This article is the third part of a trilogy investigating the relation between Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. All three essays are inspired by Foucault’s diagnosis of our epoch in terms of biopower. They therefore aim at the creation of a new concept of life. In ‘Un Ecart Infime (Part III)’, I lay out Foucault’s analysis, from the first chapter of The Order of Things, of Velázquez’s painting, Las Meninas. By stressing what Foucault says about the ‘sagittal lines’ exiting the painting, one (...) can show that that there are three major phases in Foucault’s analysis: locating the blind spot; multiplying the invisibility; and the diffraction of the multiplicity into singularities. More generally, we can see that Foucault’s analysis of the painting concerns the informal space in auto-affection; in other words, it concerns the ‘blind spot’ in the mirror relation, in the ‘psyché’. The blind spot in the ‘soul’ - and the ambiguity in the French word psyché between mirror and soul - is why we can say that Foucault’s analysis concerns life: being blind, life must be conceived as informal and unmappable. I show in the conclusion that the inability of mapping and of seeing this space in fact allows for the increase of power. (shrink)

This paper uses Michel Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics as a starting point for thinking historically about neoliberalism. Foucault’s lectures offer a rich and detailed account of the emergence of neoliberalism, but this account is far from complete. This paper addresses some of the blind-spots in Foucault’s lectures by focusing on the space between the decline of classical liberalism at the end of the 19th century and the subsequent attempt to develop a ‘positive’ or ‘ordo’ liberalism in post-war Germany. The primary (...) concern of this paper is to chart the emergence of a new or neo- liberalism in the writings of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek through the 1920s and 1930s. These writings, which are barely considered by Foucault, are important as they redefine the liberal project against the political economy of the late 19th century and, in particular, against the threat of socialism. In conclusion, it is argued that by returning to the work of Mises and Hayek it is possible to develop a critical sociology of neoliberalism, one that not only engages with the writings of these two thinkers but which also exposes the fracture lines that exist within the neoliberal project, and reconsiders the political positions that neoliberalism initially sought to reject. (shrink)

In this essay, I start from Foucault's last text, his "Life: Experience and Science." Speaking of Canguilhem, Foucault makes a distinction between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living). I then examine this difference between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living); that is, I examine the different logics, we might say, of immanence that each concept implies. To do this, I reconstruct the "critique" that Foucault presents of the concept of vécu in the ninth chapter of (...) The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses): "Man and His Doubles." I try to show how this critique applies to the early Merleau-Ponty, the Merleau-Ponty of the Phenomenology of Perception. Then, I construct the positive logic of Foucault's relation of immanence by means of another text, which is contemporaneous with Les Mots et les choses: This is not a Pipe. The critique of the concept of vécu is based on the fact that the relationship in vécu is a mixture (un mélange) that closes "un écart infime." Conversely, Foucault's conception of the relationship in "le vivant" is one that dissociates and keeps "l'écart infime" open. At the end, I suggest, through three "landmarks," how Foucault's critique might be applied to the later Merleau-Ponty. This essay is Part I of a trilogy on Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. Part II concerns Merleau-Ponty's "mixturism," while Part III concerns "the blind spot" in Foucault. These three texts complete the work necessary to open the problem of memory and life. (shrink)

Beatrice Han argues that the theories of subjection (determinism: structure) and subjectivation (freedom: agency) are the “the blind spot of Foucault's work:” to the very end of his life, in being transcendental and historical theories, respectively, they were in irresolvable conflict. In part I, I have argued that Foucault encourages us to situate the theories of the subject in an un-thematized reach for a metaphysics of realism which, in effect, was to ground his uncertain complementary reach for a naturalist (...) conduct of research. In part II I also argue that it is this fundamental feature of Foucault's Foucault that drives his returns to Kant, the purpose of which is to resolve the conflicting theories of the subject, and thus to solve his Giddensian problem of structure and creativity. Locating the returns and their purpose in my context of Science for Humanism and the recovery of human agency, I ultimately argue that Foucault's two special returns to Kant in order to solve his structure/agency problem led to two unfortunate solutions. The resort to Baudelair's aesthetic subject is a failed solution in so far as it regresses to being a pre-noumenal conception of the subject. The subsequent mere reinstatement of Kant's subject as causally empowered, minus the noumenalism, is nothing more than a reclamation of Kant's conception. Only the reconstruction of Foucault's realism permits us to assert that he could have moved beyond the reclamation of human agency to its recovery. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to mount a philosophical challenge to the currently highly visible research and discourse on empathy. The notion of empathetic perspective-shifting—a conceptually demanding, high-level construal of empathy in humans that arguably captures the core meaning of the term—is criticized from the standpoint of a philosophy of normatively accountable agency. Empathy in this demanding sense fails to achieve a true understanding of the other and instead risks to impose the empathizer’s self-constitutive agency upon the person empathized (...) with. Attempts to ‘simulate’ human agency, or attempts to emulate its cognitive or emotional basis, will likely distort their target phenomena in profound ways. Thus, agency turns out to be empathy’s blind spot. Elements of an alternative understanding of interpersonal relatedness are also discussed, focusing on aspects of ‘interaction theory’. These might do some of the work that high-level constructs of empathy had been supposed to do without running into similar conceptual difficulties. (shrink)

