Proceedings of a colloquium held in 2008 at Central European University.

This paper introduces Husserl's ethics by examining his critique of Kant's ethics. It presents Husserl's lectures on ethics in which he offers his own ethical theory in a historical context. The phenomenological ethics seeks to combine the advantages of both the traditional empiricism and rationalism. Husserl's ethics takes into account that emotions play an essential role in the constitution of values and morals. Contrariwise, Husserl fights against relativism in ethics and praises Kant for the discovery of an absolute moral imperative. (...) He considers Kant's ethics as a rationalistic position that is too formal and that does not take into account that every will must be motivated by some concrete material good that is evaluated in our feelings or emotions. (shrink)

Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume’s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination (...) in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate. (shrink)

This paper argues that Husserl’s ethics do not fit into any one of three commonly recognized kinds of ethical theory: virtue (Aristotelian), deontological (Kantian), and consequentialist (especially, utilitarianism). Husserl’s mature ethical theory, in particular, combines a modern, Kantian or Fichtean approach based on a strong concept of a free and active ego capable of shaping its life autonomously through its own will with a more Aristotelian theory of the virtues that help us to shape our lives in order to reach (...) happiness or eudaimonia. The paper presents a historical overview of Husserl’s writings on ethics, divided into two main periods with distinct emphases. It concludes that, on the one hand, Husserl’s theory of the ethical person clarifies the origin of the virtues in the free activity of the subject, and on the other, it extends the voluntaristic conception of subjectivity to encompass the passively constituted habits. In this way, Husserl combines an Aristotelian-style virtue ethics with modern theories of subjectivity. It is this combination of modern and Aristotelian elements in Husserl’s ethics that makes it a systematically fruitful and promising contribution to ethical theory. (shrink)

This article is composed of three sections that investigate the epistemological foundations of Husserl’s idea of logic from the Logical Investigations . First, it shows the general structure of this logic. Husserl conceives of logic as a comprehensive, multi-layered theory of possible theories that has its most fundamental level in a doctrine of meaning. This doctrine aims to determine the elementary categories that constitute every possible meaning (meaning-categories). The second section presents the main idea of Husserl’s search for an epistemological (...) foundation for knowledge, science and logic. Their epistemological clarification can only be reached through a detailed analysis of the structure of those intentions that give us what is meant in our intentions. To reveal the intuitive giveness of logical forms is the ultimate aim of Husserl’s epistemology of logic. Logical forms and meaning-categories can only be given in a certain higher-order intuition that Husserl calls categorical intuition. The third section of this article distinguishes different kinds of categorical intuition and shows how the most basic logical categories and concepts are given to us in a categorical abstraction. (shrink)

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin documents and celebrates Wright's 100-year-old masterpiece by using rare vintage postcards to provide a revealing and visually unique journey through Wright's work.

INTRODUCTION HUTCHESONS LIFE AND WORKS The history of philosophy includes the names of many persons, famous in their time, whose contributions to human ...

