In the last few years, nativist, modular views of moral cognition have been influential. This paper shares the view that normative cognition develops robustly, and is probably an adaptation. But it develops an alternative view of the developmental basis of moral cognition, based on the idea that adults scaffold moral development by organising the learning environment of the next generation. In addition, I argue that the modular nativist picture has no plausible account of the role of explicit (...) moral judgement, and that no persuasive version of the ‘poverty of the stimulus' applies to moral cognition. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to undercut the justification of our moral judgments by showing why a tendency to make moral judgments would evolve regardless of the truth of those judgments. Machery and Mallon (2010. Evolution of morality. In J.M. Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group (Eds.), The Moral Psychology Handbook (pp. 3-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press) have recently tried to disarm these arguments by showing that moral cognition – in the sense that is relevant (...) to debunking – is not the product of natural selection. Specifically, they present a barrage of increasingly influential challenges against reciprocity-based approaches to moral nativism. In the present paper I defend the nativist account of moral cognition against these criticisms, thereby bolstering the skeptical conclusions of evolutionary debunking arguments. However, Machery and Mallon's critique does successfully highlight several vulnerabilities in Richard Joyce's approach to debunking, suggesting several ways in which it can be revised toward generating a more robust version of the argument. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts Mencius's moral philosophy with recent development in cognitive science regarding mental capacity to understand moral rules and principles. Several cognitive scientists argue that the human mind has innate cognitive and emotive foundations of morality. In this paper, Mencius's moral theory is interpreted from the perspective of faculty psychology and cognitive modularity, a theoretical hypothesis in cognitive science in which the mind is understood as a system of specialized mental components. Specifically, Mencius's Four (...) Beginnings (the basic human emotions that serve as the foundations of morality) are interpreted as vertical faculties, comparable to Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's moral faculties. (shrink)

Some thinkers distrust Darwinist explorations of complex human behaviors, particularly investigations into possible differences in valued skills between genders, races or classes. Such projects, it is claimed, tend to have adverse effects on people who are already disadvantaged. A recent argument by Philip Kitcher both clarifies and generalizes this charge to cover a whole genre of scientific projects. In this paper I try to spell out and analyze Kitcher's argument. The argument fails, I suggest, because some of its key premises (...) fail to convince. My analysis focuses on relevant facts about the role of inquiry in fallibilist contexts, the texture of belief in contemporary natural science, and the moral dimension of scientific research. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up one of Wang Yangming’s most audacious philosophical claims, which is that an achievement that is entirely concerned with correcting one’s own inner states, called “establishing sincerity” (licheng 立誠) can help one to fully grasp (jin 盡) all ethically pertinent matters, including those that would seem to require some ability to know or track facts about the wider world (e.g., facts about people very different from ourselves, facts about the needs of plants and animals). Wang (...) makes a claim to this effect in some of his letters and recorded discussions. -/- I begin with a brief, historical reconstruction of what Wang means by “establishing sincerity” and then turn to two sets of controversies regarding his audacious claim. The first has to do with how we should understand the proposal that establishing sincerity helps or positions a person to fully grasp all ethically significant concerns. On the interpretation of Chen Lai 陳來, Wang doesn’t think that establishing sincerity is sufficient by itself to have this grasp, only that it lays a necessary psychological foundation for all attempts to do so, so that it leaves much more work to do. I largely agree with Chen’s reading but find it isn’t strong enough to capture what’s most important and controversial about Wang’s view. On my stronger reading, Wang doesn’t just think that establishing sincerity provides a necessary foundation for a complete grasp, he also thinks that it describes the most difficult and demanding step or part of the process – the other steps come much more naturally and easily. The second set of controversies has to do with whether we can preserve Wang’s core account of virtuous moral agency without his strong ethical nativism, according to which we have an inherent capacity and disposition to track what is ethically important or salient about people and things very much unlike ourselves. I consider some arguments and interpretations of Wang’s thought that might allow us to bypass his nativist presuppositions, and conclude that they do not succeed. Even if we cannot accept his ethical nativism, however, there is a range of important ethical norms for which Wang’s prescriptions are powerful and prudent. The result of this study, I hope, will be an account of Wang’s thought which better positions us to see what parts are (and are not) worth bringing to ongoing debates about the nature of ethics, moral knowledge, and moral virtue. (shrink)

The study of biological invasions raises troubling scientific, political and moral issues that merit discussion and debate on a broad scale. Nativist trends in Conservation Biology have made environmentalists biased against alien species. This bias is scientifically questionable, and may have roots in xenophobic and racist attitudes. Rethinking conservationists' conceptions of biological invasion is essential to the development of a progressive environmental science, politics, and philosophy.

In this paper, the difficulties inherent in the debate between moral nativists and antinativists, who differ in their beliefs on the nature of systems of morality, are shown to exemplify the need for philosophers to support their views with empirical data. Furthermore, it proposes that an empirical study of first-generation immigrant populations has the potential to resolve the debate over moral nativism, as it would allow researchers to observe the moral “critical period.” Based on the recent (...) philosophical advances made through experimental evidence, this paper goes on to argue that empirical data is a valuable source of information from which philosophers ought to draw. (shrink)

