This piece presents an account of Kant's notion of provisional right and connects this conception to his defence of two principles of publicity. The argument is to the effect that understanding the notion of provisional right will enable us to comprehend the Kantian picture of the state of nature, the basis of the transition from such a state to the civil condition and also his treatment of international right. The paper also presents the sketch of (...) a Kantian theory of normatively justified institutions. (shrink)

Kant maintains that while claims to property are morally possible in a state of nature, such claims are merely “provisional”; they become “conclusive” only in a civil condition involving political institutions. Kant’s commentators find this thesis puzzling, since it seems to assert a natural right to property alongside a commitment to property’s conventionality. We resolve this apparent contradiction. Provisional right is not a special kind of right. Instead, it marks the imperfection of an action where (...) public authorization is lacking. Provisional right thereby functions as a methodological device in a sequential elucidation of the moral basis of public law. To develop this reading, we first explain Kant’s two-step account of property rights—his division between ‘having’ and ‘acquiring’. Then we explain what is involved in a sequential exposition of right more generally. (shrink)

I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature.Weak provisionalityholds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast,strong provisionalityholds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view,anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but (...) anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s mature political philosophy entails the provisionality thesis. The provisionality thesis asserts that in a world like ours, populated with beings sufficiently like us, acquired rights (rights to external objects of choice, including property, sovereignty and territory) are necessarily provisional. I motivate the standard view, which restricts the notion of provisional right to the state of nature and the transition from the state of nature to the civil condition. I then provide two textual arguments (...) against it. I conclude by reflecting on the normative implications of the provisionality thesis, arguing that they are more modest than has been formerly appreciated. (shrink)

Kant’s brilliant original contributions to political thought cannot be understood without attention to his dynamic concept of provisional right, argues Elisabeth Ellis in this book—the first comprehensive interpretation of Kant’s political theory. Kant’s notion of provisional right applies to existing institutions and practices that are consistent with the possibility of progress. Ellis traces this idea through Kant’s works and demonstrates that the concept of provisional right can be used both to illuminate contemporary theoretical debates (...) and to generate policy implications. In this new interpretation, Kant’s provisionalism provides a broad standard for political right that remains deeply responsive to historical and geographical particulars, directing our attention to the dynamism between our world and our ideals. Ellis offers us Kant for our time—worldly, pragmatic, and intensely committed to the everyday pursuit of human freedom. (shrink)

True,Kant takes the conclusions of his ethical work for granted in his political theorizing; he treats corollaries of the categorical imperative as conclusive principles of political right.However,in his political theory his concern is not simply to lay ...

In this short but intriguing book, Elisabeth Ellis tackles the problem that our political language is misleadingly full of clashes between conclusive political principles, when in fact our political actions necessarily take place in a world too complex and changing for such fixed answers. Drawing upon the work of Immanuel Kant, Ellis proposes to clarify our political talk and reasoning by replacing the language of conclusive principles with that of provisional reasoning. It is the aim of the book to (...) describe a theory of provisional politics derived from Kant's political writings, to show that provisional reasoning is a better tool for modern-day democratic politics than conclusive reasoning, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of provisional reasoning about political policies through a series of case studies of contemporary political issues.According to Ellis, to theorize provisionally is to "always leave open the possibility of entering into a rightful condition" . In particular, provisional theory takes as a given that agency and plurality are basic conditions of politics—not that they are "absolute precepts," but rather "conditions of principled political action as such" . Throughout the book, Ellis evaluates the merit of. (shrink)

James Tully's account of a ?post?imperial constitutionalism?, in his book Strange Multiplicity, wrongly rejects the ideal of impartiality in modern political theory. Pace Tully, this paper argues for a conception of impartiality called ?justice as provisionality?. This is demonstrated by explaining the concept of a ?contrastive hard case?. These cases, exemplified both by indigenous peoples? struggles for recognition and ?traditional? justifications for violence against women, centrally involve conflicts over the cultural interpretation of value. The paper argues that the just adjudication (...) of these cases depends on understanding two different senses of the term ?provisionality?. These demonstrate that the post?imperial state can give impartial reasons for the rights of parties to ?contrastive? claims in a way that integrates the concerns of both feminists and cultural pluralists. The two senses of provisionality are: first, that consequent upon historical injustice, the post?imperial state should recognize the legitimacy of citizens? partial reasons for their actions and practices; and hence, should recognise that the domain of public, impartial reason is always provisional and incomplete. Second, our capacities for reason are dependent on public and nonpublic provision, protection and care. This is because diverse inequalities and injustices could prevent vulnerable people, in some cases women, from acting according to reasons at all. (shrink)

The right to teach at university is a distinctive philosophical and legal conundrum but a largely unexplored question. Drawing on Humboltdian principles, the legitimacy of the university teacher stems from their continuing engagement in research rather than possession of academic and teaching qualifications alone. This means that the right to teach needs to be understood as a privilege and implies that it is always provisional, requiring an ongoing commitment to research. Yet, massification of higher education systems internationally (...) has led to the disaggregation of the academic profession with teaching-only positions now increasingly common. University teachers employed to both teach and research face a narrowing set of performative expectations with respect to how ‘research-active’ is defined. This paper challenges these contemporary understandings and, drawing on historical evidence, argues that a broader definition of research and scholarship needs to underpin the basis of the right to teach. (shrink)

Kant suggests in The Metaphysics of Morals that we may sometimes say something untrue or insincere since others are free to interpret our statements as they wish. (1996, 6:238) Yet he also argues that even in conflict situations we should be truthful so as to not eliminate trust and to make it possible for a rightful condition to arise. My paper considers the conditions Kant believes essential to maintain basic trust so that in better times peace is possible. It also (...) considers their relation to sincerity. I argue that Kant’s view can provide a model for building political trust after wars and other forms of conflict. Furthermore, I consider the need for the possibility of help as also necessary for trust, through the work of Jean Améry. In certain situations, sincerity is not the most important thing. More important are truthfulness and the willingness to act as if we were sincere and thought others and the world worthy of our trust. (shrink)

