Over the past four decades, Charles Taylor's work as an intellectual historian, epistemologist, and normative political theorist has made him a leading figure in contemporary social philosophy. In Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity, Mark Redhead examines the problem of political fragmentation, the problem of how to accommodate narrowly defined groups while promoting allegiance to a larger polity, through an analysis of Taylor's thought and politics.

MacIntyre and the plurality of traditions -- Charles Taylor : strong evaluation and the hermenutics of the modern social imaginary -- Hannah Arendt on reasoning without banisters -- Seyla Benhabib : thinking with Arendt and Habermas against Arendt and Habermas -- Foucault and the art of telling the truth of ourselves -- Connolly and the practice of deep pluralism -- Reasoning through baggage in a global polity.

In this article, I discuss Charles Taylor's reading of Nietzsche. Taylor argues that Nietzsche presents a challenge on the 'deepest level' because, on Taylor's reading, Nietzsche forces us to consider whether or not our 'continuing allegiance to standards of justice and benevolence' goes against our inner nature. I argue that this purported Nietzschean challenge is more self-revealing of Taylor than it is foreboding, as it brings to light the tension between the open and pluralistic content of Taylor's faith, and the (...) epistemological grounding of it, which a more well-rounded appreciation of Nietzsche could help to alleviate. Key Words: Charles Taylor • genealogy • ontology • moral reasoning • Nietzsche • theism. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the problem of political fragmentation via an analysis of the politics and thought of Charles Taylor. ;A politically fragmented country is one whose members increasingly identify with the concerns of specific groups rather than the country as a whole. To address political fragmentation is to address the tension between accommodating narrowly defined groups and promoting allegiance to a larger polity. Concerns about fragmentation mainly appear in two forms: First, if citizens find themselves primarily identifying with a specific (...) ethnic, cultural or social group and not with the larger polity of a given country, will this hamper the ability of citizens of that country to develop a common civic culture? The second worry involves the limits of a state's ability to provide recognition. Is there a limit to the number and variety of group rights claims which a state can accommodate such that a state dramatically loses its ability to function effectively when it nears or exceeds that limit? ;Taylor confronts these questions in two interrelated manners: his intellectual quest to diagnose the moral context In which modern liberal democracies operate, and his attempts, as a political actor and commentator, to advance his own federalist solution to Canada's unity crises. ;My analysis of Taylor's philosophy and politics reveals several lessons about mediating political fragmentation in liberal democratic states. These lessons are predicated upon the following axioms: An adequate approach to political fragmentation must be sufficiently open to the myriad of particular identities that comprise a polity that it can provide what citizens who have a given identity regard as a fair hearing of their concerns. At the same time, it must be focused on articulating the basis of commonality among citizens. Taylor, despite his professed commitments to openness, is unable to develop a theoretical model that supports these commitments because of a series of ethical and political tensions that plague his thought. (shrink)

This article pursues two questions: Can one use Foucault’s later writings on parrhesia and Kant to create a Foucaldian approach to public reason? If so, what lessons might those attracted to John Rawls’ well-known model of public reason draw from a Foucaldian orientation? By putting Foucault into a competitive yet productive relationship with Rawls, this article addresses some of the latter’s shortcomings. In doing so it also makes a larger argument about the need to develop approaches to democratic deliberation that (...) involve engagement with – rather than simple toleration and/or accommodation of – the various ‘reasonable’ ethical commitments deliberators, on some fundamental level, reason in light of. The justificatory aims of public reason are best achieved when participants’ most-cherished beliefs are opened to critical dialogue rather than banished to the realm of the ‘non-political’. The article begins by briefly illuminating the salient features of Rawls’ model of public reasoning as well as three problems that ensue with the limitations it places on discourses regulated by public reason. It then attempts to distill a Foucaldian approach to public reason by briefly discussing 4 elements of Foucault’s later work on Rawls’ philosophical godfather Kant together with several features of the antiquarian studies of parrhesia that Foucault was conducting at the time these Kantian works were written. Third, Jeffrey Stout’s recent account of theistic democratic actors in some of the most economically disadvantaged US localities demonstrates how many of the ideals integral to this Foucaldian approach to public reasoning built on engaging (rather than simply tolerating and/or accommodating) contrasting ethical perspectives are central to some concrete practices of public reasoning. It concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of publicly reasoning through rather than independently of our deepest commitments. (shrink)