Mirror-touch synaesthesia is a condition where observing touch to another’s body induces a subjective tactile sensation on the synaesthetes body. The present study explores which characteristics of the inducing stimulus modulate the synaesthetic touch experience. Fourteen mirror-touch synaesthetes watched videos depicting a touch event while indicating whether the video induced a tactile sensation, on which side of their body they felt this sensation and the intensity of the experienced sensation. Results indicate that the synaesthetes experience stronger tactile sensations when observing (...) touch to real bodies, whereas observing touch to dummy bodies, pictures of bodies and disconnected dummy body parts elicited weaker sensations. These results suggest that mirror-touch synaesthesia is not entirely bottom-up driven, but top-down information, such as knowledge about real and dummy body parts, also modulate the intensity of the experience. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results from an experimental reproductive ethics study exploring questions about reproduction and parenthood. The main finding in our study is that, while we may assume that everyone understands these concepts and their relationship in the same way, this assumption may be unwarranted. For example, we may assume that if ‘x is y’s father’, it follows that ‘y is x’s child’. However, the participants in our study did not necessarily agree that it does follow. This (...) means, at the very least, that we need to make sure all parties in a debate have the same relationships in mind when talking about reproduction and parenthood. Moreover, it gives us reason to explore more carefully the conditions which support or undermine the connections between these concepts. This cannot come from purely theoretical reasoning, nor from empirical research alone, but from the alliance between the two. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The creation and selection of children as tissue donors is ethically controversial. Critics often appeal to Kant’s Formula of Humanity, i.e. the requirement that people be treated not merely as means but as ends in themselves. As many defenders of the procedure point out, these appeals usually do not explain the sense of the requirement and hence remain obscure. Arguments This article proposes an interpretation of Kant’s principle, and it proposes that two different instrumental stances be (...) distinguished. I argue that the creation of “saviour children” is a form of instrumentalization that I dub “preemptive instrumentalization” and that it is categorically different from earlier forms of instrumental attitudes concerning human reproduction. Conclusion Critics are wrong to claim that Kant’s principle is either compatible with the selection of saviour siblings or too vague to serve as an ethical principle. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses the website. Under the title “The Virtual Laboratory: Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life” it gives access to a massive collection of texts and images concerning the experimental life sciences of the 19th and early 20th century. The main focus is on physiology and psychology. Plant breeding is an additional theme. As of now, the Virtual Laboratory gives access to some 12,000 digital items, i.e. historical text books, journal articles, manuscripts, trade catalogs, photos, (...) films, audio files, etc. At the same time, the Virtual Laboratory is a platform for historians of science to publish and discuss their research on the experimentalization of life. Topics range from the history of precision time measurements in the physiological lab to the historical epistemology of hearing and the role of the Axolotl as an experimental animal in zoology. By way of a guided tour through the Virtual Laboratory, the paper describes the kind of epistemic space that was created. It argues that open access to historical sources as well as tight connections between historical research papers and their raw data, e.g. manuscript sources, profoundly change what used to be called the Archive. Today’s historians of science have started to work within a space that is widely distributed and extremely flexible with respect to its internal connections. It is a space that turns the Archive into an authentic laboratory for the science historian. (shrink)

This paper addresses an article by Felix Klein of 1886, in which he generalized his theory of polynomial equations of degree 5—comprehensively discussed in his Lectures on the Icosahedron two years earlier—to equations of degree 6 and 7. To do so, Klein used results previously established in line geometry. I review Klein’s 1886 article, its diverse mathematical background, and its place within the broader history of mathematics. I argue that the program advanced by this article, although historically overlooked due to (...) its eventual failure, offers a valuable insight into a time of crucial evolution of the subject. (shrink)

When we discuss normative reasons, oughts, requirements of rationality, hypothetical imperatives (or “anankastic conditionals”), motivating reasons and so on, we often use verbs like “believe” and “want” to capture a relevant subject’s perspective. According to the received view about sentences involving these verbs, what they do is describe the subject’s mental states. Many puzzles concerning normative discourse have to do with the role that mental states consequently appear to play in this discourse. This book uses tools from formal semantics and (...) the philosophy of language to develop an alternative account of sentences involving these verbs. According to this view, which is called parentheticalism (in honour of J. O. Urmson), we very commonly use these verbs in a parenthetical sense. Used with this sense, these verbs themselves express backgrounded side-remarks on the contents they embed, and these latter, embedded contents constitute the at-issue contents of our utterances. This means that instead of speaking about the subject’s mental states, we often use sentences involving “believe” and “want” to speak about the world in a way that, in the conversational background, relates our utterances to her point of view. This idea is made precise, and it is used to solve various puzzles concerning normative discourse. The final result is a new, unified understanding of normative discourse, which gets by without postulating conceptual breaks between objective and subjective normative reasons, or normative reasons and rationality, or indeed between the reasons we ascribe to an agent and the reasons she herself can be expected to cite. Instead of being connected to either subjective mental states or objective facts, all of these normative statuses can be adequately articulated by citing worldly considerations from the subject’s point of view. (shrink)

