Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 2, Page 166-190, Spring 2023.

In the last ten or fifteen years, realism has emerged as a distinct approach in political theory. Realists are skeptical about the merits of abstract theories of justice. They regard peace, order, and stability as the primary goals of politics. One of the more concrete aims of realists is to develop a realist perspective on legitimacy. I argue that realist accounts of legitimacy are unconvincing, because they do not solve what I call the “puzzle of legitimacy”: the puzzle of how (...) some persons can have the right to rule over others, given that all persons are equals. I focus on the realist accounts of legitimacy developed by Bernard Williams and John Horton. (shrink)

The article defends the claim that if some laws are (or would be) widely accepted, this provides pro tanto moral reasons to support these laws and not to support otherwise better laws that are not widely accepted. In that sense the value of having widely accepted laws provides moral reasons to make compromises in politics, and it justifies a modest and qualified status quo bias. Widely accepted laws are valuable because they reduce enforcement costs, have symbolic value, help to maintain (...) peace, and realize the value of non-subjugation. (shrink)

The article argues that persons should be conceived as self-owners and entitled to acquire private property within justifiable property conventions because they should be able to live as project pursuers. This is the ‘project pursuit argument’. It leads to a conception of self-ownership that is stringent, but weaker than standard libertarian notions of self-ownership, and to an understanding of private property as a convention that has to meet a sufficientarian threshold in order to be justifiable.

« Le monde a changé la psychanalyse qui organisait la vision de Freud a elle aussi changé, et avec elle la compréhension du Malaise dans la culture.Dans cet essai, je voudrais mettre à contribution les ressources de la psychanalyse contemporaine pour comprendre comment les nouvelles formes de la souffrance psychique et du malètre de notre temps ont partie liée avec les mutations qui ont ébranlé le monde dans lequel nous vivons et dans lequel vivront nos descendants. Ces ressources sont fondées (...) pour une part essentielle sur les connaissances qui nous viennent de la pratiquepsychanalytique lorsqu'elle s'engage dans un travail avec les groupes, les familles et les institutions. Les articulations entre les formations et les processus psychiques qui se développent dans les groupes (qui ne se développent pas sans les groupes) et la structuration du monde interne peuvent alors ètre mises au jour et nous doter d'autres vues sur le malètre. Malètre: autre chose qu'un malaise, plutôt une mise en question de la capacité d'ètre et d'exister en suffisant accord avec soi-mème, avec les autres et avec le monde. Au-delà des dérives alarmistes ou déficitaires, il y a à penser ce que peut et ne peut pas la psychanalyse, face au malètre, tant qu'il fait jour. ». (shrink)

In this article, I defend the view that we can acquire factual knowledge – that is, contingent propositional knowledge about certain (perceivable) aspects of reality – on the basis of imaginative experience. More specifically, I argue that, under suitable circumstances, imaginative experiences can rationally determine the propositional content of knowledge-constituting beliefs – though not their attitude of belief – in roughly the same way as perceptual experiences do in the case of perceptual knowledge. I also highlight some philosophical consequences of (...) this conclusion, especially for the issue of whether imagination can help us to learn something from fictions. (shrink)

Lockeans regard taxation as a—perhaps sometimes permissible—infringement of moral property entitlements. This essay discusses whether, or in what form, this charge is defensible. In doing so, it will explore the truth and the limits of the conventionalist reply of Murphy and Nagel to Lockean challenges to taxation. It argues that there is a moral rationale for property conventions that is independent of the question whether and how one can acquire natural, pre-conventional property rights in the state of nature, that this (...) rationale sets a moral standard for how good property conventions are and whether they are justifiable at all, and that once property conventions are in place, people’s moral property entitlements are at least partly determined by these conventions, sometimes even by unjustifiable ones that ought to be reformed. Because taxation can be a part of property conventions, taxation as such is not an infringement of moral property entitlements. But the essay will also argue that some taxation—excessive taxation—does infringe on moral property entitlements. This is because the moral rationale for property conventions sets some standards for what owners should be entitled to, and so excessive taxation will infringe upon moral entitlements that are partly not convention-based. (shrink)

Introductory text for the CRISPP-special issue and Routledge-book on "Compromising on Justice". Also includes a summary of the articles by Steven Wall, Robert B. Talisse, Sune Lægaard, Daniel Weinstock, Enzo Rossi and Fabian Wendt.

