Identity, difference, and the associated subject of cultural diversity pose challenges for nursing. As the demographics of the world change, demands are rising for nurses to provide sensitive, individualized care to people living in our ever‐changing global community. Issues concerning gender, sexuality, disability, age, language, economic and occupational status, multiculturalism, and ethnicity are made more complex because many of these topics strike a personal chord for individual nurses. In order for nursing to provide appropriate care to the world's people and (...) to meet future challenges, nursing must define itself in new ways. Kikuchi and Simmons have stated that the best way for nursing to approach this task is through the development of a ‘sound’ philosophy of nursing that will ‘accommodate diversity in nursing thought’. They contend that before we can establish a philosophy of nursing, nurses will have to agree upon the nature of reality, human beings, truth, and knowledge. This paper will suggest that neopragmatism, as described by Richard Rorty, is a way to assure diversity of thought in nursing. However, I will argue against the requirement for this philosophy to be ‘sound’ in the sense that Kikuchi and Simmons use this term. In place of their call for ‘truth and unity in nursing thought’. I will attempt to demonstrate how neopragmatic ideas relate to the construction of what Rorty called a unifying ‘plausible narrative of progress’. This change will allow nursing to abandon the dead end debate over epistemologies and instead focus on more important issues related to improving nursing practice. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, se ha argumentado que el concepto de eudaimonía en Aristóteles se encuentra anclado en el contexto de una comprensión teleológica del universo, por cuanto dicha noción parece radicar en una definición funcionalista de la naturaleza humana. Teniendo esto en mente, Bernard Williams ha desarrollado una crítica en contra de la propuesta ética de Aristóteles, acusándola de una cierta ambición científica en el campo del razonamiento práctico que resulta insostenible actualmente. Este ensayo busca discutir si, en efecto, estos señalamientos tienen (...) un sustento plausible o si, por el contrario, se basan en una interpretación debatible de los fundamentos de la ética aristotélica. Con este propósito, se analiza la justificación del razonamiento ético de Aristóteles a la luz de los argumentos de Williams y de algunos de sus contradictores. (shrink)

This article focuses on the limitations of four major critiques of the work of Leavis made by Kevin Harris. It is argued that (1) Leavis’s procedure of working with the concrete and particular and (2) the context within which he worked, dominated by the exponents of modernism, are glossed over by Harris so that Leavis’s insights are not given due weight. Furthermore, Harris overlooks the significance of an Aristotelian perspective to Leavis’s concern for value and thus underestimates literature’s role in (...) furthering our understanding of what it is to flourish. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Richard Rorty’s views on intercultural hermeneutics as presented in his essay “Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens” and in his correspondence with the Indian philosopher Anindita Niyogi Balslev. In doing so, I focus primarily on Rorty’s presumption that instead of providing an “authentic” picture of another culture, the goal of intercultural studies or hermeneutics should be to look if there is anything “of use” that a given culture offers and that is not offered by ours.

This article attempts to map the broad ethical and legal contours of global child health realities. Its interest is in international duties to reduce disparities in the health of children. Specifically, it inquires into loci of collective rights and responsibilities in this context. Clarity on the sources of this responsibility and the nature of such rights will, it is hoped, contribute to enhanced and sustained action to attenuate these inequalities. A review and critique of the current topography of global health (...) ethics is followed by an analysis of international human rights law as it pertains to global health, with a particular focus on the legal dimensions of child health outcomes. Thus grounded, the article seeks to build conceptual synergies between public health ethics and human rights paradigms to underwrite collective action on global child health disparities. (shrink)

David Denz; Bioethics and the Literature of Pluralism, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7, Issue 3, 1 January 2001, Pages.

