Studies of participatory governance generally examine the input and/or output side of policy processes. Often neglected is the throughput: Does the state have the political and technical capacity to implement the decisions that deliberative bodies make? In this study of Brazilian river-basin committees, the authors find that activists inside and outside the state often must collaborate to overcome resistance to change and provide state officials with resources they lack. They argue that this does not constitute the transfer of state responsibility (...) to private actors but rather the mobilization of a state's capacity to defend the public interest. (shrink)

Die Philosophie Johann Baptist Schads – und für sie sei in dieser Untersuchung stellvertretend und ein wenig verkürzend sein Neuer Grundriss der transcendentalen Logik nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre aus dem Jahr 1801 herangezogen – beansprucht für sich keine vollständige, sondern nur partielle Eigenständigkeit, indem sie zwar v.a. auf das Gedankengut Fichtes zurückgreift, allerdings für sich reklamiert, die Hauptthesen der Wissenschaftslehre zu Ende zu denken, was in Schads Augen allein dadurch geschehen kann, daß das Übersinnliche, das Absolute, traditionell gesprochen: Gott (...) oder die Gottheit, mit den zu erarbeitenden, überformalen Mitteln der transzendentalen Logik als das gedacht wird, was nicht mehr eigentlich gedacht und nur noch in Negationsbezügen unzutreffend angesprochen zu werden vermag. Der eigenen Aufgabenstellung mit den in ihr zunächst nur enthaltenen, sich aber im Verlauf der folgenden systematischen Analysen bestätigenden Prämissen – etwa einer internen Logikdifferenz oder des grundsätzlichen Wahrheitsziels der Philosophie – folgend erarbeitet Schad eine transzendentale Logik, die diese wahre Philosophie sein soll, womit er sich einerseits dem Vernunftprogramm Kants anschließt, um andererseits die grundsätzlichen Bestimmungen der Wissenschaftslehre Fichtes aufzunehmen – in derjenigen Form, in der sie ihm allein bekannt sein konnten, was zwangsläufig bedeutet, daß Schad die späteren Versionen der Wissenschaftslehre und zumal die Logikausarbeitungen Fichtes in seinen Vorlesungen aus dem Jahr 1812 nicht berücksichtigen konnte, obwohl sie beim Rückvergleich mit Schads Werk sichtbar machen, daß die Wege Fichtes mit denen des Letztgenannten keinesfalls konvergieren, was jedoch nach der schon früh ablehnenden Haltung des Wissenschaftslehrers seinem selbsternannten Nachfolger gegenüber nicht zu erstaunen vermag. Daß hingegen trotz Fichtes negativer Bewertung den Ausführungen Schads durchaus ein Eigenwert sowie eine interessante Weiterführung der Wissenschaftslehre nicht abgesprochen werden können, mögen die folgenden Überlegungen beweisen. (shrink)

Husserls Phänomenologie ist als Erscheinungslehre auf den logischen Urteils- und Formenkanon angewiesen und partiell mit ihm identisch. Darüber hinaus ist sie als transzendentale Logik die Begründung jeder formallogischen Urteilstätigkeit, d. h. sie ist eine Wahrheitslehre vor dem Hintergrund der Bestimmung und Anwendung des Urteils sowie seiner Verlaufsgesetze. Die Analyse der einschlägigen Schriften und Vorlesungsmanuskripte Husserls von den Logischen Untersuchungen bis hin zu Erfahrung und Urteil soll dazu dienen, den bislang oftmals zu Unrecht vernachlässigten, aber gleichwohl konstitutiven Zusammenhang zwischen Phänomenologie, Urteilslehre (...) und Wahrheitserkenntnis aufzuweisen. (shrink)