Although linguistic nativism has received the bulk of attention in contemporary innateness debates, moral nativism has perhaps an even deeper ancestry. If linguistic nativism is Cartesian, moral nativism is Platonic. Moral nativism has taken a backseat to linguistic nativism in contemporary discussions largely because Chomsky made a case for linguistic nativism characterized by unprecedented rigor. Hence it is not surprising that recent attempts to revive the thesis that we have innate (...) moral knowledge have drawn on Chomsky’s framework. I’ll argue, however, that the recent attempts to use Chomsky-style arguments in support of innate moral knowledge are uniformly unconvincing. The central argument in the Chomskian arsenal, of course, is the Poverty of the Stimulus (POS) argument. In section 1, I will set out the basic form of the POS argument and the conclusions about domain specificity and innate propositional knowledge that are supposed to follow. In section 2, I’ll distinguish 3 hypotheses about innateness and morality: rule nativism, moral principle nativism, and moral judgment nativism. In sections 3-5 I’ll then consider each of these hypotheses in turn. I’ll argue that while there is some reason to favor rule nativism, the arguments that moral principles and moral judgment derive from innate moral knowledge don’t work. The capacity for moral judgment is better explained by appeal to innate affective systems rather than innate moral knowledge. In the final section, I’ll suggest that the role of such affective mechanisms in structuring the mind complicates the standard picture about poverty of the stimulus arguments and nativism. For the affective mechanisms that influence cognitive structures can make contributions that are neither domain general nor domain specific. (shrink)

Thus declares Francis Hutcheson, expressing a view widespread during the Enlightenment, and throughout the history of philosophy. According to this tradition, we are by nature moral, and ourS concern for good and evil is as natural to us as our capacity to feel pleasure and pain. The link between morality and human nature has been a common theme since ancient times, and, with the rise of modern empirical moral psychology, it remains equally popular today. Evolutionary ethicists, ethologists, developmental (...) psychologists, social neuroscientists, and even some cultural anthropologists tend to agree that morality is part of the bioprogram (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; de Waal, 1996; Haidt & Joseph, 2004; Hauser, 2006; Ruse, 1991; Sober & Wilson, 1998; Turiel, 2002). Recently, researchers have begun to look for moral modules in the brain, and they have been increasingly tempted to speculate about the moral acquisition device, and innate faculty for norm acquisition akin to celebrated language acquisition device, promulgated by Chomsky (Dwyer, 1999; Mikhail, 2000; Hauser, this volume). All this talk of modules and mechanism may make some shudder, especially if they recall that eugenics emerged out of an effort to find the biological sources of evil. Yet the tendency to postulate an innate moral faculty is almost irresistible. For one thing, it makes us appear nobler as a species, and for another, it offers an explanation of the fact that people in every corner of the globe seem to have moral rules. Moral nativism is, in this respect, an optimistic doctrine—one that makes our great big world seem comfortingly smaller. I want to combat this alluring idea. I do not deny that morality is ecumenical, but I think it is not innate—at least that the current state of evidence is unpersuasive. Morality, like all human capacities, depends on having particular biological predispositions, but none of these, I submit, deserves to be called a moral faculty. Morality is a byproduct—accidental or invented—of faculties that evolved for other purposes.. (shrink)

In the 17th century, there was a lively debate in the intellectual circles with which Locke was familiar, revolving around the question whether the human mind is furnished with innate ideas. Although a few scholars declared that there is no good reason to believe, and good reason not to believe, in the existence of innate ideas, the vast majority took for granted that God, in his infinite goodness and wisdom, has inscribed in human minds innate principles that constitute the foundation (...) of knowledge, as well in practical as in theoretical matters. It was in opposition to the latter group, which included Descartes, leading Anglican divines, and the Cambridge Platonists, that Locke directed his attack upon innate ideas in the first book of the Essay.1 In the minds of those who weighed in on one side or the other, the importance of the controversy related to epistemological, moral, and religious doctrines. At the epistemological level, innatists (or, as I will also call them, nativists) held that all knowledge of the natural and supernatural world available to humans is based on fundamental “speculative” axioms, theoretical principles that neither require nor are capable of proof. These principles, such as the causal principle – that nothing comes from nothing – or the principle of non-contradiction – that nothing can both be and not be at the same time, were taken to be both universal and necessary, and hence impossible to derive from experience. To the mind of an innatist, if these principles are not based on experience and are not (as chimerical ideas were thought to be) constructed out.. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments, notably Sharon Street’s Darwinian Dilemma (2006), allege that moral realists need to explain the reliability of our moral judgments, given their evolutionary sources. David Copp (2008) and David Enoch (2010) take up the challenge. I argue on empirical grounds that realists have not met the challenge and moreover cannot do so. The outcome is that there are empirically-motivated reasons for thinking moral realists cannot explain moral reliability, given our current empirical understanding.

One of the most influential arguments in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science is Chomsky's argument from the poverty of the stimulus. In this response to an essay by Chandra Sripada, I defend an analogous argument from the poverty of the moral stimulus. I argue that Sripada's criticism of moral nativism appears to rest on the mistaken assumption that the learning target in moral cognition consists of a series of simple imperatives, such as "share your toys" or (...) "don't hit other children." In fact, the available evidence suggests that the moral competence of adults and even young children is considerably more complex and exhibits many characteristics of a well-developed legal code, including abstract theories of crime, tort, contract, and agency. Since the emergence of this knowledge cannot be explained by appeals to explicit instruction, or to any known processes of imitation, internalization, socialization and the like, there are grounds for concluding it may be innate. Simply put, to explain the development of intuitive jurisprudence in each individual, we must attribute unconscious knowledge and complex mental operations to her that go well beyond anything she has been taught. (shrink)

It is an old and venerable idea in philosophy that morality is built into us, and this nativist view has seen a resurgence of late. Indeed, the prevailing systematic account of how we acquire complex moral representations is a nativist view inspired by arguments in Chomskyan linguistics. In this article, I review the leading argument for moral nativism – the poverty of the moral stimulus. I defend a systematic empiricist alternative that draws on the resources of (...) statistical learning. Such an empiricist account, I argue, promises to explain much of the complexity of people’s moral and other normative attitudes. (shrink)

Moral naturalism is the view that moral properties exist in a manner that fits with our scientific worldview. Might empirical discoveries about the genealogy of moral judgments (that, for example, they issue from an evolved psychological faculty) serve to undermine moral naturalism? One way of undermining moral naturalism is to show that moral properties do not exist at all. The possibility of genealogical considerations supporting this conclusion is examined and found to be weak. Alternatively, (...) might empirical discoveries about the genealogy of moral judgments serve to vindicate some form of moral naturalism? This possibility is also explored and found to be unconvincing. (shrink)

Commentary on Lesly Newson and Peter Richerson, Moral Beliefs about Homosexuality: Testing a Cultural Evolutionary Hypothesis.