This article deals with the question of the applicability of Lewis’ concept of the culture of poverty to the situation of the socially excluded localities in urban setting inhabited by Roma (“Roma ghettoes”). The “Roma ghettoes” are shown to be places of a specific cultural pattern which emerged in the process of reaction and adaptation to the long-lasting poverty of its inhabitants. This pattern matches most of the parameters of the culture of poverty - with the exception of an elaborated (...) system of kinship. An analysis of its role in “Roma ghettoes,” however, shows that the complex system of kinship does not prevent poverty, but may re/produce it. (shrink)

According to the author Rorty´s romanticism is limited by postanalytical presuppositions. Consequently, Rorty should be considered a "modern enlightened man". Due to his disbelief in the concept od "experience", in searching for something beyond "vocabularies", Rorty ignores an important fact: Humans are interconnected with their world also by other relationships, not only by those, which can be formulated in banal, everyday "rational" language. In order to show more clearly the blind spot of the postanalyticians he tries to compare Rorty´s approach (...) with that of Michel Foucault, who attempted at reintroducing the forgotten conception of truth as a personal "proof" or "battle". Thus he wanted to confirm the superiority of ac_ting over thinking, of experiment over clearly defined and intelligible "vocabulary". According to the author this approach is much closer to romanticism than that of Rorty. (shrink)

One of the most exciting features in Foucault’s work is his analytics of power in terms of forms of visibility. It allows for a reflection on the conditions of seeing and thinking, thus triggering a seemingly paradoxical move: locating the limits of our perspectives entails simultaneously transgressing these limits. In a way, we decipher our own blind spot. Approaching Discipline and Punish through this perspective brings us to identify the digital subject as a characteristic figure of our time. In contrast (...) to its disciplinarian counterpart, it appears to be an active, though not necessarily political subject. The notion of visual citizenship will help us to go a step further and figure out what it could mean to challenge today’s surveilling gaze. (shrink)

Beatrice Han has argued that the theories of subjection (determinism: structure) and subjectivation (freedom: agency) are the “the blind spot[s] of Foucault's work.” Furthermore, she continues, as historical and transcendental theories, respectively, Foucault left them in a state of irresolvable conflict. In the Scientific Temptation I have shown that, as a practicing researcher, Foucault encourages us to situate the theories of the subject in the context of his un-thematized search for a metaphysics of realism, the purpose of which was (...) to ground his complementary reach for a possibility of naturalism. In Returning to Kant I now argue that it is this fundamental feature of “Foucault's Foucault” that drives his returns to Kant, the purpose of which was to resolve the conflicting theories of the subject and thereby solve his Giddensian problem of structure and creativity. Locating the returns and their purpose in the context of my own arguments for the recovery of human agency, I argue that Foucault's attempts to solve his Giddensian problem led to two unfortunate solutions. In the first return, his resort to Baudelaire's aesthetic subject is a regression to a pre-noumenal conception of the Kantian subject. With the second return, the reinstatement of the Kantian subject as causally empowered, minus the noumenalism, is nothing more than a reclamation of Kant's conception. I argue that only a reconstruction of Foucault's scientific realism permits us to understand that he could have moved beyond mere reclamation to the actual recovery of human agency. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part ofDAII.11 (423b27–424 a10), where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

Brandom explains perceptual knowledge as the product of two distinguishable sorts of capacities: the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli; and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlement of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a blind (...) spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects and to explain how we can justify the attributions of reliability to observers that make observation reports. (shrink)

Nietzsche, Foucault, and Rorty are each ethical thinkers in that widest sense that concerns questions of who we ought to be, and each seeks to answer those questions through accounts of self-creation that are distinguished by the style and scope of embeddedness in some community they rely on. Nietzsche’s is a middle-ground position between Rorty and Foucault since he offers an affirmation of community, on grounds that Rorty might accept, without acquiescence to the status quo, a concern for Foucault. Nietzsche (...) aims to place himself in a community, but one in part defined by its vigilance in identifying its blind spots, in knowing that it does not always know itself. In particular, I would like to say that Rorty misses the force of Nietzsche’s views on self-creation and the affirmation of community because Rorty mischaracterizes Nietzsche’s perspectivism by construing it along narrative rather than affective or physiological lines. (shrink)

