This paper critically surveys Adorno's dialectical-philosophical perspective of communication, which addresses a question and a quest for humanity: "How is communication possible?" In my view, any discussion of Adorno's view on communication should start with his distinction of two concepts: mediation and communication. Mediation involves the ideological critique of illusory relations of objectivity. Communication, defined by Adorno as the never-ending confrontation and reconciliation between subjectivity and objectivity, comes after the epistemological critique of objective mediation. Therefore, the quest for communication always (...) involves a never-ending wrestling between subject and object, particular and universal, experience and information. As Adorno would argue, true communication is "a result not an illusion o f (non-) identity of self and others. If any authentic mediated communication is humanly possible, it is because such communication is inscribed in a dialectical-dialogical process and it can only be accomplished momentarily. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Habermas's social-philosophical exploration of the public sphere in the age of mass communication, which addresses a key question: "Is the public possible in the sociohistorical formation of the mass public sphere?" In his genealogical analysis of different public spheres from feudal to modern times, Habermas indicates that the emergence of inter-subjectivity is historically based upon the dichotomy of private / public (subjective/objective). He emphasizes the opposition of the "subjective side" of rationality to its "objective side" while (...) dealing with the public spheres in different historical periods. Habermas points out that the notion of the public can exist only at the face-to-face level communication. It is impossible for the (impersonal) masses to construct any sense of publicness, since there are no historical and social conditions in which the masses of working class can establish an "autonomous private sphere" outside of material production and consumption, as the bourgeoisie did. In this way, Habermas ambivalently argues that the public is not possible in the mass public sphere. (shrink)

Most empirical research examining physician views on physician-assisted suicide has used quantitative methods to characterize positions and identify predictors of individual attitudes. This approach has generated limited information about the nature and depth of sentiments among physicians most impassioned about PAS. This study reports qualitative data provided by 909 physicians as part of a larger survey regarding attitudes toward and experiences with PAS and palliative care. Emergent themes illustrate important clinical, social, and ethical considerations in this area. The data illustrate (...) the diverse and ardent responses that PAS evokes among certain physicians. The role of physicians' personal values is central to discussions about legalization of PAS. Polarized views such as those expressed by physicians in this study are not likely to be reconciled, thereby constraining the development of public policy regarding PAS. (shrink)

A popular strategy for answering the question of why and how laws bind is to use the concept of political justification: to argue that laws bind when they can be justified in the political domain. Being defensible in the political domain is supposed to make laws emotionally compelling in virtue of their being justified for each member of the community, and intellectually compelling in virtue of their having emerged from a process that is subject to constraints of rationality such as (...) consistency and coherence. However, being politically justifiable does not and cannot explain why it is reasonable to expect individuals to conform because it places too much emphasis on deference to the judgments of public actors. In this paper I use a distinction between general availability and general acceptability accounts of publicity to explain why the answer to what makes laws binding lies in developing an account of good reasons, not an account of why political reasons should take priority. (shrink)

Many have argued that certain statues or monuments are objectionable, and thus ought to be removed. Even if their arguments are compelling, a major obstacle is the apparent historical value of those commemorations. Preservation in some form seems to be the best way to respect the value of commemorations as connections to the past or opportunities to learn important historical lessons. Against this, I argue that we have exaggerated the historical value of objectionable commemorations. Sometimes commemorations connect to biased or (...) distorted versions of history, if not mere myths. We can also learn historical lessons through what I call repudiatory honouring: the honouring of certain victims or resistors that can only make sense if the oppressor(s) or target(s) of resistance are deemed unjust, where no part of the original objectionable commemorations is preserved. This type of commemorative practice can even help to overcome some of the obstacles objectionable commemorations pose against properly connecting to the past. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Chinese text, is optimistic about life unrestrained by entrenched values. This paper contributes to existing debates on Zhuangzian freedom in three ways. First, it reflects on how it is possible to enjoy the freedom envisaged in the Zhuangzi. Many discussions welcome the Zhuangzi’s picture of release from life shaped by canonical visions, without also giving thought to life without these driving visions. Consider this scenario: in a world with limitless possibilities, would it not be (...) fraught, not knowing how to interpret situations? I suggest that freedom in the Zhuangzi is possible only if one succeeds in reorienting herself to the new ‘normal’. Second, I introduce and develop the idea of working with constraints. This focuses on an agent's maximizing the fit between relevant conditions, on the one hand, and their capabilities, on the other. Finally, I propose that self-directed practice, an important expression of agency, is required for building capabilities that enable such freedom. I examine the idea of risk involved in these firsthand experiences, articulating an account of agency that sits at the heart of hard-won Zhuangzian freedom. (shrink)

