Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defense of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of substances. Langton argues that his claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but epistemic humility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. This interpretation vindicates Kant's scientific realism, and shows his primary/secondary quality distinction to (...) be superior even to modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable. (shrink)

"The Symons Medal—one of Canada's most prestigious honours—recognizes an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to Canadian life. The 2020 Symons Medal was awarded to Mr. Bob Rae, P.C., C.C., O.Ont, Q.C. Mr. Rae is the 20th Medallist in this series, following a formidable line of recipients. Hon. Rae's lecture is Learning from The Past, Imagining the Future: Reflections from a Political Life. Throughout the address, published in a bilingual book format, he explores such themes as Canada's improbable origins (...) as a nation; post-war emergence onto the global stage; active membership within the United Nations; and the significance of the ever-evolving Canadian constitution—a "living tree document." Welcoming remarks were made by the Honourable Premier Dennis King, while the official response was delivered by the Honourable Roy Romanow, PC, OC, SOM, QC. Hon. Rae is the 2020 recipient in part for his many years of work on humanitarian issues, most recently the Rohingya Refugee crisis, as well as his time focusing on indigenous issues and his decades of public service and teaching. He has always been deeply involved in the political life of Canada—as MP, former premier of Ontario, and interim leader of the federal Liberal Party. The Symons Medal and Lecture Series is named in honour of Professor Thomas H.B. Symons, a long-time supporter of Confederation Centre and a Board Governor. Held each fall, the medal ceremony and its associated lecture offer a national platform for an eminent Canadian to discuss the nation’s current state, shared histories, and future prospects using themes related to their professional pursuits. The award is presented at Confederation Centre of the Arts—Canada’s living monument to Canadian Confederation—in honour of the meetings of the Fathers of Confederation, who first gathered at Province House National Historic Site in the fall of 1864."--. (shrink)

What is the real significance of covariance anyway, and why should it be regarded as so fundamental ? What we mean by a covariant expression is one whose ...

In the October 1937 number of Philosophy of Science Lindsay has made certain criticisms of the adequacy of the “operational method” of analyzing and giving meaning to the concepts of physics, documenting his criticisms chiefly from my own writings. In these criticisms he has made statements as to the method which I would by no means accept. This is not characteristic of his paper only, for I have seldom indeed seen a printed discussion of the method which I would accept (...) as being an adequate or sometimes even fair representation of what I understand by it. It will perhaps pay therefore if I attempt to state what I conceive it to be all about, particularly since I have never attempted such a comprehensive statement and since my own ideas on the subject have been developing since I first wrote in the Logic of Modern Physics. For one reason I have hesitated to do this, for fear of seeming to subscribe to the not uncommon idea that we are dealing with some elaborate and profound new theory of the nature of knowledge or of meaning. I believe that I myself have never talked of “operationalism” or “operationism”, but I have a distaste for these grandiloquent words which imply something more philosophic and esoteric than the simple thing that I see. What we are here concerned with is an observation and description of methods which at least some physicists had already, perhaps unconsciously, adopted and found successful—the practise of the methods already existed. What I have attempted is to analyze these successful methods, not to set up a philosophical system and a theory of the properties that any method must have if it hopes to be successful. Since I was concerned with a technique already extant, my principal method of getting others to see what the technique involved has been to exhibit examples of the technique in action, rather than to attempt any exhaustive characterization of the technique itself. (shrink)

A first in English, this book engages with the ways in which Hegel and Sartre answer the difficult questions: What is it to be human? What place do we have in the world? How should we live? What can we be?

Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their respective conceptual theories, little work has been done to bring them into conversation on this issue or, indeed, any other. This is perhaps not surprising given Sartre’s early work on this topic has tended to be downplayed in favour of his affirmation of freedom, while Castoriadis not only denigrates Sartre’s thinking generally and his account of the imagination specifically but also posits their relationship as one of opposition. (...) In contrast, this article brings them into conversation on the question of the imagination to call into question Castoriadis assessment of their relation. To do so, I outline Sartre’s position in The Imaginary, showing that Castoriadis assessment of Sartre’s notion is based on a problematic, if common, misunderstanding of Sartre’s notion of nothingness and its relationship to creativity. Having overcome the opposition that Castoriadis affirms between their respective positions, I argue that, while there certainly are differences between their positions, there are also important points of agreement and overlap between them, especially regarding the constitutive role that the imagination plays for consciousness, and the relationships between the imagination and freedom and the imagination and creativity, that point to a shared and original approach. (shrink)

Rae Langton here draws together her ground-breaking and contentious work on pornography and objectification. She shows how women come to be objectified -- made subordinate and treated as things -- and she argues for the controversial feminist conclusions that pornography subordinates and silences women, and women have rights against pornography.

