This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins likewise draws on (...) Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

In this article I consider whether and how Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method can initiate a phenomenological way of life. The impetus for this investigation originates in a set of manuscripts written in 1926 (published in Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion) where Husserl suggests that the consistent commitment to and performance of phenomenological reflection can change one’s life to the point where a simple return to the life lived before this reflection is no longer possible. Husserl identifies this point of no return with (...) becoming a transcendental idealist. I propose a way of understanding Husserl’s claim that transcendental idealism makes a simple return to life before phenomenological reflection impossible. I then suggest that a phenomenological way of life is characterized by an epistemic modesty that follows from Husserl’s transcendental idealism and consider whether and how such a phenomenological way of life is a life worth living. (shrink)

This paper spells out Husserl’s account of the exercise of rationality and shows how it is tied to the capacity for critical reflection. I first discuss Husserl’s views on what rationally constrains our intentionality. Then I localize the exercise of rationality in the positing that characterizes attentive forms of intentionality and argue that, on Husserl’s account, when we are attentive to something we are also pre-reflectively aware of what speaks for and against our taking something to be a certain way. (...) After discussing the conditions under which this pre-reflective awareness gives way to reflective deliberation, I contrast this account to a compelling Kantian-inspired account of the activity of reason that has recently been developed by Matthew Boyle. In particular, I argue that Husserl delimits the scope of the exercise of rationality differently than Boyle, and I show how this implies different accounts of the self. (shrink)

"Edmund Husserl is widely regarded as the principal founder of phenomenology, one of the most important movements in twentieth-century philosophy. His work inspired subsequent figures such as Martin Heidegger, his most renowned pupil, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, all of whom engaged with and developed his insights in significant ways. He also made important contributions to logic and philosophy of mathematics and his work on fundamental problems such as intentionality, consciousness and subjectivity continues to animate philosophical research (...) and argument. The Husserlian Mind is an outstanding reference source to the full range of Husserl's philosophy. Forty chapters by a team of international contributors are divided into seven clear parts covering the following areas: Husserl's major works, Husserl's phenomenological method, Phenomenology of consciousness, Epistemology, Ethics and social and political philosophy, Science, Metaphysics. Contained in these sections are chapters on many of the key aspects of Husserl's thought, including intentionality, transcendental philosophy, reduction, perception, time, self and subjectivity, personhood, logic and mathematics, psychology, ontology and idealism. Offering an unparalleled guide to the enormous range of his thought, The Husserlian Mind is essential reading for students and scholars of Husserl, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as religion and sociology"--. (shrink)

According to a predominant view, reflection is constitutive of personhood. In this paper I first indicate how it might seem that such an account cannot do justice to the socially embedded nature ofpersonhood. I then present a phenomenologically-inspired account of reflection as critical stance taking and show how it accommodates the social embeddedness of persons. In concluding, I outline how this phenomenological account is also not vulnerable to a number of additional challenges that have been raised against accounts that consider (...) reflection to be constitutive of personhood and what matters for responsibility. (shrink)

In this article, I develop how the phenomenological understanding of the intentionality of consciousness allows us to formulate a theory of personal identity that can at least account for the continuity of consciousness through time, provide an account of a certain aspect of what it means to be a person, namely to be able to appropriate one’s past as one’s own, and give an original answer to the question of personal identity and state in what the identity of a person (...) through time consists. After having developed the outlines for such a phenomenological theory of personal identity, I conclude that the provided account of the person is the correlate of the phenomenological concept of world. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a number of respects in which Husserl’s, Heidegger’s, and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of the world differ, despite other significant commonalities. Specifically, I discuss how both Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of our experience of the world challenge Husserl’s assertion of the possibility of a worldless consciousness; how Heidegger’s discussion of the world entails a rejection of Husserl’s claim that the world is at bottom nature; and how Merleau-Ponty puts pressure on Husserl’s account of the necessary structure of the (...) world. In concluding, and as a propaedeutic to adjudicating these disputes, I aim to show why Husserl makes these contested claims. Specifically, I suggest that it is Husserl’s phenomenological conception of reason and his commitment to (this conception of) reason that motivate him to make the claims about our experience and world with which the later phenomenologists take issue. (shrink)