Is there something special about group rights? Many would say "yes". For some, only certain kinds of groups---ones that are oppressed, or play a special role in well-being---may have rights. For others, the kind of group is not as important as the group's culture and internal structure. At the very least, many argue, group rights ought to be more restricted than individualistic ones. For these reasons, arguing the merits of a group right is often thought to require a theory of (...) groups or of group identity. If only certain kinds of groups may have rights then one has to identify the roles that various groups and/or identities play in personal well-being. If a group's culture or internal structure must meet certain standards then one must develop a theory of how culture or the internal organization of a minority influences people. ;I argue that it is a mistake to think that arguing a group right requires a theory of groups. This mistake reflects a tendency to think about group membership as a kind of good and to focus on its internal, psychological significance. But if one thinks about group membership as a vehicle of action, and focuses on the concrete effects it may have, it becomes apparent that arguing for a group right does not require a theory of groups, group identity or culture. For in the end, the issues that one must address in arguing a group rights are issues about groups. Rather, they are issues about political and moral authority, and about the extent to which moral and political norms ought to recognize and reinforce the ways that people depend upon one another. These are important issues and they raise pressing questions for political philosophy. But they are not about groups. (shrink)

Tainted political symbols ought to be confronted, removed, or at least recontextualized. Despite the best efforts to achieve this, however, official actions on tainted symbols often fail to take place. In such cases, I argue that political vandalism—the unauthorized defacement, destruction, or removal of political symbols—may be morally permissible or even obligatory. This is when, and insofar as, political vandalism serves as fitting counter-speech that undermines the authority of tainted symbols in ways that match their publicity, refuses to let them (...) speak in our name, and challenges the derogatory messages expressed through a mechanism I call derogatory pedestalling: the glorification or honoring of certain individuals or ideologies that can only make sense when members of a targeted group are taken to be inferior. (shrink)

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that (...) civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions. (shrink)

Does ‘remembering that p’ entail ‘knowing that p’? The widely-accepted epistemic theory of memory answers affirmatively. This paper purports to reveal the tension between ETM and the prevailing anti-luck epistemology. Central to my argument is the fact that we often ‘vaguely remember’ a fact, of which one plausible interpretation is that our true memory-based beliefs formed in this way could easily have been false. Drawing on prominent theories of misremembering in philosophy of psychology, I will construct cases where the subject (...) vaguely remembers that p while fails to meet the safety condition, which imply either that ETM is false or that safety is unnecessary for knowledge. The conclusion reached in this paper will be a conditional: if veritic epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, then ‘remembering that p’ does not entail ‘knowing that p’. (shrink)

Moral thinking and communication are critical competencies for confronting social dilemmas in a challenging world. We examined these moral competencies in 70 college students and graduates from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants were assessed through semi-structured written interviews, Facebook group discussions, and a questionnaire. In this paper, we describe the similarities and differences across cultural groupings in (1) the social issues of greatest importance to the participants; (2) the factors influencing their approaches to thinking about social (...) issues and communicating with others; and (3) the characteristics of their moral functioning in terms of moral awareness, moral judgment, moral discourse, and moral decision-making. (shrink)

Are there wrongs for which states cannot apologise? In this chapter, I argue that the answer is 'Yes'. I begin with the simple observation that reasoning as a state official requires a conception of what officials do, and so a conception of what is - and is not - properly undertaken on behalf of the state. To act as an official, then, requires a theory of what happens in a well functioning state: it requires a 'normative theory of the state. (...) What officials believe to be necessary for a state to be a good example of its kind will affect what they recognise as outside the bounds of what a state official ought to do. This limit on what can be recognised as something prior officials ought not to have done is illustrated by Canada's official apology for imposing residential schools on indigenous peoples. Canada's official apology left out a crucial feature of the schools policy in part because of the influence of integrationist theories of the state. An integrationist view of good statehood has limited officials' ability to see the project of restructuring indigenous communities and inculcating attachment to an overarching identity as a wrong in itself, and distorted officials' diagnosis of what went wrong in previous policy. One effect has been to allow contemporary officials to offer a sincere and comprehensive apology for past officials' human rights violations in indigenous communities while themselves pursuing policies in these communities that violate human rights. The lesson of the Canadian apology is that how state officials theorise the state can undermine their capacity to recognise human rights violations for what they are and distort their judgements of what must be done in remedy. (shrink)