The paper aims at offering a pedagogical perspective as part of the debate on philosophical practices with children, referring particularly to educational deontology matters emerging when “uncomfortable” questions occur. Many of the questions which arise during sessions of philosophical are left unanswered, being perceived as uncomfortable. Our reflection is on what educational deontology requires in order to deal with the challenge that these kinds of questions bring along. Starting from the concept of deontology proposed by the educationalist Mariagrazia Contini and (...) embracing Jana Mohr Lone’s idea of children’s comfort with uncertainty, the paper offers a discussion on what we mean by educational responsibility when undertaking the task of facilitating a community of philosophical inquiry with children. The paper concludes that the facilitator should be present, attentive, capable of good listening. She/he should be a model, a good example for the community: available to listen and answer back, respectful, sensitive, capable of mind shifts and humble. Moreover, a facilitator should be trained to a reflexive thinking: she/he needs to be well aware of her/his cognitive schemes, the premises of her/his knowledge, the social and cultural paradigms she/he refers to. All this “intangible background” needs to be made explicit in order to be aware of the frames that shape each educational action. (shrink)

This article discloses the romantic source of many core terms in Rorty's vocabulary, including redescription, contingency, anxiety of influence, anti-authoritarianism, post-philosophical culture, and political culture. Although Rorty disagrees with Romanticism's indifference toward community, his revisionary pragmatism has a discernable romantic cast.

Irony has a suspicious moral reputation, especially in popular media and internet culture. Jonathan Lear (2011) introduces a proposal which challenges this suspicion and identifies irony as a means to achieve human excellence. For Lear, irony is a disruptive uncanniness which arises from a gap between aspiration and actualisation in our practical identity. According to Lear, such a disruptive experience of ironic uncanniness reorients us toward excellence, because it passionately propels us to really live up to that practical identity. However, (...) Lear’s understanding of irony is idiosyncratic and his proposal overlooks that disruption often results from value incompatibility between different practical identities. The disruption which follows from value incompatibility does not inherently reorient us toward excellence. The point is exactly that achieving excellence in one practical identity is sometimes incompatible with excellence in the other. Pace Lear, I do not identify this disruptive experience as a central example of irony. Instead, I consider irony a virtuous coping strategy for such disruption, because it introduces the necessary distance from our moral imperfection to sustain practical deliberation and maintain good mental health. Such virtuous irony negotiates a golden mean between too little disruption (complete insensitivity toward one’s imperfection) and too much disruption (a complete breakdown of practical deliberation and mental health). I argue that ironic media in popular culture provide a rich source of such virtuous irony, which I demonstrate through analysis of satirical examples. (shrink)

In an interesting essay published in this journal Jonathan Floyd has recently argued (Citation2009) that, contrary to widespread opinion, political philosophy is not too a‐historical, for historical facts cannot ground timeless political principles. In the following I would like to reply to his theses showing that the authors he criticises aim in fact to show that our historical situation gives us a decisive clue as to the tasks that philosophical theory has to address; that philosophical argumentation rests on normative beliefs (...) that we expect our audience to take for granted, and that these beliefs are historically embedded. Finally, although the historicity of normative beliefs has been often used to reject universalism, current scholarship includes important attempts to combine historicity and universalism. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's philosophy has two basic commitments: one to postmodernism and the other to liberalism. However, these commitments generate tension. As a postmodernist, he sharply criticizes the Enlightenment; as a liberal, he forcefully defends it. His postmodernist liberalism actually explains liberalism using irrationalism. /// 罗蒂哲学有两个基本承诺，一个是对后现代主义的承诺，一个是对自由主义 的承诺。但是这两种承诺之间存在着紧张关系: 作为后现代主义者，罗蒂对启蒙提 出了强烈的批评; 作为自由主义者，他又在极力地维护启蒙。罗蒂的后现代自由主 义实质上是以非理性主义来解释自由主义。.

This paper argues that significant aspects of the vaccination debate are ‘deep’ in a sense described by Robert Fogelin and others. Some commentators have suggested that such disagreements warrant rather threatening responses. I argue that appreciating that a disagreement is deep might have positive implications, changing our moral assessment of individuals and their decisions, shedding light on the limits of the obligation to give and respond to arguments in cases of moral disagreement, and providing an incentive to seek alternative ways (...) of going on in the face of intractable moral disagreement. Non-coercive, non-reasoned strategies have been used or recommended to increase vaccination rates. Such strategies look problematic when judged by the standards of ideal moral and rational argumentation, but more acceptable if seen as responses to deep disagreements. (shrink)

The human being is a dynamic and open creature, and therefore he always changes. However, not only an individual but also the whole society is in such a state. The article briefly explains the urge...