Why absolute certainty is impossible in science In today's unpredictable and chaotic world, we look to science to provide certainty and answers—and often blame it when things go wrong. The Blind Spot reveals why our faith in scientific certainty is a dangerous illusion, and how only by embracing science's inherent ambiguities and paradoxes can we truly appreciate its beauty and harness its potential. Crackling with insights into our most perplexing contemporary dilemmas, from climate change to the global financial meltdown, this (...) book challenges our most sacredly held beliefs about science, technology, and progress. At the same time, it shows how the secret to better science can be found where we least expect it—in the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the inevitably unpredictable. William Byers explains why the subjective element in scientific inquiry is in fact what makes it so dynamic, and deftly balances the need for certainty and rigor in science with the equally important need for creativity, freedom, and downright wonder. Drawing on an array of fascinating examples—from Wall Street's overreliance on algorithms to provide certainty in uncertain markets, to undecidable problems in mathematics and computer science, to Georg Cantor's paradoxical but true assertion about infinity—Byers demonstrates how we can and must learn from the existence of blind spots in our scientific and mathematical understanding. The Blind Spot offers an entirely new way of thinking about science, one that highlights its strengths and limitations, its unrealized promise, and, above all, its unavoidable ambiguity. It also points to a more sophisticated approach to the most intractable problems of our time. (shrink)

This article will address sexuality as a medium of empire, approaching this question through the absence of empire in Foucault’s history of sexuality. This absence of empire is all the more enigmatic given that it coincides with the omnipresence of race. To that extent, I argue for an “alteration of absence” in the reading of Foucault. Acknowledging the paradoxical presence of race--perhaps even its centrality--in Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and liberalism is a necessary step to reveal the depth of another (...) absence, that of empire and coloniality. The article discusses this blind spot in Foucault’s work, arguing that a form of racial distinction operates through sexuality.It attempts to assess how influential this “imperial absence” is to the genealogy of sexuality and race. Lastly, it also sketches some possible reconfigurations of Foucault’s theses when read in colonial or postcolonial contexts. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Blind spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right And What to Do about It, by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Princeton University Press 2011, x, 191pp.

This chapter analyses the Church's efforts in opposing The Da Vinci Code as a concerted bid to reinforce the ideological bulwark surrounding millennia-old structures of episcopal governance. It postulates that it was Church leaders sensing a challenge to Roman Catholicism's traditional manner of organizing and exercising power in the form of depersonalized office charisma that provoked the criticisms they mounted worldwide against The Da Vinci Code. Weber's discussion of models for the institutionalization of legitimate power speaks directly to the contingency (...) of outcomes for religions founded upon charismatic authority. In early 2005 Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a former high Vatican official, urged Catholics to shun the novel like rotten food and branded the bestseller 'a sack full of lies' insulting the Christian faith. For Weber, the Catholic Church provided a paradigmatic example of the rise of a bureaucracy to the position of an all-powerful authority. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of belief define beliefs in terms of specific sets of dispositions. In this article, I provide a blind-spot argument against these accounts. The core idea of the argument is that beliefs having the form [p and it is not manifestly believed that p] cannot be manifestly believed. This means that one cannot manifest such beliefs in one’s assertions, conscious thoughts, actions, behaviours, or any other type of activity. However, if beliefs are sets of dispositions, they must be manifestable (...) in some way. Therefore, according to my argument, beliefs are not sets of dispositions. The argument is defended against some possible objections. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical implications of American newspaper policies that call for the automatic rejection of anonymous submissions to "letters to the editor" forums. The investigation is a qualitative analysis of more than 30 practitioner essays printed in journalism trade journals in the mid-to-late 20th century and interviews conducted with editors from 16 U.S. newspapers. The analysis found that contemporary American editors exhibited a blind spot toward anonymous commentary that seems to be in contention with certain tenets of codes (...) of ethics. Although editors took some steps toward making ethical arguments in favor of those policies, they either truncated or skipped some steps-such as considering all of the facts, considering journalistic principles, and acknowledging their personal biases toward anonymity-in making ethical decisions. The study concludes that editors who make ethical arguments in favor of "must-sign" policies should reconsider either their ethical justifications for those policies or the utility of the policies themselves. (shrink)

The growing prevalence of misleading information (i.e., bullshit) in society carries with it an increased need to understand the processes underlying many people’s susceptibility to falling for it. Here we report two studies (N = 412) examining the associations between one’s ability to detect pseudo-profound bullshit, confidence in one’s bullshit detection abilities, and the metacognitive experience of evaluating potentially misleading information. We find that people with the lowest (highest) bullshit detection performance overestimate (underestimate) their detection abilities and overplace (underplace) those (...) abilities when compared to others. Additionally, people reported using both intuitive and reflective thinking processes when evaluating misleading information. Taken together, these results show that both highly bullshit-receptive and highly bullshit-resistant people are largely unaware of the extent to which they can detect bullshit and that traditional miserly processing explanations of receptivity to misleading information may be insufficient to fully account for these effects. (shrink)