A shift in emphasis can change the truth-value of a singular causal sentence. This poses a challenge to the view that singular sentences predicate a relation. I argue that emphasized causal sentences conjoin predication of a causal relation between events with predication of a relation of causal relevance between states of affairs (or perhaps facts). This is superior to the treatments of such sentences offered by Achinstein, Dretske, Kim, Sanford, Bennett, and Levin. My proposal affords clarity regarding logical structure, at (...) least at a certain level of detail. It makes the relation between the content of an emphasized causal sentence and the unemphasized version clear. It answers some questions about the ontological requirements of the truth of emphasized causal sentences, without introducing new entities (as do some other accounts) or unacceptable consequences for identity and individuation of events. (shrink)

In Daoist philosophy, the self is understood as an individual interdependent with others, and situated within a broader environment. Within this framework, the concept ziran is frequently understood in terms of naturalness or nature while wuwei is explained in terms of non-oppressive government. In many existing accounts, little is done to connect these two key Daoist concepts. Here, I suggest that wuwei and ziran are correlated, ethical, concepts. Together, they provide a unifying ethical framework for understanding the philosophy of the (...) Daodejing. I explore the meaning of ziran as self-so-ness or, in human terms, as pertaining to an individual’s spontaneity. The appropriate response to the spontaneity of individuals is to avoid, insofar as possible, imposing or using restrictive norms and methods, that is, wuwei. According to this view, ziran and wuwei offer an account of ethics that attends to core notions of interdependent selfhood, including mutuality, relationality, interdependence, symbiosis, and responsiveness. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine (...) the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom suggests that promoting self-determination for peoples and protecting the human rights of individuals are competing priorities. However, many recent international human rights documents include rights of peoples in their lists of basic human rights. In this paper, I defend including at least one people’s right, the right to self-determination, in the list of basic rights. Recognizing that self-determination is a constitutive element of human dignity casts state sovereignty in a different light, with interesting consequences both for international law (...) and for philosophical debates about the rights of minorities. (shrink)

The standard criticisms of Confucian ethics appear contradictory. On the one hand, Confucian ethics is deemed overly rule-bound: it is obsolete because it advocates adherence to ancient Chinese norms of proper conduct. On the other hand, Confucian ethics is perceived as situational ethics—done on the run—and not properly grounded in fundamental principles or norms. I give reasons for these disparate views of Confucian ethics. I also sketch an account of Confucian morality that focuses on moral development; in this account the (...) place of normative ethics is nominal. (shrink)

The core thesis of anti-luck epistemology is the incompatibility thesis, that is, knowledge is incompatible with veritic epistemic luck. Traditionally, anti-luck epistemologists hold that there are two distinct types of veritic epistemic luck, viz, intervening luck and environmental luck. The former occurs when something luckily intervenes between the subject’s belief and the target fact, which renders the subject’s belief luckily true. The latter can be found in cases where the subject’s belief is luckily true when she is in an unfriendly (...) epistemic environment. This paper purports to show that there is another long-neglected type of veritic epistemic luck—I name it ‘interpretative luck’. It refers to the type of luck occurring when the subject accidentally chooses the correct interpretation of evidence and thus her belief is luckily true. I will demonstrate that no proper reasons can support the incompatibility between interpretative luck and knowledge. Instead, the price for insisting this incompatibility would be unacceptably high. Therefore, the existence of interpretative luck falsifies the incompatibility thesis of anti-luck epistemology. (shrink)

A dominant belief in political philosophy is that states must be entitled to authorize the use of coercion in order to justifiably coerce its subjects. Call this view the entitlement view. On this view, for a state to justifiably coerce its subjects, a necessary condition is that it is entitled to authorize the use of coercion. Sceptics hold the entitlement view. However, they deny that states are entitled to authorize the use of coercion. This denial informs their views regarding the (...) permissible use of political power. Skeptics believe that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. In this paper, I present a challenge to the skeptical view that nearly all uses of political power is impermissible. I also present a view on the justification of certain uses of political power that is an alternate to the entitlement view. My alternate view allows me to demonstrate that a state can engage in permissible uses of political power over a broad range of domains without possessing any entitlements. (shrink)