Resilienz wird in der Psychologie und Sozialpädagogik häufig als positiv angesehen. In der Armutsbekämpfung ist diese Sichtweise durchaus nachvollziehbar, insbesondere in der Prävention von Kinderarmut: wenn Resilienz das ist, was ein Kind in die Lage versetzt, die Risiken und negativen Folgen von Armut besser zu bewältigen, scheint es sinnvoll, diese Fähigkeit bei Kindern zu fördern. Mein Beitrag befürwortet diesen Befund, plädiert aber dafür, dass die Resilienzdebatte der Untermauerung durch Argumente aus der praktischen Philosophie bedarf, da das, was häufig als Resilienz (...) bezeichnet wird, nicht immer positiv zu bewerten ist. Ziel meines Beitrags ist es, den Resilienzdiskurs im Rahmen der Kinderarmutsbekämpfung in einer normativen Theorie zu verankern: im Capability Ansatz von Amartya Sen. Resilienz wird damit, so meine These, zu einem fundamental normativen Begriff. Mein Beitrag gliedert sich in drei Teile: Zuerst wird auf die Grundideen des CA und die Stellung von Kindheit darin eingegangen. Im zweiten Teil wird der Resilienzbegriff im Kontext von Kinderarmutsprävention charakterisiert. Der dritte Teil widmet sich den Verbindungslinien zwischen der Resilienzdiskussion und dem CA. Leitgedanke ist dabei, dass der CA die menschliche Handlungsfähigkeit als normativ grundlegend auszeichnet. Auf dieser Basis lässt sich überzeugend beurteilen, warum Armut bei Kindern höchst problematisch ist und welches Ziel in der Resilienzförderung verfolgt werden soll. Wie ich argumentieren werde, ist die Bereitstellung von capabilities auch die gerechtigkeitstheoretische Basis von Resilienzförderung in der Praxis. Der Beitrag schließt mit Impulsen, welche, so meine Hoffnung, für eine weitere Diskussion der Normativität von Resilienz dienlich sein können. (shrink)

Ch. G. Bardili (1761-1808) ist der Begrunder des rationalen Realismus mit dem Ziel eines von der Materialitat ausgehenden Gottesbeweises. Heute nur noch als von den Zeitgenossen fast einhellig abgelehnter Denker bekannt, bietet sein Schaffen in der enormen Spannbreite von Wissenschaftsreflexionen, Ethik, Philosophiegeschichte und Logik doch ein interessantes, facettenreiches und in seiner Radikalitat anregendes Gesamtkonzept. Dieses Werk erstmals in vollem Umfang zu erschliessen, das ganze System Bardilis in seiner Entwicklung und seinen Inhalten nachzuzeichnen sowie in seinen Grundzugen, die fur die Debatten (...) der Zeit, etwa mit Fichte, Schelling und Reinhold, bedeutsam sind, aufzuweisen, ist die Absicht des vorliegenden Bandes.'Bislang liegt uber Bardili keine nennenswerte Literatur vor. [.] Diese Lucke schliesst nun die vorgelegte Monographie, [.] um so ein Werk vorzustellen, das zwar heute weitgehend in den Hintergrund geruckt oder oft schlicht vergessen ist, das es gleichwohl - wie die Vf. uberzeugend zu zeigen vermag - verdient hat, wieder starkere Beachtung zu finden, weil es zu zentralen Fragestellungen, wie sie im Bereich der klassischen deutschen Philosophie wichtig und bestimmend geworden sind, eine haufig zweifellos eigenwillige, aber trotzdem wegen seines hohen Grades an Originalitat und seiner radikalen, wenn auch bisweilen exzentrisch anmutenden, Alternativstellung bedenkenswerte Anstosse bietet. [.] Insgesamt leistet die Vf. mit ihrer Monographie Hervorragendes und Vorbildliches: Sie zeichnet den Denkweg und das System Bardilis in ihrer Entwicklung und ihren Inhalten nach. Die wesentlichen Grundzuge, die sich fur die Debatten, Streitgesprache und [.] philosophischen Konstellationen der Zeit als so bedeutsam erwiesen, werden pragnant aufgewiesen und mit denkerisch hochster Souveranitat durchdrungen.' Dirk Cursgen, Philosophische Rundschau. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Arzneimittelzulassung und der Aufnahmeprozess zur Kostenerstattung sollen die Entwicklung und Vermarktung von pharmazeutischen Innovationen mit Patientennutzen nicht behindern, zugleich aber die Wirtschaftlichkeit der Arzneimittelversorgung für die Kostenträger nicht gefährden. Eine Anpassung der Verfahren an die Merkmale personalisierter Arzneimittel erscheint notwendig. Dabei ist allerdings zu fragen, ob eine ungerechtfertigte Privilegierung erfolgt. In den USA und in der EU werden die jeweiligen Zulassungsverfahren für Arzneimittel und Tests schrittweise angepasst und integriert. Zulassung und Erstattungsentscheidungen sollen koordiniert werden. Eine Privilegierung, wie bei Arzneimitteln (...) für seltene Indikationen, findet jedoch für personalisierte Medizin nicht statt. Es bestehen keine unzumutbaren Hürden für die Hersteller. Zurückhaltung bei der Entwicklung innovativer Produkte wäre deshalb nicht gerechtfertigt. (shrink)