In 1967 Richard Rorty edited an anthology of philosophy papers called The Linguistic Turn. This book was supposed to "provide material for reflection on the most recent philosophical revolution, that of linguistic philosophy" (2). Rorty contends in the introduction that the "history of philosophy is punctuated by revolts against the practices of previous philosophers" (1). Thus The Linguistic Turn tries to highlight the ways in which philosophical methods and problems were being rethought in terms of language throughout the middle portion (...) of the twentieth century. In 1967 Rorty was not yet the iconoclastic, star philosopher and champion of American pragmatism that he became after the publication of Philosophy and .. (shrink)

A growing, interdisciplinary field of cognitive linguistics has developed in recent decades, bringing together research from many fields to explore the ways that metaphors provide structure and semantic content to thought and language. In this article, the American public school disability emotional/behavioral disorder (E/BD) is examined in regard to the primary metaphors that frame the basic concepts of the disorder. The metaphors of 2 versions of E/BD, psychodynamic and behavioral, are investigated. A series of critical questions about the E/BD construct (...) are posed, and possibilities for new metaphors are proposed. (shrink)

In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel describes a mode of consciousness that is analogous to that of the sage in the Zhuangzi. He labels this “Evil Consciousness.” One of the more important phases of Spirit that leads up to this stage also resonates similarities, namely the “pure I” which Hegel modeled on Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew. In what follows we will first look at the “pure I” before moving to the evil consciousness and making a comparison with the Daoist sage. By (...) contrasting these depictions, we will be better able to understand the intricacies of the sage and Hegel’s Spirit. (shrink)

Straipsnyje tiriama vidujybės kontekstualizacija, įvykusi XX a. filosofijoje. Doktrina, įgalinusi šį procesą, vadinama kontekstualizmu. Skiriama vidujybės kontekstualizacija silpnajame ir stipriajame kontekstualizmuose. Siplnasis kontekstualizmas tiria įvairius kontekstiškos vidujybės atvejus, o stiprusis kontekstualizmas siekia formuluoti bendruosius metodologinius principus apie kontekstiškos vidujybės ir kalbos prigimtį. Kaip alternatyva kontekstualizmui teigiama filosofinio klasicizmo pozicija, kuri į filosofinį mąstymą grąžina tiesą ir asmens tapatybę. Pasak pastarosios filosofinės pozicijos šalininkų, filosofo tapatybė yra jo tiesa. Nors grąžinamos klasikinės filosofijos problemos, tačiau filosofinis klasicizmas vengia naiviojo realizmo ir siekia (...) išmokti kantišką-vitgenšteinišką-deridišką pamoką. (shrink)

Most modern ethicists and ethics textbooks assert that religion holds little or no place in ethics, including fields of professional ethics like medical ethics. This assertion, of course, implicitly refers to ethical reasoning, but there is much more to the ethical life and the practice of ethics—especially professional ethics—than reasoning. It is no surprise that teachers of practical ethics, myself included, often focus on reasoning to the exclusion of other aspects of the ethical life. Especially for those with a philosophical (...) background, reasoning is the most patent and pedagogically controllable aspect of the ethical life—and the most easily testable. And whereas there may be powerful reasons for the limitation of religion in this aspect of ethics, there are other aspects of the ethical life in which recognition of religious belief may arguably be more relevant and possibly even necessary. I divide the ethical life into three areas—personal morality, interpersonal morality, and rational morality—each of which I explore in terms of its relationship to religion, normatively characterized by the qualities of devotion, diversity, and reasoning, respectively. (shrink)

In the debate on free will and moral responsibility, Saul Smilansky is a hard source-incompatibilist who objects to source-compatibilism for being morally shallow. After criticizing John Martin Fischer’s too optimistic response to this objection, this paper dissipates the charge that compatibilist accounts of ultimate origination are morally shallow by appealing to the seriousness of contingency in the framework of, what Paul Russell calls, compatibilist-fatalism. Responding to the objection from moral shallowness thus drives a wedge between optimists and fatalists within the (...) compatibilist camp. (shrink)