Most political philosophers are reluctant to treat cultural rights as basic. Instead, the predominant view is that cultural interests are only important derivatively, in virtue of their contribution to some other interest. In this chapter I argue that political philosophers ought to follow international human rights norms regarding the importance of culture. Not only do international human rights courts and committees come to the right conclusion about the significance of culture, but, as importantly, they come to this conclusion because they (...) think about what cultural rights protect inthe right way. Contemporary political philosophers prefer to treat cultural rights as derivative in part because they tend to treat culture as a “resource” or a “good,” but this is a mistake. Cultural rights are better understood as protecting and promoting an activity. Respecting and promoting cultural participation is a constitutive element of showing respect for human dignity because, like free expression, political participation, and freedom of conscience, cultural participation is something persons do as part of making a life for themselves. (shrink)

Theories that recognize group rights face an important challenge from both friends of rights and friends of groups: that rights discourse cannot accord priority to the needs of group life over those of any individual person because the theory of moral value which underwrites rights language cannot recognize groups as having oveniding interests or importance. The full import of this objection has often been missed by those against whom it is levelled because they focus on claims by groups against non-group (...) members. However the full weight of the problem is most apparent in claims groups make against their own members (what Kymlicka calls "internal restrictions"). In this paper I look more closely at the objection from internal restrictions to clarify what is -- and what is not -- at stake. I clarify: (i) why the moral theory that underpins rights language poses a problem that must be addressed; and (ii) why the strategies most commonly pursued by advocates of group rights do not make this problem go away. However, although it is true that some forms of collectivism are ruled out by rights discourse, distinguishing between the ethical and methodological commitments of a theory makes apparent that adopting some form of methodological collectivism need not imply a collectivist theory of moral value. Neither the (ethical) individualism of rights theory nor the (methodological) collectivism of most theories that value group membership are grounds for rejecting the coherence of group rights. (shrink)

This paper purports to disprove an orthodox view in contemporary epistemology that I call ‘the epistemic conception of memory’, which sees remembering as a kind of epistemic success, in particular, a kind of knowing. This conception is embodied in a cluster of platitudes in epistemology, including ‘remembering entails knowing’, ‘remembering is a way of knowing’, and ‘remembering is sufficiently analogous to knowing’. I will argue that this epistemic conception of memory, as a whole, should be rejected insofar as we take (...) into account some putative necessary conditions for knowledge. It will be illustrated that while many maintain that knowing must be (1) anti-luck and (2) an achievement, the two conditions do not apply to remembering. I will provide cases where the subject successfully remembers that p but lacks knowledge that p for failing to meet the two putative conditions for knowledge. Therefore, remembering is not a kind of knowing but a sui generis cognitive activity. (shrink)

