To bring the significance of Lyotard's reading of Kant's sublime into full relief, I will begin by considering some of the philosophical developments of Descartes and Hume as they relate to issues of subjectivity and consciousness. The thought of these two modern writers informs the critical philosophy of Kant. I will then explain the aesthetics of Kant and show how with the sublime there is a unique kind of time distinct from the common time of cognition. This aesthetic time destabilizes (...) what Kant had earlier described as the basis for the way that we think about the self. In light of this concept of aesthetic temporality, I will examine, in the conclusions of my essay, Galen Strawson's pearl theory of the self, and suggest a possible alternative view. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is an ethical theory that gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. In contrast, dominant policy-evaluation methodologies, such as benefit-cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and utilitarianism, ignore or downplay issues of fair distribution. Based on a research group founded by the editors, this important book is the first to show how prioritarianism can be used to assess governmental policies and evaluate societal conditions. This book uses prioritarianism as a methodology to evaluate governmental policy across a variety of (...) policy domains: taxation, health policy, risk regulation, education, climate policy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the first to demonstrate how prioritarianism improves on GDP as an indicator of a society's progress over time. Edited by two senior figures in the field with contributions from some of the world's leading economists, this volume bridges the gap from the theory of prioritarianism to its practical application. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship concerning science diplomacy is increasingly taking a historical approach. In our introduction to this special issue, we argue that this approach promises insight into science diplomacy because of the tools historians of science bring to their work. In particular, we observe that not only are historians of science currently poised to chart the diplomatic aspects involved in the transnational circulation of technoscientific knowledge, materials, and expertise. They are ready to bring critical global analysis to an important phenomenon that (...) has too often been treated as a benign diplomacy device deployed by the Global North without equal reference to the Global South. Through cases discussed in the articles of the special issue, however, we see that historically, in the Global South as well as the Global North, science diplomacy has often functioned to mediate the circulation of technoscientific knowledge and materials, and its historical study helps to better illuminate the resulting knowledge-power nexus. (shrink)

*Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author's and should not be ascribed to the American Medical Association.

In Real Hallucinations, Matthew Ratcliffe offers a philosophical examination of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how it is shaped by relations with other people. He focuses on the seemingly simple question of how we manage to distinguish among our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. To answer this question, he first develops a detailed analysis of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (...) (somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's). He shows how thought insertion and many of those experiences labeled as "hallucinations" consist of disturbances in a person's senseof being in one type of intentional state rather than another. Ratcliffe goes on to argue that such experiences occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. In so doing, he considers forms of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The overall position arrived at is that experience has an essentially temporal structure, involving patterns of anticipation and fulfillment that are specific to types of intentional states and serve to distinguish them phenomenologically. Disturbances of this structure can lead to various kinds of anomalous experience. Importantly, anticipation-fulfillment patterns are sustained, regulated, and disrupted by interpersonal experience and interaction. It follows that the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole. (shrink)

This book explores how ancient philosophers, particularly Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Sextus Empiricus, understood relativity and how their theories of the phenomenon affected, and were affected by, their broader philosophical outlooks.

In this paper I respond to Robert Taylor's argument that a Rawlsian framework does not support strong affirmative action programs. The paper makes three main arguments. The first disputes Taylor's claim that strong AA would not be needed in ideal conditions. Private racial discrimination, I suggest, might still exist in such conditions, so strong AA might be needed there. The second challenges Taylor's claims that pure procedural justice constrains Rawlsian nonideal theory. I argue that this rests on a fetishizing of (...) pure procedural justice that is absent from Rawls's work. I also show that a revised formulation of Taylor's concern here also fails. My third argument makes a positive Rawlsian case for strong AA in nonideal conditions that builds on a Taylor concession. Taylor suggests that the goal of nonideal theory is to create a world in which ideal theory can be applied. My argument begins by showing that another permissible goal of Rawlsian nonideal theory is to ameliorate injustice. I then argue that Rawls's contractualist framework supports the strongest forms of AA when category 3 interventions are blocked. (shrink)

