Thus Plotinus (what is his status in the history of metaphysics and in the "Platonic" era, if one follows Heidegger's reading?), who speaks of presence, that is, also of morphē, as the trace of nonpresence, as the amorphous (to gar ikhnos tou amorphous morphē). A trace which is neither absence nor presence, nor, in whatever modality, a secondary modality.In his reading of Heidegger in his 2003 seminar, published as The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida is particularly troubled by one particular (...) aspect of Heidegger: Heidegger's "superabundant use" of the language of Walten.1 "As you see," Derrida writes of Heidegger's use of Walten, "late in my life of reading Heidegger, I have just discovered a word that seems to .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Genealogy of SilenceChōra and the Placelessness of Greek WomenAdam KnowlesIsn’t excess that which the philosopher... must bring back, within measure?—Luce Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air in Martin HeideggerAnd if I must make some mention of the virtue of those wives who will now be in widowhood, I will indicate all with a brief word of advice. To be no worse than your proper nature [phuseōs], is a great (...) honor for you; and great honor is hers, whose reputation among males is least, whether for praise or for blame.—PericlesIntroductionPhilosophy in the twentieth century is mapped upon a terrain of silence. At the turn of the century Sigmund Freud sought to translate the silent language of the unconscious, as Friedrich Nietzsche heralded an untimely voice that could not yet be heard.1 Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, foundational thinkers in analytic and continental philosophy respectively, each placed silence at the core of his most influential works.2 In the phenomenological tradition, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas prominently thematized silence,3 while the subsequent generation of poststructuralist, [End Page 1] deconstructionist, and feminist thinkers such as Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Luce Irigaray all grappled with silence in various forms.4 Among these works, Lyotard’s theory of the differend, a term that describes an ontological gap of incommunicability, is now a standard term for addressing questions of silence, silencing, the ethics of sayability and trauma.5 Later, in queer theory, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s closet became a complex synonym for many forms of silence and silencing.6Beyond this philosophical concern for silence and silencing, a number of similar themes emerged in the art and literature of the twentieth century, demonstrating both the creative and destructive force of silence.7 In literature, dramatists such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter brought silence to the stage, while poets and novelists like Adrienne Rich and Virginia Woolf traced the presence of silence in language, each thematizing the power of silencing in unique ways.8 In music, John Cage famously utilized silence as an element of his compositions and filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergmann and Chantal Akerman likewise crafted silence to structure the cinematic spaces of their works.9 Silence became one of the most persistent themes of philosophy in the twentieth century, both implicitly and explicitly. Could one even go so far as to say that a certain silence haunted philosophy in the twentieth century?Amid this abundance of artistic and philosophical work on silence, “breaking the silence” became the watchword for emancipatory projects pursued by groups such as first-wave feminists, postcolonial scholars, race theorists, and campaigns for social justice.10 These emancipatory projects sought to disrupt processes of silencing by locating, recovering, and translating marginalized voices from the silencing of oppression and disenfranchisement. Though essential political interventions at the historical moment when they emerged, these projects of recovery soon met with the critique of the politics of representation best exemplified by thinkers such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Toril Moi.11 Spivak and Moi effectively argued that recovering and speaking for silenced and marginalized voices entails a further form of silencing. These critiques showed that projects of recovering silence from the archives, history, literature, art, culture, and everyday practices of living were constrained by the very concept of silence they employed. As a result, any naive politics of granting a voice and breaking silence became impossible after the 1980s. From this point onward the deconstructive critique of representation folded silence back into itself, destroying any simple binary of empowered speech and disempowered silence. Even despite this powerful deconstruction of the speech/silence binary, philosophy, to the extent that it still operates within representational schemes and a speech/silence binary, still remains haunted by the specter of silence—a silence that carries with it a deeply gendered heritage. Pursuing rigorous analyses of the manifold structures of silence and silencing remains an urgent ethical and political task for feminist philosophy. [End Page 2]This essay seeks to contribute to that task by arguing that, in order to critically engage with the many... (shrink)