International human rights concepts and documents figure prominently within theories of global justice. Appeals to human rights often rely on theories and interpretations that rank human rights in relation to one another designating some as more important or more crucial than others such that they may or must be given priority. In this paper I argue that hierarchical ranking of human rights should be rejected by theorists of global justice because such ranking: (a) undermines the effectiveness with which human rights (...) operate as principled constraints on state actors; and (b) is inconsistent with the international legal framework and practice from which the human rights concepts and documents draw their rhetorical force. Instead theorists of global justice should accept the indivisibility principle, which states that all human rights are interrelated and interdependent and must be treated on the same footing and given the same emphasis. The attraction of hierarchical ordering rests on misguided concerns about the practicality of indivisibility that fail to properly distinguish between rights and claims and ignore important dimensions of human rights implementation and assessment. I argue that indivisibility is both pragmatically defensible, provides a better theoretical grounding for understanding complaints about violations, and offers a better framework for understanding the relationship between human rights and legitimacy than hierarchical ordering. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new self-defense theory of punishment, the rights-protection theory. By appealing to the interest theory of right, I show that what we call “the right of self-defense” is actually composed of the right to protect our basic rights. The right of self-defense is not a single, self-standing right but a group of derivative rights justified by their contribution to the protection of the core, basic rights. Thus, these rights of self-defense are both justified and constrained (...) by the basic rights they are supposed to protect. I then explain how this theory responds to a common objection. Opponents argue that, to exercise the right of self-defense, some threat must be present. However, in the context of punishment, the threat has already taken effect or is already gone. Thus, the right of self-defense becomes irrelevant when we punish an offender. I show that this objection is based on an implausibly narrow conception of self-defense. A reasonable conception would allow us to exercise our right of self-defense when there is a present definite threat, a future definite threat, or a potential threat. Thus, we may still exercise our right of self-defense in the context of punishment. (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider contemporary consequentialist theories of punishment. Consequentialist theories of punishment look to the consequences of punishment to justify the institution of punishment. Two types of theories fall into this category—teleology and aggregationism. I argue that teleology is implausible as it is based on a problematic assumption about the fundamental value of criminal punishment, and that aggregationism provides a more reasonable alternative. Aggregationism holds that punishment is morally justified because it is an institution that helps society to (...) aggregate important moral values. Several theories fall into this category, including general deterrence theories, specific deterrence theories, and preventionism. I critically evaluate these theories and argue that only one specific deterrence theory, namely, my rights-protection theory, provides the most reasonable consequentialist account of punishment. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom suggests that promoting self-determination for peoples and protecting the human rights of individuals are competing priorities. By this is meant that securing individuals in their human rights requires limits on the rights of their peoples, and vice versa. In contrast, the Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Draft Declaration) treats the two as not only mutually supporting but mutually necessary. In the Draft Declaration, the right of peoples to self-determination is more than a principle (...) that constrains states in their behavior towards other states and territories “outre-mer”; it also constrains states within their domestic realm. This view of self-determination reflects the experience of many indigenous groups, for whom refusal to respect the integrity of their group and failure to respect the integrity of their persons have gone hand in hand. In this chapter, I argue that the Draft Declaration’s treatment of self-determination is right: self-determination is a human right and this human right is the same right that underpins the rights of states. Treating an interest of peoples like self-determination as a constitutive element of human dignity raises practical worries about the stability of the international system, and philosophical worries about potential conflicts between individuals and peoples. But it also casts state sovereignty itself in a different light. This new light has interesting consequences both for international law and for philosophical debates about minorities within minorities. In particular, it allows one to think about questions about internal minorities as ultimately questions about legitimacy and representation. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that the moral value of national identity is sufficient to justify at least a prima facie right of a national community to create its own independent, sovereign state. In the literature, this argument is commonly referred to as the identity argument. In this paper, I consider whether the identity argument successfully proves that a national group is entitled to a state of its own. To do so, I first explain three important steps in the argument (...) and then consider whether they lead to the desired conclusion. My examination reveals that the identity argument relies on the Optimal Protection Principle; however, this principle does not apply to the case of a national community. As a result, the identity argument fails to justify even a prima facie right of a national community to establish its own state. (shrink)

