Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

I examine the claim, made by some authors, that we sometimes acquire knowledge from falsehood. I focus on two representative cases in which a subject S infers a proposition q from a false proposition p. If S knows that q, I argue, S's false belief that p is not essential to S's cognition. S's knowledge is instead due to S's belief that p′, a proposition in the neighbourhood of p that S believes . S thus knows despite her false belief. (...) The widely accepted and plausible principle that inferential knowledge requires known premises is unscathed. (shrink)

This article surveys western business ethics' recent history to show how this ethic has neglected recently its religious traditions and become construed more narrowly as an applied philosophy and social science. It argues that this narrowness has confused business ethics' role in business education and helped to weaken the distinctiveness of certain institutions of higher education. It then suggests ways that western business ethics might become more integrated, interesting, and autonomous as an academic discipline by incorporating its key religious traditions.

In the current paper, we re-examine the concept of strong admissibility, as was originally introduced by Baroni and Giacomin. We examine the formal properties of strong admissibility, both in its e...

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. _Songs of Experience _is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its (...) sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis—qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful—_Songs of Experience _explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience—epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical—Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures. (shrink)

. Science at the interface with society is regarded with mistrust among parts of the public. Scientific judgments on matters of practical concern are not infrequently suspected of being incompetent and biased. I discuss two proposals for remedying this deficiency. The first aims at strengthening the independence of science and suggests increasing the distance to political and economic powers. The drawback is that this runs the risk of locking science in an academic ivory tower. The second proposal favors “counter-politicization” in (...) that research is strongly focused on projects “in the public interest,” that is, on projects whose expected results will benefit all those concerned by these results. The disadvantage is that the future use of research findings cannot be delineated reliably in advance. I argue that the underlying problem is the perceived lack of relevance and reliability and that pluralism is an important step toward its solution. Pluralism serves to stimulate a more inclusive research agenda and strengthens the well-testedness of scientific approaches. However, pluralism also prevents the emergence of clear-cut practical suggestions. Accordingly, pluralism is part of the solution to the credibility crisis of science, but also part of the problem. In order for science to be suitable as a guide for practice, the leeway of scientific options needs to be narrowed – in spite of uncertainty in epistemic respect. This reduction can be achieved by appeal to criteria that do not focus on the epistemic credentials of the suggestions but on their appropriateness in practical respect. (shrink)

We reconstruct genetic determinism as a reductionist thesis to the effect that the molecular properties of cells can be accounted for to a great extent by their genetic outfit. The non-reductionist arguments offered at this molecular level often use the relationship between structure and function as their point of departure. By contrast, we develop a non-reductionist argument that is confined to the structural characteristics of biomolecules; no appeal to functions is made. We raise two kinds of objections against the reducibility (...) claim underlying genetic determinism. First, some conceptual distinctions at the protein level cannot be captured on a genetic basis. A one-to-many relationship between DNA sequences and proteins emerges from them. Second, the relationship between genes and proteins is characterized by explanatory loops or reciprocal explanatory dependence. The presence of proteins is explained by the transcription from corresponding DNA sequences, and the latter is in turn accounted for by the action of proteins. By contrast, a reductive account requires a unidirectional explanatory dependence. (shrink)

Earlier in this century, many philosophers of science (for example, Rudolf Carnap) drew a fairly sharp distinction between theory and observation, between theoretical terms like 'mass' and 'electron', and observation terms like 'measures three meters in length' and 'is _2° Celsius'. By simply looking at our instruments we can ascertain what numbers our measurements yield. Creatures like mass are different: we determine mass by calculation; we never directly observe a mass. Nor an electron: this term is introduced in order to (...) explain what we observe. This (once standard) distinction between theory and observation was eventually found to be wanting. First, if the distinction holds, it is difficult to see what can characterize the relationship between theory :md observation. How can theoretical terms explain that which is itself in no way theorized? The second point leads out of the first: are not the instruments that provide us with observational material themselves creatures of theory? Is it really possible to have an observation language that is entirely barren of theory? The theory-Iadenness of observation languages is now an accept ed feature of the logic of science. Many regard such dependence of observation on theory as a virtue. If our instruments of observation do not derive their meaning from theories, whence comes that meaning? Surely - in science - we have nothing else but theories to tell us what to try to observe. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for Semantic Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition that more than one languge user takes to be that utterance's truth-conditional content. I argue that Semantic Variance is problematic for standard theories concerning the nature of communication, the epistemic significance of ordinary disputes, the semantics of speech reports, and the nature of linguistic competence. In response to the problems arising from the truth of Semantic Variance, I develop new accounts of (...) the transmission of relevant information, ordinary disputes, and the semantics of speech reports. Towards the end of the dissertation I outline a pluralistic account about the nature of communication and linguistic competence. (shrink)

