The volume contains almost thirty papers by Kazimierz Twardowski , the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The papers are published in English for the first time. The papers concern fundamental problems of philosophy: the methods of philosophizing, the boundary of psychology and semiotics, the conceptual apparatus of metaphysics, ethical skepticism, the question of free will and ethical obligation, the aesthetics of music and so on. The systematic considerations are complemented by concise but excellent sketches of the philosophical views of Socrates, (...) Aquinas, Leibniz, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Bergson. (shrink)

Daybreak marks the arrival of Nietzsche's 'mature' philosophy and is indispensable for an understanding of his critique of morality and 'revaluation of all values'. This volume presents the distinguished translation by R. J. Hollingdale, with a new introduction that argues for a dramatic change in Nietzsche's views from Human, All Too Human to Daybreak, and shows how this change, in turn, presages the main themes of Nietzsche's later and better-known works such as On the Genealogy of Morality. The main themes (...) of Daybreak are located in their intellectual and philosophical contexts: in Nietzsche's training as a classical philologist and his fascination with the Sophists and Thucydides; in the moral philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer, which are the central foci of Nietzsche's critique of morality; and in the German Materialist movement of the 1850s and after, which shaped Nietzsche's conception of persons. The edition is completed by a chronology, notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

The volume contains almost thirty papers by Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The papers are published in English for the first time. The papers concern fundamental problems of philosophy: the methods of philosophizing, the boundary of psychology and semiotics, the conceptual apparatus of metaphysics, ethical skepticism, the question of free will and ethical obligation, the aesthetics of music and so on. The systematic considerations are complemented by concise but excellent sketches of the philosophical views of Socrates, Aquinas, (...) Leibniz, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Bergson. (shrink)

Philosophers of literature do not take much of an interest in autobiography.1 In one sense this is not surprising. As a certain prejudice has it, autobiography is, along with biography, the preferred reading of people who do not really like to read. The very words can conjure up images of what one finds on bookshelves in Florida retirement communities and in underfunded public libraries, books with titles like Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli or Me: Stories of My (...) Life (Katharine Hepburn).2 Hardly rousing material, at least from the philosophical point of view. But on a moment’s reflection, it becomes clear that the initial prejudice is unfounded. Never mind the fact that there are obviously .. (shrink)

Why do people hate one another? Who gets to speak for whom? Why do so many people combat prejudice based on their race, sexual orientation, or disability? What does segregation look like today? Many of us ponder and discuss urgent questions such as these at home, and see them debated in the media, the classroom, and our social media feeds, but many of us don't have access to the important new ways philosophers are thinking about these very issues. Enter (...) UnMute, the popular podcast hosted by Myisha Cherry, which hosts a diverse group of philosophers and explores their cutting-edge work through casual conversation. -/- This book collects 31 of Cherry's lively and timely interviews, offering an accessible resource through which to encounter some of philosophy's most socially and politically engaged, public-facing work. Its original illustrations, depicting the interview subjects up close, show just how broad a range of philosophers--black, white, and brown, male and female, queer and straight, abled and disabled--are at the center of crucial contemporary conversations. Cherry asks philosophers to talk about their ideas in ways that anyone can understand, explaining how they got interested in philosophy, and why the questions they investigate matter urgently. -/- Along with the interviews, the volume provides a foreword by Cornel West, a section in which all the interviewees explain how they got into philosophy, and a "Say What?" glossary defining terms that might be new to some readers. Like the podcast that inspired it, the book welcomes in those new to these philosophical questions, those captivated by questions of race, class, gender, and other issues and looking for a new lens through which to examine them, and those well-versed in public philosophy looking for a one-stop guide. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Preface Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers Part Two: The Free Spirit Part Three: The Religious Nature Part Four: Maxims and Interludes Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals Part Six: We Scholars Part Seven: Our Virtues Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands Part Nine: What is Noble? From High Mountains: Epode.

The paper provides a thorough account of the relationship between Ernst Mach’s thought and that of an apparently more intellectually distant near-contemporary, Friedrich Nietzsche. The consistency of their views is in fact substantial, as I try to show within the paper. Despite their interests being different, both Mach and Nietzsche were concerned with the same issues about our intellectual relationship with the external world, dealing with the same questions and pursuing a common aim of eliminating worn-out philosophical conceptions. Moreover, it (...) can be argued that both Mach and Nietzsche converged on what we now know as the problem of realism versus anti-realism in the philosophy of science, and that they both rejected ‘representational’ (realist) conceptions of science in favour of a certain sort of pragmatic anti-realism, whose focus was on the role science plays as a means of orientation. (shrink)

Daybreak marks the arrival of Nietzsche's 'mature' philosophy and is indispensable for an understanding of his critique of morality and 'revaluation of all values'. This volume presents the distinguished translation by R. J. Hollingdale, with a new introduction that argues for a dramatic change in Nietzsche's views from Human, All Too Human to Daybreak, and shows how this change, in turn, presages the main themes of Nietzsche's later and better-known works such as On the Genealogy of Morality. The main themes (...) of Daybreak are located in their intellectual and philosophical contexts: in Nietzsche's training as a classical philologist and his fascination with the Sophists and Thucydides; in the moral philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer, which are the central foci of Nietzsche's critique of morality; and in the German Materialist movement of the 1850s and after, which shaped Nietzsche's conception of persons. The edition is completed by a chronology, notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about (...) the failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (shrink)

In _Beyond Prejudice_, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the traditional (...) view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions. (shrink)

Annette Baier sets the title, the genre, and the task of her book from Hume’s essay "Of Moral Prejudices." Rather than arguing from or towards general principles, these essays call upon a wide range of reading, observation, and experience: we are not only meant to be enlightened, but also invited to adopt the reflective habits of mind they exemplify. Like Hume, Baier analyzes and evaluates our attitudes and customs; like him, she finds that our foibles and our strengths are (...) closely linked; and like him, she is both a proponent and a model of good sense. When she is unfairly prejudiced— as she is against what she sees as the harsh and narrow rigors of Kant—she is, with all the bonnehommie of Hume, more ready to tease than to demolish. (shrink)