The value of solidarity, which is exemplified in noble groups like the Civil Rights Movement along with more mundane teams, families and marriages, is distinctive in part because people are in solidarity over, for or with regard to something, such as common sympathies, interests, values, etc. I use this special feature of solidarity to resolve a longstanding puzzle about enacted social moral rules, which is, aren’t these things just heuristics, rules of thumb or means of coordination that we ‘fetishize’ or (...) ‘worship’ if we stubbornly insist on sticking to them when we can do more good by breaking them? I argue that when we are in a certain kind of solidarity with others, united by social moral rules that we have established among ourselves, the rules we have developed and maintain are a constitutive part of our solidary relationships with one another; and it is part of being in this sort of solidarity with our comrades that we are presumptively required to follow the social moral rules that join us together. Those in the Polish Revolution, for example, were bound by informally enforced rules about publicity, free speech and the use of violence, so following their own rules became a way of standing in a valuable sort of solidarity with one another. I explain why we can have non-instrumental reasons to follow the social moral rules that exist in our own society, improve our rules and even sometimes to break the otherwise good rules that help to unite us. (shrink)

Virtue liberalism holds that the success of liberal politics and society depends on the citizenry possessing a set of liberal virtues, including traits like open-mindedness, toleration, and individual autonomy. Virtue liberalism is thus an ethically demanding conception of liberalism that is at odds with conceptions, like Rawlsian political liberalism andmodus vivendiliberalism, that attempt to minimize liberalism’s ethical impact in order to accommodate a greater range of ethical pluralism. Although he claims to be a Rawlsian political liberal, Richard Rorty’s pragmatic liberalism (...) is best understood as a version of virtue liberalism that, in particular, recommends a controversial civic virtue of irony for good liberal citizenship. Indeed, Rorty ultimately joins Dewey in conceiving of liberal democracy as a “way of life,” rather than merely a set of political relations that have a minimal effect on our characters or on the shape of our private commitments and projects. (shrink)

The critique of metaphysics can often entail a critique of liberalism. Rorty sought a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophy and the broader humanities, by linking the rejection of metaphysics to a justification for liberal democracy and reformism. He believed that the recognition of socio-historical contingency concerning interpretations of fundamental values and of truth, combined with a humanities education, would create a sense of solidarity that would motivate reforms. Freire argues that a dialogic form of education is as important as the (...) humanities’ content. For Freire, people liberated by a critical education based on dialogue rather than a passive reception of information, can develop a radical critique of capitalism. Vattimo argues that while Heidegger saw techno-science as being the final phase in metaphysical domination, the contemporary development of information and communications technology creates a ‘Babel-like’ pluralism that undermines the ‘violence’ of metaphysic’s totalising thought. This can allow for the development of a post-metaphysical ‘weak communism’ that improves social justice. Rorty and Freire help to show that it is education, rather than technological developments, that can motivate a post-metaphysical politics of solidarity, and Vattimo and Freire are correct to argue that replacing reformism with radical critique is needed for social justice, although Vattimo’s weak communism only provides limited social justice. (shrink)

For two millennia Christians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the Christian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between an ethic of proximity, (...) which enjoins us to attend to the needs of those near and dear, and an ethic of outwardness, which enjoins us to both attend to and open ourselves up to the needs of those who belong to various out-groups. The Christian ethical vision enjoins an ethic of outwardness. A close look at the liturgies of the Eastern Christian tradition reveals the ways in which they express this ethic. (shrink)

Coordination is a widely employed term across recent quantitative and qualitative approaches to intersubjectivity, particularly approaches that give embodiment and enaction central explanatory roles. With a focus on linguistic and bodily coordination in conversational contexts, I review the operational meaning of coordination in recent empirical research and related theorizing of embodied intersubjectivity. This discussion articulates what must be involved in treating linguistic meaning as dynamic processes of coordination. The coordination approach presents languaging as a set of dynamic self-organizing processes and (...) actions on multiple timescales and across multiple modalities that come about and work in certain domains (those jointly constructed in social, interactive, high-order sense-making). These processes go beyond meaning at the level that is available to first-person experience. I take one crucial consequence of this to be the ubiquitously moral nature of languaging with others. Languaging coordinates experience, among other levels of behavior and event. Ethical effort is called for by the automatic autonomy-influencing forces of languaging as coordination. (shrink)

