they should be understood as a radically new kind of component of our (human) extended mind. Although I do have reservations about this suggestion as well, it seems the most promising at this point. (shrink)

This paper (in German) lays out two different conceptions of language as 'Spiel', which I call - appropriating a pair of expressions used by Wilhelm von Humboldt - 'Spiel' as 'ergon' and 'Spiel' as 'energeia'. The first one conceives of 'Spiel' as 'game', an abstract entity constituted by a set of rules; the second one conceives of 'Spiel' as 'play', a mode of being that is constituted by a certain kind of movement. I show how the metaphor of language as (...) 'Spiel' has been interpreted in both of these ways, but how, and why, historically, the first interpretation, specifying linguistic entities as rule-constituted entities of a certain kind, came to be superseded by the second interpretation, specifying 'play' as the mode of being of language itself, most prominently in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

Because a title such as the one I have assigned to this contribution could either prompt all sorts of expectations or lead to forming no expectations at all, it seems important at the outset to begin by indicating what I shall not be concerned with. On the face of it the title could seem to call for a discussion of the way religious consciousness is expressed in the framework of this or that particular rational system or culture, presumably contemporary—be it (...) Hispanic, African, American Indian, Asiatic, European, or whatever. There can be no question that such a discussion would be significant, involving as it does the important contemporary concept of “acculturation,” which seeks to obviate the unfortunate identification of religion and any particular cultural or rational form of its expression. I shall not, in fact, be concerned with any particular culture or system at all, while, on the other hand, from the religious point of view I shall, like Hegel, be concerned only with Christianity, not as particular but as universal; not as a one among many but as all-embracing religious awareness. (shrink)

This book collects essays from the 2006 and 2007 International Philosophy Colloquia Evian, centred around a central problem in the philosophy of mind: the relationship between the human faculty of sensory experience and the faculty of conceptual reflection, that is self-consciousness. Containing articles by philosophers of eight nationalities, in three languages (English, French, German), and of "analytical" as well as "continental" provenance, it beautifully represents the spirit of the colloquia. Authors include Joshua Andresen (AU Beirut), Valérie Aucouturier (Kent U / (...) U Paris I), Karin de Boer (KU Leuven), Santiago Echeverri (U Genève), Roberto Farneti (LU Bolzano), Tim Henning (JLU Giessen), Felix Koch (Columbia U), Christophe Laudou (Madrid), David Lauer (FU Berlin), Jason Leddington (Bucknell U), Nicolas Monseu (UC Louvain), Soraya Nour (HU Berlin), Hans Bernhard Schmid (U Wien), Henning Tegtmeyer (U Leipzig). (shrink)

Carl Vogt’s quarrel with Rudolph Wagner is considered to be a culmination of the materialism dispute in the 19th century. Out of this basically academic issue on the nature of human mental functions, a personal dispute quickly developed which was unrivalled in thematic incisiveness and expression. The aim of this study is the detailed linguistic analysis of the polemics and argumentation in this dispute based on extensive text excerpts, in which for the first time detailed linguistic studies on Vogt and (...) Wagner are presented. (shrink)

John McDowell’s Mind and World takes us on a philosophical journey leading from the concept of experience to the concept of tradition. It also traces a conceptual path from a Kantian to a Gadamerian problematic. In this paper, it is argued that a final step is missing in order to complete the conceptual arc of Mind and World and make the book come full circle: The Kantian conception of experience articulated on the first pages of of the book needs to (...) be integrated into the hermeneutic framework articulated on its last pages, transforming it into a more encompassing, fully hermeneutic conception. This can be achieved, I contend, by drawing on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of experience in Truth and Method. I show that Gadamer’s conception of “dialectical experience” conceives of experience as an event, a process unfolding in time, and as inextricably intertwined with the notions of tradition and critique. Explaining this conception, I claim that it gives us reason to revise McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience as „openness to the world“ in an important respect: We should not understand openness to the world as unproblematically and transcendentally given, but as an inherently self-critical event unfolding in time, too. (shrink)