The international legal order is beginning to take human rights seriously, yet sound justifications for claims about human rights are conspicuously absent. Philosophers have begun to respond to this “justification deficit” by developing theories of human rights. Although a philosophical conception of human rights is needed, it would not be sufficient. The justification of human rights is a dynamic process in which a provisional philosophical conception of human rights both guides and is fleshed out by public processes of practical (...) reasoning structured by legal institutions. Whether the “justification deficit” can be remedied depends not only upon the content of human rights norms as set out in the major conventions and the arguments philosophers can marshal to justify them but also upon the epistemic virtues of the institutions through which the norms are specified, contested, and revised over time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy in an Uncertain World:Expertise as a Provisional Response to VulnerabilityRobert Smid (bio)In the final chapter of American Immanence, Michael Hogue writes that "[r]ather than asking the foundationalist question of what epistemology is needed to ground or justify democracy, the pragmatist asks what epistemology democracy entails. What 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"1 While Hogue and I (...) have explored similar themes in our research on the promises and perils of democracy, this statement identifies a key difference in our respective approaches that has significant implications for the role that democracy can and should play in inquiry as well as for its potential to revolutionize civilization as we know it in the Anthropocene.In what follows, I raise three interrelated points that interrogate that difference. The first pertains to the role of foundations, provisional or otherwise, in Hogue's work, and results in a challenge to the special status seemingly given to democracy and a proposed inversion of the relation he poses between epistemology and democracy. The second pertains to the role of education in a democracy. This is a dimension of traditional pragmatist discourse on democracy that is conspicuously absent in Hogue's book, yet one that has significant implications for his argument. In this section, I will draw out the Deweyan strains of that discourse that appear to inform Hogue's work and contrast them with a Peircean take that yields notably different outcomes. The third point addresses the relation between democracy and sovereignty, a relation that Hogue explicitly eschews but that I will argue maintains some validity within democratic discourse, albeit in a more modest and provisional form. Finally, I draw these three points together in a conclusion that affirms much of Hogue's argument—including the profound vulnerability manifested by the Anthropocene and the need for more resilient forms of associated life—but assert that democracy is no less vulnerable than any other aspect of our uncertain world and therefore cannot be expected to possess within itself all that is necessary for its ongoing development. Building on the inversion of democracy and epistemology in the first section, the constitutive role of education in a [End Page 30] democracy as laid out in the second section, and the argument for a mitigated sovereignty in the third section, I argue that professional expertise provides an acceptable and necessary default when democratic structures fail.I. Provisional FoundationsAs a theopolitics rooted in religious naturalism, Hogue's understanding of democracy is one that is "embodied, relational, and vulnerable."2 That is, knowledge, meaning, and value all emerge out of and are conditioned by their social context, and shift according to the interests and needs of those who lay claim to them. Accordingly, Hogue's argument for democracy is that it is the way of life that allows for the broadest possible participation in such constructions, and which responds most effectively to the conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability surrounding them. It comes as no surprise, then, that his account of democracy is antifoundational, recognizing not only that all inquiry begins in medias res, but also that it emerges from a wide variety of media and that, while one goal of democratic discourse may be to chart a coherent path forward, both the media and the proposed paths are subject to change at any moment. Such antifoundationalism is a fairly standard commitment in pragmatist and process discourse, and thus relatively uncontroversial in its own right. It is worth noting, however, that being committed to antifoundationalism and actually being antifoundationalist in practice are often two very different things, our best efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.It is clear from Hogue's book that he resists any foundationalist epistemology, opting instead to derive his epistemology from democratic practice. As noted above, he asks "[w]hat 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"3 While it is possible that there is one epistemology that is best suited to democracy understood in this way, that epistemology would not, by his account, stand on its own foundation but be contingent on one... (shrink)

In chapter four of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick raised interesting questions about whether or not it is ever morally acceptable to act against what are agreed to be an individual's natural moral rights. The pursuit of these questions opens up issues concerning the specific content of these individual rights. This essay explores Nozick's questions by posing examples and using our considered responses to them to specify the shape of individual rights. The exploration provisionally concludes that a conception of (...) individual moral rights quite different from Nozick's looks attractive and merits further development. Footnotesa I thank Ellen Frankel Paul for helpful, constructive, and substantive comments on a prior draft of this essay. It goes without saying that her comments outstripped my ability to respond. (shrink)

For all contract theorists, including Kant, political legitimacy is based upon the consent of the governed. The differences amongst them begin to emerge when we inquire into the motivations and considerations which lead up to the agreement. For Kant, consent to the social contract is not based upon considerations of rational self-interest or prudence, nor upon a natural right to self-preservation and the guarantee of absolute property rights, but upon a moral obligation to institutionalize and make peremptory in a (...) social contract property rights that in the state of nature have only a provisional character. Whether this approach ultimately makes the idea of a voluntary agreement superfluous is a question I will address below. First I would like to consider the unique status Kant assigns to property rights in his theory of the social contract. This status has for the most part not been observed in the secondary literature, and Kant has even been accused of falling behind the achievements of Locke and Rousseau by grounding property rights on an element of brute force. However, since Kant himself espoused a labor theory of property rights in his earlier writings, it is important to consider carefully the basis for its subsequent rejection in the Rechtslehre. Further, since Kant’s theory of property rights constitutes an alternative to Locke, it may be possible to find within the contract tradition an alternative to the view of property rights found in some of its contemporary versions. (shrink)

The United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had primacy over national judicial agents for crimes committed in these countries during the most notorious civil wars and genocide of the 1990s. The UN Charter granted the Security Council the right to establish a tribunal for Yugoslavia in the context of ongoing civil war and against the will of recalcitrant national agents. The Council used that same right to punish individuals responsible for a genocide that (...) it failed earlier to prevent in Rwanda. In both cases the Council delegated a portion of its coercive title to independent tribunal agents, thereby overriding the default locus of punishment in the world order: sovereign states. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s theory of property through a comparative analysis of Gottfried Achenwall’s justification of ownership rights. I argue that at the core of Achenwall’s and Kant’s understanding of ownership rights lies the idea that rights are to be acquired through a juridical act (factum iuridicum, rechtlichen Act) of the will. However, while Achenwall thinks of this act as emerging from a private will, Kant holds that rights and obligations can only be brought about by an act of the (...) general will. By contrasting these two views, I aim to illuminate one of the main features of Kant’s theory of property, namely, that ownership rights are only possible in a rightfully constituted state. I conclude with a suggestion regarding Kant’s view of the notion of ‘provisional’ possession in the state of nature. (shrink)