Several commentators have expressed concern that the Durban Platform does not include more specific language about the need for equitable mitigation efforts. Meanwhile, other commentators have argued that the differentiated approach adopted by the Kyoto Protocol set up an opposition between the developed and developing nations; resulting in an impasse which has prevented the achievement of adequately ambitious, agreeable and binding mitigation commitments. In this commentary I propose that the political impasse is not due to the equity track per se, (...) but rather to the territorial and production-based accounting system upon which it was built. Under the UNFCCC, parties are required to provide inventories of GHG emissions within their national borders. There are several problems with this method, but most important given the argument here, is that the production-approach has resulted in a significant misrepresentation of the total climate impact of developed nations. Because GHG emissions are not confined by geopolitical borders, it is important to understand the climate impact of contemporary consumption and trade, regardless of where emissions are produced. I argue that supplementing production-based accounting with a consideration of the emissions embedded in trade has the potential to provide a more agreeable and politically viable path for closing the ambition gap and ensuring equity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Who Tells the StoryCindy BitterThirty years later, I do not remember her name, but I definitely remember her face, and this is how I remember her story.She came into the office for her flu shot. She was in her 70s and had a mild case of COPD attributed [End Page 87] to years of exposure to pesticides on the family farm. She said she was trying to stay healthy, (...) as the grandkids were due for a visit, and everyone had gotten a cold after Thanksgiving the year before. I was a sub-intern doing a required rural medicine rotation and diligently did an exam, finding asymptomatic new-onset atrial fibrillation of uncertain duration. We admitted her to the hospital and started anticoagulation. My attending also ordered a calcium channel blocker to slow her pulse, which was running 90–100 while she was at rest. The attending insisted that it would convert her back to sinus rhythm. The nurses were not experienced with the medication and were uncomfortable giving it. I was pretty sure the calcium channel blocker was not indicated, and a quick check of my pocket manual confirmed the drug would lower her heart rate and maybe her blood pressure but that it would not fix the abnormal rhythm. I refused to administer it. The attending came in, pushed the medication, and returned home. A few minutes later, the patient was struggling to speak. Her pulse fell to in the 30s, and her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low. I asked for the crash cart and calcium, and my attending, then started CPR when she lost her pulse. Half an hour later, my attending called her time of death.Hers was not the first death I'd witnessed, but it was the first time I felt like my patient would have been better off without our interventions. As a medical student hundreds of miles from the main hospital campus, I felt powerless to contradict the attending, and did not know where to turn for support in the moment. I rationalized it by saying that I had not actively contributed to her death by pushing the medication, but I held myself morally culpable for doing the exam and finding an asymptomatic abnormality that started her down that path. I felt I should have known the pathophysiology and medication side effects better, or been more assertive, or called for help.One could argue whether I was suffering from a grief reaction or falling into depression, but I questioned my calling to medicine and seriously considered leaving the field. But I was quite certain that I did not want another patient to be put at risk, or a student to feel cornered into taking actions against their better judgment. After returning to the main hospital, I met with the clerkship director and helped develop a pathway for students to raise safety concerns in real-time. Now I recognize the feeling I experienced as moral injury, but we weren't using that term at the time, or talking about Six Sigma safety, or stopping the line.Ultimately, I continued through medical school and trained as an emergency physician. My prior reverence for my attendings moderated to a healthier respect that had to be earned. I read voraciously, trying to prepare myself for unexpected situations. I became an advocate for patient safety and was an early adopter of shared decision-making. I strive to be a physician who welcomes questions and respects the concerns of all team members. Many of the principles that ground my career in medicine grew out of my exposure to this patient.It was always my least favorite of the tropes common to television medical dramas—the circumstances of the patient-of-the-week illuminated some aspect of our main characters' lives, providing a very important life lesson. I felt it positioned patients to be in service of the physician's aims, using patients as a means to our ends, when we should be using our knowledge and experience to further the patient's goals. Very un-Kantian, in addition to transgressing against multiple other philosophers and medical ethicists. As medicine learns more about the power of... (shrink)

Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. However, adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience may lead to a highly problematic theoretical consequence: the debilitation of civil disobedience. This is because, according to the novel analysis I propose, civil disobedience primarily functions as a costly social signal. It is effective by being reliable, reliable by being (...) costly, and costly primarily by being punished. My analysis will highlight a distinctive feature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two paradoxical implications. First, the instability of the moral status of both civil disobedience and its punishment to the extent where the state may be left with no permissible course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience. Second, by refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience, the state may render uncivil disobedience—illegal political activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience—potentially permissible. (shrink)

Cognitive science has come down with a nasty cold, so Jerry Fodor has recently lamented, and the afflicting strain is something called concept pragmatism.1 Its chief symptom is the urge to identify the content of a concept with the inferences habitually drawn upon in its use (a ‘definition-in-use’), these serving also as its condition of possession, in knowing how to draw those inferences definitive of the concept.2 The affliction is quite fatal if Fodor is right, but the welfare of the (...) patient is of only indirect concern. What I want instead to ask here is whether the diagnosis has anything to do with the pragmatism that he says, breathlessly, has “bred monsters” down the last century—in particular, with the.. (shrink)