Suppose we can save either a larger group of persons or a distinct, smaller group from some harm. Many people think that, all else equal, we ought to save the greater number. This article defends this view (with qualifications). But unlike earlier theories, it does not rely on the idea that several people's interests or claims receive greater aggregate weight. The argument starts from the idea that due to their stakes, the affected people have claims to have a say in (...) the rescue decision. As rescuers, our primary duty is to respect these procedural claims, which we must do by doing what these people would decide, in a process where each is given an equal vote on the matter. So in cases where each votes in their own self-interest, respect for their equal right to decide, or their autonomy, will lead us to save the greater number. The argument is explained in detail, with special attention to the questions of how, exactly, it avoids aggregation, and of why majority rule is superior to lottery procedures. The view has further advantages. Especially, it explains the “partial” relevance of numbers in cases involving unequal harms, and it does so in a way that dissolves the appearance of paradox that besets theories of “partial aggregation.”. (shrink)

A main objection – perhaps the foremost – to Kant's theory of moral worth is that whereas he claims that only actions performed from the motive of duty have moral worth, most people are convinced that right actions performed out of.

This article raises the question of whether there is one consistent theory of volitional acts in Husserl’s writings. The question arises because Husserl approaches volitional consciousness in his static and his genetic phenomenology rather differently. Static phenomenology understands acts of willing as complex, higher-order phenomena that are founded in both intellectual and emotional acts; while genetic phenomenology describes them as passively motivated phenomena that are implicitly predelineated in feelings, instincts, and drives, which always already include a characteristic element of striving. (...) Thus, according to genetic phenomenology, volitional acts are not founded on intellectual and emotional acts but rather influence those acts in their specific directedness. This article critically investigates four possible attempts to unite the two phenomenological approaches consistently and concludes that all these attempts are burdened with unsolved problems. It thus remains questionable whether Husserl has one consistent theory of volitional acts. (shrink)

A primary contribution of this essay is to provide a survey of the human and environmental impacts of livestock production. We will find that the mass consumption of animals is a primary reason why humans are hungry, fat, or sick and is a leading cause behind the depletion and pollution of waterways, the degradation and deforestation of the land, the extinction of species, and the warming of the planet. Recognizing these harms, this essay will consider various solutions being proposed to (...) “shrink” livestock’s long shadow, including proposed “technical” or “market” solutions, a transition to “new agrarian” methods, and a vegetarian or vegan diet. Though important and morally relevant qualitative differences exist between industrial and non-industrial methods, this essay will conclude that, given the present and projected size of the human population, the morality and sustainability of one’s diet are inversely related to the proportion of animals and animal products one consumes. (shrink)

Contemporary commentators on the history of ethics have devoted little attention to the ethical theory of Thomas Reid. The main reason for this neglect concerns the perspective from which they are very likely to view his theory. Roughly, this perspective is as follows. Eighteenth century ethics tends to be viewed as consisting mainly in the prolonged dispute concerning the nature of the moral faculty. In identifying Reid’s part in this dispute it should be noted that his Essays on the Active (...) Powers of the Human Mind, his major work on ethics, was published in 1788. It was therefore preceded by the works of such early rational intuitionists as Cudworth, Clarke, Balguy, and Wollaston and by the criticisms directed against them by such defenders of the moral sense position as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume. Moreover, it was preceded by the intuitionistic counterattack directed against the latter by Richard Price, a near contemporary of Reid, who has often been described as the greatest of the intuitionists and whose prominence is such that his ethical theory has tended to eclipse that of Reid. The result is that there are in Reid a large number of pages devoted to restatements of an intuitionistic position which a contemporary reader has already encountered in earlier writers and which he is therefore likely to find rather boring. Even those who have maintained correctly that Reid is the founder of the Scottish school of common sense and that his ethical theory is to be seen in the context of his defense of common sense have added little to this perspective, since, generally speaking, they have found no significant differences between his ethical theory as seen in this context and intuitionism. Viewed from this perspective, Reid’s ethics might well be deserving of neglect and of the comment made by Alasdair MacIntyre that “the successors of Hume and Adam Smith in Scottish philosophy have little to say to us. Thomas Reid was a rationalist in the spirit of Price.”. (shrink)

In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition that ‘philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts’ as a (...) reference point, it suggests that the corresponding philosophical practice is intimately connected to art and science. Studying the conceptual drawings in Deleuze’s texts, the article situates his philosophy in the French tradition of epistemology (Cavaillès, Bachelard and Canguilhem). As a result, the conceptual work of this philosophy can be seen as intensively responding to the creative problems posed by the dynamics of science in contemporary societies. (shrink)

