In “Why Forgiving the Unrepentant is not Demeaning or Insulting: A Reply to Nicholas Wolterstorff,” David E. Wright argues against Wolterstorff’s view in Justice in Love that it is wrong or impossible to forgive the unrepentant wrongdoer. In response to Wolterstorff’s claim that it is impossible to forgive the unrepentant, Wright presents the case of Timothy and Hubert, which seems to show that one can forgive the unrepentant and take the wrong seriously. In response to Wolterstorff’s claim that it is (...) not morally permissible to forgive the unrepentant, Wright employs Trudy Govier and Colin Hirano’s invitational model of forgiveness, in which the act of forgiveness serves as the impetus or “invitation” for reconciliation. To illustrate this, Wright presents the case of Timothy and Jake, which seems to show that forgiving the unrepentant can be respectful of both the victim and the wrongdoer. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s distinction between the cognitive roles of sensibility and understanding raises a question concerning the conditions necessary for objective representation. I distinguish two opposing interpretive positions—viz. Intellectualism and Sensibilism. According to Intellectualism all objective representation depends, at least in part, on the unifying synthetic activity of the mind. In contrast, Sensibilism argues that at least some forms of objective representation, specifically intuitions, do not require synthesis. I argue that there are deep reasons for thinking that Intellectualism is (...) incompatible with Kant's view as expressed in the Transcendental Aesthetic. We can better see how Kant’s arguments in the first Critique may be integrated, I suggest, by examining his notion of the 'unity' [Einheit] of a representation. I articulate two distinct ways in which a representation may possess unity and claim that we can use these notions to integrate Kant’s arguments in the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction without compromising the core claims of either Sensibilism or Intellectualism—that intuition is a form of objective representation independent of synthesis, and that the kind of objective representations that ground scientific knowledge of the world require synthesis by the categories. (shrink)

Colin Morris traces the origin of the concept of the individual, not to the Renaissance where it is popularly assumed to have been invented, but farther back, ...

The agent-structure problem is a much discussed issue in the field of international relations. In his comprehensive analysis of this problem, Colin Wight deconstructs the accounts of structure and agency embedded within differing IR theories and, on the basis of this analysis, explores the implications of ontology - the metaphysical study of existence and reality. Wight argues that there are many gaps in IR theory that can only be understood by focusing on the ontological differences that construct the theoretical (...) landscape. By integrating the treatment of the agent-structure problem in IR theory with that in social theory, Wight makes a positive contribution to the problem as an issue of concern to the wider human sciences. At the most fundamental level politics is concerned with competing visions of how the world is and how it should be, thus politics is ontology. (shrink)

Kant's philosophy promises to explain various synthetic a priori claims. Yet, as several of his commentators have noted, it is hard to see how these explanations could work unless they themselves rested on unexplained synthetic a priori claims. Since Kant appears to demand explanations for all synthetic a priori claims, it would seem that his project fails on its own terms. I argue, however, that Kant holds that explanations are required only for synthetic a priori claims about (purportedly) experience-independent entities, (...) and that his project rests on a rationalist method of reflection that justifies certain basic synthetic a priori claims. (shrink)

In this study of the nature of philosophy, Colin McGinn shows us how philosophy can maintain its connection to the past while looking forward to a bright future.

According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematically coercive character of political action. This paper challenges that assumption. While (...) conceding that citizens who propose to deploy the coercive apparatus of the state to enforce controversial legislation owe their fellows a justification that overcomes the strong presumption against coercing agents, it denies that this consideration can explain why public justifications are also required. Having argued that the public justification requirement is not among the justification conditions for public coercion, the paper then proposes an alternative rationale for the expectation that political action be publicly justified. On this alternative, the case for the public justification requirement depends on democratic citizens’ standing as legislative co-authors, and not on considerations having to do with their liability as private individuals to coercion at the hands of the state. (shrink)

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures and elsewhere. This distinction (...) helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

The one-world interpretation of Kant's idealism holds that appearances and things in themselves are, in some sense, the same things. Yet this reading faces a number of problems, all arising from the different features Kant seems to assign to appearances and things in themselves. I propose a new way of understanding the appearance/thing in itself distinction via an Aristotelian notion that I call, following Kit Fine, a ‘qua-object.’ Understanding appearances and things in themselves as qua-objects provides a clear sense in (...) which they can be the same things while differing in many of their features. (shrink)

Kant’s transcendental idealism hinges on a distinction between appearances and things in themselves. The debate about how to understand this distinction has largely ignored the way that Kant applies this distinction to the self. I argue that this is a mistake, and that Kant’s acceptance of a single, unified self in both his theoretical and practical philosophy causes serious problems for the ‘two-world’ interpretation of his idealism.