When I proposed having the future at the center of this issue, which marks the 10th anniversary of Humanist Studies & The Digital Age, I was aware of the complexity of this controversial topic. The possibility of magnifiche sorti e progressive — a “splendid and progressive destiny” — made possible by human technology inspires hope in some and critique in others. The expression comes from one of Leopardi’s last poems, Ginestra o il fiore del deserto (Broom, or the flower of (...) the desert), where he uses it ironically to suggest the powerlessnesss of humanity in the face of natural disasters. The poet argues with all those who praise the human condition and progress acritically. He condemns their hubris and bitterly invites them to visit the arid slopes of Vesuvius, reduced to a desert by the volcano’s eruption. (shrink)

These lectures on logic, more specifically proof theory, are basically intended for postgraduate students and researchers in logic. The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge and the difference between a question and an answer, i.e., the implicit and the explicit. The problem is delicate mathematically and philosophically as well: the relation between a question and its answer is a sort of equality where one side is ``more equal than the other'': one thus discovers essentialist blind spots. Starting (...) with Godel's paradox --so to speak, the incompleteness of answers with respect to questions--the book proceeds with paradigms inherited from Gentzen's cut-elimination. Various settings are studied: sequent calculus, natural deduction, lambda calculi, category-theoretic composition, up to geometry of interaction, all devoted to explicitation, which eventually amounts to inverting an operator in a von Neumann algebra. Mathematical language is usually described as referring to a preexisting reality. Logical operations can be given an alternative procedural meaning: typically, the operators involved in GoI are invertible, not because they are constructed according to the book, but because logical rules are those ensuring invertibility. Similarly, the durability of truth should not be taken for granted: one should distinguish between imperfect and perfect modes. The procedural explanation of the infinite thus identifies it with the unfinished, i.e., the perennial. But is perenniality perennial? This questioning yields a possible logical explanation for algorithmic complexity. This highly original course on logic by one of the world's leading proof theorists challenges mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers to rethink their views and concepts on the nature of mathematical knowledge in an exceptionally profound way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Blind Spots and Avenues for Transformation within the Utopian Canon: Toward A Terrestrial EcotopianismHeather Alberro (bio)Limitations and Exclusions of the (Western) Utopian CanonUtopianism in all of its manifestations often powerfully (re)surfaces during times of significant socio-ecological upheaval as a response to oppressive and exploitative realities. As such it is a fervent refusal against a given status quo and its purported inevitability. Utopianism and hope are rendered possible by, and (...) draw their transformative potential from, the boundless terrain of potentiality surrounding any given reality.1 Indeed, without such conditions of radical uncertainty, hope and utopianism would not be possible. Often and understandably, the seminal works of Plato, Thomas More, William Morris, H. G. Wells and others come to mind when we think of utopian studies. Hence Kumar’s parochial observation that there is no discernible utopian tradition beyond the West because other cultures lack the foundational myth of the Golden Age—that is, the Garden of Eden, Atlantis, and Arcadia—that has been so formative to the development of utopia in the West.2 These traditional or “transcendental” utopian modalities often feature a dichotomous opposition to their present reality, depicting time and historical movement [End Page 528] as linear successions of stages proceeding from an archaic past and toward a future wherein the utopian ideal is seen as occupying a “fixed space outside time and history.”3 Such temporally “transcendent” utopias marked the dawn of the modern phase of utopian thought, originating in the seventeenth century alongside new theories of social evolution that coalesced into modern Enlightenment notions of linear historical progress.4Prioritizing Pluralism: Critical Heterotopias of the “Here and Now”What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the “concrete alternative.” The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society: they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial and error, as the new society develops.5Tom Moylan’s notion of “critical utopianism,” which emerged during the “historic block” of political opposition of the 1960s and 1970s, marks one important step within the utopian canon toward praxis and the essential “Nowness” of critique and imaginative projection.6 This “critical” strand of utopianism is fueled by a fervent opposition to the exploitation and domination of people and the natural world that is increasingly characteristic of Western-capitalist societies.7 This opposition is coupled with a utopian desire for mutual aid, ecological resilience, liberation, and peaceful living—in effect, a longing for community.8 The “critical” in Moylan’s formulation has a bivalency: first, in the sense of critique through the debunking and deconstruction of the utopian genre itself, which was “colonized” by capitalism toward the 1970s and infused with technocratic dreams of material abundance through boundless economic expansion; and second, in the sense of the critical mass required to effect fundamental societal transformations.9 If the better is the enemy of the good, then perfection serves as “a stick with which to beat the possible.”10 Utopias do not offer rigid blueprints of a fixed or perfect ideal world but rather head toward “the ideal” by offering “a rich blending of creative fantasy, critical thinking, and oppositional activism” predicated on a demand for radically new relations between social and natural systems.11 Ever critically self-reflective, critical utopias continually remind us of the limitations of the utopian impulse, particularly the dangers of pursuing rigid and transcendental visions of “the better.” Nevertheless, these are desperate times that demand some orientation toward a better; utopianism’s [End Page 529] denunciative function is not enough. Thus, in his impassioned recent work Becoming Utopian, Moylan denotes the need for an intersectional, democratically unified leadership structure that can help sustain a political movement for counteracting the “global/neoliberal superpower order while reaching for a utopian horizon.”12 With a focus more on process than a fixed ideal, the critical utopia explores and articulates vibrant post-capitalist futures that are simultaneously open-ended, and far more socio-ecologically resilient than the “now” of late capitalism.Akin in function and style to critical utopias are the grounded and transgressive... (shrink)