Betrachtet man die Geschichte des Begriffs ‚Phänomenologie‘, ist nicht auf den ersten Blick klar, was darunter zu verstehen ist. Wie Schuhmann (1984 ) herausgearbeitet hat, tritt dieser Begriff in der Philosophiegeschichte auf, noch lange bevor Edmund Husserl sich ihn zu Eigen machte, um sein eigenes philosophisches Projekt zu beschreiben. Auch hinderte Husserls Versuch, diesen Begriff für die Beschreibung seines eigenen einmaligen Projekts zu beanspruchen, seine Zeitgenossen (z.B. Pfänder, Reinach, Stein) keineswegs daran, denselben Begriff ebenfalls zur Beschreibung ihrer jeweiligen Projekte und (...) Methoden zu verwenden. Es versteht sich also, dass Husserl selbst beträchtlichen Aufwand betrieb, um zu definieren, was der Begriff ‚Phänomenologie‘ in seinen Augen zu bedeuten hatte. Zum Zeitpunkt der Publikation des ersten Buches seiner Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie im Jahre 1913 charakterisiert Husserl Phänomenologie als eine neue Wissenschaft, die sich von jeder anderen, bereits geschichtlich verankerten Wissenschaft wie Physik, Psychologie oder Kulturwissenschaft unterscheidet (Hua III/1, 1). Diese Darstellung von Phänomenologie lässt auf Anhieb eine wichtige Abweichung von seiner einstigen Gleichsetzung von Phänomenologie und deskriptiver Psychologie in den Logischen Untersuchungen (1901) erkennen. In der breiteren philosophischen Landschaft wären angesichts Husserls positiver Bestimmung dessen, was diese phänomenologische Wissenschaft ist, möglicherweise auch heute noch viele genauso irritiert wie einige der damaligen Teilnehmer des VI. Kongresses für experimentelle Psychologie, denen Husserl 1914 erklärte: „Analog wie die reine Geometrie Wesenslehre des ‚reinen‘ Raumes bzw. Wissenschaft von den ideal möglichen Raumgestalten ist, ist die reine Phänomenologie Wesenslehre des ‚reinen‘ Bewusstseins, Wissenschaft von den ideal möglichen Bewusstseinsgestalten (mit ihren ‚immanenten Korrelaten‘)“ (Schumann 1914, 144-5). Was heute wie damals für ein Verständnis dieser Darstellung von Phänomenologie der Klärung bedarf, ist Husserls Beschreibung der Phänomenologie als einer Wesenslehre, d.h. einer reinen oder eidetischen Wissenschaft, ebenso wie seine Aussage, deren Untersuchungsgegenstand sei das von ihm sogenannte reine Bewusstsein. Nur indem man die beiden Bedeutungen von ‚rein‘ erhellt, die hiermit angesprochen sind, wird auch deutlich, inwiefern Husserl behaupten kann, Phänomenologie unterscheide sich von anderen Wissenschaften: sowohl von empirischen wie Physik oder experimenteller Psychologie als auch von anderen eidetischen Wissenschaften wie Geometrie und deskriptiver Psychologie. Diese Erläuterung zeigt nicht nur, inwiefern Phänomenologie von all diesen Disziplinen verschieden ist, sondern auch, inwiefern sie mit ihnen zusammenhängt – und damit ist gerade die Idee der Phänomenologie begründet. (shrink)

In this article, I show how Husserl’s reflections on attentive or patent intentionality and on the differentiation between background and foreground that is brought about by attentive interest allows us to better understand the distinction between sleep within wakefulness and genuine sleep as well as the distinction between the intentionality that occurs while awake and when asleep. In this way it also becomes more clear what wakefulness amounts to.