Research on ‘moral learning’ examines the roles of domain-general processes, such as Bayesian inference and reinforcement learning, in the development of moral beliefs and values. Alert to the power of these processes, and equipped with both the analytic resources of philosophy and the empirical methods of psychology, ‘moral learners’ are ideally placed to discover the contributions of nature, nurture and culture to moral development. However, I argue that to achieve these objectives research on moral learning (...) needs to overcome nativist bias, and distinguish two kinds of social learning: learning from and learning about. An agent learns from others when there is transfer of competence—what the learner learns is similar to, and causally dependent on, what the model knows. When an agent learns about the social world there is no transfer of competence—observable features of other agents are just the content of what-is-learned. Even learning from does not require explicit instruction. A novice can learn from an expert who is ‘leaking’ her morality in the form of emotionally charged behaviour or involuntary use of vocabulary. To the extent that moral development depends on learning from other agents, there is the potential for cultural selection of moral beliefs and values. (shrink)

Dans cet essai, je me concentre sur le débat entre nativistes et empiristes au sujet des origines de la morale : la morale serait-elle innée, là depuis la naissance, ou serait-elle un produit de la culture, acquise par le biais d’un conditionnement social ? Nous verrons que cette question soulève d’importants problèmes conceptuels, notamment celui de savoir ce que l’on entend ici par ‘morale’. Des considérations méthodologiques seront également soulevées : quels types de données peuvent montrer que le nativisme (ou (...) empirisme) moral est vrai ? Quelle forme une théorie nativiste doit-elle prendre afin de rendre compte de la complexité du phénomène moral ? En conclusion, je suggère qu’étant donné le caractère double de la morale (à la fois produit de l’évolution et de la culture), il serait peut-être envisageable de laisser tomber la bonne vielle dichotomie entre inné et acquis. (shrink)

We must admire the ambition of Prinz’s title question. But does he provide a convincing answer to it? Prinz’s own view of morality as “a byproduct – accidental or invented – of faculties that evolved for different purposes (1),” which appears to express a negative reply, does not receive much direct argument here. Rather, Prinz’s main aim is to try to show that the considerations he believes are typically presented by moral nativists are insufficient or inadequate to establish that (...) morality is innate. He discusses, individually, how much evidential weight the (alleged) existence of (1) universal moral norms, (2) universal moral domains, (3) fixed stages in moral development, and (4) precursors to morality among non-human animals lend to nativist claims, and, in addition, he argues that poverty-of-the-moral-stimulus arguments are as yet unconvincing. “[C]urrent evidence,” Prinz claims, “is consistent with the conclusion that children acquire moral competence through experience (22).” It is not my intention here to follow Prinz’s piecemeal criticisms of moral nativism. In their attacks on linguistic nativism (see, e.g., Cowie 1999) and now on moral nativism, empiricists typically deploy the.. (shrink)

Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable.1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists is that it is widely assumed (...) that the early intuitionists made little progress towards solving it. In this essay, I wish to challenge this assumption by examining one of the more subtle intuitionist responses to Hume, viz., that offered by Thomas Reid. For reasons that remain unclear to me, Reid's response to Hume on this issue has been almost entirely neglected. I shall argue that it is nonetheless one that merits our attention, for at least two reasons. In the first place, Reid's response to Hume's challenge to rational intuitionism bears a close affinity to the type of response that he offers to Hume's broadly skeptical challenge to realist views regarding our perception of the external world. Since Reid's strategy in the latter case is widely regarded as exhibiting significant promise, it is natural to wonder whether, when applied to the moral domain, this type of strategy displays similar promise.2 I will suggest that it does. That is, I will suggest that since Reid's broadly nativist position in perception is one well worth considering, then so also is his broadly nativist account of moral motivation. Second, Reid's position regarding moral motivation represents an intriguing attempt to blend a broadly intuitionist view with important insights from the sentimentalist tradition. In this respect, Reid's view is a genuine hybrid position unlike that offered by other intuitionists such as Richard Price. The synthetic character of Reid's position, I claim, gives it a unique type of theoretical richness, since it incorporates some very attractive features of both rational intuitionism and sentimentalism. (shrink)

Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable. 1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists is that it is widely (...) assumed that the early intuitionists made little progress towards solving it. In this essay, I wish to challenge this assumption by examining one of the more subtle intuitionist responses to Hume, viz., that offered by Thomas Reid. For reasons that remain unclear to me, Reid's response to Hume on this issue has been almost entirely neglected. I shall argue that it is nonetheless one that merits our attention, for at least two reasons. In the first place, Reid's response to Hume's challenge to rational intuitionism bears a close affinity to the type of response that he offers to Hume's broadly skeptical challenge to realist views regarding our perception of the external world. Since Reid's strategy in the latter case is widely regarded as exhibiting significant promise, it is natural to wonder whether, when applied to the moral domain, this type of strategy displays similar promise. 2 I will suggest that it does. That is, I will suggest that since Reid's broadly nativist position in perception is one well worth considering, then so also is his broadly nativist account of moral motivation. Second, Reid's position regarding moral motivation represents an intriguing attempt to blend a broadly intuitionist view with important insights from the sentimentalist tradition. In this respect, Reid's view is a genuine hybrid position unlike that offered by other intuitionists such as Richard Price. The synthetic character of Reid's position, I claim, gives it a unique type of theoretical richness, since it incorporates some very attractive features of both rational intuitionism and sentimentalism. (shrink)

