I begin, in Parts I-III, by presenting the details of the Baker and Hacker/community consensus debate over the nature of rule-following in the later Wittgenstein. In Part IV this philosophical debate is related to the law through the argument that there is both an internal and an external element to rule-following in law. I here assert one of the principal claims of my position: viz., that legal argument is directed at constructing the point of law. Part V introduces the distinction (...) between the formal and the material elements of a concept. As I shall show in detail, form is a heuristic for illuminating conceptual understanding. In Part VI, I move on to provide several examples in support of the form/matter distinction. Part VI also provides arguments in support of the proposition that understanding is internal to a practice and thus not necessarily coextensive with regularity in behavior. Parts VII-IX examine relevant claims made by Wittgenstein and their application to law. Finally, Parts X-XI sketch and illustrate my ultimate claim, a narrative approach to law. (shrink)

Guanxi, or social networks common in Confucian cultures, has long been recognized as one of the major factors for success when doing business in China. However, insider networks in business are certainly not confined to Asian cultures, nor is the attendant possibility for corruption. This study obtained original data to investigate current Taiwanese perceptions of (1) how guanxi is established and cultivated; (2) how guanxi actually is practiced now and people’s acceptance of it; and (3) the effects of guanxi on (...) business operations, employment/promotion, and social justice and fairness. The researchers also hope to (4) verify some arguments made by pioneering researchers. The authors speculate on how these attitudes may affect behavior in business transactions in hopes of making readers more aware of differing cultural values that may create unexpected ethical dilemmas. They suggest that professional ethical codes should provide guidance on the practice of guanxi in a Confucian society and that special emphasis or training in interpreting those codes may be required. (shrink)

I describe how relativistic field theory generalizes the paradigm property of material systems, the possession of mass, to the requirement that they have a mass–energy–momentum density tensor T µ associated with them. I argue that T µ does not represent an intrinsic property of matter. For it will become evident that the definition of T µ depends on the metric field g µ in a variety of ways. Accordingly, since g µ represents the geometry of spacetime itself, the properties of (...) mass, stress, energy, and momentum should not be seen as intrinsic properties of matter, but as relational properties that material systems have only in virtue of their relation to spacetime structure. (shrink)

Textbooks present classical particle and field physics as theories of physical systems situated in Newtonian absolute space. This absolute space has an influence on the evolution of physical processes, and can therefore be seen as a physical system itself; it is substantival. It turns out to be possible, however, to interpret the classical theories in another way. According to this rival interpretation, spatiotemporal position is a property of physical systems, and there is no substantival spacetime. The traditional objection that such (...) a relationist view could not cope with the existence of inertial effects and other manifestations of the causal efficacy of spacetime can be answered successfully. According to the new point of view, the spacetime manifold of classical physics is a purely representational device. It represents possible locations of physical objects or events; but these locations are physical properties inherent in the physical objects or events themselves and having no existence independently of them. In relativistic quantum field theory the physical meaning of the spacetime manifold becomes even less tangible. Not only does the manifold lose its status as a substantival container, but also its function as a representation of spacetime properties possessed by physical systems becomes problematic. 'Space and time' become ordering parameters in the web of properties of physical systems. They seem to regain their traditional meaning only in the non-relativistic limit in which the classical particle concept becomes approximately applicable. (shrink)

In a recent comment on H.L.A. Hart’s ‘Postscript’ to The Concept of Law, Ronald Dworkin claims that the meaning of legal and political concepts may be understood by analogy to the meaning of natural kind concepts like ‘tiger’, ‘gold’ and ‘water’. This article questions the efficacy of Dworkin’s claims by challenging the use of natural kinds as the basis for a semantic theory of legal and political concepts. Additionally, in matters of value there is no methodological equivalent to the scientific (...) method. Thus, there is little hope of finding hidden essences to explain the meaning of legal and political concepts. Finally, even if there are natural kinds, Dworkin’s arguments for their efficacy in jurisprudence are problematic and unpersuasive. The problem for Dworkin is that his embrace of natural kinds undermines the ‘fit’ side of the fit/justification model of adjudication that lies at the heart of his theory of law. (shrink)

Abstract:Recent developments in personality research point to an alchemy of character composed of five elements: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. This paper surveys this research for its implications to the study of the virtues in organizational ethics. After subjecting each of these five character traits to several tests as to what constitutes a virtue, the empirical evidence supports an organizational virtue of agreeableness and an organizational virtue of conscientiousness. Although the empirical evidence falls short, an argument is (...) mobilized on behalf of an additional organizational virtue of openness to experience. (shrink)

Urban contexts are widely conceived as inherently violent due to their putatively disorderly nature. Such a conception of violence effectively conceives it as singular and fundamentally destructive, neither of which necessarily hold universally true. Drawing on Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and the life history of Bismarck, a former gang member turned drug dealer turned property entrepreneur living in a poor neighbourhood in Managua, Nicaragua, this article highlights how different forms of urban violence interrelate with each other over time, and how (...) they shape an individual’s urban experience and environment. In doing so, it underscores how urban violence is not a singular phenomenon, how it intertwines with a range of urban social processes, and how it is often socially constitutive rather than destructive. Seen from this perspective, the key question to ask is less to what extent violence is a hallmark of urban contexts but rather how different articulations of violence emerge in cities, and why it is that they can play such contrasting roles in the constitution of urban life. (shrink)

This is a précis of my book Kant's Radical Subjectivism, to be published as part of a symposium dedicated to the book, with critics Hein van den Berg, Karin de Boer, Henny Blomme en Joris Spigt, including a reply by me. The symposium is in Dutch, but the pre-print uploaded here is in English!