ArgumentIn the winter of 1849–1850 in Königsberg, German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) conducted pioneering measurements concerning the propagation speed of stimulations in the living nerve. While recent historians of science have paid considerable attention to Helmholtz's uses of the graphic method, in particular his construction of an instrument called “myographion,” this paper draws attention to theinscription surfacesthat he used in effective ways for capturing and transmitting his findings. Against the background of recent archival findings, I show that Helmholtz used (...) isinglass copies of his graphical recordings in order to communicate the basic principle of previous measurements to the academic public. As the correspondence with his Berlin-based friend and colleague Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) and the subsequent development of the myographion make clear, these curves were not meant as measurements but functioned as demonstrations. In other words, Helmholtz's curves did provide “images of precision” (Olesko and Holmes 1993) – but they were not precise images. (shrink)

Despite non/minimal adversarial feminist argumentation models heavily critiquing rude, hostile, uncooperative argumentative practices, I argue that these models slip easily into instances of ‘white talk’ when white individuals are engaged with BIPOC on matters concerning racial injustices. While these models address overt aggression, a more nuanced modification is needed for the models to handle cases of white passive aggressive argumentative tactics. Moreover, I also argue that given the language and argumentative ideology within academia, ‘white talk’ cannot be addressed by BIPOC (...) without ‘argumentative smothering.’ Building heavily from Dotson’s conception of ‘testimonial smothering,’ I argue argumentative smothering occurs when an interlocutor heavily modifies their argumentative practices due to an oppressive environment in an attempt to situate their argument in such a way that it will be receptive and ‘acceptable’ to the other interlocutor and/or audience. (shrink)

Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the “French style” of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhem’s study of the reflex concept with respect (...) to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhem’s philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences. (shrink)

Este trabalho parte de algumas considerações das perspectivas antropológicas de Paulo Freire e John Dewey, tomando o primeiro autor como um leitor do segundo, pelo menos por via indireta através de Anísio Teixeira, focalizando basicamente duas noções fundamentais: o inacabamento freiriano e o crescimento deweyano. Discutindo detalhes e consequências teóricas desses conceitos para a educação, utilizamos as críticas dos autores em relação à educação bancária e/ou tradicional para apresentar os argumentos que foram elaborados em favor de uma nova educação. Foi (...) nesse contexto de discussão que as implicações pedagógicas para a infância foram consideradas. This paper presents some considerations from the anthropological perspectives of Paulo Freire and John Dewey, taking the first author as a reader of the second one, at least by indirect means of Anísio Teixeira, and it focuses basically two fundamental notions: Freire’s incompleteness and Dewey’s growth. Discussing details and consequences of these theoretical concepts for education, we considered the criticisms of the authors in relation to banking education and / or traditional education in order to present the arguments that were drawn up in favor of a new education. It was in this context of discussion that the pedagogical implications for children were considered. (shrink)

Strategies to involve agribusiness in the development of sustainable agricultural systems have been limited by the lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework for identifying the most critical supportive policies, programs and regulations. In this paper, we propose an efficiency/substitution/redesign framework to categorize strategies for modifying agribusiness practices. This framework is then used to identify a diverse range of short, medium, and long-term strategies to be pursued by governments, community groups, academics and agribusiness to support the transition. Strategies discussed include corporate (...) greening, ethical investment, changing the legal status of the corporaton, new business forms and the development of ecological economics. (shrink)