Neoliberal rationality eliminates what these thinkers termed the "good life" or the "true realm of freedom", by which they did not mean luxury, leisure, or indulgence, but rather the cultivation and expression of distinctly human capacities for ethical and political freedom, creativity, unbounded reflection, or invention.The legacy of Kant's political writings is uniquely duplicitous. This is because the space of the Kantian text is capable—as great philosophical works often are—of sustaining immense contradictions.1 On the one hand, as has long been (...) well known, Kant's universalist notion of reason provided justification for and implicitly sanctioned the violence of racist colonial civilizing... (shrink)

In 1929, Martin Heidegger announced a new fundamental term in his thinking: Wal- ten. Heidegger uses Walten to designate the primal ontological force of nature, but also brings it into connection with administration (Verwalten), specifically linking it to university administration. The article argues that in the Black Notebooks Heidegger develops a philosophical conception of administrative practice in the midst of his own administrative practice as university Rector in the era of Gleichschaltung.

In 1929, Martin Heidegger announced a new fundamental term in his thinking: Wal- ten. Heidegger uses Walten to designate the primal ontological force of nature, but also brings it into connection with administration (Verwalten), specifically linking it to university administration. The article argues that in the Black Notebooks Heidegger develops a philosophical conception of administrative practice in the midst of his own administrative practice as university Rector in the era of Gleichschaltung.

ABSTRACT This article explores the gendered nature of speech and silence in ancient Greece by showing how women were denied the measure of moderation with regard to speech. Drawing on examples from Plato and Aristotle, it shows how the voice of Greek women was associated with irreducibly contradictory qualities of being too loud, yet never silent enough. Exploring these contradictions through Plato's chōra and Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman, it argues that Greek women were ultimately considered essentially atopos, or (...) out of place by virtue of their measurelessness, with great political consequences for the city. (shrink)

The ‘indispensability argument’ for the existence of mathematical objects appeals to the role mathematics plays in science. In a series of publications, Joseph Melia has offered a distinctive reply to the indispensability argument. The purpose of this paper is to clarify Melia’s response to the indispensability argument and to advise Melia and his critics on how best to carry forward the debate. We will begin by presenting Melia’s response and diagnosing some recent misunderstandings of it. Then we will discuss four (...) avenues for replying to Melia. We will argue that the three replies pursued in the literature so far are unpromising. We will then propose one new reply that is much more powerful, and—in the light of this—advise participants in the debate where to focus their energies. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

“What do you see when you look at your face in the mirror?” asks J. David Velleman in introducing his philosophical theory of action. He takes this simple act of self-scrutiny as a model for the reflective reasoning of rational agents: our efforts to understand our existence and conduct are aided by our efforts to make it intelligible. Reflective reasoning, Velleman argues, constitutes practical reasoning. By applying this conception, _Practical Reflection_ develops philosophical accounts of intention, free will, and the foundation (...) of morals. This new edition of _Practical Reflection_ contains the original 1989 text along with a new introduction and is the latest entry in The David Hume Series of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues, which keeps in print previously published indispensable works in the area of cognitive science. _ _ _ _. (shrink)

This essay argues that Mark C. Murphy's original contribution to natural law ethics succeeds in finding a way between older metaphysical and newer purely practical approaches in this genre. Murphy's reconstruction of the function argument, critique of subjectivist theories of well-being, and rigorous formulation of a flexible welfarist theory of value deserve careful attention. I defend Kant against Murphy's critique and argue that Murphy faces the problem of showing that all his basic goods are morally inviolable. Although I endorse Murphy's (...) critique of radical virtue ethics, I raise objections to the basic moral norms he derives from his list of goods, and to the analysis of peace of mind and happiness as basic goods. (shrink)

