I examine passages from the Zhuangzi that proponents of interpreting Zhuangzian ethics as "patient moral relativism" (PMR) primarily draw on to support their view. I consider whether in these passages Zhuangzi morally evaluates agents or their actions, and if he does, whether his evaluations support ascribing to him PMR. My argument is that Zhuangzi either fails to make the required moral evaluations or he makes moral evaluations that do not accord with PMR. A PMR-friendly reading is possible only if we (...) accept contested interpretative claims about parts of the Zhuangzi that go beyond the primary textual evidence that is frequently cited in support of such a reading. (shrink)

Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472 – 1529) is famously associated with the view that knowledge and action are unified (zhī xíng hé yī 知行合一). Call this the Unity Thesis. Given standard assumptions about what it means for a person to know, it may seem that the Unity Thesis is clearly false: I can know that p without currently acting in p-related ways, and I can know how to φ without currently φ-ing. My aims in this paper are, first, to draw on (...) recent work in epistemology to explain and defend the Unity Thesis and, second, to argue that it offers us an attractive conceptual alternative to a standard way of thinking about the nature of intentional action. The first step of my argument draws on the idea that what distinguishes intentional actions from bodily events is the presence of knowing-to – that is, an agent is φ-ing intentionally if and only if she is currently doing something because she knows to do it as a way for her to φ. Such a notion of knowing-to allows us to explain otherwise puzzling features of the Unity Thesis, including the claim that knowing and acting occur simultaneously. In the second step, I argue that the Unity Thesis can help us avoid various long-standing issues in the philosophy of action, including the problem of deviant (formal) causation. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Kant's and Bolzano's differing perspectives on ordinary natural language. I argue that Kant does not see ordinary language as providing semantically organized content and that, as a result, Kant does not believe that ordinary language is sufficiently well-developed to support philosophical analysis and definition. By contrast, for Bolzano, the content given in ordinary language are richly structured entities he calls 'propositions in themselves'. This contrast in views is used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's belief (...) that definition is impossible for philosophical concepts. It is also used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's methods of exposition of philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Passages from the recently excavated Guodian manuscripts bear a surprising resemblance to a position ascribed to Gaozi and his followers in the Mengzi at 6A4-5, namely that righteousness is “external.” Although such a resemblance has been noted, the philosophical implications of it for the debate between Gaozi and Mengzi and, by extension, for Mengzian ethics have been largely unexplored. I argue that a Guodian-inspired reading of 6A4-5 is one that takes the debate to be about whether standing in certain family (...) relations makes a difference to whether one’s actions are righteous. Gaozi denies that it does, holding the view that one’s family relations, i.e., relations internal to the household, are irrelevant when it comes to matters of righteousness, while Mengzi disagrees, arguing that all relational properties, including family relations, are just as much reason-giving properties for performing righteous actions as they are in the case of performing benevolent actions. I argue that such a Guodian-based reading provides us a simple, yet explanatorily powerful reading of 6A4-5 that has broader implications for Mengzian ethics and our understanding of the early Chinese intellectual milieu in general. (shrink)

This chapter examines Mencius’s views on knowledge and how they might contribute to contemporary debates in epistemology. For this purpose, I focus on three features that I take to be characteristic (although not exhaustive) of Mencian epistemology: first, Mencius’s views on knowing things; second, the role that wisdom or intellectual virtue plays in acquiring knowledge; and third, Mencius’s views on “knowing-to”, a kind of knowledge conceptually distinct from knowing-that and knowing-how. I argue that the views we find in the Mencius (...) on these matters are relevant to contemporary debates on the nature of objectual knowledge, on the role of intellectual virtue in knowing, and on the relation between know-how and intelligent action. (shrink)

In this chapter I give an account of the epistemology underlying the concept of “extension” in the Mengzi, an early Confucian text written in the fourth century BCE. Mengzi suggests in a conversation with King Xuan of Qi that a solution to the King’s problem of how one comes to act in a kingly manner is that one engages in “extension”. I argue that a long-standing scholarly debate on the exact nature of Mengzian “extension” can be resolved by closely investigating (...) the epistemological assumptions that must be in place for “extension” to be a viable solution to King Xuan’s problem. More specifically, my argument is that knowledge of a certain kind, namely knowing-to, is both necessary and sufficient for extension to take place. In other words, for a person S to extend X, where X is a capacity for action, S at least needs to have knowing-to. (shrink)

Background and aimsFew Polish hospitals have Hospital Ethics Committee (HECs) and the services are not always adequate. In this situation, the role of HECs, in providing, among others, ethical advice on the discontinuation of persistent therapies, may be taken over by other entities. The aim of our research was to investigate, how often and on what issues hospital chaplains are asked for ethical advice in reaching difficult medical decisions.MethodsA survey of 100 Roman Catholic chaplains was conducted, that is, at least (...) 10% of all chaplains currently working in Polish hospitals.ResultsOf the participants, 29% confirmed receiving requests for advice in making a morally difficult medical decision. Receiving this type of request was not conditional on the place of their service, duration of their pastoral mission or HEC membership. The largest group of chaplains (21%) encounter questions concerning the ethical dilemmas associated with discontinuing persistent therapy. Patients and their families most often raise issues related to the methods of birth control, and the medical staff raise the issue of termination of pregnancy—as reported by 9% and 15% of chaplains, respectively. Most of the chaplains asked for help (79%) experience a deficit of specialist knowledge in the area of medicine or ethics.ConclusionsIn order to improve the quality of ethical consultations in Polish hospitals, in addition to further development of HECs, it is postulated to develop a system for bioethical education of chaplains. (shrink)