Philip Pettit’s republican conception of freedom is presented as an alternative both to negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The basic idea is to conceptualize freedom as non-domination, not as non-interference or self-mastery. When compared to negative freedom, Pettit’s republican conception comprises two controversial claims: the claim that we are unfree if we are dominated without actual interference, and the claim that we are free if we face interference without domination. Because the slave is a widely accepted paradigm of the (...) unfree person, the case of a slave with a non-interfering master is often cited as providing a good argument for the first republican claim and against a negative conception of freedom. One aim of this article is to raise doubts about whether this is true. The other aim of the article is to show that the prisoner—also a paradigm of the unfree person—presents a good argument against the second republican claim and in favour of a negative conception of freedom. This is called the ‘prisoner-argument’. It will be argued that neither Pettit’s distinction between free persons and free choices nor his distinction between compromising and conditioning factors of freedom can help to rebut the charge of the prisoner-argument. (shrink)

In diesem Text skizziere ich erstens – auch in Abgrenzung zu alternativen Friedensbegriffen aus der Geschichte der Philosophie und der Friedensforschung – einen Friedensbegriff, der eine plausible Zielvorstellung für pluralistische, auch in Gerechtigkeitsfragen gespaltene Gesellschaften abgeben könnte. Zweitens diskutiere ich den Einwand, dass hier unter dem Deckmantel einer neuen Terminologie in Wirklichkeit eine minimalistische, libertäre Gerechtigkeitsvorstellung propagiert wird.

Abstractabstract:Was there a linguistic turn in Frankfurt School Critical Theory before Habermas's communications-theoretic one? Might later Wittgenstein and the early Frankfurt School have adopted similar pictures of language? I propose that both questions should be answered affirmatively, focusing on Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason. I argue that, thanks to the picture of language that Horkheimer and Adorno share with (later) Wittgenstein, we can reconstruct their theory in a way that renders it more defensible. Insofar as the human life form and language (...) are inseparable, language can be an inextinguishable reservoir of what Horkheimer called "objective reason." Recognizing this allows us to answer Habermas's critique of Horkheimer and Adorno. Moreover, paying attention to this inseparableness can enable us to engage in disclosing social critique (for example, regarding current debates about sustainability). (shrink)

The uncertainty associated with paradigmatic families has been shown to correlate with their phonetic characteristics in speech, suggesting that representations of complex sublexical relations between words are part of speaker knowledge. To better understand this, recent studies have used two-layer neural network models to examine the way paradigmatic uncertainty emerges in learning. However, to date this work has largely ignored the way choices about the representation of inflectional and grammatical functions (IFS) in models strongly influence what they subsequently learn. To (...) explore the consequences of this, we investigate how representations of IFS in the input-output structures of learning models affect the capacity of uncertainty estimates derived from them to account for phonetic variability in speech. Specifically, we examine whether IFS are best represented as outputs to neural networks (as in previous studies) or as inputs by building models that embody both choices and examining their capacity to account for uncertainty effects in the formant trajectories of word final [ɐ], which in German discriminates around sixty different IFS. Overall, we find that formants are enhanced as the uncertainty associated with IFS decreases. This result dovetails with a growing number of studies of morphological and inflectional families that have shown that enhancement is associated with lower uncertainty in context. Importantly, we also find that in models where IFS serve as inputs—as our theoretical analysis suggests they ought to—its uncertainty measures provide better fits to the empirical variance observed in [ɐ] formants than models where IFS serve as outputs. This supports our suggestion that IFS serve as cognitive cues during speech production, and should be treated as such in modeling. It is also consistent with the idea that when IFS serve as inputs to a learning network. This maintains the distinction between those parts of the network that represent message and those that represent signal. We conclude by describing how maintaining a “signal-message-uncertainty distinction” can allow us to reconcile a range of apparently contradictory findings about the relationship between articulation and uncertainty in context. (shrink)

Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing any moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, (...) conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose any moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace. (shrink)