With his 1951 publication of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, W.V.O. Quine launched a series of arguments against the idea that analyticity – “truth in virtue of meaning alone” – could be a philosophically explanatory notion. While his rejection represents a significant philosophical stride in its own right, to which many in the contemporary philosophical scene pay verbal respects, the revolutionary consequences of this insight often go ignored today. Much of current professional philosophy in virtually every sub-discipline carries on as though (...) analyticity were a viable notion, because much of it aims at conceptual analysis – the “discovery” of the meanings of philosophical concepts, such as ‘mind’, ‘truth’, ‘meaning’, ‘person’, and ‘right’. Rejecting analyticity as a viable philosophical notion undermines such efforts insofar as they aim at conceptual analysis. If philosophers give up the notion of analyticity, as they should, they are left with the questions of what goals and methods are viable for the analysis of concepts. One option is to concentrate effort on explication of familiar concepts; explication is an alternative to conceptual analysis in that it does not aim to dig out analytic truths about given concepts. Rather, it identifies what is interesting about a certain vague concept, and generates a new, more rigorous and precise concept to replace the old one. The justification for the replacement, in the most appealing cases, is in the possibilities for understanding that are introduced by the new explication. Examples of explication in my sense are the replacement of ordinary grammatical terms by the operators of first order logic, replacement of ‘game’ with a decision theoretic notion of games in game theory, and replacement of ‘true’ with ‘true-in-L’ in Tarskian semantics. Advances of this sort depart consciously in some ways from ordinary usage of the terms they focus on, but in so departing, they develop new possibilities and perspectives for rigorously understanding the world. In the dissertation that follows, I not only recommend explication as a method, I also put it into practice. I develop an explication of the sameness and difference relations that relies solely on the relation of denotation between a predicate and objects of which it is true. Two things are the same with respect to R just in case there is at least one R-predicate that denotes them in common. I used this explication to develop related explications of similarity and analogy. These latter explications, I use to critique the current fashion of research on similarity and analogy in cognitive psychology. These studies have produced an immense body of interesting and promising work in the past several decades; however, much of the research design and data interpretation harbors philosophical errors and so often imports unjustified prejudices from the researchers themselves. My explication offers alternative formulations of the most salient aspects of these research traditions, formulations that avoid the errors of past research and, more importantly, suggest new research questions and possibilities that would not occur under the previous, philosophically muddled paradigm. The project closes with an application of my explication of analogy to a discussion and critique of the philosophical literature on analogical arguments. While philosophers and logicians have developed workable theories for deductive and inductive reasoning, very little work of promise has been done on analogical arguments. My explication of analogy is used to diagnose the problems of past attempts by philosophers to develop logics for analogical arguments and suggest, in light of the psychological research on analogy and the use of analogies in scientific thought, that philosophers should focus on analogical arguments as creative, heuristic devices, rather than as truth-preserving inference structures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Mogens Lærke. Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xviii + 387. Hardback, $115.00. -/- Spinoza's political philosophy, always a subject of attention in Francophone scholarship, has been coming into sharper focus for Anglophone readers in recent years as well. Mogens Lærke—well known for his essays on metaphysics and cognition in Spinoza, for his invaluable book Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza (Paris: Honoré Champion, (...) 2008), and for bridging French and English scholarly communities—has now written a richly contextual treatment of Spinoza's conception of the freedom of philosophizing (libertas philosophandi). His book presents a thoroughly mid- to late seventeenth-century Dutch Spinoza. The expression libertas philosophandi appears in the full title of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise (1670, hereafter TTP). Lærke argues that libertas philosophandi is the key to understanding "Spinoza's attempt to theorize a new republican public sphere" (5). As defined by Spinoza, "the freedom of philosophizing is not for Spinoza an individual right but a collective natural authority constitutive of a particular kind of public sphere" (5)—namely, one constituted by such recognizably republican notions as equality, integrity, virtue, and honor. It depends on citizens "having taken possession of their own free judgment and on their capability and willingness to engage with each other without prejudice and deceit" (234). Far from being "granted," libertas philosophandi is "achieved through civic education and mutual advising in the public sphere" (235). Rather than a formal permission or abstract right, libertas philosophandi is a socially mediated expression of power (or what the Ethics calls conatus, striving and expression): it emerges and is maintained through cultivation, regulation, and identification, and is communal—that is, political. Put another way, libertas philosophandi is a collective form of freedom enacted as a noncoercive exchange of views among equals who agree to search for truth and pursue well-being together. As distinct from the rational and intellectual freedom examined in the Ethics, libertas philosophandi reflects everyone's natural (and so inevitable) power of self-expression and does not depend on rational attainment. The task of politics is inducing as many people as possible to express themselves constructively. Thus, politics depends on motivating people to act as if they were rational. In practice, this means that citizens must commit themselves to friendly mutual advice and teaching rather than to coercive measures, to deliberative structures rather than to secrecy and partiality, and to acceptance of a unified sovereign, whatever the exact form of the government may be. Following the indications of TTP 5 and TTP 16-17, Lærke shows that this commitment can come about either imaginatively [End Page 523] or rationally. For those who do not or cannot—or cannot consistently—comprehend the usefulness of a well-constructed imperium, imaginative myths, such as the revelation at Mount Sinai or the social contract itself, are required. For those for whom the founding myths and codes, such as the principles of universal religion, prove insufficiently binding, state force intervenes. With characteristic erudition, Lærke situates Spinoza in the political, religious, sociocultural, and economic currents of mid- to late seventeenth-century Amsterdam. This contextualization leads to new ways of understanding Spinoza's place in the history of toleration and democratic thought. Lærke pairs this historical-philosophical sleuthing with close attention to Spinoza's exact language and argumentative structure. Most provocatively, Lærke insists on the fundamental continuity of Spinoza's political philosophy against influential readings that suppose a late-life change of heart. Chapters 2–5 explore the meaning of libertas philosophandi. Chapter 2, "Circles and Spheres of Free Philosophizing," retraces the history of the notion; chapter 3, "Philosophizing," presents philosophizing as a broad argumentative style encompassing reasoning from experience and practical or historical reasoning as well as more technical modes of inference and argument. What Spinoza calls the "natural light" and characterizes as "sound reason" is thus common to all, not restricted to intellectuals. Chapter 4, "The Apostolic Styles," studies Spinoza's analysis of the teaching methods exhibited in the Greek Scriptures. Chapter 5, "Authority," draws this part of the book to a... (shrink)

This collection of essays in moral philosophy has as its intended mark of distinction the fact that moral problems of the moment are the themes of the essays. The chapter headings indicate this contemporary concern: Abortion, Sex, Human Rights and Civil Disobedience, Criminal Punishment, Violence and Pacifism, War and Suicide and Death. There are essays by: Paul Ramsey, Philippa Foot, Jonathan Bennett, Thomas Nagel, Sara Ruddick, Richard Wassenstrom, [[sic]] John Rawls, R. M. Dworkin, William Kneale, H. L. A. Hart, J. (...) R. Lucas, Newton Carver, Jan Narveson, G. E. M. Anscombe, R. M. Hare, R. F. Holland, Mary Mothersill. One might well be inclined to agree with the editor's opposition to such philosophizing about morality which abstracts from the moral problems of one's own life. A purely theoretical approach to the study of morality would almost appear contradictory. However, it is necessary to express grave reservations about such a collection of essays as this. While the arguments of the essays are thoughtful and somewhat uncommon, the conclusions of the essays, as a rule, do not differ from "advanced" liberal opinions. In other words, the essays do not challenge students' opinions. The reading of these essays will but confirm the young in their prejudices. The problems the essays are concerned with are real problems; and it is a defect of the book that with the single exception of the chapter on Abortion no real opposing arguments are presented.--J. W. S. (shrink)