Methods Young healthy heterosexual couples underwent sleep-lab-based polysomnography of two sleeping arrangements: individual sleep and co-sleep. Individual and dyadic sleep parameters (i.e., synchronization of sleep stages) were collected. The latter were assessed using cross-recurrence quantification analysis. Additionally, subjective sleep quality, relationship characteristics, and chronotype were monitored. Data were analyzed comparing co-sleep vs. individual sleep. Interaction effects of the sleeping arrangement with gender, chronotype, or relationship characteristics were moreover tested. Results As compared to sleeping individually, co-sleeping was associated with about 10% (...) more REM sleep, less fragmented REM sleep (p = 0.008), longer undisturbed REM fragments (p = 0.0006), and more limb movements (p = 0.007). None of the other sleep stages was significantly altered. Social support interacted with sleeping arrangement in a way that individuals with suboptimal social support showed the biggest impact of the sleeping arrangement on REM sleep. Sleep architectures were more synchronized between partners during co-sleep (p = 0.005) even if wake phases were excluded (p = 0.022). Moreover, sleep architectures are significantly coupled across a lag of ± 5min. Depth of relationship represented an additional significant main effect regarding synchronization, reflecting a positive association between the two. Neither REM sleep nor synchronization was influenced by gender, chronotype, or other relationship characteristics. Conclusion Depending on the sleeping arrangement, couple's sleep architecture and synchronization show alterations that are modified by relationship characteristics. We discuss that these alterations could be part of a self-enhancing feedback loop of REM sleep and sociality and a mechanism through which sociality prevents mental illness. (shrink)

Henning's Philosophy after Marx recapitulates the history of Marx-interpretations as a history of misinterpretation. Illustrating how Marx's original theories are more sustainable than their critiques from sociology, economics or philosophy, the work culminates in a criticism of recent critical theories.

The article conducts an analysis of everyday notions of witnessing as emerging from the marginal writings of a mid-twentieth century Belgian medievalist, François Louis Ganshof (1895-1980). The aim of the analysis is threefold: to explore a specific set of cultural conditions shaping the understanding of witnessing; to demonstrate the primacy, in witnessing, of an intricate notion of historicity as moulded by scholarly practice; and to indicate that, and in what manner, witnessing and historicity informed a notion of political experience that (...) appears foundational to Ganshof's understanding of, and attitude towards, matters political in general. The article also stipulates the legitimacy and the value, in a historical investigation of political thought, of focusing on minor figures, discursive patterns and events of seeming insignificance. It ultimately proposes that the small-scale cultural labour on the discursive formations centred on historicity may be deployed for rethinking our understanding of epochal concepts such as modernity. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the current discussion on collective affective intentionality. Very often, affective sharing is regarded as a special feature ofamore general form of we-intentionality being already in place. In contrast to this view, the paper attempts to explicate a more elementary form of affective sharing that does not simply presuppose other forms of we-intentionality, but amounts to a primitive form of we-intentionality of its own. The account presented here draws on two conceptual tools from the broader phenomenological tradition: (...) prereflective we-intentionality on the one hand and atmospheric perception on the other. The central claim is that some instances of affective we-consciousness mainly emerge on the level of unthematic, pre-reflective orientation within one’s environment. The first part of the paper gives an account of this claim, while second part places the account in the broader discussion on collective affective intentionality. (shrink)

Although debates over carbon taxes and trading schemes, over carbon offsets and compact fluorescents are important, our efforts to address the environmental challenges that we face will fall short unless and until we also set about the difficult work of reconceiving who we are and how we are related to our processive cosmos. What is needed, I argue, are new ways of thinking and acting grounded in new ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world, ways of understanding (...) that recognize our fundamental interdependence and interconnection with everyone and everything in the cosmos, ways of understanding that recognize the intrinsic beauty and value of every form of existence. What is needed, I suggest, is a moral philosophy grounded in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism. It is the primary aim of this essay to defend the value of a moral philosophy inspired by Whitehead's organic, beauty-centered conception of reality. (shrink)

In 1923, Paul Valéry created an artificial world of antiquity. In it the sea could wash up things which, because of their brilliance, hardness, and unfamiliar form, interrupted and irritated well-established habits of thought. Nature or art? Given or created? Earthly or heavenly? Eupalinos, the architect, does not find himself in the position to decide. He throws back into the sea the shiny, ball-like thing he had picked up from the shore only seconds before.1 In the 1950s, the situation has (...) changed markedly. Parisian consumer society uses the polished floors of exhibition halls and salesrooms to create encounters with similarly enigmatic and wonderful objects. However, one can no longer take these .. (shrink)