Die Arzneimittelzulassung und der Aufnahmeprozess zur Kostenerstattung sollen die Entwicklung und Vermarktung von pharmazeutischen Innovationen mit Patientennutzen nicht behindern, zugleich aber die Wirtschaftlichkeit der Arzneimittelversorgung für die Kostenträger nicht gefährden. Eine Anpassung der Verfahren an die Merkmale personalisierter Arzneimittel erscheint notwendig. Dabei ist allerdings zu fragen, ob eine ungerechtfertigte Privilegierung erfolgt. In den USA und in der EU werden die jeweiligen Zulassungsverfahren für Arzneimittel und Tests schrittweise angepasst und integriert. Zulassung und Erstattungsentscheidungen sollen koordiniert werden. Eine Privilegierung, wie bei Arzneimitteln (...) für seltene Indikationen (Orphan Drugs), findet jedoch für personalisierte Medizin nicht statt. Es bestehen keine unzumutbaren Hürden für die Hersteller. Zurückhaltung bei der Entwicklung innovativer Produkte wäre deshalb nicht gerechtfertigt. (shrink)

Previous work in Game Studies has centered on several loci of investigation in seeking to understand virtual gameworlds. First, researchers have scrutinized the concept of the virtual world itself and how it relates to the idea of “the magic circle”. Second, the field has outlined various forms of experienced “presence”. Third, scholarship has noted that the boundaries between the world of everyday life and virtual worlds are porous, and that this fosters a multiplicity of identities as players identify both with (...) themselves-offline and themselves-in-game. Despite widespread agreement that these topics are targets for research, so far those working on these topics do not have mutually agreed-upon framework. Here we draw upon the work of Alfred Schutz to take up this call. We provide a phenomenological framework which can be used to describe the phenomena of interest to Game Studies, as well as open new avenues of inquiry, in a way acceptable and useful to all. This helps to distinguish the core of the field from the supplemental theoretical and critical commitments which characterize diverse approaches within the field. (shrink)

I explore how we negotiate sexual encounters with one another in language and consider the pragmatic structure of such negotiations. I defend three theses: Discussions of consent have dominated the philosophical and legal discourse around sexual negotiation, and this has distorted our understanding of sexual agency and ethics. Of central importance to good-quality sexual negotiation are sexual invitations and gift offers, as well as speech designed to set up safe frameworks and exit conditions. Sexual communication that goes well does not (...) just prevent harm; it enables forms of agency, pleasure, and fulfillment that would not otherwise be possible. (shrink)

The 'Gamer's Dilemma' is the problem of why some actions occurring in video game contexts seem to have similar, albeit attenuated, kinds of moral significance to their real-world equivalents, while others do not. In this paper, I argue that much of the confusion in the literature on this problem is not ethical but metaphysical. The Gamer's Dilemma depends on a particular theory of the virtual, which I call 'inflationary', according to which virtual worlds are a metaphysical novelty generated almost exclusively (...) by video games. Actions performed in virtual worlds really belong to the kinds of action they appear to—'virtual murder' is a kind of murder. Inflationary theories are contrasted with 'deflationary' theories which, in effect, consider video games purely as systems for generating images, and thus the gamer as a consumer of media images. Inflationary theories struggle to explain why video games produce this unique metaphysical novelty; deflationary theories fail to do justice to the intuition that there is some significant difference between the gamer and the consumer of other media forms. In place of either, I sketch a theory of the gamer as performer, primarily by analogy with stage and cinema actors, which I suggest captures more of the moral complexity of the gamer's action. (shrink)