Globalization is often discussed as if it were a recent phenomenon relating primarily to the development of world financial markets and improvements in information and travel technologies. But globalization is an ancient process, beginning with mercantile and cultural exchanges and facilitated by advances in transportation. In the twentieth century, the results of globalization can be seen in the rise of global capitalism and in the construction of a global economy. Most recently, the process of globalization has moved beyond the world (...) of finance, however, into areas still traditionally thought of as national concerns, such as culture and healthcare. It is no surprise, therefore, that increasingly the challenges the United States is confronting in healthcare, biotechnology, and the environment are simultaneously faced by the international community as a whole. In the wake of the HIV pandemic, growing environmental consciousness, and a series of sensational advances in biotechnology, there is a dawning realization that problems such as improving public health, regulating advances in biotechnology, and achieving sustainable environmental development transcend national borders. In other words, bioethics concerns are global in nature. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that from a feminist perspective well-being is most productively defined in relation to freedom, and it is with regard to questions of freedom that well-being should be pursued. Pursuing well-being from a starting point of oppression and working towards an ideal of freedom, involves two things: a reconception of the self as fundamentally relational and an emphasis on the importance of self-understanding for well-being. The former is something that has been widely acknowledged in the feminist (...) literature, where relational conceptions of the self figure centrally, and the notion of a socially situated self has been identified as one of the key contributions to living well from a feminist perspective. Self-understanding, however, has been largely ignored in feminist accounts of well-being, where the social aspects of well-being are often emphasised to the detriment of individual considerations. I argue that this can cause problems for well-being as the pursuit of freedom, but that such problems can be overcome by supplementing the relational account of the self with an emphasis on self-understanding and highlighting the interrelation between them in the pursuit of well-being qua freedom from oppression. (shrink)

Blackburn’s dilemma (as commonly understood) is that in explaining truths of the form ‘Necessarily-P’ we have to appeal either to a necessary truth, in which case we don’t seem to make the right kind of progress, or to a contingent truth, in which case we seem to undermine the necessity we were meant to be explaining. This paper advances two claims. First, it is argued that the dilemma is wider in scope than usually supposed. The standard assumption (evident also in (...) Black-burn’s original paper (1993)) is that the dilemma applies to explanations of truths of the form ‘Necessarily-P’. I argue that the real problem identified by Blackburn doesn’t just apply to explanations of truths of this form, but to explanations of necessary truths in general (e.g. truths of logic, mathematics, etc.). In the course of this argument it also transpires that the real problem on the necessity horn is rather different—and rather less susceptible to obvious objections—than it is usually taken to be. It concerns the antinaturalistic core of necessity. Second, it is argued that there is an escape from the antinaturalistic core on the contingency horn. In the footsteps of Wright (1985), the claim is that the contingency horn is tenable for those who believe that the necessary truth in question is analytic, i.e. follows from its meaning. (shrink)

The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...) vagueness in conscious experience. I also will argue that a nonreductive theory of the conscious-of relation can easily provide a very satisfying, unified explanation of the ways in which this relation is significant. (shrink)

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

We demonstrate how real progress can be made in the debate surrounding the enhanced indispensability argument. Drawing on a counterfactual theory of explanation, well-motivated independently of the debate, we provide a novel analysis of ‘explanatory generality’ and how mathematics is involved in its procurement. On our analysis, mathematics’ sole explanatory contribution to the procurement of explanatory generality is to make counterfactual information about physical dependencies easier to grasp and reason with for creatures like us. This gives precise content to key (...) intuitions traded in the debate, regarding mathematics’ procurement of explanatory generality, and adjudicates unambiguously in favour of the nominalist, at least as far as explanatory generality is concerned. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value either (...) when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

Toward an ontology of the social-historical -- Proto-institutions and epistemological encounters -- Anthropological aspects of subjectivity: the radical imagination -- Hermeneutical horizons of meaning -- The rediscovery of physis -- Objective knowledge in review -- Rethinking the world of the living being -- Reimaging cosmology -- Conclusion: the circle of creation.

Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern ...

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.