The linguistic turn is a central aspect of Richard Rorty’s philosophy, informing his early critiques of foundationalism in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and subsequent critiques of authoritarianism in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It is argued that we should interpret the linguistic turn as a methodological suggestion for how philosophy can take a non-foundational perspective on normativity. It is then argued that although Rorty did not succeed in explicating normativity without foundations (or authority without authoritarianism), we should take seriously (...) the ambition motivating his project. But taking that ambition seriously may require reconsidering the linguistic turn. (shrink)

A book on human communication that is worthy of its subject must introduce the reader to the dynamic interaction of a number of diverse fields. Colin Cherry's book, over successive editions, has served for twenty years as perhaps the most literate and readable introduction to this interaction available. Readers have consistently found that fields within their specialty are covered with authority; that fields far removed are covered with clarity; and that the connections among them are shown to be close (...) and natural. This third edition includes a new chapter, "Feeling, Knowledge, and Understanding," that extends the book's reach into philosophy, and in particular communicates some existential points-of-view. In it the author undertakes to demonstrate that "The language of physical science is inadequate for discussion of what is essentially human about human communication." In addition, numerous changes have been introduced throughout the text, and the bibliography has been expanded and updated. (shrink)

Recent research has begun to investigate sensory processing in relation to nonclinical variation in traits associated with the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We propose that existing accounts of autistic perception can be augmented by considering a role for individual differences in top-down expectations for the precision of sensory input, related to the processing of state-dependent levels of uncertainty. We therefore examined ASD-like traits in relation to the rubber-hand illusion: an experimental paradigm that typically elicits crossmodal integration of visual, tactile, and (...) proprioceptive information in an unusual illusory context. Individuals with higher ASD-like traits showed reduced effects of the rubber-hand illusion on perceived arm position and reach-to-grasp movements, compared to individuals with lower ASD-like traits. These differences occurred despite both groups reporting the typical subjective experience of the illusion concerning visuotactile integration and ownership for the rubber hand. Together these results suggest that the integration of proprioceptive information with cues for arm position derived from the illusory context differs between individuals partly in relation to traits associated with ASD. We suggest that the observed differences in sensory integration can be best explained in terms of differing expectations regarding the precision of sensory estimates in contexts that suggest uncertainty. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously ended his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1922) by writing: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence." (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.) In that earliest work, Wittgenstein gives no clue about whether this aphorism applied to animal minds, or whether he would have included philosophical discussions about animal minds as among those displaying "the most fundamental confusions (of which the whole of philosophy is full)" (1922, TLP 3.324), but given his later writings on (...) language and thought, it seems a plausible hypothesis. Years later he wrote in the Philosophical Investigations (1968, p. 223) another aphoristic statement: "If a lion could speak, we would not understand him." (Wenn der Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen.) Decades of philosophical discussion about what Wittgenstein meant by these remarks illustrate another point: when philosophers speak, we do not fully understand them. (shrink)

A growing body of interpretive literature concerning the work of Michel Foucault asserts that Foucault’s critical project is best interpreted in light of various strands of philosophical phenomenology. In this article I dispute this interpretation on both textual and philosophical grounds. It is shown that a core theme of ‘the phenomenological Foucault’ having to do with transcendental inquiry cannot be sustained by a careful reading of Foucault’s texts nor by a careful interpretation of Foucault’s philosophical commitments. It is then shown (...) that this debate in Foucault scholarship has wider ramifications for understanding ‘the critical Foucault’ and the relationship of Foucault’s projects to Kantian critical philosophy. It is argued that Foucault’s work is Kantian at its core insofar as it institutes a critical inquiry into conditions of possibility. But whereas critique for Kant was transcendental in orientation, in Foucault critique becomes historical, and is much the better for it. (shrink)