The ubiquitous human practice of spontaneously gesturing while speaking demonstrates the embodiment, embeddedness, and sociality of cognition. The present essay takes gestural practice to be a paradigmatic example of a more general claim: human cognition is social insofar as our embedded, intelligent, and interacting bodies select and construct meaning in a way that is intersubjectively constrained and defeasible. Spontaneous co-speech gesture is markedly interesting because it at once confirms embodied aspects of linguistic meaning-making that formalist and linguistic turn-type philosophical approaches (...) fail to appreciate, and it also forefronts intersubjectivity as an inherent and inherently normative dimension of communicative action. Co-speech hand gestures, as linguistically meaningful speech acts, demonstrate both sedimentation and spontaneity (in the sense of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s dialectic of linguistic expression ( 2002 )), or features of convention and nonconvention in a Gricean sense ( 1989 ). Yet neither pragmatic nor classic phenomenological approaches to communication can accommodate the practice of co-speech hand gesturing without some rehabilitation and reorientation. Pragmatic criteria of intersubjectivity, normativity, and rationality need to confront the non-propositional and nonverbal meaning-making of embodied encounters. Phenomenological treatments of expression and intersubjectivity must consider the normative nature of high-order social practices like language use. Reciprocally critical exchanges between these traditions and gesture studies yield an improved philosophy that treats language as a multi-modal medium for collaborative meaning achievement. The proper paradigm for these discussions is found in enactive approaches to social cognition. Co-speech hand gestures are first and foremost emergent elements of social interaction, not the external whirring of an isolated internal consciousness. In contrast to current literature that frequently presents gestures as uncontrollable bodily upsurge or infallible imagistic phenomenon that drives and dances with verbal or “linguistic” convention (McNeill 1992 , 2005 ), I suggest that we study gestures as dynamic, embodied, and shared tools for collaborative sense-making. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s idealization of public dialogue pits literature and narrative against objectivity and ethics, thus leaving non-intellectual practitioners in the lurch. The evolutionary arc of Rorty’s oeuvre merits an assessment of the historiography he uses to prevent figures like Michel Foucault and Cornel West from being full participants in public dialogue. Miranda Fricker’s account of the collective explains confidence and transparency in an ironized ethical tradition that mediates irony and objectivity. Fricker’s mediation positions West’s use of Foucault’s to re-narrate pragmatism (...) as a way to embrace the process of rendering ethical experience universalizable. Ironized post-philosophical cultures can be explained responsibly by ironists within critically reflective ethical traditions. Confidence in pragmatism occurs when publics admit critical self-reflective inquiry from non-intellectuals. (shrink)

A radical opponent of Western higher education asserts that its pedagogy and content depend on belief in objective truth and knowledge. This epistemology and education are attacked as exclusive and domineering toward women, minorities, and non-Westerners. The critic puts forward a pragmatist epistemology, leading to multi-cultural education aimed at social criticism and personal autonomy. The critic's dialogue with a defender of traditional epistemological ideas provides a critical introduction to the claims justifying many radical criticisms of Western curricula and pedagogy.

One consequence of the later Wittgenstein's influential critique of epistemological foundationalism has been to convince many contemporary philosophers that the ideal of universal and necessary cognitive grounds for moral or political norms is illusory. Recent neo-Wittgensteinian accounts of practical reason attempt to formulate a conception of a post-foundational politics in which a political ethos can be legitimate, rational or just even if its informing practices and cognitive standards lack foundational justification. Against these appropriations of Wittgenstein, I argue that his account (...) challenges foundationalism only by generating epistemological relativism at both the first-order level of belief systems and at the second-order level of the comparative evaluation of first-order belief systems and their non-comparable forms of justification. The result is a polytheism of forms of reason which imperils the methodological ideal of a non-relativistic practice of moral-political criticism. (shrink)

Too often C. S. Peirce’s theory of signs is used simply as a classificatory scheme rather than primarily as a heuristic framework (that is, a framework designed and modified primarily for the purpose of goading and guiding inquiry in any field in which signifying processes or practices are present). Such deployment of his semeiotic betrays the letter no less than the spirit of Peirce’s writings on signs. In this essay, the author accordingly presents Peirce’s sign theory as a heuristic framework, (...) attending to some of the most important ways that it might serve to facilitate a semeiotic investigation of our legal practices. He pays close attention to the ways the topics of history, formalism, reductionism, and generality become, from a Peircean perspective, salient features of legal studies. (shrink)