Joshua Cohen has recently remodelled Rawls’ account of public reason into an explicitly global enterprise designed to both engage and regulate human rights discourses. Cohen’s model is interesting because of the manners in which Cohen attempts to answer the questions the model begs: how can individuals with fundamentally incommensurable world views actually engage in common acts of practical reason with each other about issues like human rights? What common convictions or a common social imaginary must these individuals share? I argue (...) that articulating potential common grounds on which acts of global public reasoning can transpire involves engaging with rather than seeking to reason autonomously from the material, social, and cultural forces—most importantly the tradition of liberal secularism which Cohen’s model takes its normative bearings from—that make such discourses what they are. Doing so enhances the ability of a liberal secular human rights proponent to elucidate meaningful sites of common ground with others. Such common ground emerges not simply through toleration but also through critically engaging the worldviews of other globally public reasoners. (shrink)

This article focuses on Charles Taylor’s and William Connolly’s attempts to fashion alternative forms of secular public reasoning to those of liberals like Rawls and Galston. I provide a weak defense of Taylor against both Connolly and many of Taylor’s liberal secular foes. Despite its noted shortcomings that Connolly can help to address, Taylor’s model does provide a more adequate basis for thinking through a public morality appropriate to the times because it takes seriously the hold certain values have on (...) non-secular individuals, and thus is very much attuned to the realities of ethical deliberation in early 21st-century western democracies Key Words: democracy • liberalism • pluralism • secularism • theism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a conceptual analysis of Weinberg's proof of the spin-statistics theorem by comparing it with Pauli's original proof and with the subsequent textbook tradition, which typically resorts to the dichotomy positive energy for half-integral spin particles/microcausality for integral-spin particles. In contrast to this tradition, Weinberg's proof does not directly invoke the positivity of the energy, but derives the theorem from the single relativistic requirement of microcausality. This seemingly innocuous difference marks an important change (...) in the conceptual basis of quantum physics. Its historical, theoretical, and conceptual roots are here reconstructed. The link between Weinberg's proof and Pauli's original is highlighted: Weinberg's proof turns out to do justice to Pauli's anti-Dirac lines of thought. The work of Furry and Oppenheimer is also surveyed as a “third way” between the textbook tradition established by Pauli and Weinberg's approach. (shrink)

Geach's problem, the problem of accounting for the fact that judgements expressed using moral terms function logically like other judgements, stands in the way of most noncognitive analyses of moral judgements. The non-cognitivist must offer a plausible interpretation of such terms when they appear in conditionals that also explains their logical interaction with straightforward moral assertions. Blackburn and Gibbard have offered a series of accounts each of which interprets such conditionals as expressing higher order commitments. Each then invokes norms for (...) the coherent acceptance of attitudes to explain why we hold certain combinations inconsistent. Against these accounts the paper presses two related objections: (1) The norms needed to do the explanatory work cannot be strong enough to do that work without also ruling clearly consistent attitudes inconsistent. And (2), the norms of rational attitude acceptance do not neatly track the distinction between consistent and inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

In the age of the Internet, people have increased access to information along multiple dimensions. It might seem that we are on our way to an epistemic utopia in which we spend less time and effort on basic cognitive tasks while devoting more time and effort to complex deliberation. However, though there are many accurate sources on the Internet, they must be sifted from the spammers, concern trolls, practical jokers, conspiracy theorists, counterintelligence sock-puppets, and outright liars who also proliferate online. (...) We can approach this problem via the individual or via the network, asking two questions. First, holding the topology of the network constant, which moral and epistemic dispositions are conducive to successful inquiry by nodes at different positions within it? Second, holding the distribution of people’s epistemic dispositions constant, which network topologies are more likely to produce epistemic goods and avoid epistemic ills? To answer these questions, we need to combine virtue-theoretic reflection on individual dispositions with a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of networks. In this paper, I highlight and explore some important properties of such networks and connect those properties with dispositions that make someone an excellent member of an epistemic network. (shrink)