This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that disabled people do not have a future, in the form of the disability rights movement. It provides an exploratory discussion of the key role played by utopianism in the response. In doing so, the article adds to critical theorizing on the importance of utopia to the oppression of non-dominant groups and to transcending that oppression. I use utopian studies scholarship to interpret the activities leading up (...) to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 as a minor utopia, characterized by an ambiguous, grounded, and provisional effort to imagine alternative ways of being. I articulate the central role played by a positive vision of disability and disabled people for this inversion of the historically negative relationship between utopia and disability. The article turns to disability activists to show that the movement countered exclusionary utopian approaches by acting as if it had a right to envision and enact a different, better future for all from the perspective of disability and disabled people. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2Barbara A. BieseckerEyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2. Jacques Derrida Trans.Jan Plug and others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 303. $53.95, hardcover, $20.95, paperback.My motivation is doubled. First, I want to use the occasion of this review to mark out a consistent and dominant motif in the life's work of Jacques Derrida (whose passing nearly (...) two years ago left the world a considerably less hospitable place) that practitioners in my field have tended to miss altogether or have deliberately disavowed. I want, in other words, to force our encounter, however belated and brief, with Derrida's participatory and persistent critique of responsibility. Contrary to the intellectual lore and the (not so) local interests that support it, I will dare to say, with the earnest hope of provocation, Derrida never stopped thinking and writing about the subject of responsibility and, more precisely, about the experience of the aporia through which every responsible decision must necessarily "pass." To borrow a phrase, deconstruction in a nutshell: a sustained meditation on responsibility that, in affirmatively insisting on the "nonpassive endurance of the aporia [as] the condition of responsibility of decision" (1993, 16), refuses the assurances of antinomy and dialecticizable contradiction in all of its senses. To think and write about responsibility in a deconstructive key is, then, to wager an aneconomics of the act, of decision and action without guarantees. Let us (re)read what Derrida has said on numerous occasions:To protect the decision or the responsibility by knowledge, by some theoretical assurance, or by the certainty of being right, of being on the side of science, of consciousness or of reason, is to transform this experience into the deployment of a program, into a technical application of a rule or a norm, or into the subsumption of a determined "case." All these are conditions that must never be abandoned, of course, but that, as such, are only the guardrail of a responsibility to whose calling they remain radically heterogeneous.(1993, 19)Not the dismantling of the subject but the identification of the condition of possibility of an agent who labors to live up to that impossible name.But I do not want only to contest at least one field's sanctioned ignorance by recommending Eyes of the University be read solely as variations on a long-standing and significant deconstructive theme. With attentiveness to the particular [End Page 254] inflections of the pieces collected therein as well as to the complex tangle of techniques of knowledge and strategies of power that constitutes our professional or institutional present, I want also to underscore the timeliness and usefulness of the volume for Philosophy and Rhetoric's cross-disciplinary readership, an increasing percentage of whom is engaged in the business of self-(re)definition and outreach, prompted in good part by dramatic shifts in attitudes and resources on the national, state, and local levels. Eyes of the University, then, as a kind of primer for all those amongst us embroiled in shaping and provisionally securing the future of higher learning in the humanities. Indeed, over the course of this collection of lectures, essays, interviews, and reports crafted between 1975 and 1990, Derrida revisits responsibility as a question of and for the university. During a talk marking the anniversary of the founding of Columbia University's graduate school and reprinted here as "Mochlos: Eyes of the University," Derrida posits the irreducibly rhetorical question (not because it has no answer but, rather, because it has at least two) in the following way:If we could say we (but have I not already said it?), we might perhaps ask ourselves: where are we? And who are we in the university where apparently we are? What do we represent? Whom do we represent? Are we responsible? For what and to whom? If there is a university responsibility, it at least begins the moment when a need to hear these questions, to take them upon oneself and respond to them, imposes itself. This imperative of the response is the initial form and minimal requirement of responsibility.(2004, 83)Turning to... (shrink)

This essay deals with Kant’s Doctrine of Right, but in a rather unusual way by being at the same time a review of a book on that doctrine. It was, indeed, that book which brought me, by trying to review it, to reformulate my own view on the issue To sum up the main mistakes of the author of that book: he takes the Doctrine of Right as a direct application of the doctrine of freedom, as developed in (...) the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason, to external acting of humans. That leads him on a crooked path to the thesis that provisional right is not „real“ right in the state of nature, but a conceptual assumption, which can be only thought of. With his idea that real right can only exist in a civil state, the author ends up in a position of legal positivism. The essay tries to expose the decisive steps which made the author go astray so that he eventually failed to grasp Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals altogether. Accordingly, apart from the mentioned mistakes, some connected problem areas, which are completely muddled up in the book, will be subjected to a closer investigation: freedom of the will versus freedom of action; free will versus general will; freedom in the doctrine of right versus freedom in ethics; validity of right versus effectiveness of right. Towards the end, some pages are dedicated to a critical statement on the author’s thesis that Kant’s Doctrine of Right is absolutely unsuited as basis for any claim to distributive justice. (shrink)

The paper starts out from a debate that occurred in Germany in 2015, where interpreters claimed to be able to divine Immanuel Kant’s views of the contemporary refugee crisis. It does not attempt to give a substantive answer to the title question, i.e. it does not try to specify the conclusive extension of cosmopolitan right. In contrast, it outlines the systematic work that would have to be done in order to be able to answer the title question. I start (...) from cosmopolitan right as natural right and ask what kinds of transformations cosmopolitan right would have to undergo to form a legitimate part of public international law, in parallel to Kant’s move from provisional private law to peremptory public law in his Doctrine of Right. For that purpose, I introduce distinctions between trivial and non-trivial transformation, between strong and weak transformation, and between transformation based on historically blameworthy and historically blameless action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam SmithElisabeth EllisSamuel Fleischacker. A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Cloth, $70.00. Pp. 338.Samuel Fleischacker's lively and ambitious new book on judgment makes significant contributions to the literature interpreting Kant and Smith. He constructs a powerful [End Page 447] theory of free human judgment from (...) Kant's third Critique and Smith's Wealth of Nations, using this theory to revise Isaiah Berlin's classic distinction between negative and positive freedom. By arguing for what he calls "a third concept of liberty," Fleischacker hopes "to make the world free for good judgment" (243).Fleischacker begins his book with three chapters on "the nature of judgment," which include a controversial but ultimately convincing reading of Kant's writing on aesthetic judgment. Having outlined a Kantian theory of judgment, Fleischacker moves in the next six chapters to "the politics of judgment," reading Smith's Wealth of Nations in light of Aristotle's philosophy of phronesis (and also, rightly, in the context of Smith's own Theory of Moral Sentiments). This second section concludes with two extremely interesting chapters on politics and judgment in Kant and Rawls, in which Fleischacker weaves a number of controversial hypotheses, for example, that Kant's Groundwork was fundamentally influenced by Adam Smith (229n.), or that Kant included gender-based inequality among the types of tutelage to be overcome (186n.), into a strong critique of contemporary political philosophy. To both the utilitarian and the deontological traditions in political thought, Fleischacker opposes a "third way," in which the basis of political legitimacy is rooted in neither desire nor reason, but in the capacity for judgment. Fleischacker concludes his book with a single chapter on "the freedom of judgment," in which he argues for this philosophy against a series of representatives of alternative views.Interpreting Kant's political philosophy, Fleischacker directs our attention away from the familiar calculus of universal rules and toward what this reader agrees is the more authentically Kantian politics of gradual progress toward freedom. From this interpretation, he derives a very interesting critique of Kant's most prominent present-day successors:Rawls and Habermas try to uncover a framework for just politics from the structure of reason itself, and their projects fail, deeply and irremediably, because that structure cannot tell us anything, by itself, about its own proper application to concrete matters of public policy. Kant's own political writings are more closely engaged with specific, contingent issues of his day. Surprisingly, perhaps, Kant has considerably greater respect for history, and for empirical fact, than do his modern-day followers.(184)Fleischacker is not the only scholar interested in directing our attention toward Kant's pragmatic politics. See, for example, John Christian Laursen, The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992). Fleischacker goes on to emphasize that for Kant political freedom is something to be achieved over time via such institutions as civic education and a free press. As such, political freedom is not identical with freedom of the will, and thus for Fleischacker, Kant's political arguments do not depend on defending transcendental freedom. Instead, Fleischacker argues, a truly Kantian politics will address the conditions for the free exercise of individual judgment. "Freedom.... can be developed empirically... " (186). Though generally convincing, Fleischacker's reading of Kant's politics is vulnerable to criticism on some points of interpretation. For example, by overlooking Kant's [End Page 448] account of provisional right in the Rechtslehre, Fleischacker misses one of the most important of Kant's attempts to translate judgment's mediating function into political practice.If A Third Concept of Liberty elides some interpretive issues (such as the relationship between aesthetic and moral decision-making (23n.), the book confronts the most important questions of present-day political theory head on. Fleischacker makes a number of far-reaching but also quite specific proposals for moving the world closer to a realm of free human judgment. Against negative libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Fleischacker calls for governmental activism to... (shrink)