Sufficientarian libertarianism is a theory of justice that combines libertarianism’s focus on property rights and non-interference with sufficientarianism’s concern for the poor and needy. Persons are conceived as having stringent rights to direct their lives as they see fit, provided that everyone has enough to live a self-guided life. Yet there are different ways to combine libertarianism and sufficientarianism and hence different types of sufficientarian libertarianism. In the article I present and discuss three types, and I argue that the last (...) one overcomes the problems of the other two. The first type combines libertarianism with a sufficiency principle in what is sometimes called the ‘ethics of distribution’. The second incorporates modest welfare rights into a libertarian theory of justice. The third endorses a sufficientarian Lockean proviso for practices of private property within a libertarian theory of justice. I argue that it is superior to the others. (shrink)

Staaten beanspruchen für sich das Recht, Gesetze geben und mit Zwangsgewalt durchsetzen zu dürfen. Doch unter welchen Bedingungen haben sie dieses Recht tatsächlich? -/- Das ist die grundlegendste Frage der Politischen Philosophie. Obwohl wir die Autoritätsansprüche des Staates oft als selbstverständlich hinnehmen, erscheinen sie moralisch durchaus fragwürdig, wenn man Personen als frei und gleich begreift. Wie können wenige Parlamentsmitglieder das Recht haben, für Millionen Menschen verbindliche Gesetze zu erlassen? Wie können Polizeibeamte und Richter das Recht haben, diese Gesetze gegenüber Personen (...) durchzusetzen, die sie ablehnen? In diesem kurzen, verständlichen und anregenden Buch stellt Fabian Wendt die fünf wichtigsten Theorien politischer Autorität aus der zeitgenössischen Politischen Philosophie vor. Er diskutiert darüber hinaus den Anarchismus, der als Alternative ernst zu nehmen ist, falls alle Begründungsversuche politischer Autorität fehlschlagen sollten. (shrink)

This chapter overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and role of imagining and focusses primarily on three important distinctions that Hume draws among our conscious mental episodes: (i) between impressions and ideas; (ii) between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and (iii), among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement and ideas of the fancy. In addition, the chapter considers Hume’s views on the imagination as a faculty of producing ideas, as well as on (...) the part that imagining plays in the acquisition of modal knowledge and in the comprehension of, and resistance to, false or fictional opinions. (shrink)

The problem of algorithmic fairness is typically framed as the problem of finding a unique formal criterion that guarantees that a given algorithmic decision-making procedure is morally permissible. In this paper, I argue that this is conceptually misguided and that we should replace the problem with two sub-problems. If we examine how most state-of-the-art machine learning systems work, we notice that there are two distinct stages in the decision-making process. First, a prediction of a relevant property is made. Secondly, a (...) decision is taken based (at least partly) on this prediction. These two stages have different aims: the prediction is aimed at accuracy, while the decision is aimed at allocating a given good in a way that maximizes some context-relative utility measure. Correspondingly, two different fairness issues can arise. First, predictions could be biased in discriminatory ways. This means that the predictions contain systematic errors for a specific group of individuals. Secondly, the system’s decisions could result in an allocation of goods that is in tension with the principles of distributive justice. These two fairness issues are distinct problems that require different types of solutions. I here provide a formal framework to address both issues and argue that this way of conceptualizing them resolves some of the paradoxes present in the discussion of algorithmic fairness. (shrink)

The imagination poses fascinating philosophical questions across a range of subjects including philosophy of mind, aesthetics and epistemology. However, until now it has been a relatively neglected topic. How do acts of imagining differ from other mental episodes, such as perceptions or judgements? What kind of awareness is involved in imagining? Can imagining ground knowledge and if so, how reliable is it? Is there some unity to the various forms of imagining? In this book Fabian Dorsch considers these questions, (...) introducing and assessing all the main issues and arguments concerning imagination, including: episodic imagining imagining objects propositional imagining imagination and epistemology imagination and aesthetics imagination and cognitive science the unity of imagining. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, _Imagination_ is an ideal starting point for anyone studying the philosophy of imagination for the first time as well as more advanced students and researchers in philosophy, psychology and related disciplines. (shrink)

A libertarian theory of justice holds that persons are self-owners and have the Hohfeldian moral power to justly acquire property rights in initially unowned external resources. Different variants of libertarianism can be distinguished according to their stance on the famous Lockean proviso. The proviso requires, in Locke’s words, to leave ‘enough and as good’ for others, and thus specifies limits on the acquisition of property. Left-libertarians accept an egalitarian interpretation of the proviso, ‘right-libertarians’ either reject any kind of proviso or (...) accept rather weak versions of it. In be-tween there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation: a ‘sufficiency proviso.’ The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism.’ In this article I make a case for moderate libertarianism, so understood. I argue that moderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place. (shrink)