This article explores Charles Taylor's Hegelian and Aristotelian ethic of reconciliation. It comments on the critical work provided by Joel Anderson, Jürgen Habermas, Chandras Kukathas, Morag Patrick, Philip Pettit and Mark Redhead. It is argued that these critical perspectives on Taylor's work have not fully developed the spirit of liberalism which runs like a red thread through his ethic of reconciliation. For Taylor, reconciliation embraces others who are different from us and aims to create a virtuous culture. Taylor's (...) critics overlook the liberal implications of his ethic and also do not recognize his commitment to the plural diversity in modern societies. Taylor's communitarianism (post-liberalism in his mind) aims to create trust, openness and democratic accountability. The article concludes that democratic practice must also engage with others who are different from us, fostering a fusion of horizons that creates reconciliation and understanding. Key Words: communitarianism • ecology • interpretation • liberalism • post-liberalism • public sphere • reconciliation. (shrink)

In The Nature of Consciousness, Mark Rowlands develops an innovative account of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, one that has significant consequences for attempts to find a place for it in the natural order. The most significant feature of consciousness is its dual nature: consciousness can be both the directing of awareness and that upon which awareness is directed. Rowlands offers a clear and philosophically insightful discussion of the main positions in this fast-moving debate, and argues that the phenomenal (...) aspects of conscious experience are aspects that exist only in the directing of experience towards non-phenomenal objects, a theory that undermines reductive attempts to explain consciousness in terms of what is not conscious. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the philosophy of mind and language, psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

This second edition of the book contains a new chapter on the notions of natural-kind words and natural kinds.

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

Lately, philosophers of mathematics have been exploring the notion of mathematical explanation within mathematics. This project is supposed to be analogous to the search for the correct analysis of scientific explanation. I argue here that given the way philosophers have been using “ explanation,” the term is not applicable to mathematics as it is in science.

This book scrutinizes recent work in phonological theory from the perspective of Chomskyan generative linguistics and argues that progress in the field depends on taking seriously the idea that phonology is best studied as a mental computational system derived from an innate base, phonological Universal Grammar. Two simple problems of phonological analysis provide a frame for a variety of topics throughout the book. The competence-performance distinction and markedness theory are both addressed in some detail, especially with reference to phonological acquisition. (...) Several aspects of Optimality Theory, including the use of Output-Output Correspondence, functionalist argumentation and dependence on typological justification are critiqued. The authors draw on their expertise in historical linguistics to argue that diachronic evidence is often mis-used to bolster phonological arguments, and they present a vision of the proper use of such evidence. Issues of general interest for cognitive scientists, such as whether categories are discrete and whether mental computation is probabilistic are also addressed. The book ends with concrete proposals to guide future phonological research.The breadth and depth of the discussion, ranging from details of current analyses to the philosophical underpinnings of linguistic science, is presented in a direct style with as little recourse to technical language as possible. (shrink)

The empirical turn, understood as a turn to the artifact in the work of Ihde, has been a fruitful one, which has rightly abandoned what Serres and Latour call “the empire of signs” of the postmoderns. However, this has unfortunately implied too little attention for language and its relation to technology. The same can be said about the social dimension of technology use, which is largely neglected in postphenomenology. This talk critically responds to Ihde and Stiegler, and sketches a Wittgensteinian (...) inroad to a more holistic and transcendental revision of postphenomenology which does not turn away from the artifact but places it in a wider social context and asks the question regarding the relation between language and technology. Finally, since the earth may be the ultimate condition of possibility, it is asked what this language-sensitive and transcendental approach may imply for rethinking our human position and agency in the Anthropocene. The paper ends with pointing to the role of language as transcendental condition that shapes the very project of thinking the “Anthropocene.”. (shrink)

In a series of articles, Rieppel (2005, Biol. Philos. 20:465–487; 2006a, Cladistics 22:186–197; 2006b, Systematist 26:5–9), Keller et al. (2003, Bot. Rev. 69:93–110), and Nixon and Carpenter (2000, Cladistics 16:298–318) criticize the philosophical foundations of the PhyloCode. They argue that species and higher taxa are not individuals, and they reject the view that taxon names are rigid designators. Furthermore, they charge supporters of the individuality thesis and rigid designator theory with assuming essentialism, committing logical inconsistencies, and offering proposals that render (...) taxonomy untestable. These charges are unsound. Such charges turn on confusions over rigid designator theory and the distinction between kinds and individuals. In addition, Rieppel’s, Keller et al.’s, and Nixon and Carpenter’s proposed alternatives are no better and have their own problems. The individuality thesis and rigid designator theory should not be quickly abandoned. [Individuals; kinds; PhyloCode; rigid designators; species; taxa; taxon names.]. (shrink)