This article is a provisional exploration of the field of cultural studies from a committed animal rights perspective. It argues that cultural studies will need to be reformed in response to increasing public concern about animal welfare issues and the growth of environmental consciousness. A number of critical readings of literary texts are employed to exemplify how this reformation might manifest itself in practice. It includes a review and critique of some current work in the field and suggests that (...) cultural theory is presently unable to respond fully to the place of animals in cultural production. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the implications that a general view of complexity - i.e. the view that complex phenomena are irreducible - hold for our understanding of ethics. In this view, ethics should be conceived of as constitutive of knowledge and identity, rather than as a normative system that dictates right action. Using this understanding, we elaborate on the ethics of complexity and the complexity of ethics. Whilst the former concerns the nature and the status of our modelling (...) choices, the latter denotes a contingent and recursive understanding of ethics. Although the complexity of ethics cannot be captured in a substantive normative model, we argue that this view of ethics nevertheless commits one to, what we term, ‘the provisional imperative’. Like Kant’s categorical imperative, the provisional imperative is substantively- empty; however, unlike Kant’s imperative, our imperative cannot be used to generate universal ethical principles. As such, the provisional imperative simultaneously demands that we must be guided by it, whilst drawing attention to the exclusionary nature of all imperatives. We further argue that the provisional imperative urges us to adopt a certain attitude with regard to ethical decision-making, and that this attitude is supported and nurtured by provisionality, transgressivity, irony, and imagination. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big (...) organizations shape moral consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

In response to Evelyn Pluhar'sWho Can Be Morally Obligated to Be a Vegetarian? in this journal issue, the author has read all of Pluhar's citations for the accuracy of her claims and had these read by an independent nutritionist. Detailed analysis of Pluhar's argument shows that she attempts to make her case by consistent misappropriation of the findings and conclusions of the studies she cites. Pluhar makes sweeping generalizations from scanty data, ignores causal explanations given by scientists, equates hypothesis with (...) fact, draws false cause conclusions from studies, and in one case claims a conclusion opposite of what the scientist published. Such poor reasoning cannot be the basis of an argument for moral vegetarianism. A broader search of the literature and attention to reviews and textbooks in nutrition shows that each of Pluhar's claims is suspect or incorrect. Pluhar has not undermined my central claims: even if animals have certain rights and well-planned vegetarian diets are safe in complex industrialized societies, these diets cannot be so regarded if the presuppositions of high levels of wealth, education, and medical care do not exist; and, women, children, the aged and some ill persons are at greater risk on restrictive vegan diets. Thus, any duty of moral vegetarianism is not categorical but provisional in nature. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Kant’s legal philosophy in order to defend the right to voluntary motherhood by way of abortion at any stage of pregnancy as an essential feature of women’s basic rights. By developing the distinction between innate and acquired right in Kant’s legal philosophy, I argue that the viability standard in US law (as established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey) misunderstands the nature of embodied right. Our body is the site of innate (...) class='Hi'>right; it is the means through which we can set and pursue ends in the world. The law, therefore, cannot adjudicate the relationship between the will and the body: it cannot require us to allow our bodies to be used against our will. By comparing unwanted pregnancy to sexual assault, I problematize the notion that consent to pregnancy, like consent to sex, can ever be conclusive. I examine Kant’s own account of unwanted pregnancy, in which he describes mother and child finding themselves “in a state of nature” in order to rethink the status of the fetus in law, and I argue that we should understand the fetus’s right to life as provisional, rather than as enforceable by law. (shrink)

A central question that arises when interpreting the U.S. Constitution is which theory of interpretation is the best? In his recent book, “How to Interpret the Constitution,” Cass Sunstein reviews various theories of constitutional interpretation currently in vogue and then offers what he believes would be the best approach going forward. In this Article, I want to take up a more basic question presupposed by the very idea of a theory of interpretation. That is, whether it is even possible to (...) arrive at more than a provisional understanding of what would be the best interpretation in any given area of study, including constitutional law. That said, I do believe some of the interpretations suggested by Cass Sunstein and elsewhere by myself and others to be more persuasive than most others, even if only partially so. For, as Sunstein himself points out, no theory seems perfect to figure out the Constitution’s meaning in every possible world in which we could imagine it to exist. So, we best just focus on our own world or what we take to matter in our world. In keeping with this idea, I plan to begin by looking first at how we might interpret the world around us based on our past experiences by considering a somewhat imaginative recent experience of my own. Next, I consider some recent studies in the neurosciences and a previous but highly influential article by the philosopher Donald Davidson concerning conceptual schemes and whether we could ever hope to make any sense of a scheme radically different from our own. Here it should be pointed out that I will use the word “scheme” when referring to a very broad system of thought for which there may not be much outside, versus when I use the word “framework,” as referencing something far narrower than a whole system of thought, even if what is referenced might purport to be a significant part of a still larger system. My goal is to eventually adopt John Rawls’ public reason method to separate out non-workable systems of thought as might be part of a particular religious or philosophical tradition that cannot be easily tied to any other system of thought easily imagined within a pluralistic society. I plan to do this by relating how Rawls’ public reason might allow for the creation of a moral interpretation of the Constitution adopting the moral theory of Alan Gewirth. The latter I adopt because its grounding does not presuppose any prior moral or religious framework. I then apply that interpretative method to five cases Sunstein believes are fixed points in our current constitutional understanding. In short, I plan to isolate out an area of human rights where even very different understandings of the world might be able to meet, while acknowledging that there will still be other areas that simply evade any common connection. I hope what I offer here to be of help for a theory of constitutional interpretation that focuses on morality, without having to compete with various religious frameworks going forward. (shrink)