It has come to be widely accepted that jus post bellum includes responsibilities to rebuild. Consequently, duties to establish a sustainable peace are increasingly defined in terms of duties to protect and promote international human rights, including duties to effectively investigate human rights violations, to ensure access to effective remedy, and to transform institutional and legal contexts that have facilitated or sustained human abuse. But what are investigations by transitional bodies seeking when they take on these tasks? Often, investigators present (...) themselves as seeking the truth and claim value for their findings based on having produced a better description or explanation than was antecedently available. But is truth worth pursuing for its own sake in transitions from conflict or must it contribute to some other goal to be valuable? In what follows I argue that the value of truth in transitions from conflict lies in the role of truth in ascribing knowledge. The connection between truth and knowledge makes it important to preserve distinctively epistemological grounds for accepting and rejecting claims and narratives. These distinctively epistemological grounds explain how, if it is conceived of as adequate responsiveness to experience, truth is a legitimate and important goal in transitions from violence that is worth pursuing for its own sake. In particular, I argue that there is value in insisting that adequate responsiveness to experience serve as an arbiter in the reception of claims and narratives because when responsiveness to experience plays an arbitral role it becomes possible for bodies such as truth commissions to serve as vehicles by which groups may attain or ascribe knowledge. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan proposes a methodological framework with which theorists may evaluate different theories of secession, including the National Self-Determination theory. An important claim he makes is, because the right to secede is inherently institutional, any adequate theory of secession must include, as an integral part, an analysis of institutional morality. Because the National Self-Determination theory blatantly lacks such an analysis, Buchanan concludes that this theory is inherently flawed. In this paper, I consider Buchanan’s framework and the responses from supporters of (...) national self-determination theory. I try to clarify the confusion shared by both parties. I conclude that, although Buchanan’s theory of institutional morality is sound, his critiques of the national self-determination theory fails. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Meditations on Zen BuddhismWhalen LaiPhilosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. By Dale S. Wright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 227.As "philosophical meditations" on the Zen of Huang Po, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism by Dale S. Wright is an impressive work. Philosophers will appreciate it, for it well shows how far Zen studies in America have moved ahead since the days of D. T. Suzuki (...) and Alan Watts. Just as Bernard Faure has deconstructed "Suzuki Zen," Dale S. Wright has here de-romanticized John Blofeld's 1959 book on Huang Po, the third "house" in the Hung-chou lineage of Ma-tsu Tao-I, being the successor to Pai-chang and master to Lin-chi.Wright's "post-romantic" reading strives for relevance in contemporary discourse. Each of the chapters takes up a key topic that dovetails into the next and escalates from Textuality, Reading, Understanding, Language, Rhetoric, and History to Freedom, Transcendence, Mind, and Enlightenment. Concerning the first, Textuality, it is shown how Blofeld has taken the records of Huang Po as true and holistic—a view that has been disputed by modern scholarship, which details a complex history of accretion instead. Renouncing the former romance with its single portraiture, Wright accepts the critical approach. Huang Po exists, then, as a series of images projected by the respondent Zen community. Wright then recalls the Buddhist doctrine of "no-self" (in the context of there being no unchanging Huang Po) and notes how a number of masters in that mountain-based lineage were also named Huang Po. In short, whereas Bernard Faure has dissolved the early images of Bodhidharma into a number of literary skandhas (heaps), fragments that do not even add up to a pudgala (fictive whole), Wright finds these socially constructed images to be born out of (Buddhist) "dependent origination" vis-à-vis the Zen community.This leads to the next topic, on how one should read a text. Wary of Blofeld's strong belief, a hermeneutics of faith that is possibly masking modern, subjective bias and projections, Wright sees a need for critical distance while granting the text its own horizon or an "otherness" that engages the reader anew. All ten chapters follow this format of pitting point against counterpoint before ruminating on some lead gleamed from the repertoire of Buddhist doctrines. Some chapters are more subtle than others, but all work to jog the reader into a sudden recognition of some past prejudice while offering a fresh take on the material. The book, though not always easy, nonetheless deserves a close reading by any and all Zen enthusiasts.Wright's choice of target—Blofeld and Huang Po—is somewhat of an unexpected delight. As with Buberism in Hasidic studies, D. T. Suzuki has perpetuated a certain "Suzuki-ism" in the Zen field, but compared with Suzuki or even Watts, Blofeld is never known to be that independent a thinker as to deserve similar attention. An eclectic collector of Eastern esoterica, Blofeld's "romance" with the Orient is not always that reflective; sometimes he just reports what he was told, unvarnished. His "romanticism" is thus often second- or thirdhand. The introduction to his 1959 work is anything but aggressive; he sounds at times all too apologetic. But [End Page 631] precisely because of this, Wright is able to cite Blofeld and use him to get at a more general but pervasive set of European "romantic" assumptions about the Buddhist East and submit that to a coherent and intriguing critique. He also whets our appetite for a good, intellectual biography of Blofeld, which we do not have. We do not really get a good picture of Huang Po either—but then, asking for that might be chalked up to a yearning for "romance" or just wishful thinking. One longs for some middle ground.That is because, unlike Descartes' Meditations, which set forth a singular, modern rationality, Wright's postmodern Meditation cannot help but suggest just one way of dealing with the polysemy of the text. Perhaps some histoire de mentalité in the future can restore some sense of the significance of Huang Po the person and his historic hour. Maybe a different... (shrink)