In this book, Gavin Rae analyses the foundations of political life by undertaking a critical comparative analysis of the political theologies of Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas. In so doing, Rae contributes to key debates in contemporary political philosophy, specifically those relating to the nature of, and the relationship between, the theological, the political, and the ethical, as well as those questioning the existence of ahistoric metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological foundations. While the theological is often associated with belief in a (...) fixed foundation such as God or the truth of a religion, Rae identifies another sense rooted in epistemology. On this understanding, the ontological limitations of human cognition mean that, ultimately, human truth is based in faith and so can never be certain. The argument developed suggests that Levinas’ conception of the political is grounded in theology in the sense of religion, particularly the revelations of Judaism. For this reason, Levinas claims that the political decision is based on how to implement a prior religiously-inspired norm: justice. Schmitt, in contrast, develops a conception of the political rooted in epistemic faith to claim that the political decision is normless. While sympathetic to Schmitt’s conception of theology and its relationship to the political, Rae concludes by arguing that the emphasis Levinas places on responsibility is crucial to understanding the implications of this. The continuing relevance of Schmitt’s and Levinas’ political theologies is that they teach us that, while the political decision is ultimately normless, we bear an infinite responsibility for the consequences of this normless decision. (shrink)

Kant argued that we have no knowledge of things in themselves, no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of things, a thesis that is not idealism but epistemic humility. David Lewis agrees (in 'Ramseyan Humility'), but for Ramseyan reasons rather than Kantian. I compare the doctrines of Ramseyan and Kantian humility, and argue that Lewis's contextualist strategy for rescuing knowledge from the sceptic (proposed elsewhere) should also rescue knowledge of things in themselves. The rescue would not be complete: for knowledge of (...) things in themselves would remain elusive. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to share with teachers a successful coaching model.

While Hannah Arendt claimed to have abandoned her early conception of radical evil for a banal one, recent scholarship has questioned that conclusion. This article contributes to the debate by arguing that her conceptual alteration is best understood by engaging with the structure of norms subtending each conception. From this, I develop a compatibilist understanding that accounts for Arendt’s movement from a radical to a banal conception of evil, by claiming that it was because she came to reject the foundationalism (...) of the former for the non-foundationalism of the latter, where norms are located from an ineffable ‘source’ diffusely spread throughout the society. While it might be thought that this means that such norms are all-encompassing to the extent that they determine individual action, I appeal to her notions of plurality, action, and natality, to argue that she defends the weaker claim that moral norms merely condition action. This demonstrates how Arendt’s conceptions of evil complement one another, highlights her understanding of the action–norms relation, and identifies that there is built into Arendt’s conception(s) of evil a resource for resisting totalitarian domination. (shrink)

This new series of books brings thoughtful, biblically informed perspectives to contemporary issues in bioethics.

In multicultural situations it is common for people to feel that their usual modes of coping are insufficient. They experience what is here called diversity stress. Today diversity stress is widely experienced in part because key management assumptions involving moral judgments are changing. Understanding diversity stress as a type of morality stress suggests particular patterns of causation, and of productive and counterproductive reactions on the part of individuals and organizations. – Deciding whom to appoint to a challenging new position in (...) Europe, a manager passes over an Asian employee and gives the job to a white male. He worries that there may be some prejudice in his own Judgment. – Because she wants to see more minorities in visible positions, a manager promotes a slightly less qualified minority candidate over a majority candidate, all the while feeling guilty. – A male manager hesitates to hug a longtime employee who has just lost her mother. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Judith Butler’s work has tended to be read through two axes: an early gender theory/later ethical theory division, and/or an ethical/political divide. In contrast, I aim to undercut both hermeneutical strategies by turning to her epistemology, as manifested through her analyses of normativity and “frames,” to argue that the latter acts as the hinge uniting her so-called early and later works and the ethical and political dimensions of her thinking. From this premise, I maintain that Butler affirms that these (...) frames are conditioned by power relations and contingency, points to the existence of multiple frameworks that simultaneously compete against one another, and insists that frames are culturally specific and determining of the categories that identify what counts as a legitimate life for a particular community and the ways in which each life is to be treated. By highlighting the social, performative, and normative dimensions of epistemic practices, Butler offers an epistemology based in the construction of contingent and contestable frameworks and shows how the contestation between distinct frameworks conditions the ethical-political life of each community. (shrink)

Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied (...) may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P. (shrink)

In this study of the works of Sren Kierkegaard, Murray Rae focuses on his understanding of the Christian faith and the nature of Christian conversion. The transformation of an individual under the impact of revelation is explored both in terms of the New Testament concept of metanoia and in comparison with claims to cognitive progress in other fields.