The subject of the following discourse is, as the title itself points out, the anthropology of Heschel. Considering the fact that Heschel is in general unknown in Poland, I shall take the liberty to make known, in short, some pieces of information about him. Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland on January 11th 1907. After graduating from the Gymnasium in Wilno he started his studies at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität, Berlin. At the Berlin University he studied at the Philosophy Department and, (...) additionally, he took up studies in the sphere of Semitic Philosophy and History of Art. In 1937 Heschel was chosen by Martin Buber as his successor at Mittelstelle für Jüdische Erwachsenen-Bildung in Frankfurt on the Main. In October he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland together with all the Jews of Polish nationality. After returning to Warsaw he taught philosophy and biblical sciences at the Institute of Jewish Studies. Six weeks before the German aggression against Poland he left for England and then for the United States where he stayed until his death. He was the Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Except for his didactical activity, our philosopher did not neglect creative work. As time went on he was becoming a more and more well-known and appreciated intellectualist and social worker in America. His activity went far beyond the boundaries of the Jewish world. (shrink)

El presente trabajo describe y analiza, desde una perspectiva de género, el escenario laboral de una cárcel de mujeres en Argentina: la Unidad Penitenciaria N° 4 de la ciudad de Santa Fe. Partimos de considerar la articulación entre trabajo y género en la prisión como un dispositivo de gobierno —que funciona de modos tanto represivos como orientados a la producción de determinadas formas de subjetividad— que se constituye, al mismo tiempo, como un sitio potencial para el desarrollo de formas diversas (...) de agenciamiento de las mujeres detenidas. En esta dirección, nos enfocamos, primero, en el modo en que el trabajo vehiculiza imágenes sobre las mujeres detenidas y su “corrección”. En segundo lugar, analizamos los diversos usos y sentidos que las mujeres detenidas hacen del trabajo y de los ingresos allí obtenidos. A partir de ello, mostramos en primer lugar de qué manera el trabajo hace visible el tipo de subjetividad que la institución penitenciaria intenta construir, caracterizada no sólo por exigencias de conformidad a modelos tradicionales de feminidad sino también por el intento de construir subjetividades (micro) emprendedoras y proactivas. Al mismo tiempo, mostramos cómo las mujeres detenidas se valen tanto de la oferta institucional como de una serie de nichos que crean por fuera de esta para construir espacios de agenciamiento que, con ciertos límites, les permiten hacer frente a algunas de las privaciones operadas por la pena privativa de la libertad y por la subordinación de género más en general. (shrink)

In the study of special languages and translation, the legal field is often insulated from other domains. This is primarily due to the extreme system dependence of the terminology of law, which results from a lack of a common legal system of reference throughout the world. The abstract nature of this human-made field and its dynamicity in view of the continuously evolving case law and constant changes in legislation make it difficult to illustrate its complex ontology through traditional terminology management (...) techniques. Therefore, this paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to constructing the ontology of legal concepts based on structural constituents from frame semantics and comparative law. Frames allowing for the representation of interconnected knowledge segments evoked by legal concepts and the distinction between micro- and macro-dimensions in legal comparison research make it possible to capture the complex ontology of legal terminology evoked in a specific point in time and a determined legal context. The ontological knowledge structure will be exemplified by terms from German social, commercial, employment, and tax law. (shrink)

I argue that, for Mengzi, the kind of knowledge that features in expressions of the form ‘knowing N’, where N is a noun or a noun phrase, is not a kind of belief but is instead a capacity for intelligently performing relevant actions. My argument proceeds by showing that, first, Mengzi is committed to the view that a person knows N iff she is relevantly capable and, second, that the best explanation for this is that the kind of knowledge involved (...) in knowing N is a capacity. Finally, I motivate such a practicalist interpretation by arguing that it offers us a general but informative explanation of what it is that knowing N makes the knower capable of doing. (shrink)

Many anglophone scholars take the early Confucians to be virtue ethicists of one kind or another. A common virtue ethical reading of one of the most influential early Confucians, namely Mengzi, ascribes to him the view that moral actions are partly (or entirely) moral because of the state from which they are performed, be it the agent’s motives, emotions, or their character traits. I consider whether such a reading of the Mengzi is justified and I argue that it is not. (...) I argue that there is no reason to believe that Mengzi distinguishes the moral value of actions that are performed from virtuous and non-virtuous states. Given this, virtue (as a feature of agents) is normatively posterior to virtuous actions. I conclude, first, that this poses a challenge to a wide range of common interpretations of the Mengzi, be they virtue ethical or otherwise, and second, that there might be conceptual space for an account of virtue ethics that rejects the normative priority of virtue over virtuous actions. (shrink)