Philosophical hermeneutics is a style of hermeneutics that focuses on the ontology of understanding and interpretation. One of the leading exponents of philosophical hermeneutics is Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer explained that the prejudice and historical aspects that accept the dialectics of the past, the present and the future are crucial in understanding religious language related to COVID-19. This concept then underlies Gadamer’s thoughts on the idea of the fusion of horizon. This idea indicates that understanding religious texts must be done by (...) bringing together the text’s horizon, author and reader to reach a meaningful knowledge in interpreting a text. Suppose this view applies in understanding religious language related to the COVID-19 pandemic protocol. In that case, interpreter must consider all dimensions associated with the social situation to find a substantive meaning and a complete understanding of all dimensions related to the interpreter’s current position to apply the substantive meaning contextually in actual cases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 535 eluded. Have Straussians proved that there is no higher human knowledge than philosophy? One hopes that they will meet their critics, because Stmussians are deeply serious men and women, and we can all learn from their mentor. Hillsdale, College Hillsdale, Michigan D. T. ASSELIN Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory. By NOEL CARROLL. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pp. 268. This book is a provocative, (...) clearly written, and carefully argued presentation of a philosophical critique of traditional film criticism. If film is taken as a serious art form, one which can stand alongside of music, painting, theatre, and literature, then Carroll's book is a good example of the type of philosophical study that is needed. Assistant professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University, Carroll knows the world of film well and attacks with vigor what he takes to be erroneous in traditional film criticism. His three targets are the film theories of Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin, and V. F. Perkins. It would be difficult to overemphasize the influence of Arnheim and Bazin on the history of the aesthetics of film: each man is a giant in the history of theorizing about film. Though much less influential, Perkins does present an mteresting view of film. Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory consists of an introduction, three central chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the three chapters is devoted to one of the film theorists, and each chapter begins with an explanation of the theory being discussed. In trying to present the theory in its strongest form, Carroll includes a detailed discussion of its historical setting, and this makes its contextual importance clear. But most of each chapter is devoted to criticism of the theory iii question. Thinking of film theories as a series of answers to abstract questions, Carroll suggests that Arnheim, Bazin, and Perkins address the same central questions and expect the answers to these questions to be related logically in the same way. Carroll lists three questions that he thinks suggest a similar structure in the three theories he is studying: " What is the determinant or special feature of film? What is the value or role of cinema? What are the processes of articulation in film in relation to the previous two answers? " Concerning the answers to these questions Carroll writes 586 BOOK REVIEWS Most classical film theories-including those of Amheim, Bazin, and Perkins-relate answers to the three basic questions in the following way: the determinant characteristic stands to the role of cinema as a means to an end, while the articulatory processes are assessed as instances of the determinant characteristic of cinema (pp. 14-15). Arnheim represents an early type of film theorizing which Carroll names the silent-film paradigm. Those who embrace this approach, and Carroll would include the Soviet montagists of the twenties such as Sergei Eisenstein, insist that film is not merely a record of reality but rather manipulates reality expressively. Though Arnheim wrote after sound had entered film, he disdained talkies and looked back to silent film to discover the paradigm of film. Carroll's treatment of Arnheim relies on the latter's 1957 Film As Art, which is a condensed version of his 1933 book Film. The 1957 condensation can he considered the authoritative articulation of Arnheim's position. The prejudice against cinema in its early days derived from the fact that a major constituent of film was photography. Many felt that photography could not be an art form because it was merely a copying process. Arnheim's theory can be called creationist because he successfully showed how cinema could be creative in capturing and re-presenting reality. Arnheim showed that film transcends the simple viewpoint that simple recording implies. Carroll summarizes Arnheim's view: In summary, Arnheim holds that one role of filmmaking-the one that concerns him-is art. He also contends that the determinant characteristics of the medium-those relevant to the purpose of art makingare the various ways that the medium diverges from the mechanical duplication of reality, and finally, Arnheim spends the bulk of Film As Art on lengthy examinations of the various modes of cinematic articulalation, in order to demonstrate... (shrink)

In this paper I compare two models of expert judgment: the art critic in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” and the “wise man” in “Of Miracles.” The art critic is a true judge of beauty because he has made himself into a person who is optimally receptive to beauty. He possesses the virtues of taste: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice” (“Of the Standard of Taste,” 241). But the (...) virtues of the art critic, I argue, are also those of the “wise man,” the person who consistently “proportions his belief to the evidence” (EHU 10.4; SBN 110). Comparison of these two characters reveals that for Hume the virtues fundamental to the art critic’s critical competence are also epistemic virtues. Hume’s exposition of aesthetic excellences should thus be of interest for virtue epistemology. Because contemporary virtue epistemologists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the relationships between intellectual and moral virtues, Hume offers something new: an account of epistemic virtues based on aesthetic virtues. (shrink)

In this paper, we reject commonly accepted views on fundamentality in science, either based on bottom-up construction or top-down reduction to isolate the alleged fundamental entities. We do not introduce any new scientific methodology, but rather describe the current scientific methodology and show how it entails an inherent search for foundations of science. This is achieved by phrasing metaphysical assumptions into falsifiable statements and define as fundamental those that survive empirical tests. The ones that are falsified are rejected, and the (...) corresponding philosophical concept is demolished as a prejudice. Furthermore, we show the application of this criterion in concrete examples of the search for fundamentality in quantum physics and biophysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions :REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Every discipline worthy of a name deserves to be criticized periodically, asked to explain its objects and assess its march. The history of science is no exception. Indeed, criticism at this juncture should be all the more welcomed since the subjcct has now won its place in the curriculum of Anglo-Saxon educational institutions, particularly in the United States where Ph.D. (...) program offerings are multiplying almost faster than students. 1 The pioneering days of the 1930's and 1940's are past--if not totally forgotten--and men of the "second generation" like myself who received their training in the 1950's will gain much from having their methodological presuppositions questioned. Curiously enough, there has been little discussion of this kind in print for the last decade, with the exception of articles published in Poland and Russia, where the discipline is passing through its own pioneering crisis.2 In the West, the older debates stirred up largely by British Marxists are nowadays generally disregarded and have had surprisingly little productive effect upon the field. Within the last few years, the most effective methodological discussions have stemmed from Karl Popper and his generally brilliant lot of disciples. Dr. Joseph Ag~ssi, now Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois and a member of this group, recently wrote a deliberately provocative essay entitled "Towards an historiography of science." a Agassi begins it with the arresting statement that the study of the history of science is "in a lamentable state" and ends with the implicit suggestion that an examination of the historiography of science is one of the most revealing ways to discover the discipline's failings. For Agassi, it is clear that the root of the historian's problems has been a false set of philosophical premises about the nature of science, and of its history as well. He finds that the discipline has suffered from two diseases named "inductive philosophy " and "conventionalist philosophy," for which there is a major new panacea, Popper's "critical philosophy of science." This refreshingly straightforward argument provides the essay with a ready-made structure, at the same time as it infuses it throughout with a polemical tone. Because of this tone and because of the importance of Agassi's message, he deserves to be answered. On one subject, I cannot agree more with Agassi--the need for a critical examination of the hisComell, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin have a long-standing tradition of graduate study in the history of science. In the last few years, they have been joined by: the Case IImtitute of Technology; Indiana; Johns Hopkins; M.I.T.; Princeton ; the Universities of California (Berkeley and U.C.L.A.), Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Washington; and Yale. Profeasor Duane Roller of Oklahoma has prepared a report on the present state of teaching of the history of science in the United States. 2Abstracts of the discussions can be found in the Bulletin signalgtique : Philosophie. Sciences humaines of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. See especially Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki u (1962), special issue; and Organon (1964), no. 1. 8History and Theory. Studies in the philosophy o] history, Beiheft 2 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1963),117pp. [235] 236 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY toriography of science. On the other hand, his interpretation of the way history of science has and is being written seems more like a misinformed caricature than a sincere effort to understand the past in all its complexity. But let us first examine his discussion of "inductivism," "conventionalism," and "Popperianism." Inductivists or Baconians---he uses the terms interchangeably--write history the way they insist science itself has developed. Just as they assume scientific theories to have emerged from the collection of evidence, they expect that the piling up of historical facts strung along a time-axis adds up to history. As Agassi sagely observes, historians of science, like other induetivists, delude themselves into the belief that such an approach guards them from subjectivity and prejudice. To be sure, philosophers since Kant have known that such naive empiricism is in fact fundamentally misleading, for even the most ardent Baconian has... (shrink)