In this article I respond to Sacha Golob's critique of my stance on Kantian nonconceptualism, objectivity, and animal perception of spatial particulars.

I argue that there is natural relationist interpretation of Newtonian and relativistic non-quantum physics. Although relationist, this interpretation does not fall prey to the traditional objections based on the existence of inertial effects.

The human immune system can directly lyse invading micro‐organisms and aberrant host cells by generating pores in the cell envelope, called membrane attack complexes (MACs). Recent studies using single‐particle cryoelectron microscopy have revealed that the MAC is an asymmetric, flexible pore and have provided a structural basis on how the MAC ruptures single lipid membranes. Despite these insights, it remains unclear how the MAC ruptures the composite cell envelope of Gram‐negative bacteria. Recent functional studies on Gram‐negative bacteria elucidate that local (...) assembly of MAC pores by surface‐bound C5 convertase enzymes is essential to stably insert these pores into the bacterial outer membrane (OM). These convertase‐generated MAC pores can subsequently efficiently damage the bacterial inner membrane (IM), which is essential for bacterial killing. This review summarizes these recent insights of MAC assembly and discusses how MAC pores kill Gram‐negative bacteria. Furthermore, this review elaborates on how MAC‐dependent OM damage could lead to IM destabilization, which is currently not well understood. A better understanding on how MAC pores kill bacteria could facilitate the future development of novel strategies to treat infections with Gram‐negative bacteria. (shrink)

It is a recurring idea in the history of political philosophy that concepts and doctrines of private law are illuminative of public law and political philosophy. Central among these are contract and the trust. In this paper, I consider the prospects of a third: estoppel. The public law context in which estoppel is most commonly invoked is criminal law, and there especially in the service of understanding the defenses of entrapment and what I call officially induced mistake of law. My (...) question is how well it serves this role – how well the structure of the self-disentitlement that provides the rationales for the defences of entrapment and OIML on the non-exculpatory approach to each is articulated on the model of state estoppel, as I call it. I will argue that it fares well, and so that estoppel merits inclusion on the list of concepts and doctrines of private law that are illuminative of public law and political philosophy. In conclusion I will ask what the moral-expressive content of its deployment in that context is, and argue that, while the doctrines of contract and trust work as means to articulate claims about the basis and limit of political authority, the claim that some cases of state self-disentitlement can be modelled on estoppel represents a commitment to some core principles of the rule of law. (shrink)

(2008). 2007 AESA Presidential Address Conflict of the Faculties: Democratic Progressivism in the Age of “No Child Left Behind”. Educational Studies: Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 94-113.

In this paper, I want to zero in on the Kantian idea that,whilst things in themselves must logically be presupposed as the ground underlying appearances and things are not reducible to their representations, (1) objects as appearances are not properties of things in themselves, and (2) things in themselves or the thing in itself cannot properly be represented or even thought. To do this, I turn to one of the earliest defenders and champions of the Kantian philosophy, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, (...) and specifically to his first major work Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, published in 1789. I am here interested neither in the extent to which Reinhold’s interpretation of Kant is correct or even adequately represents Kant’s thought in all of its aspects, nor whether Reinhold’s attempt to present a systematic philosophy based on a rigorous deduction from a single principle (his strong foundationalism) stands up to scrutiny. I am here solely interested in some of Reinhold’s positive insights, in the Versuch, concerning elements of his representationalism that may shed light on Kant’s idealism, specifically, the relation between appearances (as objects of knowledge) and things in themselves, i. e., points (1) and (2) described above. I read the early Reinhold of the Versuch as confirming the Kantian view that objects as appearances are not properties of things in themselves and that we are radically ignorant of things in themselves, in the sense that we can neither know things in themselves (through the senses) nor even intellectually grasp things in themselves through the understanding alone. (shrink)