This article addresses an ambiguity in Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of what it means to be a human being in the world. On the one hand, Husserl often characterizes the human being in natural scientific terms as a psychophysical unity. On the other hand, Husserl also describes how we experience ourselves as embodied persons that experience and communicate with others within a socio-historical world. The main aim of this article is to show that if one overlooks this ambiguity then one will (...) misunderstand the relation between the subject that experiences a world (and that Husserl terms transcendental) and the human being within the world. (shrink)

[Title: A phenomenological account of the habitual and active character of ignorance] -/- A number of critical social epistemologists have argued that a form of ignorance makes up the epistemic dimension of existing relations of oppression based on racial and/or gender identity. Recent phenomenological accounts of the habitual nature of perception can be understood as describing the bodily, tacit, and affective character of this form of ignorance. At the same time, as I aim to show in this article, more could (...) be phenomenologically said and made of both the active and pervasive character of said ignorance. Drawing on the phenomenological concept of receptivity, I propose a way to further understand the active character of ignorance both in and beyond perception. By doing so, we also get a better view on what it would take to overcome this kind of ignorance. (shrink)

ABSTRACT With the aim of showing what it takes to see the world and others as they are, this article provides a phenomenological account of what Iris Murdoch has memorably called “the work of attention.” I first show that Aron Gurwitsch’s analyses of attention provide a basis on which to reject a voluntaristic account of attention according to which seeing things as they are is as simple as directing one’s attention to something. Then, in order to elucidate the work that (...) is involved in paying attention, I draw on Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of the activity characteristic of attentive consciousness. I then show how a Husserlian account of the work of attention can help make sense of Murdoch’s pessimistic claim that our consciousness is not “a transparent glass through which it views the world” while also indicating how we, by paying attention, can do better. (shrink)

In this chapter I aim to show that Husserl’s descriptions of the nature and role of activity in the epistemic economy of our conscious lives imply a nondeflationary account of epistemic agency. After providing the main outlines of this account, I discuss how it compares to contemporary accounts of epistemic agency and respond to some potential objections. In concluding I indicate that according to this Husserlian account of epistemic agency we can be said to be intrinsically responsible for holding the (...) beliefs we do as well as for the absence of belief. (shrink)

L’article présente une reconstruction d’analyse husserlienne de l’éveil et démontre que, selon Husserl, seule une phénoménologie de l’attention est en mesure d’élucider les véritables caractéristiques de l’état d’éveil. Plus précisément, l’article démontre que, d’un point de vue husserlien, l’attention introduit une distinction entre thème et arrière-plan dans notre expérience et que cette différence est ce qui nous permettra de déterminer dans quelle mesure nous ne sommes jamais pleinement éveillés lorsque nous sommes éveillés (section 1 et 2), comment le sommeil au (...) sein de l’état d’éveil diffère du sommeil véritable (section 3), et, enfin, comment l’intentionnalité survenant lors du sommeil véritable, à l’instar des rêves, diffère radicalement de toute forme de conscience intentionnelle survenant lors de l’état d’éveil (section 4). (shrink)