The distinction at the heart of Kant's philosophy is a metaphysical distinction: things in themselves are substances, bearers of intrinsic properties; phenomena are relational properties of substances. Kant says that things as we know them are composed "entirely of relations", by which he means forces. Kant's claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but humility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. Kant has an empiricist starting-point. Human beings are receptive creatures. (...) We must be affected by the things of which we come to have knowledge. Kant believes that humility follows from this fact of receptivity. Humility does follow from receptivity, once a further premise is supplied. Kant believes that relational properties, causal powers in particular, are not reducible to intrinsic properties, and that intrinsic properties are therefore causally inert. Receptivity implies that we can have knowledge only of what can affect us. Irreducibility implies, in Kant's view, that intrinsic properties cannot affect us. Humility follows from these. This interpretation finds support in a range of critical and pre-critical writings, but there is a special focus on an early anti-Leibnizian argument for irreducibility that has considerable philosophical merit. One advantage of this interpretation is that the following famous contradiction is dissolved: things in themselves exist, and are the causes of phenomena, and we have no knowledge of them as they are in themselves. Moreover Kant's scientific realism, surprising on an idealist interpretation, makes sense. It does not conflict with Kant's claim that he makes all the qualities secondary--he means that he makes them powers, or in Locke's terms, tertiary qualities. Kant's "primary"/secondary quality distinction is superior to widely accepted alternatives, and his application of the irreducibility argument to the primary qualities challenges some current orthodoxies. Kant's commitment to the unobservables of science is permitted by his understanding of receptivity: we can have knowledge of anything that can affect us. Kant's scientific realism, and his humility, thus have a common source. (shrink)

Despite, or quite possibly because of, the structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist critiques of subjectivity, master signifiers, and political foundations, contemporary philosophy has been marked by a resurgence in interest in questions of subjectivity and the political. Guided by the contention that different conceptions of the political are, at least _implicitly_, committed to specific conceptions of subjectivity while different conceptions of subjectivity have different political implications, this collection brings together an international selection of scholars to explore these notions and their connection. (...) Rather than privilege one approach or conception of the subjectivity-political relationship, this volume emphasizes the nature and status of the _and _in the ‘subjectivity’ _and _‘the political’ schema. By thinking from the place _between _subjectivity and the political, it is able to explore this relationship from a multitude of perspectives, directions, and thinkers to show the heterogeneity, openness, and contested nature of it. While the contributions deal with different themes or thinkers, the themes/thinkers are linked historically and/or conceptually, thereby providing coherence to the volume. Thinkers addressed include Arendt, Butler, Levinas, Agamben, Derrida, Kristeva, Adorno, Gramsci, Mill, Hegel, and Heidegger, while the subjectivity-political relation is engaged with through the mediation of the law-political, ethics-politics, theological-political, inside-outside, subject-person, and individual-institution relationships, as well as through concepts such as genius, happiness, abjection, and ugliness. The original essays in this volume will be of interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, cultural studies, history of ideas, psychology, and sociology. (shrink)

In Kantian Humility I argue that, for Kant, ignorance of things in themselves is ignorance of the intrinsic properties of substances, and that this is epistemic humility, rather than idealism: some aspects of reality, the intrinsic aspects, are beyond our epistemic grasp.The interpretation draws upon what Falkenstein takes to be ‘a novel and not implausible understanding of Kant's distinction between things in themselves and appearances’ which views it as a distinction between the intrinsic and the relational. He concedes that Kant (...) frequently puts his distinction in just these terms, that I make ‘a strong textual case for it’, that it is ‘plausible and intriguing’ and that it may even be ‘correct, at least for a certain strand of Kant's thought’. He presumably also allows that this distinction between ‘things as they are in relation to other things and things as they are on their own’ is at base a metaphysical distinction, which makes no mention of how things look to us, appear to us or depend on our minds. I am pleased to find sympathy for this understanding of Kant's distinction in a review whose overall tenor is so critical. (shrink)