In January 1641 Marin Mersenne forwarded to René Descartes a set of objections to the latter’s Meditations that Mersenne had solicited from “an Englishman.” This, along with some optical papers that Descartes may not have known were from the same person, was apparently his first philosophical encounter with Thomas Hobbes. The surviving correspondence and the Meditations’s third set of “Objections and Replies” show that the antipathy between these two otherwise excellent minds was virtually instantaneous. The irony has often been remarked (...) that these men, who were both engaged in constructing a system of mechanical science and whose views were so similar on many major issues, should have become such bitter opponents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Awareness of the Natural World in Shinjin: Shinran's Concept of JinenDennis HirotaAttainment of Shinjin and TruthThe primary issue regarding knowledge that Shinran (1173-1263) treats in his writings concerns the commonplace, "natural" presupposition that it is constituted by an ego-subject relating itself to stable objects in the world. From his stance within Buddhist tradition, Shinran identifies the crucial problem as the human tendency toward the reification of both sides (...) of this dichotomy-resulting in an autonomous self and substantial things-with the consequent attachments fueling the afflictions ("blind passions") of habitual pain and conflict for oneself and others. The focus of Shinran's treatment of this basic Buddhist concern is the point of engagement with dharma or true reality. In this, he draws into the arena of religious faith the probing scrutiny of lingering attachments to self, even in the dedicated practitioner, that is fundamental to the critical attitude of Mahayana Buddhist tradition.My aim in taking up the issue of truth in my article "Shinran and Heidegger on Truth" in The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science 1 is to suggest a way of reading Shinran that both avoids a common pitfall that Shinran himself cautions against-an engagement with Pure Land teachings that adheres to the subject-object dichotomy of ordinary awareness-and opens up his vision to resonances with contemporary western thought, particularly continental philosophy. This latter concern is not to claim that Shinran adumbrates contemporary thought or is affirmed by resemblances, but rather seeks to cast light on compelling aspects of his thought not often treated in traditional Shin scholastics. There are, therefore, both therapeutic and constructive sides in my attempt to engage Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) thought from a perspective rooted in Shinran's Buddhism.The pitfall in reading Shinran indicated in my article is crystallized in the assumption, prevalent in Western scholarship but also widely seen in Japan, that his Shin Buddhist path centers on a simple faith in the Pure Land teachings, with such faith understood as the subjective acceptance of the truth of doctrinal propositions. In [End Page 189] other words, it is commonly presupposed that Shin Buddhist tradition (what he terms jōdo shinshū, "the true essence of the Pure Land way") implicitly affirms the subject-object dichotomy. This difficulty is frequently compounded by formulations of the supposed tenets of belief that are heavily molded and colored by Protestant Christian notions of self, sin, eschatology, and atonement. It is impossible to take up such comparative theological issues here. 2 In a sense, I have sought in my article to circumvent a hasty assessment of conceptual equivalence by pointing out the possibility of an encompassing or prior dissonance.Since Shinran's concept of "attaining shinjin" (true entrusting, which is also the Buddha-mind given to the practitioner) is built on the endeavor to deconstruct the reification of this dichotomy in engagement with the Pure Land Buddhist path, the unconsciousness reinstatement of it in reading his writings can lead one to a thorough but easily accomplished misconstrual of his thought. My suggestion in my article is that consideration of the analogues in Heidegger's thought can help us see all this. Such comparison also appears to present a relatively untested avenue for Buddhist-Christian conversation, particularly in view of Heidegger's early indebtedness to Luther's "theology of the cross" and the notion of the "alien work of God" as the critical stripping away of attachments to human capacities (destructio in the "Heidelberg Disputation"), and also his approach to Paul's letters to the Thessalonians in The Phenomenology of Religious Life. 3 The keystone in such interreligious conversation remains, however, not simply human fallibility as subject or culpability as agent, but the persistent challenge to the subject-object dichotomy, which may form a locus of refractory difference between the religious traditions.The constructive side of the comparison concerns two general dimensions of Shinran's thought that are highlighted in an approach to his writings that might be called phenomenological. One includes a shift from a reading based on scriptural foundationalism and doctrinal reasoning to a dialogical reading, one attentive to Shinran's effort to... (shrink)

Arguments for the importance of neuroscience reach across many disciplines. Advocates of neuroscience have made wide-ranging claims for neuroscience in the realms of ethics, value, and law. In law, for example, many scholars have argued for an increased role for neuroscientific evidence in the assessment of criminal responsibility. In this article, we take up claims for the explanatory role of neuroscience in matters of morals and law. Drawing on our previous work together, we assess the cogency of neuroscientific explanations of (...) three issues that arise in these domains: rule-following, interpretation, and knowledge. We critique these explanations and in general challenge claims as to the efficacy of the neuroscientific accounts. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Naturalism and deontology".

Philosophy as a “way of life” is singularly unsatisfactory as a definition of the subject. Inspired by Kant, we examine six alternative formulations: philosophy may be seen as (1) a search for the conditions governing possible experience, (2) an attempt to derive ultimate categories of ontological or else psychological analysis, (3) the discovery (or erection) of synthetic a priori truths, coupled with making the notion of “S.A.P.” coherent, (4) resolving fundamental antinomies of thought, (5) finding, and/or explicating, the role of (...) regulative principles in human enterprises, (6) “reconstructing” the domain of other disciplines, as Kant does throughout the three Critiques. We conclude with a synoptic suggestion about philosophy as self-criticism (of propositions normally accepted unthinkingly), and ponder its implications for the status of the profession. (shrink)