In the paragraphs immediately following the introduction of the method of phenomenological epoché (§§34-46) in Ideas, rather than applying this new method, Husserl provides a series of psychological descriptions on the basis of psychological reflection. This is surprising for at least two reasons. First, since Husserl has already distinguished phenomenology from psychology (both empirical and eidetic), it is not clear why he would engage in psychological reflection and description at this point in the book. Further, the psychological descriptions that Husserl (...) provides in these paragraphs are of consciousness — specifically, of our consciousness of something. But, as Husserl indicates at several points in the first book of Ideas, and as he more fully develops in the 1912 pencil manuscript of the second book of Ideas, the object of psychology is, strictly speaking, not consciousness but the soul (Seele) considered as reality (Realität). In this chapter, I first develop how these two interpretative difficulties can be overcome if we consider the overall aim of the second chapter — namely, to establish that consciousness has its own kind of being and hence essence. Then, I elucidate how exactly Husserl establishes this in this chapter and show how it entails a radical rethinking of the distinction between and relation of consciousness and world. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich die Auswirkungen untersuchen, die die phänomenologische Reflexion und die Erlangung phänomenologischer Einsichten auf denjenigen haben, der Phänomenologie treibt. Husserl selbst gibt den Impetus für diese Untersuchung, indem er (wie in einer der Textpassagen, die diesem Artikel als Motto vorangestellt sind) behauptet, dass die phänomenologische Reflexion einen derart langanhaltenden Effekt auf denjenigen hat, der phänomenologisch reflektiert, dass eine Rückkehr zum bisher gelebten Leben unmöglich wird. Dieser Punkt der Umkehr – besser gesagt, der Punkt, an dem keine (...) Rückkehr mehr möglich ist –, wie Husserl wiederholt in einer Sammlung von Forschungsmanuskripten aus dem Herbst 1926 betont, die in Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion erschienen sind, ist der Punkt, an dem man transzendentaler Idealist wird. Warum und in welchem Sinn wird es dem transzendentalen Idealisten unmöglich, einfach zu dem Leben zurückzukehren, wie er es vor der phänomenologischen Reflexion geführt hat? Allgemeiner gefragt, wie kann eine philosophische Einsicht das Leben ändern, das dieser Einsicht vorherging und zu ihr hinführte? Und, schließlich – auch, wenn Husserl selbst diese Frage nicht explizit stellte – auf welche Weise kann die Aussicht auf eine solche Veränderung oder die Veränderung selbst das Leben des Phänomenologen als ein lebenswertes Leben erscheinen lassen? In einem Versuch, Antworten auf diese Fragen zu finden, skizziere ich einige Aspekte des Vorgangs der phänomenologischen Reflexion und der verschiedenen Arten der Veränderung, die von der phänomenologischen Reflexion für das Leben des Reflektierenden ausgehen können. Ich beginne hier mit einer Beschreibung der besonderen reflektierenden Haltung, die sich durch die Methode der transzendental-phänomenologischen Epoché und die Reduktion einstellt. Dann diskutiere ich die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten, wie wir von etwas wie einem Habitus des Phänomenologen sprechen können. Schließlich erläutere ich, warum für Husserl eine unveränderte Rückkehr zur natürlichen Einstellung nicht länger möglich ist, wenn phänomenologische Reflexion zu transzendentalem Idealismus führt. (shrink)

This volume is a broad anthology addressing many if not most major topics in phenomenology and philosophy in general: from foundational and methodological ...

Der vorliegende Band, der außer Husserls Freiburger Einleitung in die Philosophie von 1919/20 auch die noch erhaltenen Teile seiner beiden ersten Freiburger Einleitungen in die Philosophie von 1916 und 1918 enthält, bietet eine sowohl historisch als auch systematisch orientierte Hinführung zur transzendentalphänomenologischen Philosophie auf dem Weg über die Ontologie und die Erkenntnistheorie. Im Ausgang von der Darstellung des Anstoßes durch die Sophisitk entwickelt Husserl ausführlich Platons Entdeckung des Apriori als den für die Folgezeit maßgeblichen Schritt zu einer wissenschaftlichen Philosophie und (...) verfolgt in kritischen Analysen deren neuzeitliche Entwicklung seit Descartes über die rationalistischen und empiristischen Systeme bis hin zu Kant. -/- In den systematisch orientierten Abschnitten der Vorlesung stellt Husserl zunächst die grundlegenden Disziplinen der theoretischen Philosophie dar: die Erkenntnistheorie, die formale Wissenschaftslehre und die Ontologie, die sich in formale Ontologie, die materialen Ontologien und die von Aristoteles begründete Ontologie der realen Welt differenziert. Die praktische Philosophie behandelt Husserl in einer detaillierten Skizze der apriorischen Wertlehre und der in dieser fundierten apriorischen Ethik; diese beiden Prinzipienwissenschaften bilden für ihn die Grundlagen einer wissenschaftlichen Ethik. Diese aus der Göttinger Zeit stammende, unter dem Einfluss Brentanos stehende Konzeption von Ethik erfährt in der Vorlesung von 1919/20 bzw. in den wenig später in diese eingefügten kritischen Reflexionen gewichtige Korrekturen. Diese Korrekturen sowie die detailierte Analyse und Entfaltung des von Platon und Aristoteles grundgelegten, durch den Siegeszug der ateleologischen Naturwissenschaft verdrängten Gedankens einer teleologischen Welterklärung deuten vor auf Husserls späte Ethik und seine metaphysische Weltdeutung. (shrink)