In the mid-nineteenth century George Boole formulated his ‘conditions of possible experience’. These are equations and ineqaulities that the relative frequencies of events must satisfy. Some of Boole's conditions have been rediscovered in more recent years by physicists, including Bell inequalities, Clauser Horne inequalities, and many others. In this paper, the nature of Boole's conditions and their relation to propositional logic is explained, and the puzzle associated with their violation by quantum frequencies is investigated in relation to a variety of (...) approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. * While preparing this paper for publication I have learnt of the untimely death of Professor J. S. Bell, and I wish to dedicate the paper to his memory. This research was undertaken while I spent a sabbatical leave at Wolfson College, and the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Cambridge. I would like to thank Michael Redhead and Jeremy Butterfield for their hospitality and for helpful discussions. A first draft of this paper has been distributed among the participants of the conference 'Einstein in Context' which was held in Israel, in April 1990.1 have benefited from the comments of many colleagues. I would like to thank in particular Arthur Fine who enlightened me on the prism models, David Albert. Maya Bar-Hillel. Yemima Ben-Menachem, Mara Beller. Simon Saunders, and Mark Steiner. This research is partially supported by the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University. (shrink)

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, 'impressively atful minds'. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioural singularities - science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art - that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the (...) basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this book, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. (shrink)

Formal arguments have proven that avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion is impossible without rejecting one or more highly plausible population principles. To many, such proofs establish not only a deep challenge for axiology, but also pose an important practical problem of how policymaking can confidently proceed without resolving any of the central questions of population ethics. Here we offer deflationary responses: first to the practical challenge, and then to the more fundamental challenge for axiology. Regarding the practical challenge, we provide an (...) overview of recent literature that explores the implications for public policy of the Repugnant Conclusion and related puzzles within population ethics, and shows that there is more commonality in the implications of different population axiologies than is generally recognized. The upshot is that uncertainty about population ethics presents no important problem for policymaking, and the importance of population ethics to policymaking has been overstated. We then turn to more fundamental issues about axiology, and describe a new series of formal proofs that undermine the idea that any plausible axiology could avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, including those that are assumed to avoid it in the literature. The philosophical upshot is that the Repugnant Conclusion cannot plausibly be avoided, and so it is a mistake to assume as a constraint on a plausible axiology that it must be avoided, as is assumed by most of the literature in population ethics, including by all of the fundamental impossibility theorems. (shrink)

Physicist Perakh critically reviews recent trends towards harmonizing religion and science, and shows that all such approaches are little more than tailoring evidence to fit the desired theory.

This study investigates how dispute-mediators handle impasse in the re-negotiation of divorce decrees by divorced couples. Three sources of impasse and three strategies for handling impasse are identified based on analysis of mediation transcripts. The concern here lies not so much in the disputant's arguments but in the discussion procedures dispute-mediators use to craft the disputant's argumentation into a tool to solve conflict. Their moves are understood here as a practice of reconstructing argumentative discourse that is neither naïve nor critical (...) but reconstruction as design. Mediator's reconstruction reveals a type of communication work in contemporary societies involved in the crafting of forums and formats that mediate argumentative communication. This work is often invisible and strategic which makes its interpretation, judgment, and development a challenge for pragma-dialectical theory. How reconstruction as design can be understood is discussed by building on prior pragma-dialectical theory and research. (shrink)

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

The paper presents an account of the concept of existence that is based on Brentano’s work. In contrast to Frege and Russell, Brentano took ‘exists’ to express a that subsumes objects and explained it with recourse to the non-propositional attitude of acknowledgment. I argue that the core of Brentano’s view can be developed to a defensible alternative to the Frege-Russell view of existence.