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

Vocabulary size has been suggested as a useful measure of “verbal abilities” that correlates with speech recognition scores. Knowing more words is linked to better speech recognition. How vocabulary knowledge translates to general speech recognition mechanisms, how these mechanisms relate to offline speech recognition scores, and how they may be modulated by acoustical distortion or age, is less clear. Age-related differences in linguistic measures may predict age-related differences in speech recognition in noise performance. We hypothesized that speech recognition performance can (...) be predicted by the efficiency of lexical access, which refers to the speed with which a given word can be searched and accessed relative to the size of the mental lexicon. We tested speech recognition in a clinical German sentence-in-noise test at two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), in 22 younger (18–35 years) and 22 older (60–78 years) listeners with normal hearing. We also assessed receptive vocabulary, lexical access time, verbal working memory, and hearing thresholds as measures of individual differences. Age group, SNR level, vocabulary size, and lexical access time were significant predictors of individual speech recognition scores, but working memory and hearing threshold were not. Interestingly, longer accessing times were correlated with better speech recognition scores. Hierarchical regression models for each subset of age group and SNR showed very similar patterns: the combination of vocabulary size and lexical access time contributed most to speech recognition performance; only for the younger group at the better SNR (yielding about 85% correct speech recognition) did vocabulary size alone predict performance. Our data suggest that successful speech recognition in noise is mainly modulated by the efficiency of lexical access. This suggests that older adults’ poorer performance in the speech recognition task may have arisen from reduced efficiency in lexical access; with an average vocabulary size similar to that of younger adults, they were still slower in lexical access. (shrink)

Human Rights Education (HRE) has traditionally been articulated in terms of cultivating better citizens or world citizens. The main preoccupation in this strand of HRE has been that of bridging a gap between universal notions of a human rights subject and the actual locality and particular narratives in which students are enmeshed. This preoccupation has focused on ‘learning about the other’ in order to improve relations between plural ‘others’ and ‘us’ and reflects educational aims of national identity politics in citizenship (...) education. The article explores the learning of human rights through narratives in relations, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Sharon Todd. For this re-thinking of relations in learning human rights, the article argues that HRE needs to address both competing historical narratives on the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as unique life narratives of learners. (shrink)

I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds also depend on our (...) mental states in more specific ways—some of them causal, others metaphysical. I defend a minimal but metaphysically important notion of essence—one that takes as primary that the essential properties of a kind constitute its identity—and argue that this minimal notion of essence is all that is needed to vindicate my claim that social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. (shrink)

Games Studies reveals the performative nature of playing a character in a virtual-game-world (Nitsche 2008, p.205; Pearce 2006, p.1; Taylor 2002, p.48). Tbe Player/Character relationship is typically understood in terms of the player’s in-game “presence” (Boellstorff 2008, p.89; Schroeder 2002, p.6). This gives the appearance that living-into a game-world is an all-or- nothing affair: either the player is “present” in the game-world, or they are not. I argue that, in fact, a constitutive phenomenology reveals the Player/Character relationship to be a (...) multi-dimensional matter of empathy. I advance a broadly Schutzian framework, drawing on his 1932 discussions of “face-to-face encounters” and ”historical predecessors,” showing how at- tention to empathy reveals a variety of “presences” that different kinds of Player/Character relationships afford. The central determinants of empathetic affordances which I focus on here are (i) how much players know about a character (especially the character’s past) and (ii) how players learn this information.The purpose of this discussion will be to show that a phenomenological analysis reveals that the relationship between a player and their character is complex, highly variable, and inherently social. Furthermore, it will add to the growing body of scholarship that demonstrates that video games are rich social objects deserving of study. (shrink)