Multiple acoustic dimensions signal speech categories. However, dimensions vary in their informativeness; some are more diagnostic of category membership than others. Speech categorization reflects these dimensional regularities such that diagnostic dimensions carry more “perceptual weight” and more effectively signal category membership to native listeners. Yet perceptual weights are malleable. When short-term experience deviates from long-term language norms, such as in a foreign accent, the perceptual weight of acoustic dimensions in signaling speech category membership rapidly adjusts. The present study investigated whether (...) rapid adjustments in listeners’ perceptual weights in response to speech that deviates from the norms also affects listeners’ own speech productions. In a word recognition task, the correlation between two acoustic dimensions signaling consonant categories, fundamental frequency and voice onset time, matched the correlation typical of English, and then shifted to an “artificial accent” that reversed the relationship, and then shifted back. Brief, incidental exposure to the artificial accent caused participants to down-weight perceptual reliance on F0, consistent with previous research. Throughout the task, participants were intermittently prompted with pictures to produce these same words. In the block in which listeners heard the artificial accent with a reversed F0 × VOT correlation, F0 was a less robust cue to voicing in listeners’ own speech productions. The statistical regularities of short-term speech input affect both speech perception and production, as evidenced via shifts in how acoustic dimensions are weighted. (shrink)

This chapter delineates two types of ideal theory that are found in Rawls’s corpus of work. The first is ideal-method theory, which is theory constructed using idealizing assumptions that do not directly correspond with the actual world. The second is ideal-content theory, namely criteria for assessing whether something is a perfectly justice institution. The chapter provides an independent justification for both types of theory, arguing that ideal-method theory is valuable within certain parameters; for instance, the idealizing assumption of strict compliance (...) helps to clarify the distinction between distributive and retributive justice. The chapter illuminates the value of ideal-content theory by clarifying and defending Rawls’s claim that nonideal theory depends on ideal-content theory. In particular, it argues that in order to gain a systematic grasp of the more pressing problems of nonideal theory it is plausible to argue that ideal-content theory is necessary. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 603-604 [Access article in PDF] Irving Singer. George Santayana, Literary Philosopher. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 217. Cloth, $25.00. In a prefatory comment, Irving Singer affirms that George Santayana, Literary Philosopher is "an introduction to the part of Santayana's philosophy that has meant the most to me" (xii). The locus of this personal interest, he goes on (...) to say, is in the "humanistic relevance" of Santayana's work. Singer's fruitful reflections on Santayana's literary genius, as well as the great philosopher's depth of critical insight with regard to aesthetics, literature, and love, all testify to this humanistic interest.Singer's examinations of Santayana's critical and fictional works are as accessible as they are interesting, a characteristic which alone recommends the book for readers interested in gaining an introductory understanding. Equally important however is the fact that Singer's reflections lend themselves to a much larger academic audience as well. Santayana's work is revealed, correctly, to be not only relevant to the philosophical community, but to contain contributional elements that are of interest to criticism in both literature and art.This does not mean that Singer avoids criticizing Santayana's philosophy. To the contrary, he levels a key criticism that begs response. Singer believes Santayana is incapable of accounting for interpersonal love. According to Singer, Santayana's deficiency in this regard is due to his belief that "[other] individuals are merely the vehicle [End Page 603] to some cherished ideal" (124). More specifically, Singer holds that Santayana's account of the realization of interpersonal love is restricted by an unnecessary dualism: the gratification of material desires (like Freud), and the distanced contemplation of an ideal (like Plato).This familiar dualism might be referred to as the "desire-renunciation" formula Santayana employs throughout his work in an attempt to pay equal respect to the material ground, and the contrasting ideal groundlessness of all things. For Santayana, the oscillation between desire and renunciation is so obviously reflected in individual aspirations, and in the general course of every human life that, for the philosopher, the task is not to attempt to justify one or the other, but to reconcile them. For Singer however, Santayana ultimately fails in this attempt: "...[Santayana's] attempt to unify Platonism and naturalism fails as philosophy..." (x). He charges that the structure of Santayana's philosophy "fails to show us how people can overcome the split between matter and spirit." Thus, Singer's divergence from Santayana derives from an overall rejection of the philosophical soundness of his work (favoring its humanistic appeal), and from his feeling that Santayana's philosophy never achieves the reconciliation it sets out as its goal. But these charges are unjust, and they seem to arise from an insufficient account of Santayana's doctrine of essence as it relates to his understanding of love.For Singer, "persons" rather than essences (or ideals) are the irreducible themes of human interest: "...loving is not the same as desiring. We desire things or persons for what they can give us, for satisfactions we hope they will provide. In loving anyone, however, we take an interest in that person, as a person and not just as a vehicle to something else" (91). But the implicit charge of this claim, namely, that Santayana's preference for essences as the irreducible themes of human interest results in the view that humans are incapable of loving persons-qua-persons (but only qua-essences), is simply wrong; and, importantly, reflective of a misunderstanding of Santayana's doctrine of essence.Santayana is consistent in his affirmation that in youth, when the demand to act is acute, it is sane to cry and to beat one's fists against the world, while with time and experience, such heated displays become tragic and even unbecoming. The same is true for Santayana with respect to love. It is wisdom reflective of the love of all things to laugh (ironically) at what was in youth an irremediable demand for the love of particular... (shrink)

:Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. ‘Ideal-advisor’ accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the advisors’ moral preferences. Do we have reason to believe that the advisors, albeit idealized, can still diverge in their rankings of a given set of alternatives? If so, (...) what are the moral facts when the advisors do diverge? These questions are investigated here using the tools of Arrovian social choice theory. (shrink)

When Saint Thomas Aquinas makes claims such as “that which is not just seems to be no law at all” it is a bit difficult to discern what he means. Some think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Strong Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a law only if X is just. Others think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Weak Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a non-defective law only (...) if X is just. In this paper, focusing on Aquinas’s metaphysics, I argue that both of these interpretations are mistaken. Aquinas is primarily defending what we can call The Metaphysical Natural Law Thesis: since being and goodness are convertible, legal validity comes in degrees—and this entails that the justice of a law literally increases the amount of being a law possesses, while the injustice of a law literally decreases the amount of being a law possesses. On this interpretation, then, the injustice of a law entails an ontological attenuation of the law without entailing an ontological annihilation of the law. (shrink)

This paper stages an argument in five premises:1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakableparticularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon itinto a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime.2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the secondof which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are unwilling to sanction in theontological (...) and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it.3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move asKant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience,wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that askingOthers to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is atthe same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness.4. That what game theory shows us is that, at thelimits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to dois precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct andthat of others.5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for theOther is always respect for their ‘castration’—that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself.In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not. (shrink)

Taxonomy is undeniably central to science — indeed, some see taxonomy as prerequisite to scientific theorizing. But what are taxonomies about? Are taxonomies discoveries or inventions? Has the world an objective, monistic structure — natural kinds or, to use Plato’s metaphor, joints along which true scientific theories carve? Controversy surrounding these issues has been at the heart of important debates in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language.