This chapter discusses central problems and prospects for ethical naturalism. Section 1 explains what is meant by “ethical naturalism” and surveys different versions of the view. Section 2 discusses the central philosophical challenge to ethical naturalism, viz., the “Normativity Objection.” Section 3 offers a battery of responses to it on behalf of the ethical naturalist. Section 4 explores a promising and novel approach to ethical naturalism, viz., a moral nativist theory that that combines a Chomskian approach to moral (...) competence with a structuralist metaphysics. (shrink)

A nativist moral psychology, modeled on the successes of theoretical linguistics, provides the best framework for explaining the acquisition of moral capacities and the diversity of moral judgment across the species. After a brief presentation of a poverty of the moral stimulus argument, this chapter sketches a view according to which a so-called Universal Moral Grammar provides a set of parameterizable principles whose specific values are set by the child's environment, resulting in the acquisition of (...) a moral idiolect. The principles and parameters approach predicts moral diversity, but does not entail moral relativism. (shrink)

The lead text of this book is based on primatologist Frans de Waal’s 2003 Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, to which he adds three short appendices. There are commentaries by Robert Wright, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Singer, followed by a 20-page response. Josiah Ober and Stephen Macedo provide a brief introduction. As befits a Tanner lecturer, de Waal’s scope is broad, his writing accessible, and the pace lively. He continues his crusade against the “veneer theory”—the idea that humans (...) are naturally sociopaths and that empathy, altruism, and morality are the result of recent cultural forces. The extent to which de Waal dichotomizes this debate, however, masks much of interest. One can agree with the seemingly obvious fact that humans are obligatorily gregarious organisms—replete with various prosocial mechanisms—while still expressing reasonable doubt that our capacity to make moral judgments is the result of an innate mechanism dedicated to that task. De Waal is an unparalleled source of rich first-hand primatological data, arguing cogently that humans show continuity with other apes regarding empathy, consolation behavior, peacemaking, and reciprocal relations. Yet he admits these “building blocks” are “by no means sufficient” for morality, and in his Response discusses two further levels of morality: rule enforcement for the community’s good, and disinterested moral reasoning. He doesn’t address whether this third, uniquely human, level is a distinct innate adaptation, apparently not appreciating that if it isn’t, and yet is necessary for being literally accorded a “moral sense”, then moral nativism is false and at least some of human morality is “veneer.” In characteristic non-philosopher manner, de Waal ultimately rejects the question as “semantics” and thus “mostly a waste of time”. It seems a surprising blemish that the author of a book subtitled “How Morality Evolved” should grow impatient with those wondering what precisely is necessary and sufficient for morality, and what specifically has evolved. (shrink)

Xenophobia is conceptually distinct from racism. Xenophobia is also distinct from nativism. Furthermore, theories of racism are largely ensconced in nationalized narratives of racism, often influenced by the black-white binary, which obscures xenophobia and shelters it from normative critiques. This paper addresses these claims, arguing for the first and last, and outlining the second. Just as philosophers have recently analyzed the concept of racism, clarifying it and pinpointing why it’s immoral and the extent of its moral harm, so (...) we will analyze xenophobia and offer a pluralist account of xenophobia, with important implications for racism. This analysis is guided by the discussion of racism in recent moral philosophy, social ontology, and research in the psychology of racism and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

In this paper I track the deployment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment by three major thinkers in postcolonial theory, namely Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and Achille Mbembe. My argument is that while postcolonial theory has used ressentiment in a captivating way, which may have the potential for accounting for how contemporary moral culture conditions racism, nativism and xenophobia, the deployment remains incoherent. The postcolonial deployment of ressentiment begins with an incoherent reading of Nietzsche by Fanon, a mistake (...) which is creatively appropriated by Said and Mbembe. As ressentiment travels into the postcolony Nietzsche’s insights are discarded and the term is transformed through Hegelian and psychoanalytic schematics that take morality to be a universal and prescriptive code, the very problem that Nietzsche was attempting to overcome. For Fanon, ressentiment explains how colonial projection or the racial gaze is internalized by the colonized subject to produce a relation... (shrink)

Buchanan and Powell hope to rescue optimism about moral perfectibility from the ’received view’ of human evolution, by tweaking our view of the innate character of morality. I argue that their intervention is hampered by an unnecessary commitment to nativism, by gender bias within the received view, and by liberal presuppositions.

James Van Cleve here shows why Thomas Reid (1710-96) deserves a place alongside the other canonical figures of modern philosophy. He expounds Reid's positions and arguments on a wide range of topics, taking interpretive stands on points where his meaning is disputed and assessing the value of his contributions to issues philosophers are discussing today. -/- Among the topics Van Cleve explores are Reid's account of perception and its relation to sensation, conception, and belief; his nativist account of the origin (...) of the concepts of space and power; his attempt to clear the way for the belief that the things we directly perceive are external things, not ideas in our minds; his stand on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities; his account of his externalist reply to philosophical skepticism, his volitional theory of action, his use of the distinction between event causation and agent causation to understand freedom of the will, and his criticism of Hume and anticipation of Moore on the analysis of moral judgment. -/- The most comprehensive work on Reid in a quarter century, this book will be welcomed by students of early modern philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of perception, and the philosophy of action. (shrink)

The idea with which Rabindranath Tagore established Visva-Bharati is different from that of the grounding of Immanuel Kant's "university with condition" or that of Jacques Derrida's "university without condition." The thinking that finally materialized into Visva-Bharati, or rather the "fore-thinking," is an uncanny complex of aesthetics, politics, topolitics, pedagogy, and Tagorean philosophy of the "home" and the "world." There is neither the "conflict" of Kant's essay _The Conflict of the Faculties_ nor Derrida's absolute radicality and radical absoluteness: there is neither (...) Kant's "freedom of the Enlightenment" nor Derrida's "freedom from the Enlightenment." Ranjan Ghosh captures this so-called dichotomy engrossingly in his book _Aesthetics, Politics, Pedagogy and Tagore_. In Tagore's idea of university, we find a "traffic," an exchange of some sort, between nativism and cosmopolitanism, colonial and postcolonial, singularity and plurality, root and rootlessness. Ghosh not only controls the "traffic" in his work but also gives his close reading of the institution and, most importantly, the underlying principle that led to the establishment of the institution. Visva-Bharati was not built upon the principles of a modern university. It did not have the moral responsibility of following the already established norms and regulations or the society at large but had what Ghosh calls a sense of "no-responsibility." Tagore's idea of university was thus built upon the "no-responsibility" toward the old Eurocentric model of pedagogy and the "responsibility" toward creating a new and more reflective model. He employed one set of responsibilities to "counter" another set of responsibilities. This article in a way is a reimagining, a commentary on Ghosh's work on the pedagogical aspects of Visva-Bharati. (shrink)