This article defends the cosmopsychist doctrine of the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo, arguing that it has distinct advantages over rival panpsychist positions. After tracing the dialectical trajectory of recent philosophical debates about panpsychism up to the present, I bring Aurobindo into dialogue with Miri Albahari, who has defended a form of panpsychist idealism based on the classical Advaita Vedānta philosophy of Śankara. I critique Albahari's panpsychist idealism from an Aurobindonian standpoint, arguing that its Śankaran metaphysical commitments and eliminativist implications make (...) it an unsatisfactory account of consciousness. I then summarize Aurobindo's cosmopsychism and explain its distinctive solution to the individuation problem, which is widely considered to be the most serious problem for all forms of cosmopsychism. According to Aurobindo, Divine Consciousness individuates into multiple creaturely consciousnesses through the twin processes of 'self-limitation' and 'exclusive concentration'. I conclude the paper by addressing several potential objections to Aurobindo's cosmopsychism. (shrink)

That Jean Gayon never paid attention to Darwin’sDarwin, CharlespangenesisPangenesis might seem like an oddity given that natural selectionSelection and biological heredity were his primary focuses for decades. This lack of interest reveals Gayon’s specific methodological orientation: he aimed at producing rational reconstructionsRational reconstruction of the way a scientific hypothesisHypothesis entered experimentation and subsequently evolved within a specific theoretical pattern. Gayon’s most important achievements, Darwinism’sDarwinismStruggle for Survival (1998) in the first place, were all based on this “structuralist approachStructuralist approach (to history (...) of science)”, where philosophy of science provides a strong problematization and even shapes the historical narrative. I argue that LakatosLakatos, Imreand DuhemDuhem, Pierre were Gayon’s main inspirations, and that his work is thereby substantially different from both philosophy of biology andHistorical epistemology French historical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology. (shrink)

This article shows that the concept of choice is central to Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism. It argues that his valuing of choice is anchored in a particular conception of human nature, one that assumes and presupposes free will. Berlin’s works sketch a metaphysics of choice, and his reluctance to situate himself openly in the debate on free will is unconvincing. By introducing the theory of autopoiesis, this article further suggests that there is a way to take Berlin’s value pluralism seriously, by (...) considering sets of values as autopoietic conscious systems. Drawing on the works of Maturana and Varela in biology and Luhmann in sociology, autopoiesis strengthens value pluralism and acts as a critique of liberalism. By putting objectivity in parenthesis, autopoiesis finally allows for value systems to coexist side by side in a stronger sense than Berlin’s liberalism ever could. (shrink)

Online creative idea generation is often considered an extension of traditional creative idea activities on the Internet platform, in which digital technology plays an important role. Consistent with the studies on traditional creative idea activities, the studies on online creative idea generation take the creativity of mass psychology as the core, and believe that digital technology can stimulate people’s creative output. This study challenges the past research paradigm from the perspective of media materiality, redefines the processes and activities of online (...) creative idea generation, and further suggests that it may affect people’s psychology by reducing their creativity without real awareness. The study is innovative in both theory and practice. We also discuss the limitations and future directions of the study. (shrink)

From all directions comes confirmation that technology, information technology above all, is radically transforming today’s business. All observers predict that this technologizing of business will continue in the 21st century with major consequences. This article argues that business ethics cases (the most popular way of approaching business ethics) as well as the broader corporate cultural values (a less popular but equally important focus for business ethics) are inexorably affected by the technological revolution in business. But of 29 business ethics textbooks (...) published in the past 5 years, only 4 show any awareness of the new configuration of hard ethics cases, and only 2 of those 4 go beyond the case approach to examine the changes in corporate cultural values. If this technological blind spot in business ethics is not corrected, the business ethics guild will have radically failed its calling and responsibility. The consequences of technological blindness and naivete in business ethics are potentially dire because of the massive power of our technologies. (shrink)