This dissertation is a constructive interpretation of the significance of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's work for ethical theory. It argues that Ricoeur provides a concept of moral meaning which addresses more adequately than major contemporary alternatives, particularly Hebermas, MacIntyre, and Levinas, the problem of moral pluralism. Specifically, moral meaning for Ricoeur is a dialectical term which mediates the teleological good and the deontological right of tradition-interpreting selves. It renders productive these two poles of moral life, one Aristotelian and the (...) other Kantian, in the formation of critical teleological goods which recognize each self's distinct otherness as an interpreter of their own moral being in the world even as their otherness is projected into provisional and imaginatively mediated aims in common. ;This thesis is made in four steps. First, the dissertation argues that any concept of tradition-constituted moral life implies a tradition-interpreting self capable of forming its given and plural background linguistically into appropriated meaning for its own being in the world. Second, this interpreting self is constituted ethically by a dialectical relation between on the one hand the narrative teleological goods it forms in time out of its interpretations of tradition, and on the other its deontological otherness as capable of forming these narrative goods for itself. Third, this dialectical relation is rendered productive in a critical teleology of moral meaning, which can be broken down into criteria of subjective conviction, interpersonal promising, and third-party community, each of which involves plural and other interpreting selves' mutual recognition. Fourth, this dialectical interpretive ethics is shown to be grounded in, and in the face of evil liberated by, its implied religious limits, specifically a dialectical economy of the gift expressed in the terms faith, love, and hope. (shrink)

Historically the primary role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) has been "to assure, both in advance and by periodic review, that appropriate steps are taken to protect the rights and welfare of humans participating as subjects in research" (U.S. FDA, 1996). However, there is much to suggest that IRBs have been unable to fulfil this mandate, particularly in regard to the matter of informed consent. Part of the problem in this regard is that the competing interests of other stakeholders (...) often undermine the IRB's capacity to serve the best interests of research subjects. This paper proposes an alternative view of the role of the IRB. It begins by treating the interests of other stakeholders as legitimate matters of concern for IRBs. Hence the process established to review and monitor human research should be treated as an exercise in social justice in which the interests of all legitimate stakeholders must be represented and considered. A variation of Rawls' (1971) heuristic "the veil of ignorance" is employed to explore the dynamic relationship between knowledge and interests that ensues when the role of the IRB is characterized in this manner. Inadequacies in the informed consent process are taken as illustrative of the inability of IRBs as they are presently construed to attend to the interests of research subjects. The major normative implication of the analysis offered here is that the role of the IRB must be expanded to include the granting of a provisional proxy consent on behalf of prospective research subjects. This provision is necessary, it is argued, if the interests of research subjects are to be fairly assessed by IRBs as a matter of social justice. It is necessary as well to ensure that an adequate standard of informed consent is attained. Somewhat paradoxically it is argued competing sets of interests the IRB must serve, rather than as the primary concern of the IRB. (shrink)

It is argued that the question of whether or not one is required to be or become a strict vegetarian depends, not upon a rule or ideal that endorses vegetarianism on moral grounds, but rather upon whether one's own physical, biological nature is adapted to maintaining health and well-being on a vegetarian diet. Even if we accept the view that animals have rights, we still have no duty to make ourselves substantially worse off for the sake of other rights-holders. Moreover, (...) duties to others, such as fetuses and infants, may require one to consume meat or animal products. Seven classes of individuals who are not required to be or become vegetarians are identified and their examption is related to nutritional facts; these classes comprise most of the earth's population. The rule of vegetarianism defines a special or provisional duty rather than any general or universal rule, since its observance it based upon the biological capacities of individual humans whose genetic constitution and environment makes them suitably herbivorous. It is also argued that generalizing the vegetarian ideal as a social goal for all would be wrongful because it fails to consider the individual nutritional needs of humans at various stages of life, according to biological differences between the sexes, and because it would have the eugenic effect of limiting the adaptability of the human species. The appeal to the natural interests of omnivores will not justify any claim that humans may eat amounts of meat or animal products in excess of a reasonable safety margin since animals have rights-claims against us. (shrink)

The Lockean natural rights tradition—including its libertarian branch-- is a work in progress.1 Thirty years after the publication of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick’s classic work of political theory is still regarded by academic philosophers as the authoritative statement of right-wing libertarian Lockeanism in the Ayn Rand mold.2 Despite the classic status of this great book, its tone is not at all magisterial, but improvisational, quirky, tentative, and exploratory. Its author has more questions than answers. On some central (...) foundational questions he refrains from taking a stand. There is spadework yet to be done on the project of developing the most plausible versions of Lockean and Lockean libertarian views. Prior to doing this work, and articulating the sensible alternatives and what can be said for and against them, we are not yet in a position reasonably to opt for any particular version of Lockean theory or for that matter to decide between the natural rights tradition and rival consequentialisms. This essay aims to explore hard and soft versions of Lockean theory. The exploration aims to persuade the reader to favor the soft versions. Section I formulates four claims (all asserted by Nozick) and provisionally identifies the Lockean libertarian view with these claims. Section II notes that although Nozick in his 1974 book made scant progress toward providing a justification of his particular doctrine of rights, compared to rivals, no rights theorist since then has made significant advances on that front, so Nozick’s achievement has not been superseded. Nozick’s view of rights as side constraints is rehearsed. Sections III and IV raise a question that Nozick first posed: Should rights be regarded as specifying ways individuals may not be treated, infringement of which is sometimes, or always, or never morally acceptable provided full compensation is paid to any victims? Hard libertarianism is defined as a version of Lockean libertarianism that replies “Never!” to this question along with offering strict interpretation and uncompromising affirmation of the four provisional claims detailed in Section I.. (shrink)