This volume brings together sixteen essays by Louise Antony that reflect her distinctive approach to issues at the intersections of feminist theory, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Antony proceeds from the Quinean precept that we treat knowledge as a natural phenomenon. This approach, Antony argues, offers feminists and other progressive theorists vital tools with which to expose and dismantle ideological conceptions of knowledge, human nature, and objectivity. She argues that naturalism's focus on the actual (as opposed to (...) hypothetical) circumstances under which human beings acquire knowledge illuminates and responds to feminist calls for a "situated" account of human knowledge. At the same time, Antony defends a number of views that have been the object of feminist criticism: psychological individualism, cognitive nativism, and the autonomy of semantics. These views, Antony argues, are in no way incompatible with feminist commitments, which is good, because they enjoy broad empirical support. Also in this volume, Antony addresses a number of practical issues of concern to feminists: Does pornography silence women? Are we ethically entitled to moral partiality? Is legitimate authority possible? Why are there so few women in philosophy? Finally, Antony presents and develops her own theory of gender. She argues that genders are socially constructed and multiply realized categories that bring into concordance sets of properties that have no natural or rational connection to each other. Genders must not be identified with the categories "female" and "male," but human sexual difference is the material, explanatory basis of gender systems: but for the existence of differences in reproductive role between females and males, gender regimes would not exist. (shrink)

In the U.S., and elsewhere, populism has been democracy’s way of shaking elites up. We can view populism in part as a revolt of the losers, or perceived losers, of globalization. Yet elites have often paid too little heed to the domestic distributive impact of high immigration and globalized trade. Immigration and globalization are also spurring forms of nativism and demagoguery that threaten both democratic deliberation and undermine progressive political coalitions. The challenge now is to find the most reasonable (...) – or least unreasonable – responses to the new politics of resentment: ways that recognize that egalitarian liberalism and social democracy are national projects and preserve progressive political coalitions, while also acknowledging our interconnections, duties, and moral obligations to those beyond our borders. (shrink)

Through a collection of original essays from leading philosophical scholars, _Stich and His Critics_ provides a thorough assessment of the key themes in the career of philosopher Stephen Stich. Provides a collection of original essays from some of the world's most distinguished philosophers Explores some of philosophy's most hotly-debated contemporary topics, including mental representation, theory of mind, nativism, moral philosophy, and naturalized epistemology.

Two protracted debates about the moral status of animals in ecological restoration projects are discussed that both testify to the troubling aspects of our inclination to think in terms of dualisms and dichotomies. These cases are more or less complementary: the first one is about the (re)introduction of species that were once pushed out of their native environment; the other one concerns the elimination or eradication of “exotic” and “alien” species that have invaded and degraded ecosystems. Both cases show (...) the detrimental impact of dualistic thinking on ecological restoration projects. In the first case, communication and cooperation between stakeholders is frustrated by the opposition of zoocentrism and ecocentrism; in the second case the opposition of nativism and cosmopolitanism appears to be a major stumbling block for consensus building and conflict management. I will argue that “gradualization”—thinking in terms of degrees instead of boundaries—can offer a way out of this black-and-white thinking and can open up space for negotiation and deliberation among different and sometimes diverging perspectives. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville is often seen as a champion of personal liberty and human greatness in the face of the conformism and mediocrity of the democratic social state. In this light, his vision of “soft despotism” anticipates familiar reservations about state managerialism and political apathy. Yet this picture risks eclipsing one of Tocqueville’s most pregnant ambiguities. Though deeply concerned by threats to liberty posed by modern mass society, Tocqueville is alive to the special need such societies have of authority, particularly (...) moral authority, and hence of restraints to liberty itself. The freedom to decide how best to lead one’s life must become self-destructive, he contends, without a corresponding inclination to look outside oneself for prudent leadership and counsel. This paper elucidates the reasoning behind this paradoxical position. I argue that beneath the need of authority Tocqueville detects an enduring human problem, though one that takes a unique and even insuperable form under modern egalitarianism. I suggest that dwelling on this problem promises to enrich debates about the cynical nativism now menacing liberal democracies. Its origins are to be found less in economic upheaval and communication technology run amok than in the decay of civil religion and civic virtue, a trend that runs very much with the grain of democratic society and whose progress may be irrevocable. (shrink)