This volume gives an overview of the rising field of Experimental Ethics. It is organized into five main parts: PART I – Introduction: An Experimental Philosophy of Ethics? // PART II – Applied Experimental Ethics: Case studies // PART III – On Methodology // PART IV – Critical Reflections // PART V – Future Perspectives. Among the contributors: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Eric Schwitzgebel, Ezio di Nucci, Jacob Rosenthal, and Fernando Aguiar.

I present a new argument for the repugnant conclusion. The core of the argument is a risky, intrapersonal analogue of the mere addition paradox. The argument is important for three reasons. First, some solutions to Parfit’s original puzzle do not obviously generalize to the intrapersonal puzzle in a plausible way. Second, it raises independently important questions about how to make decisions under uncertainty for the sake of people whose existence might depend on what we do. And, third, it suggests various (...) difficulties for leading views about the value of a person’s life compared to her nonexistence. (shrink)

Transfers of critically ill neonates are frequent phenomena. Even though parents’ participation is regarded as crucial in neonatal care, a transfer often means that parents and neonates are separated. A systematic review of the parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer is lacking. This paper describes a meta‐study addressing qualitative research about parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer. Through deconstruction and reflections of theories, methods, and empirical data, the aim was to achieve a deeper understanding of theoretical, empirical, contextual, historical, and methodological issues (...) of qualitative studies concerning parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer over the course of this meta‐study (2000–2017). Meta‐theory and meta‐method analyses showed that caring, transition, and family‐centered care were main theoretical frames applied and that interviewing with a small number of participants was the preferred data collection method. The meta‐data‐analysis showed that transfer was a scary, unfamiliar, and threatening experience for the parents; they were losing familiar context, were separated from their neonate, and could feel their parenthood disrupted. We identified ‘wavering and wandering’ as a metaphoric representation of the parents’ experiences. The findings add knowledge about meta‐study as an approach for comprehensive qualitative research and point at the value of meta‐theory and meta‐method analyses. (shrink)

The standard view of "believes" and other propositional attitude verbs is that such verbs express relations between agents and propositions. A sentence of the form “S believes that p” is true just in case S stands in the belief-relation to the proposition that p; this proposition is the referent of the complement clause "that p." On this view, we would expect the clausal complements of propositional attitude verbs to be freely intersubstitutable with their corresponding proposition descriptions—e.g., "the proposition that p"—as (...) they are in the case of "believes." In many cases, however, intersubstitution of that-clauses and proposition descriptions fails to preserve truth value or even grammaticality. These substitution failures lead some philosophers to reject the standard view of propositional attitude reports. Others conclude that propositional attitude verbs are systematically ambiguous. I reject both these views. On my view, the that-clause complements of propositional attitude verbs denote propositions, but proposition descriptions do not. (shrink)

Formal principles governing best practices in classification and definition have for too long been neglected in the construction of biomedical ontologies, in ways which have important negative consequences for data integration and ontology alignment. We argue that the use of such principles in ontology construction can serve as a valuable tool in error-detection and also in supporting reliable manual curation. We argue also that such principles are a prerequisite for the successful application of advanced data integration techniques such as ontology-based (...) multi-database querying, automated ontology alignment and ontology-based text-mining. These theses are illustrated by means of a case study of the Gene Ontology, a project of increasing importance within the field of biomedical data integration. (shrink)

According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to the (...) idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications. (shrink)

I defend the view that a reason for someone to do something is just a reason why she ought to do it. This simple view has been thought incompatible with the existence of reasons to do things that we may refrain from doing or even ought not to do. For it is widely assumed that there are reasons why we ought to do something only if we ought to do it. I present several counterexamples to this principle and reject some (...) ways of understanding "ought" so that the principle is compatible with my examples. I conclude with a hypothesis for when and why the principle should be expected to fail. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, (...) the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability. (shrink)