The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range (...) of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences. (shrink)

A physician and spokesman for the French Ideologues, Pierre-JeanGeorges Cabanis (1757-1808) stands at the crossroads of several influential developments in modern culture--Enlightenment optimism about human perfectibility, the clinical method in medicine, and the formation and adaptation of liberal social ideals in the French Revolution. This first major study of Cabanis in English traces the influences of these developments on his thought and career. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously (...) out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Part I: The sun of reason. From the Greeks to the age of reason -- Kant: reason as critique; the critique of reason -- Hegel and Marx: dialectical reason -- Reason in crisis -- Part II: Reason's eclipse and return. The critique of instrumental reason: Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno -- Habermas and the communicative turn -- Habermas and his critics.

Responsible research and innovation features the dialog of science “with society,” and research performed “for society,” i.e., for the benefit of the people. I focus on this latter, outcome-oriented notion of RRI and discuss two kinds of problems. The first one concerns options to anticipate the future course of science and technology. Such foresight knowledge seems necessary for subjecting research to demands of social and moral responsibility. However, predicting science and technology is widely considered impossible. The second problem concerns moral (...) evaluation. The benefit or harm produced by certain research and innovation achievements is often hard to estimate. Against this background of uncertainty in factual and moral assessment, I explore opportunities left for RRI. First, RRI should contribute to maintaining a wide range of approaches. Second, judgments about RRI should draw on zones of convergence among the variety of research approaches pursued. Third, decisions about implementing a technology should be revisable. Fourth, the more specific inclusion of demands from society should be reserved to technology development. Fifth, in many respects, the social compatibility of a new technology is due rather to the social context than the inherent features of the product. Favorable circumstances are transparency, representation of all relevant parties, and procedural fairness. As a result, some of the benefits and detriments of research and innovation can be identified without detailed knowledge of future findings. (shrink)

I defend a contextualist account of bare epistemic modal claims against recent objections. I argue that in uttering a sentence of the form ‘It might be that p,’ a speaker is performing two speech acts. First, she is (directly) asserting that in view of the knowledge possessed by some relevant group, it might be that p. The content of this first speech act is accounted for by the contextualist view. But the speaker's utterance also generates an indirect speech act that (...) consists in a weak suggestive that p. Since this second speech act is typically the main point of a bare epistemic modal utterance, our (negative or positive) responses to the utterance actually target this second speech act. I show how this two-speech-act account can explain the data recently adduced against contextualism. (shrink)

In ‘ The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy ’ Laurence Sterne writes: That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

In recent years, the ideas of the mathematician Bernhard Riemann have come to the fore as one of Deleuze's principal sources of inspiration in regard to his engagements with mathematics, and the history of mathematics. Nevertheless, some relevant aspects and implications of Deleuze's philosophical reception and appropriation of Riemann's thought remain unexplored. In the first part of the paper I will begin by reconsidering the first explicit mention of Riemann in Deleuze's work, namely, in the second chapter of Bergsonism. In (...) this context, as I intend to show first, Deleuze's synthesis of some key features of the Riemannian theory of multiplicities is entirely dependent, both textually and conceptually, on his reading of another prominent figure in the history of mathematics: Hermann Weyl. This aspect has been largely underestimated, if not entirely neglected. However, as I attempt to bring out in the second part of the paper, reframing the understanding of Deleuze's philosophical engagement with Riemann's mathematics through the Riemann–Weyl conjunction can allow us to disclose some unexplored aspects of Deleuze's further elaboration of his theory of multiplicities and profound confrontation with contemporary science. This finally permits delineation of a correlation between Deleuze's plane of immanence and the contemporary physico-mathematical space of fundamental interactions. (shrink)