The Meno has traditionally been viewed as "one of Plato's earliest and most noteworthy forays into epistemology." In this dialogue, and in the course of a discussion between Socrates and his young interlocutor, Meno, about the nature of virtue and whether it can be taught, “Meno raises an epistemological question unprecedented in the Socratic dialogues.” This question - or rather, dilemma - has come to be known in the philosophical literature as Meno’s Paradox of Inquiry, due its apparently containing an (...) easy-to-detect equivocation of the word ‘know’. Immediately after the paradox, and in an apparent response to it, Socrates recounts a myth: a story told by priests and priestesses about the pre-natal existence and immortality of the soul. From this this myth, Socrates concocts the infamous theory of recollection – a theory according to which the soul has acquired knowledge of everything before it was born, while in a disincarnate state. According to the traditional reading of Meno’s paradox, this theory constitutes Plato’s response to it. The traditional reading has come under fire in recent years by advocates of the epistemological reading (ERM), who argue that the theory of recollection is not Plato’s intended response to the paradox. Instead, they suggest, Plato’s distinction between true belief and knowledge – which appears towards the end of the dialogue – is sufficient for solving the paradox; and as such, it ought to be read as Plato’s response to it. In this thesis, I argue against ERM’s claim that a mere epistemological distinction is all it takes to solve the paradox. To do so, I explore the metaphysics of change in Plato’s ontology. From this, I appeal to our everyday notion of ‘memory’ in order to show that Meno’s paradox, in fact, contains a hidden-premise, which when laid bare, reveals two distinct challenges contained within the argument: a superficial one, and a deeper one. I argue that although it appears at first blush as though the former could easily be dismissed as an equivocation, to which the epistemological distinction between belief and knowledge could provide an answer, the latter cannot. This is because the deeper challenge threatens the very preconditions of knowledge itself – that is to say, it renders cognition impossible – and, as such, it cancels out any effort to provide an epistemological response to the superficial challenge. Hence, unless the deeper-level challenge is satisfactorily disarmed, both challenges remain unanswered. I argue that although the major motivation for the theory of recollection in the Meno is indeed to provide an answer to scepticism about knowledge, nevertheless, it ought to be understood, first, as a theory of cognition – i.e. as a theory about the preconditions and atomic building blocks of knowledge – and not a theory of knowledge per se. This answer comes in the form of a radical theory of the mind and cognition – one that stands in stark opposition to our common-sense views about the mind: a view from which, Plato believed, the paradox arises. Drawing on recent debates between Nativists and Empiricists in the Cognitive Sciences, I argue that it was a great achievement of Plato’s to grasp that our common-sense view about the mind, and its concomitant process of learning, language acquisition and knowledge acquisition, might in fact be at the very root of scepticism about our ability to engage in meaningful philosophical practice, and our ability to acquire objective knowledge – especially, objective moral knowledge. The Meno’s paradox, then – so I contend - is not a puzzle whose solution rests upon merely pointing to an epistemological distinction between true belief and knowledge, as advocates of ERM have suggested. Rather, it is a puzzle about cognition. More precisely, it is a puzzle that targets the rudimentary cognitive stages of initial cognition and truth-recognition - one whose solution entails offering an account of the mind that would make these elementary cognitive processes possible. Accordingly, Plato’s theory of recollection in the Meno ought to be read as an attempt to map the structure of the mind, and as such, to provide an account of cognition. In doing so, he intended to put forward a view about the preconditions of knowledge – the sort of preconditions without which language acquisition and knowledge acquisition would simply not be possible. With this theory, Plato has the beginnings of an argument against the kind of relativism and scepticism prevalent at his time. As such, a correct interpretation of the so-called paradox of inquiry (and Plato’s proposed solution to it via the theory of recollection) should approach it as a puzzle about mind and cognition – and not solely as an epistemological one, as it has previously been treated. (shrink)

We point out how some Christian-Muslim comparative philosophies of religion may be enhanced with certain translations or interpretations of Christianity: a modalist view of the trinity and a high Christology. While perhaps of only limited significance, we argue in more detail that a comparison of two leading philosophers, one Islamic, the other Christian, can bring to light a shared philosophy of innate ideas or nativism, grounding moral and theological views of goodness and the divine.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Problems with a Weakly Pluralist Approach to Democratic EducationSheron Fraser-BurgessIntroductionPluralism embodies wide acknowledgement of various forms of difference. Appeals to pluralism involve arguments for the proliferating of differences as a social and moral ideal. Rather than being a formal political regime such as with democracy or social liberalism, in the extant political philosophy literature, pluralism brings considerations of diversity and equality to bear in philosophical analysis of traditional (...) systems of government.As a critique, pluralism falls along a continuum, which can be conceived of as iterations of the standing of particular ways of life, with respect to constraints of both equality and justice. At one end of the spectrum, all conceptions of the human good share a prima facie equality that belie overarching moral norms as a criterion of ranking. Questions about the incumbency of individual liberty motivate movement toward the opposing end, as allowing for the most just society warrants giving precedence to such values. The source of pluralism’s critical role is its inherent demand of a cogent resolution of the moral and, at times, political tension between equality and freedom.This article considers two forms of pluralism that lie near opposing extremes of the continuum and their implication for education. According to Horace Kallen’s and John Gray’s strong pluralism, the claim to the fact of differing values, cultures, etc., has primacy. As a corollary, maintaining the integrity of the social groups as holders of those values becomes central. In conflict with liberal democratic principles, however, protecting group values may occur at the expense of individual detractors within the group or may pose a threat of harm to others outside of the group who do not share these values.On the other hand, one form of weak pluralism, Amy Gutmann’s deliberative democracy, constrains pluralism on political grounds of individual [End Page 1] freedom. Deliberative democracy subsumes the holding of all values, including those shared with a social group, to the requirements of democracy. Both theories are considered as attempts to reconcile principles of treating everyone equally with not unjustly limiting individual freedom in a democracy. I raise principled and practical issues from education that call into question whether each theory satisfactorily resolves the conflicting demands of both equality and liberty. A third alternative is proposed as a salient consideration for democratic education. I begin with the pluralism of Horace Kallen and its relationship to that of John Gray.Strong PluralismHorace Kallen’s Cultural PluralismIn this section, I discuss Horace Kallen’s seminal account of cultural pluralism from the early twentieth century, classifying it with the strong value pluralism articulated by John Gray. Gray’s and Kallen’s pluralism have in common both the sanctioning of the fullest expression of difference and difficulties with making sense of the intuitive pull toward a criterion for the ranking of values that democracy dictates. I then consider the educational implications of Kallen’s view, particularly with respect to its actual influence upon multi-cultural initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s.Kallen coined the term “cultural pluralism” in the early twentieth century (Kallen 73). At this time, America was experiencing a great deal of social upheaval because of the huge influx of European and Asian immigrants. Movements such as nativism and Americanization fueled xenophobic sentiment. In this milieu, the full acculturation of new immigrants became a priority. In education, schooling policies penalized immigrant expressions of cultural identity, such as speaking one’s native language and practicing cultural traditions (Kallen 4).Kallen was one of the voices advocating not only that new immigrants should be allowed to maintain their cultural identity but also that a formal political solution be initiated which accommodated the predilection to do so. Nathan Glazer explains that there was at that time a general blindness to the possibility that “these groups or elements within them would not want to acculturate and assimilate but would want to preserve their corporate characters and distinctiveness even if prejudice and discrimination disappeared.” According to Glazer, such was the doctrine of assimilation for the first forty years of the twentieth century (7). [End Page 2]Kallen’s pluralism is a departure from the prevailing view in... (shrink)