This paper argues for a rehabilitation of philosophical engagement with the question of whether revolution can be justified. Such a renewed engagement with the problem of revolution appears to be stymied by the intuition that we have strong moral arguments ruling out revolution in almost every case. I aim to show that we should abandon this intuition. I will argue that standard arguments against revolution are not strong enough to warrant the relative inattention the question of the justifiability revolution has (...) recently suffered, especially given the emergence of new potential justifications for revolution (appeals to principles of distributive justice, appeals to the international human rights regime) and the subtle but important shifts that we ought to make in our conceptions of sovereignty and revolution. Accordingly, this paper sketches six forms of argument against the justifiability of revolution. I assess each form of argument and I conclude that none of them are strong enough to makes further philosophical inquiry into the justification of revolution pointless. (shrink)

J.L. Austin described speech acts as utterances which are themselves actions, and not simply descriptions of actions or states of affairs. It is suggested that emotions are also actions, and not simply results of actions. Emotions may be conceived as attunements in the phenomenological tradition, as means of experiencing the world. Understood as attunements, emotions are actions in the sense that they do not simply result from appraisal processes or social constraints, but are themselves our engagements with the world. Three (...) insights into the nature of emotion achieved through the comparison of speech acts and emotions are discussed: emotions may best be studied as acts, and not as elements such as cognitive appraisals, characteristic feeling states, or states of physiological arousal which often accompany emotions; the study of emotions as acts may best be viewed as an exercise in uncovering rather than discovering knowledge; and emotions are commitments to world views and, as such, are susceptible to moral evaluation. (shrink)

Acts of interpersonal moral address depend upon a shared space of social visibility in which human beings can both display themselves and perceive others as morally important. This raises questions that have gone largely undiscussed in recent philosophical work on moral address. How does the social mediation of interpersonal perception by forces such as ideology shape and limit the possibilities for moral address? And how might creative acts of putting oneself on display make possible unanticipated forms of moral address, especially (...) under ideological conditions? In this paper, I propose that we can make progress towards answering such questions by treating moral address as a fundamentally aesthetic phenomenon. I begin by drawing examples from literature that invite the idea that humans and animals possess ethically value-laden features that are open to empirical view, and argue that approaches to moral address that do not avail themselves of this idea face serious limits, focusing on Stephen Darwall’s The Second-Person Standpoint. I then illustrate the role of the aesthetic in moral address by offering a reading of the “Capitol Crawl,” a 1990 direct action in which people with disabilities left behind assistive devices in order to ascend the stairs leading to the US Capitol. Drawing from some ideas in Iris Murdoch, I argue that the aesthetically striking features of this collective act of moral address are inseparable from the moral demands it expresses, and that, read as an aesthetic whole, its morally expressive power extends beyond the discursive while nevertheless remaining a part of the space of reasons. (shrink)

_Published by Taylor & Francis Group for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education_ This _Handbook_ addresses the concept and implementation of technological pedagogical content knowledge -- the knowledge and skills that teachers need in order to integrate technology meaningfully into instruction in specific content areas. Recognizing, for example, that effective uses of technology in mathematics are quite different from effective uses of technology in social studies, teachers need specific preparation in using technology in each content area they will (...) be teaching. Offering a series of chapters by scholars in different content areas who apply the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework to their individual content areas, the volume is structured around three themes: What is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge? Integrating Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge into Specific Subject Areas Integrating Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge into Teacher Education and Professional Development The _Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Educators_ is simultaneously a mandate and a manifesto on the engagement of technology in classrooms based on consensus standards and rubrics for effectiveness. As the title of the concluding chapter declares, "It’s about time!" The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national, voluntary association of higher education institutions and related organizations. Our mission is to promote the learning of all PK-12 students through high-quality, evidence-based preparation and continuing education for all school personnel. For more information on our publications, visit our website at: www.aacte.org. (shrink)

Elliot Eisner notes, “The kinds of nets we know how to weave determine the kinds of nets we cast. These nets, in turn, determine the kinds of fish we catch.”1 Sound studies is a recently emerged interdisciplinary field that draws upon the social sciences and humanities in support of a broad range of inquiry into music and sound. Weaving new approaches that cast interesting questions that yield fascinating catches, sound studies has much to offer those looking to expand or challenge (...) their conceptions of music and sound—particularly educators who wish to hear the world anew while helping others to grow meaningfully with music. This article presents an overview of the field with particular attention to those actual... (shrink)