The Implications of Immanence develops a philosophy of life in opposition to the notion of “bio-power,” which reduces the human to the question of power over what Giorgio Agamben terms “bare life,” mere biological existence. Breaking with all biologism or vitalism, Lawlor attends to the dispersion of death at the heart of life, in the “minuscule hiatus” that divides the living present, separating lived experience from the living body and, crucially for phenomenology, inserting a blind spot into a visual field.Lawlor (...) charts here a post-phenomenological French philosophy. What lies beyond phenomenologyis “life-ism,” the positive working out of the effects of the “minuscule hiatus” in a thinking that takes place on a “plane of immanence,” whose implications cannot be predicted. Life-ism means thinking life and death together, thinking death as dispersed throughout life. In carefully argued and extensively documented chapters, Lawlor sets out the surpassing of phenomenology and the advent of life-ism in Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Foucault, with careful attention to the writings by Husserl and Heidegger to which these thinkers refer.A philosophy of life has direct implications for present-day political and medical issues. The book takes its point of departure from the current genocide in Darfur and provides conceptual tools for intervening in such issues as the AIDS epidemic and life-support for the infirm. Indeed, the investigations contained in The Implications of Immanence are designed to help us emerge once and for all out of the epoch of bio-power.“Lawlor’s novel way of treating the concept of life is stimulating, original, and necessary for the social well being of our time.”—Fred Evans, Duquesne University“The Implications of Immanence continues the most promising, rigorous, and fruitful ongoing research project among scholars of twentieth-century philosophy. . . .A wonderful new book.”—John Protevi, Louisiana State University. (shrink)

In the current climate of high-stakes testing and performance-based accountability measures, there is a pressing need to reconsider the nature of teaching and what capacities one must develop to be a good teacher. Educational policy experts around the world have pointed out that policies focused disproportionately on student test outcomes can promote teaching practices that are reified and mechanical, and which lead to students developing mere memorisation skills, rather than critical thinking and conceptual understanding. Philosophers of dialogue and dialogic teaching (...) offer a different view of teaching, one that counters mechanical, transmissive or ‘monologic’ teaching. In this paper, I seek to extend the notion of dialogic teaching as a method of supporting social and moral learning processes. Specifically, my focus is on answering the question: What capacities must a teacher have to engage students dialogically? Drawing on Paulo Freire and other contemporary philosophers, I examine dialogic interaction as involving a way of ‘being with learners’ and put forth three teacher capacities necessary for dialogic teaching: self-critique, narrativity and building community. I then examine further what is concretely entailed in the practice of dialogic teaching using research in educational psychology. I aim to highlight how dialogic teaching, unlike monologic teaching, involves the teacher's active ability to support learners’ identification and exploration of their own blind spots—that is, the limits of knowledge and ability—and those of others. Following this, I consider implications of my discussion for international policy on teacher assessment. I close the paper with considerations for future research on teacher capacity and teacher evaluation. This paper contributes to our understanding of teacher capacity and the nature and aims of good teaching. (shrink)

In Consciousness Explained Dan Dennett proposes a deflationary treatment of sensory qualia. He seeks to establish a continuity among both the neural and the conscious phenomena connected with the blind spot and with the perception of repetitive patterns on the one hand and the neutral and conscious phenomena connected with blindsight on the other. He aims to analyze the conscious phenomena associated with each in terms of what the brain ignores. Dennett offers a thought experiment about a blindsight patient who (...) has the sensory information that normals do, but who seems not to have their sensory qualia.What is it that normals know that this blindsight patient does not? Dennett′s answer is "nothing." Dennett′s denial of "filling-in" accounts of repetitive patterns and the blind spot constitute a Rylean intuition pump for this thought experiment. Research by Ramachandran raises important problems for Dennett′s account. Moreover, Dennett′s attempt to discount the significance of "artificial scotomas" inadvertently employs a principle that undermines his case for establishing the continuity between the phenomena in question. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe article deals with the interrelation between Galileo and the visual arts. It presents a couple of drawings from the hand of Galileo and confronts them with Viviani's report that Galileo had not only wanted to become an artist in his youth but stayed close to the field of visual arts throughout his lifetime. In the ambiance of these drawings the famous moon watercolors are not in the dark. They represent a very acute and reasonable tool to convince the (...) people who trusted images more than words. The article ends with Panofsky's argument that it was Galileo's anti-Mannerist notion of art that evoked a repulsion of Kepler's ellipses. It tries to show that it was again an aesthetical prejudice that hindered Einstein from accepting Panofsky's theory. (shrink)