Sartre's phenomenological ontology discloses that understanding consciousness and its mode of being requires an analysis of its relation with other consciousnesses. The primordial manner in which the Other relates to consciousness is through the look. Sartre claims that consciousness tends to adopt a pre-reflective fundamental project that leads it to view the Other as a threat to its pure subjective freedom. This creates a conflictual social relation in which each consciousness tries to objectify the Other to maintain its subjective freedom. (...) But Sartre also notes that consciousnesses can establish a social relation called the “we” in which each consciousness is a free subject. While certain commentators have noted that communication allows each consciousness to learn that the Other is not simply a threatening object but another subject, communication can only play this positive role if both consciousnesses have undergone a specific process called conversion. Only conversion brings consciousness to recognise, respect, and affirm the Other's practical freedom in the way necessary to create a we-relation. To support my argument, I spend significant time outlining what conversion and the social relations created post-conversion entail. (shrink)

The effect of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on the affective impact of an emotional event was examined. In Study 1 (N = 90) the impact of a negative and positive experience was compared between student participants who habitually retrieve autobiographical memories (AMs) in a specific way and participants who generally retrieve less specific memories. In Study 2 (N = 48) the effect of an experimentally induced (specific vs. overgeneral) retrieval style on the impact of a negative experience was (...) studied in student participants who habitually retrieve less specific memories. Study 1 replicated the finding of Raes, Hermans, de Decker, Eelen, & Williams (Citation2003) that a negative event leads to less subjective distress in low‐specific participants as compared with high‐specific participants. However, both groups did not differ in their affective reaction to a positive event. Important, reduced memory specificity was associated with “repressive coping”, providing further evidence for the idea that reduced memory specificity is used as an avoidant or repressive‐defensive mechanism to regulate negative affect (CitationWilliams, 1996). In Study 2, participants who were induced to retrieve memories in an overgeneral way experienced more distress following a negative event as compared with participants who were induced to retrieve memories in a specific way. Results are discussed in the context of recent findings concerning AM specificity and emotion regulation (CitationPhilippot, Schaefer, & Herbette, 2003). Directions for further research are suggested. (shrink)

While Carl Schmitt is one of the main proponents of the question of the political with the consequence that his thinking on the subject has garnered much attention, not only is the question of the political in Gilles Deleuze relatively underdeveloped, but there has been virtually no work done on the relationship between the two. The orientating contention of this paper is that thinking the question of the political from the works of these two, very different, thinkers will not only (...) start to bring these two thinkers together but, in so doing, will allow us to better understand their individual thinking in a way that draws out conclusions regarding the nature of the political. While Schmitt’s friend-enemy division is the normal focus of analyses, I will focus on the role that violence and territory plays in fostering and sustaining this distinction to suggest that Schmitt’s famous distinction actually points towards the intimate relationship between the political, violence, and territory. Having made this connection, I then turn to the work of Gilles Deleuze who, I argue, maintains that the political is linked to pre-individual processes of territorialization and signification. The conclusion reached is that thinking the political from Schmitt and Deleuze reveals that it is intimately connected to violence, territory, and signification, which are primordially determined by ever-changing pre-individual, socio-linguistic relations specific to each society. It is to this pre-individual, socio-linguistic field that attempts to answer the question of the political should attend. (shrink)

In ‘The Harm in Hate Speech’ Waldron’s most interesting and ground-breaking contribution lies in a distinctive epistemological role he assigns to hate speech legislation: it is necessary for assurance of justice, and thus for justice itself. He regards public social recognition of what is owed to citizens as a public good, contributing to basic dignity and social standing of citizens. His claim that hate speech in the public social environment damages assurance of justice has wider implications, I argue: for hate (...) speech conducted in private; for pornography; and indeed for any speech that thwarts knowledge of what justice requires. (shrink)

The House of Lords in F v West Berkshire Health Authority [1989] considered the lawfulness of providing care and treatment for a mentally incapacitated adult. They did not, however, directly consider the use of restraint to enable the provision of care in the face of resistance from the patient. The law has since had good cause to give consideration to this important issue. This paper establishes the present law in the context of using restraint to deliver care. Although the legal (...) principles established have derived from what might be considered to be “hard cases”, life-and-death cases, they apply to all aspects of routine medical, dental and nursing care. Further, the paper considers the recent government proposals and the effect those proposals may have on the routine care of such patients. (shrink)