ABSTRACT Prior studies have examined the impacts of sensemaking processes, such as forecasting, on ethical decision making but only a few have considered how aspects of the ethical issue itself, such as social consensus and magnitude of consequences, might interact with sensemaking processes to influence EDM. The present effort examines both forecasting and moral intensity, as well as their interactions, during the EDM process. Participants in this study were given an ethical scenario with either a high or low degree of (...) social consensus as well as a greater or smaller magnitude of consequences. They were then asked to forecast either many or few potential outcomes stemming from their actions before coming up with a final plan of action. Responses were rated for quality of forecasting, use of metacognitive reasoning strategies, perceived moral intensity, and ethicality. Results indicate that social consensus may not be beneficial for EDM if the magnitude of consequences is low or individuals are not engaged in extensive forecasting. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

As the average age of the population increases, so too do the number of people living with chronic illnesses. With limited resources available, the development of dialogue-based e-health systems that provide justified general health advice offers a cost-effective solution to the management of chronic conditions. It is however imperative that such systems are responsible in their approach. We present in this paper two main challenges for the deployment of e-health systems, that have a particular relevance to dialogue and argumentation: collecting (...) and handling health data, and trust. For both challenges, we look at specific issues therein, outlining their importance in general, and describing their relevance to dialogue and argumentation. Finally, we go on to propose six recommendations for handling these issues, towards addressing the main challenges themselves, that act both as general advice for dialogue and argumentation research in the e-health domain, and as a foundation for future work on this topic. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and musicologist (...) and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

Many people have been enraged lately by the enormous increases in certain generic prescription drugs. But free marketeers defend these prices by arguing that they simply represent what the market will bear, and in a capitalist society there is accordingly nothing wrong with charging them. This paper argues that such a defense is actually contrary to the very principles that free marketeers claim to embrace. These prices are not only unjust and exploitative, but government interference with them would not render (...) the market less free, at least if what it means for a market to be “free” is properly understood. Everyone, even free marketeers with a libertarian or neoliberal bent, should accordingly be against this kind of profiteering. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We consider several ways in which a good understanding of modern techniques and principles in physics can elucidate ecology, and we focus on analogical reasoning between these two branches of science. Analogical reasoning requires an understanding of both sciences and an appreciation of the similarities and points of contact between the two. In the current ecological literature on the relationship between ecology and physics, there has been some misunderstanding about the nature of modern physics and its methods. Physics is (...) seen as being much cleaner and tidier than ecology. When compared to this idealized, fictional version of physics, ecology looks very different, and the prospect of ecology and physics learning from one another is questionable. We argue that physics, once properly understood, is more like ecology than ecologists have thus far appreciated. Physicists and ecologists can and do learn from each other, and, in this paper, we outline how analogical reasoning can facilitate such exchanges. (shrink)

Wie geartet ist das Verhältnis zwischen den zentralen Begriffen „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ in Lockes Essay? Sind diese Begriffe für Locke identisch oder voneinander verschieden? Falls sie verschieden sind, wie ist der Unterschied genau zu bestimmen? Diese Arbeit untersucht die Fragen, unter Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Deutungen in der Sekundärliteratur; sie sichtet und prüft den Text des Essays sorgfältig und breitet ein breites Spektrum philosophischer Implikationen von Lockes Ausführungen über das „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ aus. Der abschließende Teil legt dar, daß Locke niemals (...) eine feste Position gegenüber dem Verhältnis zwischen den beiden Begriffen eingenommen hat, sondern daß er zwischen verschiedenen Positionen schwankte -als Resultat der starken philosophischen Kräfte, die ihn bald in die eine, bald in die andere Richtung zogen. (shrink)

The dynamical patterns in mental phenomena have a characteristic suppleness&emdash;a looseness or softness that persistently resists precise formulation&emdash;which apparently underlies the frame problem of artificial intelligence. This suppleness also undermines contemporary philosophical functionalist attempts to define mental capacities. Living systems display an analogous form of supple dynamics. However, the supple dynamics of living systems have been captured in recent artificial life models, due to the emergent architecture of those models. This suggests that analogous emergent models might be able to explain (...) supple dynamics of mental phenomena. These emergent models of the supple mind, if successful, would refashion the nature of contemporary functionalism in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)