La mort assistée par un prestataire est en passe de devenir l’une des principales causes de décès au Canada depuis l’adoption de la loi sur l’aide médicale à mourir (AMM) en 2016. Ce qui devait être exceptionnel est devenu courant; certains demandent qu’on s’y attende. De plus en plus de patients atteints de maladies chroniques non terminales sont euthanasiés. Le personnel de santé approuve et propose désormais des MAiD aux patients vulnérables qui sont dépressifs, handicapés, atteints d’une maladie chronique ou (...) appauvris. Cet article présente une justification du point de vue de la loi morale transcendante, traditionnellement appelée loi naturelle, pour expliquer pourquoi le Canada a maintenant le régime d’euthanasie le plus libéral au monde. L’acte d’euthanasie exige que le prestataire mette délibérément fin à la vie du patient en lui administrant une substance mortelle. Cette pratique est contraire à la loi morale transcendante : ne pas tuer. Dès lors qu’une culture rejette délibérément cette loi fondamentale et adopte une éthique utilitaire dépourvue de tout principe, à l’exception de la notion d’autonomie, il est inévitable que cette pratique entraîne une ambiguïté et une incertitude éthique. Au fur et à mesure que la pratique persiste et devient la norme, l’aveuglement moral se développe et conduit à des abus flagrants sur les êtres humains. Je présente un diagramme éthique, la courbe de dissociation morale, qui illustre la raison des tendances observées au Canada. Le système de santé canadien doit réaffirmer les principes de l’éthique hippocratique et la dignité inhérente de ses patients. Les professionnels de la santé doivent donner la priorité aux soins palliatifs de haute qualité, empreints de compassion, et dire « non » à l’idée de mettre délibérément fin à la vie de patients souffrants. Ce faisant, la clarté morale sera retrouvée et les plus vulnérables de la société seront protégés. (shrink)

Many think it is plausible that agents enjoy freedom and responsibility with respect to their actions in virtue of being reasons-responsive. Extant accounts spell out reasons-responsiveness (RR) as a general modal property. The agent is responsive to reasons for and against ϕ-ing, according to this idea, if they ϕ in accordance with the balance of reasons in a suitable proportion of possible situations. This paper argues that freedom and responsibility are not grounded in such modal properties on the basis of (...) a phenomenon I call ‘rational blind spots’. Agents have highly specific local blockages (or openings) that prevent them from seeing or reacting for a particular type of reason. When these blind spots are triggered, agents fail to be responsive to reasons in the sense relevant to freedom and responsibility. Thus, we judge that they are not free and responsible. But bind spots don’t remove the agent’s possession of general modal RR properties. Thus, extant accounts of reasons-responsiveness render the incorrect result that the agents in these cases remain responsible because they remain responsive to reasons in a general sense. (shrink)

Beginning in the early 1990s, Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship (TWAIL) destabilized the mainstream narrative within international law that its doctrines were constituted by the historic search for order between formally equal state sovereigns. Instead, TWAIL scholars argued that the key constitutive dynamic of the discipline was the colonial experience, which continues to hold powerful sway over the legal architecture of global regulation whereby international law functions to perpetuate inequality and oppression. At the same time, however, TWAIL scholarship (...) regularly posits international law as an emancipatory force that may be mobilized on behalf of former colonized populations and other marginalized social identities. The rise of post-Marxist scholarship, and more generally, the turn to interdisciplinary within the profession in recent years offers an opportunity to analyze this curious paradox and construct alternative modes of analysis for future TWAIL scholarship. In the first section, the paper draws upon a diverse array of TWAIL scholars over the last thirty years to map the argumentative logic within TWAIL literature. In the second section, the paper incorporates debates and insights from complimentary academic disciplines to illuminate some blind spots within TWAIL’s central arguments, and potentially ‘radicalize’ its future possibility of critique against the growing inequality within global governance. (shrink)

Sohn-Rethel’s great idea was to ‘socialise’ Kant’s transcendental subject by combining it with Marx’s commodity-form. In so doing, he took on three challenges simultaneously: a) the timeless validity of modern natural science; b) the social genesis of empirically pure forms of cognition; and c) socialisation occurring through a purely social synthesis. However, Sohn-Rethel construed Marx’s value-form analysis as an empirical exchange of commodities and held that such exchange performs a real abstraction – in this way, he laboured under the very (...) semblance that money engenders at the surface of society by virtue of its function qua means of exchange. This semblance can be rendered transparent by, on the one hand, explaining value in terms of capitalist valorisation rather than as a product of abstraction, and, on the other, developing money as the measure and form of this valorisation. (shrink)