My particular focus in this article is on getting clearer about what Nietzsche’s experimentalism entails. Some immediate resistance may form in response to this proposal, based on my use of the term experimentalism. As Walter Kaufmann has pointed out in a discussion of experimentalism, Nietzsche himself does not discuss his work using this concept; in the original German, Nietzsche uses the terms “Experiment” and “Versuch.”1 In light of this, two main concerns may be raised about my proposal that experimentalism is (...) worth some of our time and attention: whether it is necessary or helpful to focus discussion on yet another “ism” within Nietzsche scholarship and given that experimentalism is not Nietzsche’s.. (shrink)

Health promotion efforts are commonly directed towards encouraging people to discard ‘unhealthy’ and adopt ‘healthy’ behaviours in order to tackle chronic disease. Typical targets for behaviour change interventions include diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption, sometimes described as ‘lifestyle behaviours.’ In this paper, I discuss how efforts to raise awareness of the impact of lifestyles on health, in seeking to communicate the need for people to change their behaviour, can contribute to a climate of ‘healthism’ and promote the moralisation (...) of people’s lifestyles. I begin by summarising recent trends in health promotion and introducing the notion of healthism, as described by Robert Crawford in the 1980s. One aspect of healthism is moralisation, which I outline and suggest is facilitated by efforts to promote health via information provision and educational strategies. I propose that perceived responsibility plays a role in mediating the tendency to moralise about health and behaviour. Since I argue that states ought to avoid direct and indirect moralisation of people’s health-related behaviour, this suggests states must be cautious with regard to the use of responsibility-indicating interventions to promote health. (shrink)

If a child’s well-being is at risk of considerable harm within their own family, state institutions usually intervene. In severe cases, the parents’ right to rear is suspended. Cases of risk assessment and potential state intervention are decided within a conflict between parents’ rights and claims of children for protection. There is, we argue, a standard model of normative assessment underlying these decisions: It rests on premises rooted in classic liberal political philosophy, which is prevalent in many Western societies, such (...) as a strong commitment to individualism, a separation of private and public, or a conceptualization of children as lacking the status of full right holders. We proceed in three steps. Based on cases in social work and child welfare offices, firstly, the article proposes an inductive approach to describe the problem. Second, we point out the most critical problems and shortcomings of the standard model. On this basis, third, we develop an alternative, pragmatistic perspective on child welfare and state intervention. It argues that child welfare must be understood more broadly as a societal concern than merely as a matter of the legitimacy of state intervention. A practice-oriented section follows to show what conclusions can be drawn from our alternative model. (shrink)

Many countries are experiencing increasing levels of demand for access to assisted reproductive technologies. Policies regarding who can access ART and with what support from a collective purse are highly contested, raising questions about what state responses are justified. Whilst much of this debate has focused on the status of infertility as a disease, we argue that this is something of a distraction, since disease framing does not provide the far-reaching, robust justification for state support that proponents of ART seem (...) to suppose. Instead, we propose that debates about appropriate state responses should consider the various implications for health and broader well-being that may be associated with difficulties starting a family. We argue that the harms and disruption to valued life projects of subfertility-related suffering may provide a stronger basis for justifying state support in this context. Further, we suggest that, whilst ART may alleviate some of the harm resulting from subfertility, population-level considerations can indicate a broader range of interventions aimed at tackling different sources of subfertility-related harm, consistent with broader public health aims. (shrink)

We can safely infer that a proposition is possible if p is the case. But, I argue, this inference from the actual to the possible is merely explicative in nature, though we employ it at times as if it were ampliative. To make this inference ampliative, we need to include an inference to the best explanation. Specifically, we can draw a substantive conclusion as to whether p is possible from the fact that p is the case, if via our best (...) explanation we can explain how p could occur again in the complete and coherent set of propositions that describes the actual world. (shrink)

In Christian books today readers can find dozens of spiritual practices. One resource of the Protestant tradition, however, that has largely been forgotten is the Puritan practice of conference. This article describes how for the English Puritans conference exemplified the importance of communal spiritual life, then considers applications for the contemporary church. Conference refers to intentional conversation among believers about spiritual matters. Conference particularly expresses the value of Christian community and the need for the body of Christ to function together (...) on the journey of faith. Understanding this practice not only illuminates the past but also offers valuable insights for the church today. (shrink)