Today, “scientism“ is a concept with a negative connotation in every language. Although many definitions are circulating, they have the assessment in common that scientism implicates a blind faith in science, which is wrong, simple-minded and even dangerous. However, the question is, who actually is defending that kind of position? Is scientism not just a ghost, a projection, an intellectual scarecrow in order to use many people’s fear of science in order to bash rationalistic opinions? This article develops the argument (...) that scientism is a real historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It starts by outlining the history of the French word “scientisme” and the debates around it and discovers that the word is not at all of recent invention, but goes back to the 1840s and received its negative emphasis in the late nineteenth century when “scientific spiritism” on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science. A polemical counter-concept was therefore needed. Soon afterward some scientists and philosophers emerge, like Félix Le Dantec, Abel Rey or Marcel Boll, who turn around the invective in order to describe their own optimistic and rationalistic conception of science. In conclusion the article argues that scientism has to be understood as an intellectual project and as an optimistic thought-style in science that does not at all correspond to the prejudices of the amoral scientist or the power-hungry technocrat, but is represented mostly by outsiders and nonconformists. (shrink)

The property arrangements of the Republic are often linked to Plato's biographical and historical background, especially to his alleged aristocratic prejudices against moneymaking. Contrary to this, I argue that they are based on one of his central philosophical theories, i.e. on his conception of justice. According to Plato, justice involves the control of appetitive desires. Among these appetitive desires, the desire for money stands out for the following reasons given in the text: it is part of human appetite 'by (...) nature', it is 'insatiable', and it is connected with all of the other appetites; therefore it can be restrained by education only partially, and requires particular mechanisms of control. The Laws remain consistent with this assessment, but introduce less radical political measurements, which are in turn adopted by Aristotle in the Politics. (shrink)

Indian philosophy has ancient origin, but contemporary in significance. It is wide and varied, but holistic and integral in its approach. In terms of contemporary needs and aspirations, it has to be revisited and reinterpreted. It is imperative on the part of contemporary thinkers and scholars to properly understand from the original sources and put forth its true spirit without any bias and prejudices. Then only its real message can be disseminated to the world, and an attempt is made (...) here to provide a blueprint to undertake this exercise. (shrink)

Sex: Nagel, T. Sexual perversion. Ruddick, S. On sexual morality.--Abortion: Ramsey, P. The morality of abortion. Foot, P. The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Wertheimer, R. Understanding the abortion argument. Thomson, J. J. A defense of abortion.--Prejudice and discrimination: Wasserstrom, R. Rights, human rights, and racial discrimination. Roszak, B. Women's liberation. Lucas, J. R. Because you are a woman. Thomson, J. J. Preferential hiring. Singer, P. Animal liberation.--Civil disobedience: Rawls, J. The justification of civil disobedience. (...) Singer, P. Rawls on civil disobedience. Dworkin, R. M. Law and civil disobedience.--Punishment: Downie, R. S. The justification of punishment. Kneale, W. The responsibility of criminals. Hart, H. L. A. Murder and the principles of punishment: England and the United States.--War: Anscombe, G. E. M. War and murder. Wasserstrom, R. On the morality of war: a preliminary inquiry. Lackey, D. Ethics and nuclear deterrence. Narveson, J. Pacifism: a philosophical analysis.--Suicide and death: Brandt, R. B. The morality and rationality of suicide. Holland, R. F. Suicide. Nagel, T. Death. Williams, B. The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality.--Selected bibliography (p. 432-437). (shrink)

Nietzsche referred to his critique of Judeo-Christian moral values as philosophizing with the hammer. On the Genealogy of Morals (originally subtitled A Polemic) is divided into three essays. The first is an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as Nietzsche calls them moral prejudices. The second essay addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. The third essay considers suffering and its role in human existence. What might be of (...) most value to today's reader is not necessarily Nietzsche's views on particular ethical issues, but rather his encouragement to think independently and to actualize the self. (shrink)