Please send me an email (fabian.dorsch@unifr.ch) if you wish to receive a copy of the book. — 'In this highly ambitious, wide ranging, immensely impressive and ground-breaking work Fabian Dorsch surveys just about every account of the imagination that has ever been proposed. He identifies five central types of imagining that any unifying theory must accommodate and sets himself the task of determining whether any theory of what imagining consists in covers these five paradigms. Focussing on what he (...) takes to be the three main theories, and giving them each equal consideration, he faults the first two and embraces the third, which argues that imagining is a special form of mental agency. The scholarship is immaculate, the writing crystal clear and the argumentation always powerful.' (Malcolm Budd). (shrink)

This book explores the morality of compromising. The author argues that peace and public justification are values that provide moral reasons to make compromises in politics, including compromises that establish unjust laws or institutions. He explains how it is possible to have moral reasons to agree to moral compromises and he debates our moral duties and obligations in making such compromises. The book also contains discussions of the sources of the value of public justification, the relation between peace and justice, (...) the nature of modus vivendi arrangements and the connections between compromise, liberal institutions and legitimacy. In exploring the morality of compromising, the book thus provides some outlines for a map of political morality beyond justice. (shrink)

In many critical investigations of machine vision, the focus lies almost exclusively on dataset bias and on fixing datasets by introducing more and more diverse sets of images. We propose that machine vision systems are inherently biased not only because they rely on biased datasets but also because theirperceptual topology, their specific way of representing the visual world, gives rise to a new class of bias that we callperceptual bias. Concretely, we define perceptual topology as the set of those inductive (...) biases in machine vision systems that determine its capability to represent the visual world. Perceptual bias, then, describes the difference between the assumed “ways of seeing” of a machine vision system, our reasonable expectations regarding its way of representing the visual world, and its actual perceptual topology. We show how perceptual bias affects the interpretability of machine vision systems in particular, by means of a close reading of a visualization technique called “feature visualization”. We conclude that dataset bias and perceptual bias both need to be considered in the critical analysis of machine vision systems and propose to understand critical machine vision as an important transdisciplinary challenge, situated at the interface of computer science and visual studies/Bildwissenschaft. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungSeit Jahren steigt in Indien die Anzahl der spezifisch gegenüber Frauen, hierarchisch tieferstehenden Geburts- (varṇa) und Berufsgruppen (jāti) sowie Kastenlosen (dalits;scheduled castes) und indigenen Gemeinschaften (ādivāsī;scheduled tribes) angezeigten Gewalttaten kontinuierlich an. Diese Gewaltakte und Tötungsdelikte sind aufgrund ihrer Qualität und vor allem aufgrund ihrer quantitativen Größenordnung als systemisch anzusehen. Dass sie in dieser Form noch immer ein akutes Gegenwartsproblem von allerhöchster sozialer und politischer Brisanz im vordergründig säkularisierten Indien darstellen, legt einen gesamtgesellschaftlichen Konsens über deren grundsätzliche Rechtmäßigkeit nahe, der sich (...) anhand tradierter Normen- und Wertvorstellungen sowie prämoderner Denk- und Handlungsmuster legitimiert, die auf traditionell hinduistischen Ideen basieren. Dabei kann der politische Aufstieg der nationalreligiös argumentierenden und agitierenden „Indischen Volkspartei“ (BJP:Bhāratīya Janatā Pārṭī) sowie ihr politisch forcierter Rückgriff auf den Hinduismus als einzelner, aber dennoch entscheidender Einflussfaktor gesehen werden, der die anhaltende Verschärfung innergesellschaftlicher Gegensätze und die kontinuierliche Intensivierung der Gewaltdynamiken ursächlich zu erklären vermag. Um diese Zusammenhänge zu beleuchten, vollzieht der Beitrag die ideengeschichtlichen Grundlagen religiös legitimierter Entmenschlichung und Gewalt sowie latenter wie offener Misogynie im Hinduismus von seinen vedischen Ursprüngen im 2. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend bis zur Gegenwart nach. (shrink)