Aanerud's project is to develop an account of white antiracist mothering, using a model of maternal duty to raise antiracist white children. The author sets this project in the context of historic constructions of white mothering in the twentieth century and then contrasts the need for an exploration of white mothers raising white children against the literature of white mothers’ raising children of color and mothers of color raising their own children, Once this distinction is made, Aanerud uses Collins's account (...) of racial ethnic mothering as a springboard into her discussion of antiracist white mothering of white children. (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with contingent creaturehood, (...) it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

Here I argue that aspects of Nietzsche's thought may be productively compared with the role played by the concept of ubuntu in talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I show that Nietzsche respects and writes for humanity conceived of in a vital sense, thereby imagining a sense of authenticity that may prove significant to talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I question the view that Nietzsche is an individualist, drawing on debate between Conway (1990) and Gooding-Williams (2001), concerning (...) the interpretation of ‘The Dance-Song' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as on the notion of reciprocity intrinsic to the concept of ubuntu (Shutte, 1993). South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 85-97. (shrink)

Algorithmic vision, the computational process of making meaning from digital images or visual information, has changed the relationship between the image and the human subject. In this paper, I explicate on the role of algorithmic vision as a technique of algorithmic governance, the organization of a population by algorithmic means. With its roots in the United States post-war cybernetic sciences, the ontological status of the computational image undergoes a shift, giving way to the hegemonic use of automated facial recognition technologies (...) towards predatory policing and profiling practices. By way of example, I argue that algorithmic vision reconfigures the philosophical links between vision, image, and truth, paradigmatically changing the way a human subject is represented through imagistic data. With algorithmic vision, the relationship between subject and representation challenges the humanistic discourse around images, calling for a critical displacement of the human subject from the center of an analysis of how computational images make meaning. I will explore the relationship between the operative image, the image that acts but is not seen by human eyes, and what Louise Amoore calls an “emergent subject,” a subject that is made visible through algorithmic techniques. Algorithmic vision reveals subjects to power in a mode that requires a new approach towards analyzing the entanglement and invisiblization of the human in automated decision-making systems. (shrink)

This chapter explores two kinds of testimonial trust, what we call ‘evidential trust’ and ‘non-evidential trust’ with the aim of asking how testimonial trust could provide epistemic reasons for belief. We argue that neither evidential nor non-evidential trust can play a distinctive role in providing evidential reasons for belief, but we tentatively propose that non-evidential trust can in some circumstances provide a novel kind of epistemic reason for belief, a reason of epistemic facilitation. The chapter begins with an extensive discussion (...) of standard accounts of both kinds of trust and criticises especially the standard accounts of non-evidential trust. A new account of non-evidential trust is offered that avoids a number of difficulties that plague the standard accounts by rejecting what we call ‘attitude-liability assumptions’. (shrink)

Transformative experiences are epistemically and personally transformative: prior to having the experience, agents cannot predict the value of the experience and cannot anticipate how it will change their core values and preferences. Paul (2014, 2015) argues that these experiences pose a puzzle for standard decision-making procedures because values cannot be assigned to outcomes involving transformative experience. Responding philosophers are quick to point out that decision procedures are built to handle uncertainty, including the uncertainty generated by transformative experience. My paper enters (...) here and contributes two points. First, religious experiences are transformative experiences that are especially resistant to these responses. Second, a procedure that appeals to voluntarist reasons—reasons arising from an act of the will—can allow an agent to rationally decide to undergo or avoid an outcome involving transformative experience. Combining these two points results in some interesting implications with respect to practical aspects of religion. (shrink)

Appealing to self-interest is a common way of justifying the rationality of religious faith. For instance, Pascal’s wager relies upon the expected value of choosing the life of faith being infinite. Similarly, many contemporary arguments for the rationality of faith turn on whether it is better for an agent to have faith rather than lack it. In this paper, I argue, contra Pascal, that considerations of self-interest do not make choosing faith rational because they fail to take into account the (...) way the self is transformed by faith. (shrink)

Among the most persuasive arguments against hate speech bans was made by Ronald Dworkin, who warned of the threat to political legitimacy posed by laws that deny those subject to them adequ...