Rorty saw the course of philosophy in the twentieth century as an effort to part from two major philosophical trends, namely historicism and naturalism, only to inevitably return at the end of a tortuous path to these very same tendencies. If we can concede without major objections Rorty’s diagnosis of the trends in contemporary continental and analytical philosophy, which seem to reveal the exhaustion of modern philosophy, based as it has been on epistemology, we must, on the other hand, examine (...) carefully the three main questions that this diagnosis leaves open: How does Rorty reconcile continental idealist subjectivism with materialistic behaviorism? Is it really inevitable that philosophy blinded by Geist are unable to question prevalent beliefs? Finally, is the acceptance of a liberalism that is not able to give reasons for itself the most effective and pragmatic liberalism? In answering these questions, it may not be possible to avoid a non-dogmatic, but pragmatic, metaphysics: a vocabulary of vocabularies that allows Rorty to speak of the problems of justice in Plato and Rawls, of the soul in Aristotle and Descartes, of the dystopias in Moro and Orwell. On pragmatic terms, perhaps a modest version of a metaphysic’s “vocabulary” turns out to be as legitimate and practical as any other vocabulary. (shrink)

The most effective—indeed, the only—way to make the future different from the past is, in the judgment of pragmatists such as William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, to remake the present. As Dewey notes, "present activity" is the only phase of human conduct really under our control (MW 14.184). 1 For just this reason, we must be mindful of the past and solicitous about the future as well as attuned to the present: "Memory of the past, observation of (...) the present, foresight of the future are indispensable. But they are indispensable to a present liberation, an enriching growth of action" unfolding in the here and now (MW 14.182). 2 Dewey goes so far as to assert: "We do not use the .. (shrink)

It is often claimed that liberalism is falsely and perniciously universalist. I take this charge seriously, exploring three positions: the communitarians’, Rorty’s, and that of “comprehensive” liberalism. After explaining why universalism is thought impossible, I examine the communitarian view that value is determined within communities and argue that it results in a form of relativism that is unacceptable. I next discuss Richard Rorty’s liberal acceptance of “conventionalism” and explain how, despite his rejection of universalism, Rorty remains a liberal. I then (...) present a defense of universalism, based in part on arguments that parallel Thomas Nagel’s arguments in defense of a “view from nowhere” and Jean Hampton’s objectivist arguments against Rawls’s moves to a “merely political” theory. That defense requires that we can distance ourselves from our ends to make moral judgments shorn of all partialities. (shrink)

This article examines a peculiarity dating from Classical times, namely, that democracy may be achieved, in practice, independently of and prior to its articulation as theory. This peculiarity has implications for the way in which the history of democratic theory is understood, and also for the place of the democratic theorist in society. Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Chantal Mouffe and John Keane are theorists of democracy, but they all depart, first, from the commitment to the universal truth‐claims that underpin other (...) schools of democratic thought, and, second, from the concomitant belief in the priority of theory over practice. In doing so, they make it difficult to theorise how democracy might be brought about, except, circularly, where it already exists. On the one side, Feyerabend, Rorty and, to a lesser extent, Keane, assume that ‘democracy’ already exists, so that its realisation requires no theory. On the other, Mouffe argues that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist in practice, but her attempts to theorise its realisation are not convincing. (shrink)

Christopher Southgate has made important contributions to theodicy and the theory of divine action in light of the contingency in evolution and the suffering of creation. What happens then when one thinks through the implications of contingency for Christology? One can admit that aesthetic and moral judgments are products of a contingent history and yet affirm that they really are valid. Similarly, we argue, one can acknowledge the contingency of Jesus’ existence, actions, and subsequent impact and still maintain that his (...) will was uniquely united with the divine will. Following a critical engagement with the recent work of Keith Ward, we argue that a high Christology is compatible with the actual contingencies of evolutionary and social history, without the necessity of interventionist divine action. (shrink)