The seventh chapter is dedicated to Gottfried Leibniz. In a letter to the English philosopher Samuel Clark, Leibniz recalls the episode in the park in connection with his famous principle of the identity of the indistinguishable, or simply "Leibniz's law". The futile search for two exactly identical leaves or blades of grass highlights a metaphysical principle that extends to the smallest elements of nature. If there are not two exactly the same, then they all bear the stamp of uniqueness and (...) individuality, ultimately going back to the wisdom of the Creator. The ethical implications of this ontological axiom are obvious: to destroy a leaf, let alone a whole plant, means to get rid of something that will never appear again in exactly the same form. If there are many species of plants and if each species includes a myriad of subspecies, it is because they all must exist to actualize the infinite possibilities of Divine self-expression. The loss of biological diversity diminishes the richness of manifestations that God finds in the world. From the real park, the philosopher leads us into an allegorical garden depicting his understanding of matter. In paragraph 67 of Monadology, he urges us to imagine every part of matter like a garden full of plants and a pond full of fish. But every branch of a plant, every member of an animal, every drop of its juices is again the same garden or the same pond. Each part of matter, accordingly, is a garden within a garden within a garden — and so on ad infinitum. Thus, it can be said that the plant, as its capabilities become more relevant, expresses (a) the world, (b) God's vegetable view of (a), and (c) essence. As a non-verbal sign, it is oversaturated with meaning, it is entrusted to bear the weight of theological and metaphysical entities partially revealed through it. One can only welcome the philosopher's bold assumption that a plant is not a passive object available for manipulation by humans and animals, but a subject endowed with the ability to act. However, the weak point of this statement lies in the double comparison of animals with humans and plants with animals. The standard that all other living beings must meet is hopelessly anthropocentric, since it implies that animals are less perfect people, and plants are less perfect animals. Thus, an ancient metaphysical prejudice creeps into the philosophical system, which boldly put forward the vegetative idea of infinite matter and the expressive uniqueness of each leaf and each blade of grass. The eighth chapter deals with Immanuel Kant. In his penchant for abstraction, Kant reduces flowers to specimens of pure color, and tulips seem to him the purest of all. Its simple form does not distract us from the beauty of its pure color, and in this it perfectly matches the asceticism of Kant's philosophy and the austere splendor of his aesthetic thought. Kant views tulips as examples of completeness «belonging to no purpose», where by «purpose» he means those practical tasks associated with economic activity in the broad sense of the word. The meaning and essence of the tulip varies according to the field in which we encounter it: as a natural object of study and scientific inquiry, as a useful object of our practical interest, or as an alluring embodiment of the beautiful. In his personal writings of the 1760s, Kant defends the thesis that a plant is possible only in accordance with an idea, defining the latter as the a priori cognition of the understanding by which an object becomes possible. If the material aspects of human existence, according to Kant, do not deserve respect, then even less do non-human animals and plants, which have no share in the rationality of transcendental subjects. There is only one possibility of placing plants and animals under the umbrella of Kantian respect, and it has to do with human self-respect. Kant does not abandon the idea that flowers are vital links in the chain of plant reproduction by which the genus is preserved. In flowers, and in aesthetics in general, Kant sees a utopian prefiguration of human freedom. When he calls flowers «free beauty», he means their liberation from both natural necessity and conceptual understanding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life by Sylvia BerrymanElizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BERRYMAN, Sylvia. Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. vii + 220 pp. Cloth, $70.00—Berryman’s goals in Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life are threefold: to establish that Aristotle practiced what contemporary philosophers call metaethics; to refute the idea that Aristotle justified those ethics by (...) recourse to human nature, understood as an “external point” for “establishing substantial ethical truths from a value-neutral perspective”; and to demonstrate that, for Aristotle, the source and justification for ethical demands is human practical reason.Locating the source of normativity in practical reason does not mean that there are no “standards of truth other than human beings as a species.” Positioning Aristotle against both “Archimedean” naturalisms as well as relativisms and subjectivisms, Berryman sees Aristotle’s appeals to nature as delimiting “the kinds of normative positions that could guide practical reason,” and practical reason as responsive to biological constraints. Still, nature is no fulcrum. It does not mandate the contents of the life we should live. All of this together makes Berryman’s Aristotle a “constitutive constructivist,” which is to say, a nonskeptical, cognitivist nonfoundationalist.Chapter 1’s “Introduction” sets the stage for the book’s metaethical project. Chapters 2 and 3 argue against two versions of the claim that “Aristotle was not reflective on the sources and justifications for his ethical views.” Chapter 2 places “Aristotle in the Ethics Wars” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, challenging the historicist view that “the kind of metaethical reflection about the sources of normativity” that preoccupies modern philosophy in response to “‘disenchantment’ of the modern world picture” would not have been available to Aristotle. Chapter 3, “Nature and the Sources of Normativity,” positions itself against scholars who maintain that Aristotle was complacent about the values of his own society and/or “too philosophically naïve to even reflect on the sources and justifications of ethical claims.” Inhabiting Aristotle’s social and intellectual milieu, it shows how the epistemological questions, commitments to materialist-scientific worldviews, as well as challenges to divine authority posed by fifth-century sophists, Plato, and fourth-century [End Page 381] hedonists meant that “a philosopher in Aristotle’s position could hardly avoid being reflective on questions of the status of ethics.”After establishing in chapter 3 that Aristotle could have grounded ethical claims in his natural philosophy, chapters 4 through 6 make the case that he did not. Exploring the philosophical work done by Aristotle’s appeals to nature, chapter 4, “Is Aristotle an Archimedean Naturalist?”, focuses on the apparent directionality of human development as well as references to “natural justice” and “natural virtue” in Aristotle’s ethical writings, while chapter 5, “Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics,” scrutinizes the “naturalness of the polis” and “natural slavery” in Politics 1. Finding “only very minimal appeal to human nature” in the ethical treatises, Berryman sees Aristotle’s recourse to nature in Politics 1 as “the main anomaly” for which her refutation of Archimedean naturalism must account. Based on internal evidence in the Politics and comparison with Aristotle’s biological writings, Berryman concludes that Aristotle wrote the Politics before he “developed his more detailed biological theories.” Rather than evidence of naturalism, Aristotle’s appeals to nature in Politics 1, Berryman argues, are an early reflection of the “nomos-phusis distinction found in sophistic controversies” and a “kind of rhetorical move” based on thorough “prejudice and not reasoned inference.” Concluding “The Case Against a Naturalist Reading,” chapter 6 sets the stage for Berryman’s resourcing of Aristotle’s metaethics away from nature by exploring the inadequacies of the instrumental and theoretical rule-guiding reasoning implicit in naturalist accounts of Aristotelian practical reason.Chapters 7 and 8 offer the book’s positive account. After elaborating Aristotle’s rejection of “metaphysical abstractions” as action-guiding, chapter 7, “Aristotle’s Metaethics,” recovers from the Eudemian Ethics human agency as the source of normativity in Aristotle. Action “carries with it an implicit commitment to the norms of practical reasoning,” and “Aristotle’s insight,” Berryman writes, “is the metaethical recognition that the practical... (shrink)

The paper begins with an overview of the historical roots of philosophical hermeneutics grounded in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. It goes on to explore the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer as a philosophy useful to nursing research. The four concepts of prejudice, the fusion of horizons, the hermeneutic circle and play are discussed, as are the implications these concepts have for nursing research. These concepts have been utilized in the author's own research and examples from this research (...) are given to illuminate how these concepts can be shaped to the purposes of nursing research. While the concepts discussed stem from the work of Gadamer, the ways they have been utilized by the author do not represent a Gadamerian method. Gadamer's project is purely philosophical. (shrink)

Wouldn’t it be nice if hateful people were invariably stupid to boot, if their prejudiced attitudes could be attributed to some kind of irrationality? Tempting though this prospect is, Endre Begby warns us against it. Philosophers have tended, he writes, to assume that prejudiced beliefs are always ‘a symptom of some kind of breakdown of epistemic rationality’ (p. 2). This view is Begby's target. There can, he claims, be epistemically unimpeachable instances of prejudicial belief. That claim comes bound up (...) with a broader account of what prejudice is, and of the epistemic framework we should adopt when evaluating agents. The result is a thought-provoking account of prejudice, and a case study of the tensions inherent in the non-ideal project. By intertwining discussion of prejudice with a discussion of the appropriate epistemological framework for its evaluation, the book encourages reflection on a series of important methodological questions, and ultimately a broader interrogation of the role of philosophy in the study of prejudice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Community of “Neighbors”:A Baptist-Buddhist Reflects on the Common Ground of LoveJan WillisToday we are all aware that the concept of “race” is a mere construction. There is only one “race”: the human race; to think otherwise is like still believing that the earth is flat. But “racism” is a different matter. It exists as a system of beliefs and prejudices that people differ along biological and genetic lines (...) and that one’s own group is superior to another group. When these beliefs and prejudices are coupled with power—especially the power to negatively affect the lives of those perceived to be inferior—we have a serious problem. And no one should downplay or underestimate the harm that such an ideology inflicts upon everyone who participates in it. According to one African American professor of social work, “America’s history is inextricably bound to this racist ideology. From the codifying of slavery, to the belief in ‘Manifest Destiny,’ to the treatment of ‘illegal immigrants,’ many of America’s actions continue to conflict with its creed that ‘All men are created equal.’”1Over the past decade or so, I have written a number of pieces that focus upon racism in America and racism in so-called American Buddhism.2 Being African American myself, my reasons for this focus may perhaps be clear though not necessarily inevitable. I have written on a number of other topics: Buddhist philosophical discourses and life stories of Buddhist “saints,” for example. In my writings on racism, I have tried to communicate something of the emotional and psychic toll it takes to live in this country as a person of color. In a number of these writings, I have called myself a “Baptist-Buddhist,” and thus this is also one of my “dual belongings,” one of my “multiple identities.”When I speak of racism, I am not concerned with garnering pity, or playing the “race card” of guilt, or telling you, from some assumed position of superiority on the matter, that there is simply no way for you to understand this toll. I certainly cannot speak for all African Americans, or even for most of them. Early on in the process of writing this paper, I emailed Jung and Paul to say that I found the title of the panel both much too broad and much too narrow. “Too broad” because one person cannot possibly channel and/or verbalize the countless instances of suffering endured by African Americans (and more broadly, by persons of color) throughout space and over centuries in this country owing to slavery and its aftermath. And “too narrow” [End Page 97] because, ultimately, we want to do more than just rehash our many sufferings. We don’t want to wallow in victimhood. We want to move on—from the recognition of that immense suffering, seen and unseen—and to go out into the world and act to bring about social, economic, and ecological justice. That’s what we are called upon to do: to form a new community wherein there is compassion and caring for one another, where there is love and peace, nonviolence, reconciliation, and justice.So, even though I am quite frankly tired—as are so many people of color—of being the “token” African American who can add visible “diversity” to a group in order to show that it is now more “inclusive” than before, nevertheless, in this so-called postracial society where we have a black president and the demographic of “person of color” now comprises an actual majority of the United States’ population, I must still rise to say that, sadly, racism is not dead in this country! Its painful vestiges exist, and those vestiges are far from being either innocent or unharmful.I truly believe that—for African Americans, in particular—it is the trauma and the legacy of slavery that haunts us in the deepest recesses of our souls. It is hard to imagine what having been bartered and sold as though mere property does to a human being, what being dehumanized, infanticized, and divested of all rights and liberties does to one’s sense of self-worth and well-being. As... (shrink)