This article explores political discourse in the context of an online-mediated 2021 rapprochement between Swedish ‘mainstream’ and far-right parties paving the way for their eventual 2022 electoral success and later joint government coalition. The article analyses specifically how the above political accord on the Swedish right – often seen as breaking the long-term cordon sanitaire around Sweden’s far right – would be legitimised via discourses that carried significant elaboration and deepening of the ‘criminality’ and ‘immigration’ connection later recontextualised into the (...) broader Swedish public discourse and public imagination. Using social media analytics and qualitative, critical discourse analysis, we explore in depth a ‘discursive shift’ wherein the focus on criminality would become a key ‘proxy discourse’, i.e., a public-wide implicature, which, while referring to and debating a potentially genuine social issue would be strategically instrumentalised to effectively pre-legitimise ‘moral panics’ around immigration and cultural diversity. The analysis highlights that the emergence as well as the later recontextualisation of the ‘proxy discourse’ in question – implicitly suggesting that criminality, immigration, and cultural diversity are ‘somehow’ inherently connected – not only supported the political mainstreaming of the Swedish far-right’s anti-immigration stance but also normalised the wider tenets of illiberal, nativist ‘politics of exclusion’. (shrink)

This is the third volume of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind. The extent to which cognitive structures, processes, and contents are innate is one of the central questions concerning the nature of the mind, with important implications for debates throughout the human sciences. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. The Innate Mind: Volume 3: (...) Foundations and the Future, concerns a variety of foundational issues, as well as questions about the direction of future nativist research. It addresses such questions as: What is innateness? Is it a confused notion? What is at stake in debates between nativists and empiricists? What is the relationship between genes and innateness? How do innate structures and learned information interact to produce adult forms of cognition, e.g. about number, and how does such learning take place? What innate abilities underlie the creative aspect of language use, and of creative cognition generally? What are the innate foundations of human motivation, and of human moral cognition? In the course of their discussions, many of the contributors pose the question : Where next for nativist research? Together, these three volumes provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a powerful picture of our minds and their place in the natural order. (shrink)

This book is the third of a three-volume set on the innate mind. It provides an assessment of nativist thought and definitive reference point for future inquiry. Nativists have long been interested in a variety of foundational topics relating to the study of cognitive development and the historical opposition between nativism and empiricism. Among the issues here are questions about what it is for something to be innate in the first place; how innateness is related to such things as (...) heritability, genetic information, and theories of cognitive development; the status of arguments both for and against nativism; and how best to understand the role of genes in development and inheritance. These issues are all explored in one way or another in this book. But the book also looks to the future. Alongside state-of-the-art discussions of such established nativist concerns as language, number, spatial cognition, and social cognition, this book examines nativist work in a variety of areas where detailed nativist exploration is relatively new, including cultural learning, creativity, economic choice, culture, and morality. The expansion of nativist theorizing into all these new areas shows both the power and the promise of nativist approaches, and points the way to the future. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology claims biological inclinations for certain behaviors (e.g., a desire for more frequent sex and more sexual partners by males as compared to females), and the origin of these inclinations in natural selection. Jerry Fodor’s recent book, The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way (2000), grants the nativist case for such biological grounding but disputes the presumed certainty of its origin in natural selection. Nevertheless, there is today a consensus that at least some of the claims of evolutionary psychology are (...) true, and their broad appeal suggests that many see them as easy insights into and possible license for some controversial behaviors. Evolutionary psychologists, on the other hand, caution that an origin in natural selection implies only an inclination for certain behaviors, and not that the behaviors will be true of all people, will lead to happiness or are morally correct. But such cautions can be as facile as the simplistic positions they are intended to counter. A biological basis implies tendencies to behaviors that will be pleasurable when engaged in, and that can be modified to an extent and at a psychic cost that is, at best, not fully understood. Also, while it is true that naturally selected behaviors are not necessarily moral, the implications of current evolutionary psychology cast doubt on any absolute foundation for morality at all, as well as suggesting limits on our ability to fully understand both ourselves and the universe around us. However, this does not mean that our (relative) values or apparent free will are any less real or important for us. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to a special issue centered on Cecilia Heyes’ article ‘Rethinking Norm Psychology’. This target article criticizes nativist accounts of the psychological processes dedicated to social norms and offers an alternative account of norm psychology as a cognitive gadget that is culturally evolved and socially learned. The essay sketches out the conceptual landscape around that article and locates within it some of the main points of the 14 short commentaries. These discussions focus especially on trying to (...) clarify the central phenomena that a theory of norm psychology should seek to explain and examining Heyes model and its depiction of the interaction of implicit and explicit processes. They also consider Heyes' methodological proposal for how to best test hypotheses against each other and marshal evidence for claims about innateness. This introduction essay separates out social normativity from other forms of normativity. It also offers brief arguments that future work by norm psychologists should focus on further clarifying its relationship to a handful of nearby phenomena, including status psychology, social identity, and hierarchy; normalcy and the concept of normal, and the nuances of norm enforcement. (shrink)