Addressing the question of intentionality, we do well to orient ourselves by provisional extremes. There is a temptation to politicize the discussion by identifying the right-wing and left-wing poles of the debate, but the slightest good sense shows that one would thereby only betray one’s own allegiance and one’s own assessments. Still, the point of the temptation rests with the remarkable division of interest in the philosophical community.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Nature of Proof in PsychiatryPaul Lieberman (bio)Keywordspsychotherapy process, knowledge and psychiatry, externalism, WittgensteinThis vivid clinical report illustrates recognizably, and provocatively, a number of routine, but often unexamined, clinical questions. In its few paragraphs, it depicts challenges that each practitioner confronts, and, in the flux of clinical work, addresses, however implicitly and imperfectly, every day: From what data, and by what processes, does a clinical formulation, or way of (...) understanding, come into being? How do we appraise its accuracy and adequacy? Of what value is even a well-substantiated understanding, in the mind of the therapist, to the patient? What is the power of empathy as a treatment tool? How do we assess someone's status as a “good candidate for therapy?” When, typically, only the outlines of a problem are visible, and its origins and implications are largely hidden, by what right do we recommend psychotherapy, and with what conception, at what level of detail, of what its outcome will be? These are among the questions that Dr. Bailey's story challenges us to address.They are clinical questions, of course, because they deal with empirical matters of fact—psychological processes, outcomes studies, and evidence. But they are also philosophical because, as Freud insisted and Dr. Bailey shows, information obtained in the clinical situation often has power and authority that lead us to believe we understand what is going on, understand the other person, even in the absence of scientifically tested hypotheses, or the clear application of research-based evidence. Interactions between people—including clinical interactions—have a life and ability to engage us. Their meanings can seem so transparent and convincing that no doubt or questioning may seem cogent. At their most powerful, such experiences can reawaken us to important realms of experience and feeling which we might, otherwise, forget, ignore, suppress, deny, or in other ways keep out of awareness; they have the potential to arouse us and reconnect us with truths that, once revived, can seem both valid and important—perhaps the kind of experience that we may derive from works of art or literature (in fact, Dr. Bailey's account could be seen as a clinical parable—meant to be neither true nor false, but instructive). But even less dramatic examples are commonplace: we do routinely claim to know and be able to interpret and understand the actions of other people from our everyday interactions with and observations of them.What is less clear is how to account for these convictions and how to appraise their value, because they do not derive from established scientific procedures. Clinical intuition has a role throughout medicine, but we usually expect it to be subjected later to more rigorous tests to establish the correct diagnosis. Yet, as Dr. Bailey's case illustrates, clinical intuition in the psychiatric encounter seems somehow different. When Colin [End Page 225] leads Dr. Bailey to the conclusion that a “painful lack of wounds” has made him depressed, we find this credible. It seems similarly credible that Dr. Bailey might be anxious about his own capacity to defend his young family, because he says he is, that he perceives Colin as testing his manhood or sincerity, because that seems to fit Colin's temperament, that being accurately understood is helpful, because most of us have had that experience and valued it, and that, most generally, an absence of challenge or of activity could be depressing. But suppose a patient believed that a painful lack of wounds produced diabetes instead of depression, or suppose he had developed epilepsy and attributed that to an absence of combat experience. We might see these as ‘pre-scientific’ or ‘hypothesis-generating’ (or worse). By contrast, it seems timid to consider psychiatric formulations to be always and only provisional or hypothetical.In what ways and to what extent should we expect psychiatry to be different, and why? Several considerations suggest that psychiatry's reasons are not, always and everywhere, the same as those of general medicine, nor are its objectives.In general medicine, we distinguish between signs and symptoms, on the one hand, and “underlying” disease processes, on the other. But in psychiatry, this distinction can be... (shrink)

The recent widespread transformation in the conjugal rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people across much of the globe may seem to suggest that, at long last, the history of heterosexism has reached its terminus. In Ireland, the Equal Marriage Referendum in May 2015 offered the opportunity for the citizens of the Republic to extend the same rights, permissions, and privileges to same-sex couples that married heterosexual couples freely enjoy. The passing of that referendum and the extension of (...) these rights to same-sex couples denotes a move beyond societal tolera6tion toward societal acceptance, yet it remains to be seen whether or not the affordance of conjugal rights to LGBT people will necessarily mean that all queer subjects will be given the same acceptance.This article examines equal marriage and its potential engendering of binary divisions between queer subjects who adhere to the logic of cultural heteronormativity and those who transgress its structuring forces. It aims to historicise the discourse that surrounds gay marriage by tracing these debates back to the Enlightenment's production of the companionate marriage. The works of Edmund Burke, his aesthetic writings and political speeches, provide the textual basis for an examination of 'normative desire' in the eighteenth century. The article contends that assessing the eighteenth century's regime of heteronormativity will allow us to see the provisional nature of our own heterosexist cultural formations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Time For Beginners:Natality, Biopolitics, and Political TheologyRosalyn Diprose and Ewa Płonowska ZiarekDespite The Growing Interest in Hannah Arendt’s idea of natality and its relationship to politics,1 natality is rarely discussed in the context of biopolitics.2 This is all the more puzzling since Arendt is not only a thinker of natality but also, as Agamben acknowledges in Homo Sacer, the first thinker of biopolitics (Agamben 1998, 3–4). While we will (...) elaborate the complexity of what these two terms mean shortly, a useful provisional definition of “natality” is birth as “event” and as the figure of a new beginning in political life. Michel Foucault defined “biopolitics” as the government of the biological life of a population where the state holds the right to life and death in terms of the power to “make live and … let die” (Foucault 2003, 254). We are interested in the relation between natality and biopolitics with regard to maternity in particular, first of all, because this intersection marks the site of some of the more surprisingly volatile conflicts of contemporary political life, and second, because the biopolitical regulation of giving birth raises the question of the fate of political transformation and agency within a biopolitical framework. This second point is illustrated by two relatively short-lived but volatile political events, one in Australia in December 2005–February 2006 and the other in the United States early in 2012.The Australian Case of Ru486A public debate erupted in Australia in late 20053 when, in an unprecedented move, four women senators from across the political party spectrum sponsored a “private members bill” to repeal the federal minister for health’s jurisdiction [End Page 107] over the licensing of RU486 (the so-called “home abortion pill”).4 The senators were protesting how the then conservative Australian government (the so-called Howard Government) was continuing to block the licensing of the drug despite Australia’s relatively liberal approach to surgical abortion, which has been legally available since the 1970s. The debate exposed how the Howard Government, in one of its first legislative acts after assuming power in 1996, had placed abortive agents such as RU486 under its own jurisdiction (instead of the independent body, the Therapeutics Goods Administration, which regulates all other drugs). Even though protest at this situation was well overdue by 2005, it was surprising that RU486 in particular became the focal point of contestation of government authority over life at that time. There were a number of other aspects of the government’s wider legislative agenda that were more publicly contested—harsh refugee policies, participation in the war in Iraq, draconian antiterrorism legislation, legislation deunionizing the labor market and tightening the marriage act to define marriage in terms of sexuality. Yet only RU486 succeeded in mobilizing a wave of defiance of prime ministerial authority sufficiently strong to push the debate in parliament to a rare “conscience vote” (a “free vote” that suspends the usual allegiance to one’s political party required in the Westminster system) and, even more rare, a vote that the prime minister and minister for health lost. Perhaps heartened by the success of this expression of dissent, others within the government (and the Labor opposition) began to challenge other aspects of the Howard Government’s conservative legislative agenda, eventually leading to a change of government in 2007.What does the RU486 event reveal about the relation between maternity, the politics of reproduction, political agency, and government of the life of a population? Why did administration of a home abortion pill become such a focus of dissent against totalizing government, sufficient to effectively reactivate democracy? And more specifically, what does this event say about political agency, biopolitics, and the significance of reproductive self-determination? Our second example illustrates the converse—the ever-present threat to close down women’s reproductive self-determination.The Case of the U.S. “Birth Control Mandate” of 2012In February and March 2012, the Republican Party presidential campaign veered off course from its disciplined focus on fixing the economic crisis and engaged instead what the media called “the war... (shrink)