Response‐dispositional (RD) properties are standardly defined as those that involve an object's appearing thus or thus to some perceptually well‐equipped observer under specified epistemic conditions. The paradigm instance is that of colour or other such Lockean “secondary qualities”, as distinct from those—like shape and size—that pertain to the object itself, quite apart from anyone's perception. This idea has lately been thought to offer a promising alternative to the deadlocked dispute between hard‐line ‘metaphysical’ realists and subjectivists, projectivists, social constructivists, or hard‐line (...) anti‐realists. A chief source text is Plato's Euthyphro, where the issue is posed in ethical terms: do the gods infallibly approve virtuous acts on account of their divine moral omniscience or are virtuous acts just those the gods approve? Among the areas proposed as amenable to an RD approach are epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of mathematics. It is claimed that by making due allowance for the involvement of normalised or optimised human responses one can steer a course between the twin poles of an objectivist realism that places truth beyond our cognitive grasp and an epistemic conception that confines truth within the limits of humanly attainable proof, knowledge, or verification. Here I argue—on the contrary—that RD approaches can be shown to offer nothing more than a variant of the same old realist versus anti‐realist dilemma. That is, they work out either as a trivial (tautologous) claim that ‘truth’ simply equates with ‘best judgement’ in the ideal (quasi‐objective) limit or as the claim—advanced by anti‐realists like Michael Dummett—that we cannot form any adequate conception of objective (recognition‐transcendent) truths. After looking at this issue in various contexts of debate, I conclude that one useful (if pyrrhic) outcome is to demonstrate the non‐availability of any middle‐ground stance. We are left with the strictly unavoidable choice between a realist or objectivist approach and one that assimilates truth to the consensus of accredited best opinion. This latter amounts to a roundabout, elaborately qualified version of the anti‐realist case. (shrink)

The article tries to answer the following question: what is the most promising epistemological strategy if my objective is the construction of a theory which gives me the opportunity to decrease the risk of getting to what is actually absolute, that is, to irreversible negative actions (irreversible as a theory might not be, but as an action often is)? The answer proposed is a form of epistemological dualism which means that I metaphysically believe (that is, I programmatically and systematically believe, (...) without certainly knowing it) that the epistemological relationship between any theory and any reality is dualistic. More specifically, I metaphysically believe that the epistemological relationship between any theory and any reality is not saturated: in any theory there is an ideal error, because there is no theory which is totally saturated by reality, and any reality can actualize the ideal error, because there is no reality which is totally saturated by theory. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of inter-normative engagement, of constructing dialogical interaction across substantive normative difference. Focusing on how this affects democratic and pluralistic contexts, it argues that a social-practice-based approach to normativity and reasoning offers unique resources to understand and frame such encounters. It specifically draws on pragmatism and the work of Richard Rorty to reframe normativity, authority, identity, and reason, linking these understandings to recent trends to deliberative political inclusivism in democratic theory. The upshot is that framing inter-normative (...) engagement as calls to responsive engagement between diverse systems of normative authority offers real insights for constructing and maintaining ongoing democratic engagements in a non-hierarchical manner. This, the article argues, extends emerging methodological trends in the broader literature while overcoming the morass between conflict- and consensus-oriented approaches in democratic th... (shrink)

This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy assesses the deep and abiding tensions that exist among the competing epistemic perspectives that bear on medicine and morality. Concepts of health and disease, as well as the theoretical framing of medical ethics and health care policy, intersect with an overlapping set of culturally situated communities, striving to understand and manipulate the world in ways that each finds explanatory, appropriate, or otherwise befitting. The articles explore the complexities of framing public health (...) care policy to guide bioethical decision making in the face of the plurality of ethical viewpoints and moral rationalities—including health enhancing supplements, continuous sedation until death, medical futility, the protection of vulnerable populations, and competing professional obligations. (shrink)

This paper attempts to make more explicit the relationship between narrativity and feminist care ethics. The central concern is the way in which narrativity carries the semantic load that some accounts of feminist care ethics imply but leave hanging. In so doing, some feminist theorists of care-based ethics then undervalue the major contribution that narrativity provides to care ethics: it carries the semantic load that is essential to the best care. In this article, I defend the narrative as the central (...) medium though which we make sense of and communicate our lives and their attendant hopes and cares. More than just working with the narrative of the cared-for, caring is about investing in the narrative of the cared-for in order to meet the needs of this cared-for and how this narrative might turn out. I will further demonstrate how the attitude of caring or investing in a narrative would amount to what Gabriel Marcel has described as the attitude of disponibilité. (shrink)

This essay argues that a person's fate is defined by the interaction of necessity and contingency, indicating that a person's existential competence consists of his or her ability to dance well with both necessity and contingency, not merely with either of them. As a result, it rejects the traditional association of fate with fatalism and fatality on the one hand and resists the present current to define individual fate and identity merely in terms of contingency and as contingency on the (...) other hand. Meanwhile, it defines necessity that shapes a person's fate in terms of laws of nature and human existence, not as some predetermined scheme or design. (shrink)