Wodurch zeichnet sich menschliches intelligentes Handeln aus und in welcher Beziehung steht dieses Handeln zum Wissen der handelnden Personen? Diesen Fragen wird im vorliegenden Buch nachgegangen. Praktische Intelligenz wird als Fähigkeit verstanden, im Denken, Handeln und Fühlen durch Standards und Normen geleitet zu werden. Aufbauend auf eine Interpretation von Überlegungen Gilbert Ryles entwickelt Hannes Worthmann einen neuartigen Ansatz, praktische Intelligenz und die Unterscheidung zwischen Wissen-wie und Wissen-dass jenseits verbreiteter intellektualistischer und anti-intellektualistischer Auffassungen verständlich zu machen.

When do children acquire a propositional attitude folk psychology or theory of mind? The orthodox answer to this central question of developmental ToM research had long been that around age 4 children begin to apply “belief” and other propositional attitude concepts. This orthodoxy has recently come under serious attack, though, from two sides: Scoffers complain that it over-estimates children’s early competence and claim that a proper understanding of propositional attitudes emerges only much later. Boosters criticize the orthodoxy for underestimating early (...) competence and claim that even infants ascribe beliefs. In this paper, the orthodoxy is defended on empirical grounds against these two kinds of attacks. On the basis of new evidence, not only can the two attacks safely be countered, but the orthodox claim can actually be strengthened, corroborated and refined: what emerges around age 4 is an explicit, unified, flexibly conceptual capacity to ascribe propositional attitudes. This unified conceptual capacity contrasts with the less sophisticated, less unified implicit forms of tracking simpler mental states present in ontogeny long before. This refined version of the orthodoxy can thus most plausibly be spelled out in some form of 2-systems-account of theory of mind. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting restriction, one distribution of welfare can be better than another only if there is someone for whom it is better. Extant problems for the person-affecting restriction involve variable-population cases, such as the nonidentity problem, which are notoriously controversial and difficult to resolve. This paper develops a fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. The problem reveals that, in the presence of incommensurable welfare levels, the person-affecting restriction is incompatible with minimal requirements of impartial beneficence even in fixed-population (...) contexts. (shrink)

Business scholars have recently proposed that the virtue of personal wisdom may predict leadership behaviors and the quality of leader–follower relationships. This study investigated relationships among leaders’ personal wisdom—defined as the integration of advanced cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics (Ardelt, Hum Dev 47:257–285, 2004)—transformational leadership behaviors, and leader–member exchange (LMX) quality. It was hypothesized that leaders’ personal wisdom positively predicts LMX quality and that intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, two dimensions of transformational leadership, mediate this relationship. Data came from (...) 75 religious leaders and 1–3 employees of each leader (N = 158). Results showed that leaders’ personal wisdom had a positive indirect effect on follower ratings of LMX quality through individualized consideration, even after controlling for Big Five personality traits, emotional intelligence, and narcissism. In contrast, intellectual stimulation and the other two dimensions of transformational leadership (idealized influence and inspirational motivation) did not mediate the positive relationship between leaders’ personal wisdom and LMX quality. Implications for future research on personal wisdom and leadership are discussed, and some tentative suggestions for leadership development are outlined. (shrink)

Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cognitive resources among collaborators and (...) the epistemic dependence that this distribution implies. On this background I shall describe different ideal types of research activities and analyze how they differ. Finally, analyzing values that drive science towards different kinds of research activities, I shall sketch the main mechanisms underlying the perceived tension between disciplines and interdisciplinarity and argue for a redefinition of accountability and quality control for interdisciplinary and collaborative science. (shrink)