Contemporary Roman Catholic ethics endeavors to take sin seriously by offering theologies of sin that emphasize it as a force and as a basic, personal orientation. Such efforts rightly counter the Catholic tradition's earlier reduction of sin to sins, and sins to external acts and moral culpability. But perhaps they go too far in this regard. By engaging Charles Curran, this study argues that inattention to sins undermines the theological referent of sin as a discourse that concerns more than moral (...) culpability, obscures God as the source of freedom and value, and neglects the way in which acts express and sustain sin and fashion a personal orientation. Drawing on the work of Jean Porter, the essay shows that attention to sins highlights the historicity, particularity, and provisionality of human acts because of the theological referent and analogical character of sin and sins. (shrink)

In contrast to Christopher Kelty’s case for the “careful cultural analysis of the domesticated forms that open source is taking” – which we agree to be a very useful endeavor – we would like to stick with the original call for papers for this special issue, that explicitly addresses the critical power of free software and a necessary shift to epistemologies. In our contribution we are responding to the aims of this special issue and to some of the contributions from (...) the perspective of feminist epistemology. There are several reasons for this decision. First of all, feminist scholars have been amongst the rst and most explicit to stress the linkages between knowledge and power. Apart from this generic focus, speci c feminist approaches, namely the approaches proposed by Helen Longino, Karen Barad and Lucy Suchman, o er invaluable insights for understanding the critical power of free software as a practice, which enables the materialization of principles into objects, as Kelty rightly emphasizes. Furthermore, feminist approaches suggest looking at epistemological politics and the situatedness of knowledge practices including e ects of perspectivism and marginalization. We adopt a performative understanding of epistemic practices, an understanding that take the interrelations between epistemology, ontology and ethics seriously. Thus, we start our inquiry from Kelty’s observation that free software “promises a sequence of [...] values: experimentalism and creativity, provisionality and modi ability, recti cation and refraction, dissent and critique, participation and obligation“ and that it „allows values and principles to be turned into material objects“. These and other values have already been inscribed in the launch of the GNU project in the beginning 1980s, the creation of the GPL, and they are continuously realized in the Free Software movement. Hence the interesting question is how they are realized and how are they shaped vice-versa by practices. (shrink)

In chapter one I will try to reconstruct a plot, or a hidden agenda, in the discussion in ethics between the beginning of the twentieth century and 1958, the year of a decisive turning point in ethics, both Anglo-Saxon and Continental, and strangely enough also the year of the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of post-Tridentine Catholicism, and perhaps something else. My hypothesis will be that there are two similar starting points for the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental (...) twentieth-century discussion, the philosophies of Henry Sidgwick and Friedrich Nietzsche, both expressions of some kind of ethical scepticism, and that a third, somewhat analogous starting-point could be found in Émile Durkheim, the proponent of the dream of the morale laïque. I will discuss how far the diagnosis formulated by Karl-Otto Apel of a kind of ‘parallel convergence' between existentialism and analytic philosophy, based on the shared division of facts and values that eventually justified two kinds of 'decisionism' is useful in making sense of the agenda of the discussion. In the second chapter I will discuss the reasons for two parallel U-turns around 1958 which brought back traditional schools of normative ethics, 'deontologism' and utilitarianism, as well as the reasons for criticism to both schools from the heterogeneous alignment of virtue ethics. In the third chapter I will discuss the remarkable phenomenon of the emergence, starting with the Sixties or the early Seventies, of ‘applied’ ethics. I examine the reasons, both theoretical and political, for the revival, the point to which applied ethics may look as a grand return of a casuistic and natural law way of thinking, or in Alan Donagan’s words a case of “reverse subversion” of the modern secular world by traditional Scholastic ways of thinking, and the difficult coexistence between general normative ethics and procedures for settling issues in a ‘reasonable’ way while dissent on issues of principle is as alive as ever. Then I try to draw a provisional moral. My suggestions are that (i) casuistry is more alive than ever; (ii) natural law thinking is more alive than ever; (iii) moral dilemmas never arise; (iv) moral dissent is treatable, with the right strategy; (v) practical philosophy does not need the same degree of exactness as the theoretical sciences but this is no obstacle to its working in practice. (shrink)