Henri Bergson's philosophy presents the relationship between life and matter in both dualistic and monistic terms. Life is duration, a rhythm of incalculable novelty that approaches pure creative activity. In stark contrast, matter is identified with the determinism of homogeneous space. After Time and Free Will, Bergson concedes some share of duration to matter. In this context, his dualism can be understood as a methodological step towards the articulation of a monistic metaphysics of duration. This article suggests that the distinction (...) between life and matter is also motivated by an unconscious imperative to establish a sexed hierarchy. Bergson repeatedly presents life as seminal, while matter is figured in terms of passivity. (shrink)

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano's genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. Momigliano traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation into anthropology and sociology in late modernity. Antiquarianism performed for Momigliano the work of excavating past archives while infusing historiographical inquiry with a much-needed dose of contingency. This essay aims to advance our understanding of the (...) mutual imbrications of antiquarian methods with modern conceptions of history, while also suggesting how antiquarianism can generate alternatives to historical inquiry. (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory is a variety of feminist epistemology that has been active since the 1980s. Its two central tenets are (1) that knowledge is necessarily situated within a socio-political context, and (2) that certain socio-political positions or standpoints are epistemically privileged when it comes to “reveal[ing] the truth of social reality” (Hekman 1997). Over the course of its history, standpoint theory has encountered a number of problems which have revealed divisions among its supporters over certain fundamental philosophical commitments. In (...) this paper, I sketch out a phenomenological account of perception that can begin to address these problems, drawn largely from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. There are two major issues that I believe a Merleau-Pontyan view of perception can help alleviate. One is that there has never been a thorough articulation of a theory of perception underlying standpoint theory’s central claims. This is surprising, since arguments in favor of standpoint theory often emphasize that occupying a certain standpoint enables one to see the world differently (see Hartsock 1983, among others). The other problem is the complex tension between standpoint theory’s two central theses. Positing that knowledge is necessarily situated seems to make it difficult to account for one single reality about which some particular group could be epistemically privileged (Hekman 1997). Merleau-Ponty can help us resolve these issues by providing an account of perspectival perception wherein a multiplicity of different perceptual standpoints all nonetheless put us in touch with a single "external" world. Merleau-Ponty’s account also explains how it could be that some standpoints are better than others when it comes to accessing certain features of this world. For Merleau-Ponty, it is not a problem if each perspective is incomplete, partial, or even apparently conflicting with other perspectives. The proliferation of standpoints need not lead us into an unacceptably relativistic framework, as long as we are able to conceive of each of these standpoints as giving whoever occupies it access to some particular aspect of a singular, real, shared world. (shrink)

Cultural competence has become a ubiquitous and unquestioned aspect of professional formation in medicine. It has been linked to efforts to eliminate race-based health disparities and to train more compassionate and sensitive providers. In this article, I question whether the field of cultural competence lives up to its promise. I argue that it does not because it fails to grapple with the ways that race and racism work in U.S. society today. Unless we change our theoretical apparatus for dealing with (...) diversity to one that more critically engages with the complexities of race, I suggest that unequal treatment and entrenched health disparities will remain. If the field of cultural competence incorporates the lessons of critical race scholarship, however, it would not only need to transform its theoretical foundation, it would also need to change its name. (shrink)

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i'jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory ('ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study of literary meaning. Finally, I show how Islamic aesthetics conceptualizes the translatability of literary texts along lines kindred to Walter Benjamin. -/- .