Matthew Adler's Measuring Social Welfare is an introduction to the social welfare function (SWF) methodology. This essay questions some ideas at the core of the SWF methodology having to do with the relation between the SWF and the measure of well-being. The facts about individual well-being do not single out a particular scale on which well-being must be measured. As with physical quantities, there are multiple scales that can be used to represent the same information about well-being; no one scale (...) is special. Like physical laws, the SWF and its ranking of distributions cannot depend on exactly which of these scales we use. Adler and other theorists in the SWF tradition have used this idea to derive highly restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. These constraints rule out seemingly plausible views about distributive justice and population ethics. I argue, however, that these constraints stem from a simple but instructive mistake. The SWF should not be applied to vectors of numbers such as 1 and 2, but rather to vectors of dimensioned quantities such as 1 util and 2 utils. This seemingly pedantic suggestion turns out to have far-reaching consequences. Unlike the orthodox SWF approach, treating welfare levels as dimensioned quantities lets us distinguish between real changes in well-being and mere changes in the unit of measurement. It does this without making the SWF depend on the scale on which welfare is measured, and in a way that avoids the restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. (shrink)

This is a review of David Löwenstein’s book "Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account".

In interdisciplinary research scientists have to share and integrate knowledge between people and across disciplinary boundaries. An important issue for philosophy of science is to understand how scientists who work in these kinds of environments exchange knowledge and develop new concepts and theories across diverging fields. There is a substantial literature within social epistemology that discusses the social aspects of scientific knowledge, but so far few attempts have been made to apply these resources to the analysis of interdisciplinary science. Further, (...) much of the existing work either ignores the issue of differences in background knowledge, or it focuses explicitly on conflicting background knowledge. In this paper we provide an analysis of the interplay between epistemic dependence between individual experts with different areas of expertise. We analyze the cooperative activity they engage in when participating in interdisciplinary research in a group, and we compare our findings with those of other studies in interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Are there key respects in which character and character defects are voluntary? Can agents with serious vices be rational agents? Jonathan Jacobs answers in the affirmative. Moral character is shaped through voluntary habits, including the ways we habituate ourselves, Jacobs believes. Just as individuals can voluntarily lead unhappy lives without making unhappiness an end, so can they degrade their ethical characters through voluntary action that does not have establishment of vice as its end. Choosing Character presents an account (...) of ethical disability, expanding the domain of responsibility and explicating the role of character in ethical cognition. Jacobs contends that agents become ethically disabled voluntarily when their habits impair their ability to properly appreciate ethical considerations. Such agents are rational, responsible individuals who are yet incapable of virtuous action. The view develops and modifies Aristotelian claims concerning the fixity of character. Jacobs' interpretation is developed in contrast to the overlooked work of Maimonides, who also used Aristotelian resources but argued for the possibility of character change. The notion of ethical disability has profound ramifications for ethics and for current debates about blame and punishment. (shrink)

This edited book explores diverse contestations and transformations of sovereignty around the world. Sovereignty plays a central role in modern political thought and practice, but it also remains fundamentally contested. Depending on the context and perspective, it seems either omnipresent or elusive, liberating or oppressive, fading or resilient. Indeed, if in recent decades sovereignty has been expected to wane, today it is back on the agenda; not as the solid bedrock of modern - international - politics, which it never was, (...) but as variations on a concept and institution that are ever contested and, as a result, constantly transforming. Bringing together perspectives from various disciplines, including International Relations (IR), political theory, geography, law, and anthropology, this volume: - goes beyond debates over the resilience or decline of sovereignty to instead emphasize how precisely the inherent ambiguities, tensions, and contestations in scholarship and practice spark sovereignty's manifold transformations; - offers three theoretical chapters that examine the illusions, contradictions, transformation, and lasting appeal of sovereignty and the nation-state; - explores sovereignty from various disciplinary perspectives in 11 empirical chapters that highlight its role in different contexts around the world, from the European Union (EU) to the South China Sea, to Western Sahara and Palestine; - problematizes the interplay between theory and practice of statehood and sovereignty, as in the perception of Northern Cyprus as a 'fake state', scholars' promotion of Kurdish 'statehood' in Iraq, and studies affirming the 'Islamic State'. This book will be of much interest to students of statehood, sovereignty, conflict studies and International Relations. (shrink)