The article recapitulates the different phases of the western interpretation of Nāgārjuna and aims, proceeding from a foundation enriched by a critique of them, to obtain elements of a renewed transcendental-philosophical interpretation of the philosophy of emptiness, such as was initiated by Fyodor Ippolitovich Stcherbatsky in his approach inspired by Immanuel Kant. Based primarily on Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s transcendental logic and Wissenschaftslehre a systematic reconstruction of Nāgārjuna’s thought is undertaken. Taking up an insight of Bhavya/Bhāviveka, we suggest that the absolute (...) known by Nāgārjuna as pre-reflexive being-conscious is the concept-bound appearance of the absolute in the medium of prapanca and not the absolute itself dispensed from prapanca, which as the unthinkable beyond of all thinking can be immediately realized in actuality only by the self-annihilation of thinking. This will bring to light the cognitive yield of Nāgārjuna’s effort, which is of a transcendental nature avant la lettre, and which makes him a witness for the claim to universality of transcendental-philosophical knowledge, beyond Europe.Der Aufsatz rekapituliert die verschiedenen Phasen der westlichen Rezeptionsgeschichte Nāgārjunas und plädiert für eine erneute transzendentalphilosophische Interpretation der Philosophie der Leerheit, wie sie die von Immanuel Kant inspirierte Interpretation Fyodor Ippolitovich Stcherbatskys inauguriert hat. Ausgehend von Johann Gottlieb Fichtes transzendentaler Logik und Wissenschaftslehre wird eine systematische Rekonstruktion von Nāgārjunas Denken unternommen und das von Nāgārjuna affirmierte Absolute als präreflexives Bewusst-Sein interpretiert. Im Anschluss an Bhavya/Bhāviveka wird das präreflexive Bewusst-Sein Nāgārjunas als absolute Erscheinung des Absoluten vom Absoluten selbst unterschieden, das als undenkbares Jenseits allen Denkens nur durch die faktische Selbstvernichtung des Denkens unmittelbar realisiert werden kann. Anhand dieser exemplarischen Untersuchung wird die These vertreten, dass Nāgārjuna Erkenntnisse errungen hat und zwar – ante litteram – transzendentale, die ihn zu einem Zeugen des Universalitätsanspruches transzendentalphilosophischer Erkenntnis außerhalb Europas machen. (shrink)

Eine kritische Diskussion von Ayn Rands Begründung libertärer Rechte.

When we compromise on justice, we accept or acquiesce to an arrangement that we judge to be unjust, or at least not fully just. Such arrangements are often described as constituting a ‘modus vivendi’. What reasons could we have to accept a modus vivendi, thereby compromising on justice? Given the fact of disagreement on justice, this is an important, but rather neglected question in political philosophy. One possible answer, inspired by John Rawls, is that compromising on justice is only justified (...) if this nonetheless brings us as close to ideal justice as possible under given circumstances. The most straightforward way to take issue with this answer is to present other reasons to compromise on justice. The articles in this book explore epistemic reasons and those that stem from values besides justice, like democracy, peace, toleration and non-subjugation. This book thereby sheds some light on the relevance of compromising for the legitimacy of institutional arrangements. It was previously published as a special issue of the Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy (Vol. 16, No. 4, 2013). (shrink)

Auf einer Zwillingserde teilt Julian Nida-Rümelins Alter Ego dessen philosophische Grundüberzeugungen: den Pragmatismus, den Kohärentismus, den anthropologischen Humanismus und den unaufgeregten Realismus. Was die politische Philosophie angeht, steht er allerdings fest in der klassisch-liberalen bzw. libertären Tradition von John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek und Robert Nozick. Durch einen metaphysischen Unfall gelangen die Werke des hiesigen Nida-Rümelin in die Hände seines Alter Ego. In diesem Text erfahren wir von dessen Leseeindrücken.

In diesem Text versuche ich zu zeigen, dass Nozicks Geschichte von Wilt Chamberlain zwar nicht gegen die Akzeptabilität jeder Form struktureller Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien spricht, dass das Wilt Chamberlain-Argument aber ein überzeugendes Argument gegen eine bestimmte Subklasse struktureller Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien darstellt, nämlich gegen organische Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien.

Contribution to a special issue, edited by Giulia Bistagnino and Enrico Biale, on Matteo Bonotti's book Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies (Oxford 2017), in which I raise some objections to his account of partisan obligations.