(Awarded the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize) Mīrzā Fatḥ 'Alī Ākhūndzāda’s Letters from Prince Kamāl al-Dawla to the Prince Jalāl al-Dawla (1865) is often read as a Persian attempt to introduce European Enlightenment political thought to modern Iranian society. This essay frames Ākhūndzāda’s text within a broader intellectual tradition. I read Ākhūndzāda as a radical reformer whose intellectual ambition were shaped by prior Persian and Arabic endeavors to map the diversity of religious belief and to critically assess (...) the limits of religion. That Ākhūndzāda’s critique of religion reached further than that of his predecessors is due in part to the influence of the European Enlightenment, but Ākhūndzāda’s form of critical reasoning was also substantially shaped by prior early modern intellectual genealogies. -/- . (shrink)

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge. First, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merge on the relative claims of reason and authority. Second, his use of antiquarian knowledge to supersede historicist accounts of change in time and to position the plebian social class as the true arbiters of language. Third, his understanding of philological (...) knowledge as an instrument of political change, and a foundational element in the establishment of democracy. By treating the philological imagination as a tool for bringing about political change, Vico’s plebian philology is radically democratic, and a crucial instrument in the struggle against the elite, from antiquity to the present. -/- . (shrink)

This paper discusses the diverse forms of contemporary Islam practised by the Kists, inhabitants of Georgia's Pankisi Gorge related to the Chechens. The newest wave of Salafi-inspired Islam among the young generation of Chechens, mostly men who have fought in the Chechen-Russian war, is aesthetically marked by a distinctive style of minaret and by a more public adhān than Pankisi has hitherto known. The reactions of local Kists to the aesthetics and morality of the new Islam, and the distinctions between (...) Salafi, Wahhabi, and Pankisi Islam are explored. It is argued that the new Islam is not as foreign to the Caucasus as scholarship tends to suggest. Ethnographies of minarets and headstones are followed by an exploration of reactions to Soviet secularism in the historiography of Chechen Islam. Positioning itself within recent scholarship aiming to overcome the constraints imposed by secular forms of knowledge in the study of Islamic societies, the paper seeks to locate the unique modes of Kist belief within the framework of a comparative, post-secular anthropology of Islam. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article, invited for presentation to the North American Nietzsche Society at the 2020 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, is a commentary on Mark Alfano's 2019 monograph, Nietzsche's Moral Psychology. It critically discusses Alfano's synoptic digital humanities approach and examines the efficacy of two aspects of his argument about Nietzsche's philosophy developed using this methodology: the connection between life and will to power, and the role of speech acts.

Hegel was ambivalent about Dutch genre painting’s uncanny ability to find beauty in daily life. The philosopher regarded the Dutch painterly aesthetic as Romanticism avant la lettre, and classifies it as such in his Lectures on Aesthetics, under the section entitled “Die romantischen Künste [The Romantic arts].”1 Dutch art, in Hegel’s reading, is marred by many shortcomings. The most prominent among these are the “subjective stubbornness [subjective Beschlossenheit]” that prevents this art from attaining to the “free and ideal forms of (...) expression” that marked the productions of Italian artists such as Raphael. In contradistinction to their Italian counterparts, Dutch artists in Hegel’s view are apt to. (shrink)

We present a two-pronged criticism of Ramos's argument. Our main contention is that the logic of the author’s argument is flawed. As we demonstrate, the author conflates probability with necessity, in addition to conflating free will having causal efficacy with the merely illusory conscious experience of free will; such conflations undermine the claim that individual free will should be both exhibited on a social scale and necessarily cause a particular organized pattern to emerge. In addition, we will show that the (...) author makes a series of inadequately supported assertions concerning the relationship between, and degree of scholarly consensus upon, causally effective free will and mind-body interactionist dualism, which further undermine his argument. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork in Newmarket, England, and Kentucky, this paper examines the acts of looking that take place at international thoroughbred horse auctions. Racehorse caretakers employ bloodstock agents to select the yearling thoroughbred who will make the best racehorse as a 2-year-old and, hopefully, successful stallion or broodmare after retiring from the track as a 4- or 5-year old. The paper assesses the criteria used to assess yearlings: pedigree, conformation, and "that something extra."The paper concludes that the ambiguous status of (...) the bloodstock agent derives from the liminal task the agent performs, communicating with a young, nonhuman animal to discover the animal's essential properties. Selecting yearlings depends upon a process of divination that mitigates against the characterization of western thought as "rational" and opposed to decision-making processes conventionally thought of as "non-normal" or irrational. (shrink)