Among the schools of philosophy in the Greco-Roman world, there was Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, and Skepticism to name the most prominent and influential. There was however another "school" and that was known as Cynicism. The Cynics were not scholars or writers. Like a Jesus, or a Socrates, or a Buddha, they were oralists whose memorable utterances and actions were transmitted to posterity by admirers (and detractors). It is doubtful whether we can even justly call them philosophers, as they did not (...) organize themselves into a school or possess a set of systematic doctrines. Their mode of life was a philosophy of doing. The Cynics were, to put it in contemporary terms, lifestylists and performance artists. The most famous Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, threw out his bowl, as one less thing he needed, when he saw a young boy drinking with his hands. He also comically, when Alexander the Great asked what he could do for him, replied "Get out of my sun" making clear the young conqueror had nothing to offer him. And yet the Cynics, as Mark Usher aims to show in this collection, did purvey some core values that distinguished them in their own time and recommends them to ours. Indeed, they speak with some urgency to our current predicaments involving climate change, socio-economic uncertainty, and psychic malaise. Their "less is more" approach to living anticipates our contemporary fashion for decluttering, minimalism, and simpler more natural ways of living. Like ancient Thoreaus, their disentanglement of our needs from our wants provides an object lesson in prioritizing truly human goods. The Cynics also exemplified the idea that subsistence lifestyles are sustainable lifestyles, and the principle behind their lived example gives the lie to the modern article of faith that economic development and growth are synonymous with quality of life. Finally, their embrace of cosmopolitanism-the Cynics coined the word-flies in the face of the resurgent nativism that threatens the stability of nations, including our own. The Cynics championed their positions on the grounds that each of them accorded with a state of affairs found in Nature. Their appeal to the example of non-human agents, animals in particular, is highly instructive as it validates the intrinsic worth of the non-human world more broadly, foreshadowing thereby a central tenet of modern environmental philosophy. Taken as a whole, this volume will aim to recover the Cynic ways of thinking and living and refurbish them and make them relevant for our modern, beleaguered world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century JapanStephen G. CovellPractical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By Janine Tasca Sawada. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 387.In Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth Century Japan, her follow-up volume to Confucian Values and Popular Zen, Janine Sawada breaks new ground and sets a high mark for future studies (...) on Japanese religions. Practical Pursuits pulls down the sectarian barriers that have defined scholarly and sectarian studies of Japanese religions by looking at the common practice of personal cultivation through a detailed investigation that demonstrates the manner in which members of various groups—from Rinzai Zen to physiognomy movements— [End Page 512] engaged each other directly or indirectly in a conversation that came to shape religious practice in the modern period. The uncovering of what might be called a "common religion" is similar to the work of Ian Reader and George Tanabe in their book Practically Religious. Yet, in the process of exploring the contours of personal cultivation discourse, Sawada also sheds light on shifting lay and clerical identities, state-religion relations, and the development of new religions. The first half of the book is dedicated to an analysis of precedents set in the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1603-1868) and lays the groundwork for later changes during the Meiji period (1868-1912), which are the subject of the second half of the book.Sawada begins with the provocatively titled first chapter, "Dead Words." While this term derives specifically from eighteenth-century Nativist arguments, it is revealed in the course of the book to be a central theme in Japanese religious discourse. "Dead words" refers to the reaction by Nativists, Confucian scholars, Buddhist priests, and practitioners of various religious movements to what they perceived to be an overemphasis on obtaining a purely intellectual understanding of texts rather than realizing through practice the practical and moral implications of the texts. Here, Sawada introduces us to what she terms the "grammar" of personal cultivation, namely a framework of Confucian language upon which dialogue between often vastly different communities could take place. This "grammar" provided the foundation for broad and diverse conversations about personal cultivation, the content of which may have differed dramatically even as the language used was similar. Sawada also carefully traces the manner in which definitions of "learning" and "cultivation" changed over time, how religion and learning came to be viewed separately in the modern period, and the reactions of religious organizations to these fluctuations in definition.The "grammar" Sawada describes was used by a broad spectrum of elites and, as she demonstrates, was mediated by leaders of new religious movements. This mix of actors—Rinzai Zen priests, Shingaku leaders, Shintō practitioners, and others—"created their own interpretive conclaves, negotiated between textual systems of knowledge with which they had been imbued and the reality of their social and religious experience" (p. 27). This book brings to light the overlapping conversations between these different groups and peels back the multiple layers of their relations in which conversations over personal cultivation served as a bond between political, religious, and social elites.For students of Buddhism, the two chapters related to koji (lay) Zen are of particular interest. In these chapters Sawada details the interaction between those using the "grammar" she identifies earlier. In so doing, she begins to clarify how the clergy and elite lay practitioners negotiated new understandings of the boundaries dividing lay from professional practitioners. Sawada introduces evidence to counter the standard view that Zen clergy engaged in an "outreach" effort to expand lay practices in order to overcome the financial difficulties faced by temples in the Meiji period. While she gives evidence that finances were indeed a critical issue, she also shows us that, at least in some cases, the effort was more of an "inreach" by lay members seeking to gain or regain what they believed were traditional personal cultivation [End Page 513] practices. In such cases, Sawada shows, the clergy's reaction varied from resistance to passive acceptance.It is hard to find points to critique about this very enjoyable book. That... (shrink)

Challenges to Legal Theory offers the reader a fascinating journey though a variety of multi-disciplinary topics, ranging from law and literature, and law and religion, to legal philosophy and constitutional law. The collection reflects some of the challenges that the field of legal theory currently faces. It is compiled by a selection of international and Spanish scholars, whose essays are made available in English translation for the first time. The volume is based on a collection of essays, published in Spanish, (...) in honour of Professor José Iturmendi Morales, of Complutense University, Madrid, and brings the rich scholarship of pre-eminent Spanish scholars of law and legal theory to an international audience. (shrink)