Although dignity figures prominently in modern ethical discourse, and in the writings of moral and political philosophers writing today, we still lack a clear account of how the concept of dignity might be implicated in various forms of moral reasoning. This essay tries to make progress on two fronts. First, it attempts to clarify the possible roles the concept of dignity might play in moral discourse, with particular reference to Hart's distinction between positive and critical morality. Second, it offers a (...) new typology of dignity concepts and mobilizes it to, on the one hand, criticize some familiar construals of and, on the other, to advertise the possible virtues of an unfamiliar way of thinking about dignity as a moral concept. (shrink)

By an argument form I shall mean a schema consisting of a string of symbols that are place-­‐holders for either logical terms or non-­‐logical (descriptive/content) terms: substituting terms of the appropriate kind for the symbols yields an argument. A substitution instance of an argument form is an argument that arises as a result of such a substitution. By a valid argument I shall mean an argument such that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. (...) Thus, an invalid argument is an argument such that it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. (shrink)

Equality is a fundamental but contested facet of justice. There are competing views about how the basic egalitarian character of justice should be conceptualized and about what practical implications ideals of equality have for the evaluation of political institutions, laws, and social practices. This volume brings together the reflections of some of today's leading political philosophers on the basic character and practical significance of equality as an ideal of justice. The topics explored are diverse and the essays offer challenging new (...) perspectives on recent work about justice and equality. The collection features new essays by Elizabeth Anderson, Richard Arneson, Michael Blake, Colin Macleod, Sophia Moreau, Debra Satz and Kok-Chor Tan. The essays provide an excellent indication of the richness and diversity of contemporary egalitarian theory. (shrink)

Distributive justice decision making tends to require a trade off between different valued outcomes. The present study tracked computer mouse cursor movements in a forced-choice paradigm to examine for tension between different parameters of distributive justice during the decision-making process. Participants chose between set meal distributions, to third parties, that maximised either equality (the evenness of the distribution) or efficiency (the total number of meals distributed). Across different formulations of these dilemmas, responding was consistent with the notion that individuals tend (...) to base decisions in part on the magnitude of these parameters. In addition, dilemmas associated with inconsistent responding across the sample tended to elicit the greatest spatial deviation of the cursor, potentially reflecting dilemma difficulty. One interpretation of these results is that individuals value equality and efficiency in such a way that moral dilemmas are resolved by comparing the perceived value of these qualitatively different parameters, consistent with a value pluralistic framework of decision making. A post-hoc analysis indicated that individuals also incorporated sufficiency concerns during distributive justice decision making. The results are discussed in relation to political philosophy. (shrink)

Aristotle determines eristic argument as argument which either operates upon the basis of acceptable premisses (endoxa) and merely give the impression of being deductive, or argument which truly is deductive but operates upon the basis of premisses which seem to be acceptable, but are not (or, again, argument which uses both of these mechanisms). I attempt to understand what Aristotle has in mind when he says that someone is deceived into accepting premisses which seem to be acceptable but which are (...) really not, and how this disqualifies such arguments from being dialectical. In the first section of the paper I interpret Aristotle’s notion of endoxa in terms of a relational concept of acceptability. Real Índoxa are propositions which are accepted by a qualified group or individual. False endoxa may also be accepted by someone or some group, and may even be true, but they are used to serve the purposes of eristical argumentation, which departs from certain standards of dialectical argumentation articulated in the notion of endoxa as a norm for premiss-acceptance. In particular, eristic arguments may even be valid in the sense of a syllogismos while still failing to be proper dialectical arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider how this can be, in examining certain types of fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the relationship between fallacious argumentation and false endoxa. (shrink)

Can the reality of complex moral situations be represented by means other than those of imaginative literature?If we could readily agree with Martha Nussbaum that "certain novels are, irreplaceably, works of moral philosophy" (148), then we might already have an answer to the question of whether or not literature matters. It would matter to us to the exact extent that it might help to make our lives richer, better and fuller. Nussbaum, though, refers only to "certain novels" and not to (...) literature in general. She readily admits that not all novels will suit her interests (45). For every novel that is a major work of moral philosophy, there may be more that are morally indifferent or even reprehensible and damaging. .. (shrink)