This paper argues for Kantian “universalism,” according to which the subject of empirical cognition is not merely individual, but universal. In the first section, I consider the limitations of Hume’s individualist view of the subject of judgment, which is able to explain how another person exerts power over my judgments, but cannot explain how what she says can challenge or support my judgments. In the second section, I argue that Kant’s universalism accounts for the possibility of rational support both among (...) different judgments in me, and among judgments of different subjects. The third section looks at the consequences of universalism for Kant’s account of testimony. I argue that on Kant’s view, it does not matter whether I learn something from my own experience or from your experience. Testimony thus does not emerge in Kant’s philosophy as a significant topic. In the fourth section, I argue that the enlightenment project of overcoming prejudice and acquiring wisdom makes it imperative that knowledge be not only universally shareable, but also actually shared among members of an epistemic community. (shrink)

The notion of possible worlds — once an abstruse offspring of Leibnizian theology — seems to enjoy a new lease on life in the hands of contemporary modal logicians and semanticists. The phrase “possible world” crops up with increasing frequency, and, as it is the case with many philosophical catchwords, its very familarity creates a presumption of understanding. Yet, although some related problems, particularly the one concerning cross-world identification of individuals, have received some critical scrutiny, the very idea of possible (...) worlds has been borrowed from Leibniz, and its intelligibility taken for granted even without its theological roots.My misgivings about this notion are not due to a prejudice against the concept of the possible itself: far from “passing” away, it remains a fundamental and irreplaceable element of human thought. (shrink)

Wittgenstein refers to psychophysical parallelism in this apparently prejudiced way in paragraph 611 of Zettel , in the course of a rather remarkable passage. It begins at 605 with the claim that ‘One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads or in our heads’. Subsequent sections develop this remark in a way that demonstrates Wittgenstein's rejection of the view that thinking is any sort of process in the head, whether a (...) physiological process or a matter of the operations of ‘a nebulous mental entity’. Indeed he appears to consider that these ontologically opposed alternatives have a common source, in that they both derive from the mistaken view that there must be a mediating process between psychological phenomena such as my present remembering and my experience of the remembered event . If we find no suitable mediating physiological process, we are easily led to assume that there must be a process of a rather different sort, and hence we are led to believe in a ‘nebulous mental entity’. But this whole line of thought in fact depends on a ‘primitive interpretation of our concepts’, an interpretation which we uncritically made at the stage at which we assumed that there must be a process of some sort mediating between the phenomena. We are reminded of Wittgenstein's earlier remarks in Philosophical Investigations , I, 308. (shrink)

In “The Human Prejudice”, Bernard Williams discusses our treating human beings differently in our moral thinking from the ways we treat other creatures. He criticises the idea that this expresses a prejudice, speciesism, analogous to racism and sexism. His essay has been misunderstood by some of its critics, including Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. My essay sets out several questions one may have about Williams's essay, and explains how they can be answered. I make clear the connections between “The Human (...) Prejudice” and some main elements in Williams's thinking about ethics, including his criticisms of moral theory. (shrink)

This article discusses two complementary themes that play an important role in contemporary South African political philosophy: (1) the racist tradition in Western philosophy; and (2) the role of ubuntu in regaining an authentic African identity, which was systematically suppressed during the colonial past and apartheid. These are also leading themes in Mogobe Ramose’s African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. The first part concentrates on John Locke. It discusses the thesis that the reprehensible racism of many founders of liberal political philosophy has (...) lethally infected liberal theory. This view neglects the distinction between genesis and justification. Political liberalism has since cleansed itself of the prejudices of its spiritual ancestors. Liberal human rights exclude racism as a matter of principle. The second part discusses the claim that the ubuntu philosophy provides a better basis for a constitution in a modern society than political liberalism. A major problem is that ubuntu is an essentially contested concept. Some philosophers consider ubuntu to be a moribund notion (Matolino); others see it as a vital concept par excellence. In the latter case, it is elaborated from sundry incompatible political views, ranging from African nationalism (Ramose) via humanist communitarianism (Metz) to liberalism (Mboti). Conclusion: as an essentially contested ideological concept, ubuntu should not be a decisive constitutional standard for the application of state force. In contrast, the constitutional model of political liberalism provides a reasonable alternative, as it is designed precisely to solve the problem of social plurality and ideological contest. (shrink)

In On Certainty, the emphasis is on the solitary individual as subject of knowledge. The importance of our dependence on others, however, is brought out in Wittgenstein's remarks about trust. In this paper, the role and nature of trust are discussed, the grammar of trust being contrasted with that of reliance. It is shown that to speak of trust is to speak of a fundamental attitude of one person towards others, an attitude which, unlike reliance, is not to be explained, (...) or assessed, by an appeal to reasons. It is, rather, because we have such a fundamental readiness to accept what we are taught by others that we can come to develop an understanding of reasons. The idea that believing something without evidence is always a weakness is shown to be a philosophical prejudice. Trust is always for something we can rightfully demand from others: misplaced trust, accordingly, is not a shortcoming on the part of the trustful person, but of the person in whom the trust was placed. The destruction of trust is a tragedy of life; in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein suggests a connection between distrust and madness. (shrink)