Aquinas says that faith is belief about things one does not “see” for oneself. But if you do not see it for yourself, what makes your belief reasonable? Recent interpreters have missed a key part of Aquinas’s answer, namely, that faith is believing God (credere Deo). In other words, they have not given sufficient attention to the formal object of faith. As a result, they overemphasize other parts of his answer. Drawing partly on recent epistemology of testimony, I explain how (...) the formal object of faith contributes to the justification of one’s faith. (shrink)

In recent years an increasing number of moral theorists have come to embrace the term "moral pluralism" to describe a particular kind of moral theory. Unfortunately, there has been little consensus regarding what exactly constitutes a pluralistic theory, and what specific commitments such theories involve. My dissertation takes on the task of articulating the underlying schema of pluralist moral theory, and of analyzing the plausibility and implications of pluralism's fundamental commitments. I argue that the most thoroughgoing pluralist theories are shaped (...) by two defining theses; the plurality of the good , and the plurality of the right , and that these are conceptually linked by two additional meta-ethical commitments. My analysis of the plausibility of these commitments is at times friendly to moral pluralism and at times critical of it. For instance, I develop an account of "value incommensurability," an idea upon which pluralism depends, that resists some of more the important attacks within the literature. Yet I also criticize the commitment to the plurality of the right, as held by Susan Wolf and several other pluralists. I argue that this view is less plausible than "limited pluralism"---a view that is pluralistic about the good but monistic about the right. In the final chapter I explore the relationship between moral pluralism and political liberalism, focusing on the role that overriding values play within each type of theory. (shrink)

While it is often thought that pluralism is best accommodated by a liberal state, John Kekes has recently argued that pluralism and liberalism involve inconsistent commitments. He maintains that liberalism is committed to the idea that one or more of the “liberal values” must override all other values, while pluralism is committed to the idea that there are no overriding values whatsoever. In this paper I challenge Kekes' position by arguing that ethical pluralism does not require an absence of overriding (...) values, and that liberalism does not require that one or more of the liberal values must override all others. (shrink)

For Lipman, philosophy needs to approximate human interests by being dramatized, as proposed here with a new viewpoint: “to reveal life is to reveal drama.” The life of a philosopher is “revitalized in a comprehensive re-telling,” in the philosophical question and the reflective concerns of wh..

It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role (...) of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave
. (shrink)

The first section reconstructs Dugin’s claims to have charted a “fourth political theory” (4PT), which would have broken from “fascism” and “Nazism”, the “third political theory” (as well liberalism and communism, the first and second “PTs” respectively). The second section of the paper critically unpacks four Duginian claims to defend this position, despite his avowed recourse to intellectuals who became Nazi Party Members and public advocates of the Third Reich, led by Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. In the third section, (...) we assess whether Dugin’s substantive claims hold up about “Nazism” and “fascism”, which enable him to present his 4PT as “anti-Nazi/fascist/racist”, by recourse to Aurel Kolnai’s monumental 1938 work The War on the West: the most extensive anglophone examination of the intellectual sources, texts, and parameters of “the Nazi creed, … its fundamental principles and its details” (Kolnai 1938: 18). Our argument is that Dugin’s “4PT” involves a more or less clever ideological repackaging of the “3PT” in the face of continuing horror at the Nazi’s crimes, rather than a novel political theory, based on a “retreat[ing] from the “sub-standard” Hitler to the “eminent” Spengler, Heidegger or Nietzsche” (Lukács 1980: p. 8). (shrink)

The debate over whether the just war theory begins with a "presumption against violence" has raged among Christian ethicists for more than thirty years. One camp argues that the theory begins with a presumption against violence that can be overridden in exceptional circumstances. The other camp claims that the just war tradition instead begins with a presumption against injustice. A careful analysis of the debate, however, reveals that the term "presumption against violence" has been used in three different ways, and (...) that clarifying these usages can show the common ground in the debate and move it toward a resolution. (shrink)