The study of corporate governance is importantly concerned with individuals and institutions and how individuals and institutions relate with/in society in such a manner that the good obtains. This paper begins with an analysis of Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in order to introduce the post-colonial African condition of corruption and abject suffering as one that begs recognition of the place of corporate governance in advancing the good life. The question raised is of where the (...) things are that would prepare the way to the good or ‘beautyful’ life. This question is raised in the understanding that situations inform how individuals behave. Two case studies of business organisations acting against HIV and AIDS are then looked at to suggest how business has a key role in turning individuals and thereby societies of Africa towards the good. The observation is that work being done to combat the harmful effects of HIV and AIDS is instructive of ways in which corruption and abject suffering may be arrested in post-colonial Africa by advancing a culture of recognition and granting of human dignity that is reflective of and supportive of good corporate governance practices and principles. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the rise of neoliberal economic thinking and its rejection of concepts of both state intervention in the economy and the pursuit of purposes bybusiness that are not directly related to profit maximization, has been accompanied by intensified social criticism of business and concerns about sustainability. The article explores the implications of these paradoxes and relates them to active consumerism and to the issue of market externalities.

Traditional methods for deriving property-based representations of concepts from text have focused on either extracting only a subset of possible relation types, such as hyponymy/hypernymy (e.g., car is-a vehicle) or meronymy/metonymy (e.g., car has wheels), or unspecified relations (e.g., car—petrol). We propose a system for the challenging task of automatic, large-scale acquisition of unconstrained, human-like property norms from large text corpora, and discuss the theoretical implications of such a system. We employ syntactic, semantic, and encyclopedic information to guide our extraction, (...) yielding concept-relation-feature triples (e.g., car be fast, car require petrol, car cause pollution), which approximate property-based conceptual representations. Our novel method extracts candidate triples from parsed corpora (Wikipedia and the British National Corpus) using syntactically and grammatically motivated rules, then reweights triples with a linear combination of their frequency and four statistical metrics. We assess our system output in three ways: lexical comparison with norms derived from human-generated property norm data, direct evaluation by four human judges, and a semantic distance comparison with both WordNet similarity data and human-judged concept similarity ratings. Our system offers a viable and performant method of plausible triple extraction: Our lexical comparison shows comparable performance to the current state-of-the-art, while subsequent evaluations exhibit the human-like character of our generated properties. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the prevalence in the 27 member states of the European Union of a little discussed illicit wage arrangement in which formal employees are paid two wages by their formal employers – an official declared salary and an additional undeclared wage, thus allowing employers to evade their full social insurance and tax liabilities. Reporting the results of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews, the finding is that one in 18 formal employees (...) received such an envelope wage from their formal employer and that envelope wage payments are more prevalent in member states with lower (rather than higher) levels of state intervention. The tentative conclusion is that illicit envelope wage payments are a product of under-regulation, rather than over-regulation, and that further research is now required to test the validity analysis of this thesis in other global regions. (shrink)

It will be interesting to listen to the personal beliefs concerning “Truth” as revealed in the studies of different scholars in different countries. But how will such a collection of beliefs contribute to the seeking of truth itself when we want to attribute to the word truth one of the adjectives: “absolute,” or “universal”?

Pragmatism is America's best-known native philosophy. It espouses a practical set of beliefs and principles that focus on the improvement of our lives. Yet the split between classical and contemporary pragmatists has divided the tradition against itself. Classical pragmatists, such as John Dewey and William James, believed we should heed the lessons of experience. Neopragmatists, including Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jürgen Habermas, argue instead from the perspective of a linguistic turn, which makes little use of the idea of experience. (...) Can these two camps be reconciled in a way that revitalizes a critical tradition? -/- Colin Koopman proposes a recovery of pragmatism by way of "transitionalist" themes of temporality and historicity which flourish in the work of the early pragmatists and continue in contemporary neopragmatist thought. "Life is in the transitions," James once wrote, and, in following this assertion, Koopman reveals the continuities uniting both phases of pragmatism. Koopman's framework also draws from other contemporary theorists, including Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Bernard Williams, and Stanley Cavell. By reflecting these voices through the prism of transitionalism, a new understanding of knowledge, ethics, politics, and critique takes root. Koopman concludes with a call for integrating Dewey and Foucault into a model of inquiry he calls genealogical pragmatism, a mutually informative critique that further joins the analytic and continental schools. (shrink)