An error that medicine has long shared is to attribute to a desire or an effect of the mother’s imagination during gestation, the deformities, growths or spots that a child bears at birth. The imagination would be capable of imprinting external modifications on a matter and would have an impact on the perceptions and sensory development of the fetus. Returning briefly to the genealogy and posterity of the topos, this article focuses on the successes and refutations of the Malebranchist paradigm (...) in the 18th century, through a corpus of medical popularization texts where the debates oppose the supporters of the imagination for whom emotion alters the organs of the fetus and the detractors of this thesis who only see it as prejudice. Mechanistic systems had in common that they avoided the soul to explain life. Although each era has its hermeneutic system of representations, and that medicine—closely dependent on the philosophical and moral conceptions of its time—is also a cultural production, it is nevertheless not uninteresting to question on the fortune of a motive and the scientific topicality of the question. What does the baby perceive in utero? Does he feel his mother’s pain? If so, what is the biological impact? To what extent can the maternal imagination and experience mark the child’s body? Informed by functional imaging technologies, recent research returns to the symbiotic link of mother-fetus interactions. Convergences appear between this 18th century and our 21st century. In no case did we want to contrast today’s scientists who are firmly in touch with reality and their predecessors who are prey to imagination. Science, whatever the era, always feeds on imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Human Roots of Artificial Intelligence:A Commentary on Susan Schneider's Artificial YouInês Hipólito (bio)Technologies are not mere tools waiting to be picked up and used by human agents, but rather are material-discursive practices that play a role in shaping and co-constituting the world in which we live.Karen BaradIntroductionSusan Schneider's book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind presents a compelling and bold argument regarding the potential impact (...) of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) on our society and personal identity. Schneider's argument emphasizes how AI may fundamentally alter our sense of self and disrupt traditional notions of identity and consciousness, motivating further significant cognitive science and ethical implications that require careful consideration. [End Page 297]The recent surge in AI hype has given rise to a widespread belief that AI is an autonomous and exceptional entity, potentially even possessing intelligence. This trend reflects a subtle reemergence of the classic Turing question, as the media bombards us with sensational inquiries into the intelligence of AI systems. Amidst this hype, it is easy to forget that AI is a product of human creation.Upon closer examination, the hype surrounding AI necessitates an assumption of its autonomy, which implies a belief in the realism of AI—the notion that AI, as an independent entity, is morally neutral. However, AI does not emerge in a vacuum. It is designed and developed by individuals who are shaped by their own experiences and biases.By endorsing the realism of AI as morally neutral (Cooley 1995), those involved in its design may use this argument to deflect ethical responsibility away from themselves and allow biases to persist, thereby perpetuating social injustice. Such attitudes toward AI revitalize the debate on the neutrality of technology (Ruane, Birhane, and Ventresque 2019; Du, Lu, and Xie 2021; Lüthi et al. 2023).This article presents a critique of realism with regard to AI highlighting the significant social implications both at the basis of design and that arise from our interactions with these technologies. The argument suggests that AI does not exist independently of human practices and values, but rather emerges from them. The article instead suggests viewing AI design as a cultural practice defending realism about self-determination agencies, drawing from Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity as a means to understand the human roots on the basis of AI.I. Rejecting Realism about AIConsider the hypothetical scenario of an Artificial Intelligence system that is discovered by humans, but exists independently of human cognition and perception. This scenario embodies the philosophical perspective of realism about AI, which maintains that AI entities have objective existence in an abstract domain, independent of human invention or imagination. If this perspective were to hold true, then humans could not be held responsible for the actions of autonomous AI systems.If we were to conceive of AI as an ideal entity that exists independently of humans, it would likely lead to a number of negative consequences for society. First and foremost, it may lead to the dangerous assumption that AI systems are neutral and objective, devoid of the biases and prejudices that are inherent in human decision-making. This could create a false sense of trust in AI, leading to the belief that their decisions are inherently fair and impartial. However, the reality is that AI systems are not inherently neutral, but rather are shaped by the cultural and social contexts in which they are created and deployed. [End Page 298]AI as an autonomous, self-governing agent raises concerns about the attribution of accountability for its actions. Considering AI as an independent entity may pose challenges in assigning responsibility to its human creators and the industry that produced it. On the other hand, viewing AI as an ideal entity, distinct from human influence, may hinder its ability to foster a more equitable and just world. Importantly, overlooking the social and cultural dimensions of AI risks forfeiting opportunities to employ AI in redressing prevalent biases and inequities in society. AI possesses the potential to serve as a potent instrument for advancing social justice and equality, but this prospect necessitates acknowledging and... (shrink)

SummaryThough Peter Gordon mentioned philosophical anthropology in his book Continental Divide, he has not yet realized how it works independently from Cassirer's and Heidegger's prejudices. The whole argument between them before, in and after Davos raged around the status of philosophical anthropology: How do the spiritualisation of life and the enlivening of the spirit come about? This was not just the central question for philosophical anthropology founded by Max Scheler, but also in Wilhelm Dilthey's life philosophy, which was systematized (...) by Georg Misch. Cassirer and Heidegger shared three shortcomings with respect to the Life-philosophical Anthropology. Neither had a philosophy of nature or a philosophy of sociaty or a philosophy of history. The insight into the unfathomability of humans is given a political edge in Helmuth Plessner's book Power and Human Nature. Elevating it to the principle of democratic equality with respect to the worth of all cultures one opens up the potential for a form of civil competition that might supersede ethnocentric wars. (shrink)

When in 1792 Kant published his essay “On the Radical Evil in Human Nature” in the Berlinische Monatsschrift it had the effect of an exploding bomb. Many of those who previously embraced his ethics were shocked and bewildered. Goethe’s well-known metaphorical statement sums up the reaction: “Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosophical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil, in order that Christians too (...) might be attracted to kiss its hem.” The deep emotional disappointment of Kant’s followers aside, there is very little reason to believe that Kant’s alleged sharp turn in regard to the problem of evil was dictated by any political considerations. Rather, it was Kant’s decision to face philosophically his inner conviction of “the insuperable evil of our hearts,” which before the essay on radical evil only appears—rather implicitly—in his personal correspondence. (shrink)

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense are they defective? Many will be false and harmful, but philosophers have further argued that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by violating our epistemic responsibilities. It is also assumed that we are only morally responsible for the harms that prejudiced beliefs cause because, in forming (...) these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. In Prejudice, Endre Begby argues that these common convictions are misguided. His discussion shows in detail that there are many epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief, and that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to articulate our ethical responsibilities. Doing so unreasonably burdens victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, Begby provides an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. This view is supported by a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, Begby develops a systematic platform for non-ideal epistemology which would apply to a wide range of other social and epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more. (shrink)