In his hermeneutic of the self, which he is working out in his Oneself as another , Ricœur writes about the constitutive conditions of conscience as a dimension of the experience of passivity. For the following considerations, I will argue that Ricœur is very right in maintaining the moral impact of the notion of conscience; but if we on the other hand remember older writings by Ricœur like Fallible Man we have to admit that something is missed in the chapter (...) about conscience in Oneself as Another . And that means, that in Oneself as Another he neglects the affective dimension of conscience. This affective dimension is - I think - the notion of shame. Dans Soi-même comme un autre où s'élabore son herméneutique du soi, Paul Ricœur réfléchit sur les conditions constitutives de la conscience comme expérience de la passivité. Pour les considerations suivantes, je souhaiterai montrer que Ricœur a tout à fait raison de plaider pour la dimension morale de la notion de conscience. Mais, d'un autre côté,si l'on se souvient des écrits plus anciens de Ricoeur sur l'Homme faillible , nous sommes tenus d'admettre que, au cours du chapitre sur la conscience dans Soi-même comme un autre , quelque chose est perdu de vue. Nous voulons signifier que, dans ce chapitre, il néglige la dimension affective de la conscience. Cette dimension affective est, nous semble-t-il, la notion de honte.  . (shrink)

Since their emergence in the 1980s, environmental virtue ethics (EVEs) have aimed to provide an alternative to deontological and consequentialist approaches for guiding ecological actions in the context of the global environmental crisis. The deterioration of the ecological situation and the challenges in addressing collective action problems caused by global changes have heightened interest in these ethics. They offer a framework for meaningful individual actions independently of the commitment of other actors. However, by shifting the focus onto individuals, EVEs appear (...) to grapple with the tension between anthropocentrism and respect for nature, as well as between self-flourishing and concern for other living beings. This article argues that this difficulty is rooted in the neglect within EVEs of the communitarian aspect of ancient virtue ethics. Drawing from Baird Callicott’s ecocentric approach and Val Plumwood’s works, this paper explores the possibility of conceiving ecological communities as collective frameworks in which both public and private virtues are defined and practiced. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

One popular description of current society is that it is a depressed society and medical evidence about depression’s prevalence may well make such an estimation plausible. However, such normative-critical assessments surrounding depression have to date usually operated with a one-sided understanding of depression. This understanding widely neglects the various ways depression manifests as well as its comorbidities. This becomes evident at the latest when considering one of depression’s most prominent and well-known comorbidities: chronic pain. Against this background, we aim in (...) this article to substantiate our leading claim that the phenomenal interconnection between depression and chronic pain must be acknowledged in the global diagnosis of a depressive society. Thus, we argue here for a complementation of the dominant interpretation of a depressed society. This would support the overcoming of oversimplified images and estimations about depression in current society and further, help to recognize chronic pain properly on the larger scale of assessments that address society as a whole. (shrink)

Gyenis and Rédei (G&R) have shown that any prior _p_ on a finite algebra _A_, however chosen, significantly restricts the set of posteriors derivable from _p_ by Jeffrey conditioning (JC) on a nontrivial measurable partition (i.e., a partition consisting of members of _A_, at least one of which is not an atom of _A_). They support this claim by proving that the set of potential posteriors _not derivable_ from _p_ in this way, which they call the _Bayes blind spot of (...) p_, is large, having cardinality _c_ and normalized Lebesgue measure 1, as well as being of second Baire category for a natural metrizable topology. In the present paper, we establish results analogous to those of G&R for probability measures on any infinite sigma algebra of subsets of a countably infinite set (which requires distinctly different treatments of the topological and measure-theoretic cases). We also show, in both the finite and infinite cases, that all of the limitative results for a single prior _p_ continue to hold for the intersection of the Bayes blind spots of countably many priors. This leads us to reject the claim of G&R that the large size of blind spots in the single prior case is attributable to the limitations imposed by priors. We argue instead that it is the so-called _rigidity property_ of JC that accounts for the large size of Bayes blind spots. G&R also prove that _any_ potential posterior _q_ can be derived from a prior _p_ by at most two applications of JC on nontrivial partitions. But they remark that their particular two-stage derivation of an \(r \in BS(p)\) from _p_ is barely distinguishable from a single, complete reassessment on a trivial partition. We show, however, that there are two-stage derivations of _r_ from _p_ that require no direct assessment of the probability of any atom at either stage. Finally, in order to situate the aforementioned limitative results in the proper context, we demonstrate that a probability revision that would amount to complete reassessment within a Jeffrey evidentiary framework may arise, in a different evidentiary framework, in a way that involves no direct assessment of the probability of any atom, as, for example, in a generalization of Jeffrey’s solution to the problem of old evidence and new explanation. (shrink)