Mettendo in discussione le antiche considerazioni di Ferdinand Tönnies sul­l’ineluttabilità della transizione dalla comunità alla società – un carattere tipico della modernità secondo Tönnies –, Martin Buber reclama la necessità, in­sieme politica e religiosa, di costruire una comunità post-sociale, nella quale tro­vi concretezza l’anelito socialista e libertario alla ‘buona vita’ e il bisogno spi­rituale di realizzare Dio nei rapporti degli uo­mi­ni con i loro simili. Nella sua riflessione, infatti, l’autore esprime l’idea di un Dio che non si sovrappone af­­fatto (...) agli uomini, ma si colloca accanto a loro, manifestandosi nelle isti­tu­zio­ni mondane, quando siano fon­date sulla giustizia e sull’uguaglianza.By drawing into question Ferdinand Tönnies ancient remarks on the ine­vi­ta­bility of the transition from community to society – according to the former, a ty­pical feature of modernity – Martin Buber claims the need, both political and re­ligious, to build a post-social community, in which the socialist and liber­tarian aspiration for a ‘good life’ and the spiritual need to realize God in hu­man relations with our fellow men may materialize. As a matter of fact, in his thought, the author expresses the idea of a God not superimposing on men at all, but rather standing next to them, revealing in worldly institutions, when foun­ded on justice and equality. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kant’s notorious claim that psychology cannot become a science “properly so-called”. Contrary to widespread opinion, he does not hold any of the following three implausible views: psychological phenomena cannot be mathematized, they cannot be explained in by reference to mathematical causal laws, and they cannot be dealt with in causal terms at all. Instead of claiming something about psychological phenomena, Kant argues against a specific conception of psychology: the then popular introspective psychologies. Only this reading explains why (...) he is also concerned with the possibility of psychological experiments, and it does justice to how he himself treats phenomena of thinking, willing, and so on. (shrink)

The philosophical treatment of space and time has had a long history. This continuing interest stems not least from the fact that space and time form the basis of movement. Space-time philosophy encompasses a wide range of subjects, many of which, on first inspection, do not seem to have anything to do with space and time. Space-time philosophy is a matter of causality and probability, the Big Bang and Heat Death. It is a matter of the origins of each term (...) s meaning and the inability to experience space-time theory first hand. It is a matter of Achilles and the turtle, as well as, Maxwell s demon. In dealing with space-time, one does not deal solely with space and time. ". (shrink)

Historical Epistemology: On the Diversity and Change of Epistemic Values in Science. Historical epistemology involves the claim that the system of scientific knowledge is not determined by the observations but is also subject to epistemic requirements that may change in the historical process of doing research. As a result, the system of knowledge is path‐dependent in that its shape is contingent on epistemic choices made at certain historical points. I attempt to elaborate this approach by drawing attention to the double (...) role of epistemic values. First, such values create relations of significance and thereby contribute to directing research into certain avenues. Second, they are also important in the process of confirmation in that they entail that certain forms of agreement with the facts are superior and preferable to other such forms. Some epistemic orientations and reorientations can be reconstructed as arising from an interaction with nature, but others are based on commitments to the kind of knowledge we appreciate. The epistemic authority of science is created in large measure by rules of the scientific community that express how to deal with knowledge claims. (shrink)

I defend the principle that a person is blameworthy for her action only if that action was morally wrong. But what should we say about an agent who does the right thing based on bad motives? I present three types of cases that have these features. In each, I argue, the agent is not culpable for her action; however, she violates the norm of moral responsibility, and thus acts in a morally irresponsible way. This analysis, I show, has several virtues. (...) It also has important theoretical ramifications: it allows for a more nuanced approach to moral luck and paves the way for an unexplored line of defense in favor of a particular norm of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this document, we describe the concepts of ideal semantics and stage semantics for abstract argumentation in terms of argument labellings. The difference between the traditional extensions approach and the labelling approach is that where the former only identifies the sets of accepted arguments, the latter also identifies the rejected arguments as well as the arguments that are neither accepted nor rejected. So far, the labellings approach has been successfully applied to complete, grounded, preferred, stable and semi-stable semantics, as well (...) as to the concept of admissibility. In the current paper, we continue this line of research by showing that ideal semantics and stage semantics can also be described in terms of argument labellings. (shrink)

What does it take for an individual to be personally responsible for behaviors that lead to increased risk of disease? We examine three approaches to responsibility that cover the most important aspects of the discussion of responsibility and spell out what it takes, according to each of them, to be responsible for behaviors leading to increased risk of disease. We show that only what we call the causal approach can adequately accommodate widely shared intuitions to the effect that certain causal (...) influences—such as genetic make-up or certain social circumstances—diminish, or undermine personal responsibility. However, accepting the causal approach most likely makes personal responsibility impossible. We therefore need either to reject these widely shared intuitions about what counts as responsibility-softening or undermining or to accept that personal responsibility for behaviors leading to increased risk of disease rests on premises so shaky that personal responsibility is probably impossible. (shrink)

This Introduction to the Special Issue on “Responsible Research and Innovation” outlines features of the philosophical debate about the concepts involved and summarizes the papers assembled in this issue. The topic of RRI is widely discussed in science studies and has made its way into science policy. This SI is intended to make the contributions of philosophers of science more visible. The philosophically relevant parts of the field concern, among others, the processes of public participation in science and their impact (...) on the knowledge produced, the notion of justified public trust in science, and the idea of research pursued for the common good. Such topics bring social procedures together with epistemic and ethical considerations and thus raise philosophical challenges. RRI is subject to the tension between committing research to creating knowledge in harmony with public expectations, on the one hand, while not complying with public wishful thinking, on the other. RRI embodies a friction between serving people’s aspirations and correcting people’s expectations. This special issue is intended to explore the narrow pathway left between these conflicting demands. (shrink)

Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory. They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society. Most attempts to explain the role of brands focus on brands either as marketing and management tools or a symptoms of consumerism. Brand Society combines these perspectives to show how brands have (...) the power to transform both the organizations that develop them and the lifestyles of the individuals who consume them. This holistic approach shows how brands function as a medium between producers and consumers in a way that is rapidly transforming our economy and society. That's the bottom line of the Brand Society: brands are a new way of organizing production and managing consumption. Using an array of practical case studies from a diverse set of organizations, this book provides a fascinating account of the way in which brands influence the lives of individuals and the organizations they work in. (shrink)

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

Interviewing as part of broadcast news includes a wide range of practices that go beyond calling public figures to account in ways that have received so much attention and analysis in the research literature. This article examines a major strand of news interviewing which it identifies as ‘experiential’ and argues, on the basis of close discourse analysis of interviews drawn from coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2005 London bombings, that the focus on personal experience and emotion in (...) them is managed in ways quite distinct from accountability interviewing. Indeed, the apparently formulaic quality of the verbal performance in these interviews gives shape to experience in a fashion close to ritual but demands a quite different kind of alignment from the audience than that implicated by accountability interviewing. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians need to address the question of cost-responsibility: If an individual is responsible for being worse off than others, then what benefits, if any, is that individual uniquely cost-responsible for? By applying luck egalitarianism to justice in health I discuss different answers to this question inspired by two different interpretations of luck egalitarianism, namely ‘standard luck egalitarianism’ and ‘all luck egalitarianism’, respectively. Even though I argue that the latter is more plausible than the former, I ultimately suggest and defend (...) a third interpretation of luck egalitarianism, which I label ‘universal luck egalitarianism’. Finally, I adjust my findings to a (all things considered) more plausible currency, namely welfare. (shrink)

The thesis of social constructionism is that emotions are shaped by culture and society. I build on this insight to show that existing social constructionist views of emotions, while providing valid research methods, overly restrict the scope of the social constructionist agenda. The restriction is due to the ontological assumption that social construction is indissociable from language. In the first part, I describe the details of the influential social constructionist views of Averill and Harré. Drawing on recent theorizing in psychology, (...) I suggest that their fixation on language makes these approaches inadequate to the analysis of the social construction of human emotional experience. In the second part, I extend the argument to other species, suggesting that these social constructionist views are incapable of accommodating the fact, ascertained by primatologists, that animals have cultures, and that part of animal culture concerns the social molding of their emotions. I conclude that a reconstructed social constructionism should be regarded not as inimical to, but as part and parcel of, a nonreductive biology of emotions. (shrink)

If we are responsible for taking care of our health, are we blameworthy when we become sick because we failed to meet that responsibility? Or is it immoral to blame the victim of sickness? A moral perspective that is sensitive to therapeutic concerns will downplay blame, but banishing all blame is neither feasible nor desirable. We need to understand the ambiguities surrounding moral responsibility in four contexts: (1) preventing sickness, (2) assigning financial liabilities for health care costs, (3) giving meaning (...) to human suffering, and (4) interacting with health care professionals. We also need to distinguish different kinds of blame, explore the interplay of justice and compassion in avoiding unjustified blaming of victims, and work toward a unified moral-therapeutic perspective that encourages individuals to accept responsibility while avoiding destructive forms of blaming. (shrink)

In recent literature, there has been much debate about whether and how luck egalitarianism, given its focus on personal responsibility, can justify universal health care. In this paper we argue that, whether or not this is so, and in fact whether or not egalitarianism should be sensitive to responsibility at all, the question of personal responsibilization for health is not settled. This is the case because whether or not individuals are responsible for their own health condition is not all that (...) is relevant when considering whether we should somehow hold them responsible for their own health condition, e.g. cost-wise. There may also be efficiency-based reasons to hold them responsible, and there may even be egalitarian reasons. Defining universal health care as an insurance system where everyone’s deductible and premium is 0, we will argue that efficiency-based reasons for cost-responsibilization are not convincing, but that there are egalitarian reasons for cost-responsibilization. Luck egalitarianism, therefore, cannot, at least not on its own term, justify universal health care. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Anscombe’s account of animal versus human intention, and of her notorious claim that the expression of intention is purely conventional. It engages in a criticism of Richard Moran’s and Martin Stone’s recent exegesis of these views of Anscombe’s, and proposes an alternative reading which explains how she can accept both that speechless brutes have intentions and that human intention is essentially linguistic.