The journal continues to publish translations of individual chapters of the book by the famous phenomenologist Michael Marder "Plants of Philosophers (Intellectual Herbarium)". Out of twelve stories, "Irigaray’s Water Lily" was chosen. The author analyzes the views of a modern French philosopher Luce Irigaray, whose numerous books contain a feminist revision of traditional philosophy and its language. Today, having thrown off the straitjacket of metaphysical reasoning, living thought turns to physicality, marked by finiteness and sexual differences, as well as (...) to the surrounding world, to the rhythms of the earth and the richness of non-Western philosophical traditions. Luce Irigaray's creativity is rooted in all those dimensions of experience that she was able to restore at the sunset of metaphysics. In the work of Irigaray, the vegetable occupies a special place and stimulates the development of her thoughts. Plants provide her with a model of thinking, living and cultivating subjectivity. Cultivation in this case does not mean the formation of the physis in accordance with the predetermined parameters of the mind or the forcible eradication of what grows by itself. On the contrary, cultivating nature, for example, means that we put ourselves at her service, protecting, participating and encouraging myriad plants. Irigaray calls us to listen to the muted vegetative rhythms of our life and thinking, whose growth has been stopped by the prejudices of metaphysics and the arrhythmia of modern existence. Everything that Western philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel rejected and devalued in relation to plants, in her works is lovingly extracted, overestimated and cultivated. (shrink)

This chapter proposes to reconstruct and make sense of Gadamer's position with regard to the concept of prejudice in its relation to several neighboring, that is, related concepts. These concepts include, first of all, pre‐understanding.The method of clarifying the meaning of concepts through reconstruction of their history is based on a particular conviction or, more exactly speaking, a philosophical position. According to it, philosophical concepts are determined in their meaning not through a random choice to designate them with that word (...) “but rather on the basis of their historical background”, and “legitimate philosophizing needs to be able to account historically for its own concepts”. The chapter then shows how Gadamer's treatment of the issue was anticipated and indeed delineated by Heidegger. The particular prejudice we are urged to liberate ourselves from is the assumption that past ages knew better how things were than we do. (shrink)

Slife and Reber accuse psychology of harboring a hidden, albeit unintentional, bias against theism in violation of the spirit of the American Psychological Association Council of Representatives resolution on religious prejudice. However, they are mistaken in categorizing a bias against theism in psychological research and theory as religious prejudice. Moreover, their discussion of religious prejudice morphs into promotion of Christian theology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Frege's linguistic views are exemplified by an analysis of the following topics: proper and common names, the definite and the indefinite article, the singular and plural distinction, words and sentences, together with the role of the copula, and the relationship of syntactical and semantical categories. His endeavour to overcome the ambiguities of natural language inherently connected with his logical investigations failed. In fact, his conceptions are relying on accidental features of a particular natural language, namely German. Therefore, they are neither (...) valid in general nor relevant from the logical point of view. They are influenced rather by his philosophical prejudices than by empirical results obtained in comparative philology and linguistics at all. (shrink)

"Making Sense of Nonsense: Trivial Remarks on the Nature of Language" is an inquiry into the nature and significance of nonsense for philosophers and other human beings. Philosophers have been accused of indulging in nonsense. Wittgenstein complains that philosophers take language on holiday. If an utterance is nonsense in virtue of being on holiday, we might expect meaningful utterances to be meaningful in virtue of their being at work, at home. When we look at language at home, (...) we find that, despite the tribute philosophers of language ordinarily pay to the a priori, meaning is a most contingent and subjective family of phenomena. On the rough ground of everyday discourse, we find language stamped with the desires and agendas of certain groups of mammals. Language shows us its rough edges when we clear away the unarticulated presuppositions smuggled in by dominant philosophical methodology. There are a number of strategies for attaining an unclouded vantage point on language. One is to imagine oneself into the position of someone to whom our language and way of life is unfamiliar. Another is to actually occupy a point of view from which the language and way of life we take for granted begins to seem strange. ;The theory of meaning that emerges from the kind of attention to language here described can be stated thus: meaning is grounded in concernful engagement with the world. Or, to put it another way: we talk about what we care about. As a result, language can serve as a deep reserve of human history. What it tells us about ourselves is not always pleasant. As the language reveals the concerns and agendas of speakers, it reveals the imbalances and abuses of power among those speakers. Insofar as language constructs the worlds we inhabit, the injustices and prejudices we find in language are mirror images of reality as we know it. The good news is the liberatory potential of our realization of the extent to which meaning, and hence reality, are "man-made." This potential is realized in the work of many radical lesbian feminist philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXV, Numbers 1 and 2, April/November 1999, pp. 139-153 Hume on Monkish Virtues WILLIAM DAVIE In the second Enquiry1 Hume denounces the "monkish virtues," saying that men of sense will regard them as vices because they "cross all... desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper" (EPM 270). He includes under this heading, "Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, (...) humility, silence, solitude." No doubt Hume's stance regarding the "monkish virtues" does fit into a particular vision of the desirable life, but it may be questioned whether it fits his philosophy with full consistency. In this paper, I will argue that Hume's explicit formula for identifying virtues fails to justify his rejection of the monkish virtues if it is followed without prejudice. I. Identifying Virtues Our whole comprehension of virtue, and our competence to identify it in any community, ultimately derives from our perception of virtue in particular instances. The edifice of morality reaches into the thin air of abstractions and general rules, but it does not begin there and it is always grounded in the concrete experience of human individuals. In the most basic case, what we perceive is not (say) the trait of kindness as embodied in George.2 We rather perceive the whole phenomenon of George in his particular situation. We pick up information about the person and the surroundings, including bits about motivation, moods, temptations, complications of all sorts, plus the general William Davie is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, 1295 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1295, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 140 William Davie background understanding we have of human nature. We ascertain whether the man's character is useful or agreeable, for himself or others. All this is needed to "pave the way" for the activation of moral sentiment. Then we get an impression (not an idea) of the man's virtue; we feel the warm glow of George's kindness on this particular occasion. How does language figure in our experience of moral differences? We know that as any individual's time on earth mounts up, and as one gains a few years of experience, he or she will gradually acquire abstract ideas and the words which signify them. Here in brief is Hume's account of the formation process (T 17-25). The first order of business is to notice a resemblance among certain objects of experience; we apply the same word to all of them. Thus, we would gather indefinitely many instances in which the word 'kind' is applied to something, or where somebody speaks of 'kindness.' The word becomes associated with a certain custom, or habit of mind, which custom is evoked whenever we hear or speak that word, or at least whenever the word is used wrongly. In that event, the custom fires up some relevant counterexamples for our attention. If somebody asserts, "True kindness is always well-planned and fully reflective," our mind instantly lights upon cases of spontaneous or impulsive kindness. If we should overhear, "She is a very kind person, so people don't like her," we know that something is amiss. Our competence in handling abstract ideas clearly underwrites the catalog that Hume confidently envisions at the start of his second Enquiry. We can make two lists, one for virtues and one for vices. In this process, Hume thinks, "The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly" (EPM 174). We can easily appreciate why it should be so. Our moral epithets are mounted on items of direct perception. Our understanding of a particular word is really a custom of associating certain elements of our own experience. He offers some concrete guides, each of which can be used from one's armchair : 1. A philosopher can "enter into his own breast" for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him. 2. He can consider whether the attribution of a particular quality to him would come from a friend or an enemy. 3. He can consider whether a quality, if ascribed to any person, "implies... (shrink)

We present a pragmatic analysis of the different meanings assigned to the term “local realism” in the context of the empirical violations of Bell-type inequalities since its inception in the late 1970s. We point out that most of them are inappropriate and arise from a deeply ingrained prejudice that originated in the celebrated 1935 paper by Einstein-Podolski-Rosen. We highlight the correct connotation that arises once we discard unnecessary metaphysics.