This paper discusses some issues concerning the definition of moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics 1106b 36- 1107a 2. It is reasonable to expect from a definition the complete enumeration of the relevant features of its definiendum, but the definition of moral virtue seems to fail in doing this task. One might be tempted to infer that this definition is intended by Aristotle as a mere preliminary account that should be replaced by a more precise one. The context of the argument (...) Aristotle develops in Book II of his NE give us some help. I argue that the definition of moral virtue, once considered in the light of its context, is far from being an incomplete and provisional account: it rather introduces coherently the same notion of moral virtue that Aristotle employs in other texts (as in Nicomachean Ethics VI 13). My main proposal is that the way in which "hexis" is understood in the context of previous chapters allows Aristotle to encode in it the notion of an ability to do the right things regularly. Thus, moral virtue is a "hexis prohairetike etc.", but the ability to do the right things regularly is already encoded in the occurrence of "hexis" in the definiens account of moral virtue, as if Aristotle meant "hexis [praktike] prohairetike". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Re-editing the RepublicMalcolm SchofieldS. R. Slings, ed. Platonis Respublica. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. xxiv + 428 pp. Cloth, $45.S. R. Slings' Republic is the second volume to appear in the new OCT edition of Plato. Reviewing the first—the new volume I, containing the first two tetralogies—Slings rounded off with some general remarks for the "average user of OCTs," who "will want to know to what degree (...) all this work has improved the text" (Mnemosyne 51 [1998] 101). If we apply the question to the fruits of his own tireless labours (the last of his seven general editorial principles is: editori non est fatiscendum), the answer is the same verdict as Slings passed on volume I: "The text is not all that different from Burnet's, and rightly so," for "he was a superb editor with a feeling for Platonic Greek that is unlikely to be ever surpassed" (ibid. 93). But did you know something Slings reports elsewhere (Mnem. 42 [1989] 192): that "when the volumes of Burnet's Platonis Opera first appeared, they were generally considered a provisional editio minor, soon to be superseded by more impressive tomes?" What is hugely improved is the apparatus criticus. There are two main reasons for this.First, Slings' text is based on a much more secure assessment of the textual tradition than was Burnet's, thanks not least to the comprehensive work of his former pupil Gerard Boter in The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1989). Burnet gave pride of place to three primary witnesses: Parisinus 1807, ninth century (A); Marcianus 185, twelfth century (D); and Vindobonensis suppl. gr., dated by Slings to the period 1250-1325 (F). But he reported them selectively and sometimes inaccurately and never collated any of them himself. Moreover, while he was the first editor to recognise the true importance of the Vindobonensis, in Slings' opinion he accorded it more authority, particularly relative to the Parisinus, than it really carries. Finally, Burnet attached some weight to M, a manuscript in the library of the Malatestas at Cesena variously attributed to the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries (but considered fifteenth century by Slings and Boter) and collated for the Republic by Lewis Campbell. Boter's investigations have established that M carries no independent authority. Slings and Boter have reexamined all three of the primary medieval manuscripts both in photocopies and in situ, with what was evidently extreme care, and Slings says he has no doubt that the readings reported in the new OCT are a lot more reliable than in any previous edition. His general view of the [End Page 607] merits and demerits of A, D, and F—repeated here—was already set out in Appendix 2 to his major edition of the Clitophon (which precedes the Republic in the seventh tetralogy and shares its textual tradition); see Plato: Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 340-44. Roughly speaking, A is the weightiest, D is of relatively minor importance, and F is "a typical representative of the cheap Plato omnibus as found in later antiquity," with "many uniquely true readings" but lots of errors and "untrustworthy variants in word order and particles" (ibid. 341).Second, as well as exploiting Plato papyri and translations into Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew, Slings makes more generous use of the indirect tradition than do earlier editions by using quotations and allusions in subsequent ancient authors and scholia. He thanks a number of other Dutch scholars for their help in compiling this material and cites in particular Gerard Boter's index of testimonia in The Textual Tradition. Slings includes a list of those cited in his apparatus criticus as an appendix (it runs to seventeen pages). Moreover, interpretation of the information provided in the apparatus is aided by the clear explanation in the editor's pithy Latin preface of the rules and the orthographic practices he proposes to follow. In general, while Slings' apparatus is not consistently bulkier than Burnet's, it is often richer. Mostly this is thanks to better information about the textual tradition. But in line with the usual modern practice, Slings also gives the source of any Platonic quotation... (shrink)

I investigate the construction of the mathematical concept of quaternion from a methodological and heuristic viewpoint to examine what we can learn from it for the study of the advancement of mathematical knowledge. I will look, in particular, at the inferential microstructures that shape this construction, that is, the study of both the very first, ampliative inferential steps, and their tentative outcomes—i.e. small ‘structures’ such as provisional entities and relations. I discuss how this paradigmatic case study supports the recent (...) approaches to problem-solving and philosophy of mathematics, and how it suggests refinements of them. In more detail, I argue that the inferential micro-structures enable us to shed more light on the informal, heuristic side of mathematical practice, and its inferential and rational procedures. I show how they enable the generation of a problem, the construction of its conditions of solvability, the search for a hypothesis to solve it, and how these processes are representation-sensitive. On this base, I argue that: 1.the recent development of the philosophy of mathematics was right in moving from Lakatos’ initial investigation of the formal side of a mathematical proof to the investigation of the semi-formal, heuristic side of the mathematical practice as a way of understanding mathematical knowledge and its advancement. 2.The investigation of mathematical practice and discovery can be improved by a finer-grained study of the inferential micro-structures that are built during mathematical problem-solving. (shrink)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This (...) essay examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

In contrast to a stereotypical account of Indian philosophy that are entailments of the interpreter’s beliefs (an approach that violates basic standards of reason), an approach to Indian philosophy grounded on the constraints of formal reason reveals not only a wide spread disagreement on dharma (THE RIGHT OR THE GOOD), but also a pervasive commitment to the practical foundation of life’s challenges. The flip side of this practical orientation is the criticism of ordinary experience as erroneous and reducible to (...) the agent’s mental states. If we ignore the background practical orientation in Indian philosophy, this seems not like an error theory, that I call Ironic Idealism, but as a defense of idealism. I consider salient candidates for Indian Idealism (Advaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, Kāśmīra Śaivism and the Yogavāsiṣṭha) and note that these positions continue a theme in Indian philosophy of articulating Ironic Idealism. Ironic Idealism depends upon the very Indian distinction between ultimate and provisional truth, and Ironic Idealism criticizes the mundane, provisional sort of "truth" as psychological and mental --- and ultimately false. Interpretation, the common approach to the study of Indian philosophy, is an example of what Ironic Idealism criticizes. This explains why authors incorrectly find Idealism everywhere in Indian thought. (shrink)

The extension of intellectual property rights into the realm of biology has emerged as an increasing focus of controversy in relation to science,2 biodiversity,3 agriculture,4 health,5 development,6 human rights7 and trade.8 This paper presents the results of a review of international trends in activity for patent protection between 1990-2000 and provisional data to 2004 and 2005 from over 70 national patent offices, four regional patent offices and the World Intellectual Property Organisation using the European Patent Office esp@cenet worldwide database.9 (...) The review employed patent publication counts as an indicator of activity for traditional medicines, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and biotechnology. The research provides insights into the internationalisation of patent activity in multiple areas of biology. The review emphasises the need to combine the further development of quantitative methods with qualitative analysis of the implications of international patent activity in relation to biological and genetic material for science, society and policy. (shrink)

This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to (...) protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). It concludes by outlining a methodological framework for evaluating these options, and by setting out my tentative and provisional evaluation of which responses are the least bad. (shrink)

Environmental thinkers often suppose that the natural world (or some parts of it, at least) exists in its own right, independent of human concerns. The arguments developed in this paper suggest that it is possible to do justice to this thought without endorsing some form of metaphysical realism. Thus the early sections look to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to develop an anti-realist account of the independent reality of the natural world, one, it is argued, that has certain advantages over (...) the accounts proffered by 'environmental realists'. The concluding sections draw upon certain of Merleau-Ponty's later works to defend a rather bolder claim: that the conceptions of realism endorsed by environmental thinkers are not just ill equipped but, in fact, unable to acknowledge what may be provisionally referred to as the more-than-human dimension of reality. (shrink)