Relationalism about perception minimally claims that instances of perception -- in contrast to instances of hallucination -- are constituted by the external objects perceived. Most variants of relationalism furthermore maintain that this difference in constitution is due to a difference in mental kind. One prominent example is acquaintance relationalism, which argues that perceptions are relational in virtue of acquainting us with external objects. I distinguish three variants of acquaintance relationalism -- which differ in their answers to the question of which (...) kind of awareness hallucinations involve -- and object to all of them on two main grounds. First, none of the variants can explain how hallucinations can be introspectively indistinguishable from perceptions, despite their essential difference in awareness. Second, all three variants are unable to identify the feature of hallucinations that ensure that these experiences possess the same motivational power as corresponding perceptions. Since aquaintance relationalism can satisfy neither of these two desiderata on relationalist views, it should be rejected. Hence, if we want to be relationalists about perception, we should endorse a form of relationalism that treats perceptions -- as well as hallucinations -- as representational. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

This article considers Theodor W. Adorno’s thesis of the ‘liquidation of the individual’ as a contribution to the critique of political economy insofar as it links structural economic imperatives o...

In this book Fabian Klinge develops a novel approach for explaining phenomenal consciousness. He defends a version of panpsychism, that is the theory, that (some of) the fundamental physical entities exhibit consciousness. However, in contrast to standard conceptions of the view, the author does not take human consciousness to be grounded in but emergent from the consciousness of elementary particles. In this form, he argues, panpsychism can overcome the doctrine’s Achilles' heel, the combination problem, without running into similarly severe (...) problems—thus rendering panpsychism a strong contender to its problem-ridden rivals physicalism and dualism. In addition, the author provides a thorough analysis of the poorly studied concept of metaphysical emergence. He argues that, by refining some of the major contributions in the literature, emergence can be made intelligible enough to serve as a basis for a credible solution proposal to the mind-body problem. (shrink)

The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salient and shared by thoughts with experiences, (...) namely the rational role that they play in our mental lives and their determination by factors external to them, such as external objects or reasons. In particular, I aim to defend Phenomenal Rationalism about judgemental thoughts and perceptual experiences: the view that their phenomenal character reflects their rational role, that is, their capacity to provide and/or respond to reasons. I conclude with some remarks about how this view may be extended to other kinds of th... (shrink)

While John Rawls made the notion of a “modus vivendi” prominent in political philosophy, he treats modus vivendi arrangements rather short and dismissively. On the other hand, some political theorists like John Gray praise modus vivendi as the only available and legitimate goal of politics. In the article I sketch the outlines of a different, more nuanced approach to modus vivendi arrangements. I argue that the moral standing of modus vivendi arrangements varies, and I try to spell out the factors (...) that determine the relative moral standing of modus vivendi arrangements. (shrink)

This article investigates the categories of variegated social formations and structural historical heterogeneity, which have been developed from Latin American Marxism as a theoretical attempt that aims to account for the complexity of the debates around historical time. For this, the work of René Zavaleta Mercado (Bolivia) and Aníbal Quijano (Peru) is analyzed, revealing their connections and divergences. It is concluded that there are important meeting points, but also disagreements.

This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of all three contexts (...) are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno inspired much of Germany’s 1960s student movement, but he came increasingly into conflict with this movement about the practical implications of his critical theory. Others – including his friend and colleague Herbert Marcuse – also accused Adorno of a quietism that is politically objectionable and in contradiction with his own theory. In this article, I reconstruct, and partially defend, Adorno’s views on theory and (political) praxis in Germany’s 1960s in 11 theses. His often attacked and maligned stance (...) during the 1960s is based on his analysis of these historical circumstances. Put provocatively, his stance consists in the view that people in the 1960s have tried to change the world, in various ways; the point – at that time – was to interpret it. (shrink)

Public reason liberals from John Rawls to Gerald Gaus uphold a principle of public justification as a core commitment of their theories. Critics of public reason liberalism have sometimes conceded that there is something compelling about the idea of public justification. But so far there have not been many attempts to elaborate and defend a ‘comprehensive’ liberalism that incorporates a principle of public justification. This article spells out how public justifiability could be integrated into a comprehensive liberalism and defends the (...) claim that what is worthwhile about public justification can be extracted from public reason liberalism. (shrink)