Seabed mining, the extraction of minerals from the deep-sea floor, is hotly contested. Policymakers have agreed on the need for a regulatory framework. However, traditional ethical theories and principles are not well equipped for the ethics of the alien deep sea. Engaging with the sea means engaging with something abstract that we can only access indirectly. We argue that this invisibility and alienness of the sea and its inhabitants can give new insights into how ethics are done. Rather than getting (...) even more grip on what is already directly known, considering what is outside our usual moral view may be just as valuable. To do so, art can help us think with these unknown and invisible parts of the ecosystem. For that, we describe three cases. The scientist and artist Eugen Ransonnet engaged with the underwater world in the late 19th century. The Victorian flower painter Marianne North's unruly approach greatly influenced the botanic discourse until today. And finally, Christina Stadlbauer's Institute for the Relocation of Biodiversity and her work with the mollusk Pinna Nobilis in Mar Menor, Spain. We describe the Pinna Nobilis video project and the ethical and political opportunities it opens. We propose that engaging with the arts can pave the way towards including the unknown in ethical reflection and, at the same time, how it can rephrase questions that can help us reconsider what is outside of our moral view. (shrink)

dewey is an optimistic thinker. He fits into a vein of pragmatism known as meliorism, which holds that the condition of the world can be improved through intelligent, imaginative, human action. For this reason, it is tempting to read Dewey as permanently cheerful—particularly when we compare him with philosophers from the continental tradition who work on similar themes. However, it is important to remember that meliorism holds that improvement is possible through intelligent engagement—not that it is guaranteed. Dewey's aesthetics particularly (...) have been mischaracterized as overly sanguine, lacking solid account of the tragic. This is a misreading since Dewey's aesthetic does make ample room for human suffering on... (shrink)

The combination of the issue of return of individual genetic results/incidental findings and paediatric biobanks is not much discussed in ethical literature. The traditional arguments pro and con return of such findings focus on principles such as respect for persons, autonomy and solidarity. Two dimensions have been distilled from the discussion on return of individual results in a genetic research context: the respect for a participant’s autonomy and the duty of the researcher. Concepts such as autonomy and solidarity do not (...) fit easily in the discussion when paediatric biobanks are concerned. Although parents may be allowed to enrol children in minimal risk genetic research on stored tissue samples, they should not be given the option to opt out of receiving important health information. Also, children have a right to an open future: parents do not have the right to access any genetic data that a biobank holds on their children. In this respect, the guidelines on genetic testing of minors are applicable. With regard to the duty of the researcher the question of whether researchers have a more stringent duty to return important health information when their research subjects are children is more difficult to answer. A researcher’s primary duty is to perform useful research, a policy to return individual results must not hamper this task. The fact that vulnerable children are concerned, is an additional factor that should be considered when a policy of returning results is laid down for a specific collection or research project. (shrink)

Following a detailed study of the views of reid and wittgenstein on philosophy and language, I conclude that reid's position represents an extremely pivotal stage in the upgrading of the importance of language in philosophy which, Taken up and carried along by moore, Culminates in the later philosophy of wittgenstein and that the latter owes much to views on philosophy and language which have their origin in reid.

Harry Frankfurt has claimed that some of our desires are ‘internal’, i.e., our own in a special sense. I defend the idea that a desire's being internal matters in a normative, reasons-involving sense, and offer an explanation for this fact. The explanation is Kantian in spirit. We have reason to respect the desires of persons in so far as respecting them is a way to respect the persons who have them (in some cases, ourselves). But if desires matter normatively in (...) so far as they belong to persons, then it matters whether they really do belong to the persons who have them. Thus Kantian considerations explain why identification (or internality) is a normatively relevant category. This account is superior to others, and does not lead to reasons bootstrapping or a self-centred conception of deliberation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to complicate two primary norms within argumentation theory: 1) engaging with one’s interlocutors in a ‘pleasant’ tone and 2) speaking directly to one’s target audience/interlocutor. Moreover, I urge argumentation theorists to explore various cultures’ argumentative norms and practices when attempting to formulate more universal theories regarding argumentation. Ultimately, I aim to show that the two previously mentioned norms within argumentation obscure and misrepresent many argumentative practices within African American Vernacular English—or Ebonics, specifically the art of signifying.