Online research in philosophy

The galvanising purpose of Federation was the creation of the Commonwealth and the distribution of power between it and the former colonies, simultaneously elevated to Statehood. But beyond this simple fact, consensus about Australian federalism has traditionally been elusive and is, if anything, only increasingly so. While the contemporary political debate over federal reform proceeds from a shared sense that our existing arrangements have manifest shortcomings, there is far from unanimity as to which of its particular features are strengths, and (...) which are deficiencies. The structure of this paper is as follows. In Part II, the range of understandings as to the character of the federal relationship between Australian governments is canvassed. Consideration is given to the views of the Constitution’s Framers and commentators, but most centrally to members of the High Court since these have brought about great change in federal arrangements. The significance of the Court’s marked preference for adhering only to constitutional structure and its inability or unwillingness to develop ‘a federal jurisprudence’ is examined in two respects. First, the effect of the Court’s arid Engineers’ Case methodology has been to reject any suggestion that fidelity to a concept of ‘federal balance’ is consistent with both the contents and purpose of the Constitution and also the principles of divided government. Particular consideration is given to the limitations of a commitment to federalism in only a structural sense, as revealed by the judicial reasons of the majority and dissenting judges in the recent case of New South Wales v Commonwealth. Second, the tension between competing assumptions of the kind of federal system established by the Commonwealth Constitution has produced an unstable and uncertain environment for the development of cooperative schemes between the Commonwealth and States. In Part III we consider how an attempt to ‘constitutionalise’ the relationship between the tiers of government as one underpinned by cooperation and respect would impact on the Court’s approach. Drawing on foreign constitutions, and adapting these in light of Australia’s politico-legal conditions and history, we suggest how a commitment to cooperative federalism might best be shaped for possible inclusion in the Commonwealth Constitution. (shrink)

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all; the concept of truth is of no real philosophical importance. In this concise and clearly written book, Lynch argues that we should reject both these extremes and hold that truth is a functional (...) property. To understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we understand that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism: beliefs about the concrete physical world needn't be true in the same way as our thoughts about matters -- like morality -- where the human stain is deepest. (shrink)

In developing an "internal" sociology of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge drew on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reinterpret traditional epistemological topics in sociological terms. By construing scientific reasoning as rule following within a collective, sociologists David Bloor and Harry Collins effectively blocked outside criticism of a scientific field, whether scientific, philosophical, or political. Ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch developed an alternative, Wittgensteinian reading that similarly blocked philosophical or political critique, while also disallowing analytical appeals to historical or institutional contexts. I (...) criticize these Wittgensteinian sociologies and argue for the historical and contemporary significance of methodological criticisms of scientific practice that conjoin epistemological and political categories. I consider two such cases briefly: the Baconian criticism of Scholastic science in the early Royal Society and the criticism of AIDS drug testing protocols by activists. Key Words: Wittgenstein • sociology of scientific knowledge • ethnomethodology • scientific method • interpretive sociology. (shrink)

Concepts in Film Theory is a continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories. In writing now about contemporary theory, Andrew focuses on the key concepts in film study -- perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving a sense of the interdependence (...) of these concepts. Andrew provides lucid explanations of theories which involve perceptual psychology and structuralism; semiotics and psychoanalysis; hermeneutics and genre study. His clear approach to these often obscure theories enables students to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film -- and of art. (shrink)

Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering a few problems such a position might face.

Pluralism about truth is the view that there is more than one way for a proposition to be true. When taken to imply that there is more than one concept and property of truth, this position faces a number of troubling objections. I argue that we can overcome these objections, and yet retain pluralism's key insight, by taking truth to be a multiply realizable property of propositions.

A prevailing view in contemporary philosophy of mind is that zombies are logically possible. I argue, via a thought experiment, that if this prevailing view is correct, then I could be transformed into a zombie. If I could be transformed into a zombie, then surprisingly, I am not certain that I am conscious. Regrettably, this is not just an idiosyncratic fact about my psychology; I think you are in the same position. This means that we must revise or replace some (...) important positions in the philosophy of mind. We could embrace radical skepticism about our own consciousness, or maintain the complete and total infallibility of our beliefs about our own phenomenal experiences. I argue that we should actually reject the logical possibility of zombies. (shrink)

This paper builds upon ethnomethodological and social constructivist studies of representation in the natural sciences to examine sociological theory, a field that is much closer to home. An analysis of diagrams and related illustrations in theory texts shows that labels, geometric boundaries, vectors, and symmetries often are used to convey a sense of orderly flows of causal influences in a homogeneous field. These graphic elements make up what I call a "rhetorical mathematics" that conveys an impression of rationality. Although theory (...) pictures rarely show much beyond what a text already says in its writing, they simulate a hermeneutic passage from written ideas to an independent representational or mathematical space. The paper discusses two modes of textual disruption of the rhetorical mathematics of theory pictures: parody and deconstruction. Parody makes ironic use of graphic devices in order to expose the rationalistic associations that come with the territory. Deconstruction displaces (and, if taken far enough, dissolves entirely) the Flatland of pictorial rationality. These negative maneuvers raise the possibility of using figural space for alternative modes of sociological inquiry. (shrink)

Ethnomethodologists (or at least many of them) have been reticent about their theoretical sources and methodological principles. It frequently falls to others to make such matters explicit. In this paper I discuss this silence about theory, but rather than entering the breach by specifying a set of implicit assumptions and principles, I suggest that the reticence is consistent with ethnomethodology's distinctive research 'program'. The main part of the paper describes the pedagogical exercises and forms of apprenticeship through which Garfinkel and (...) Sacks aimed to develop ethnomethodology as a practice. These efforts were not entirely successful, partly because ethnomethodological 'practice' required an engagement with other fully-fledged practices. Aside from the difficulties of mastering such practices, it was unclear what an ethnomethodological study would add to, or take from, them. Whether successful or not, ethnomethodological research points to the specificity of discourse and action in any given practice which a general theory is bound to misconstrue. Current disputes about cultural constructivist versions of natural science illustrate the problems that arise when the terms of a general theory are used to describe and evaluate specific domains of practice. The paper concludes by recommending ethnomethodology as a way to dissolve an unbridgeable gap between cultural theories and socially located practices. (shrink)

We outline our central reasons for pursuing the project of equality studies and some of the thinking we have done within an equality studies framework. We try to show that a multi-dimensional conceptual framework, applied to a set of key social contexts and articulating the concerns of subordinate social groups, can be a fruitful way of putting the idea of equality into practice. Finally, we address some central questions about how to bring about egalitarian social change.

This paper discusses recent neuroscientific research that indicates a solution for what we label the ''causal problem'' of pain qualia, the problem of how the brain generates pain qualia. In particular, the data suggest that pain qualia naturally supervene on activity in a specific brain region: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The first section of this paper discusses several philosophical concerns regarding the nature of pain qualia. The second section overviews the current state of knowledge regarding the neuroanatomy and physiology (...) of pain processing. The third section highlights the recent research by Rainville et al. [(1997) Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex, Science, 277, 968-971], which suggests that pain affect is encoded in the ACC. The final section of the paper spells out exactly how these data affect the causal problem of pain qualia. (shrink)

Book Information A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice Raimond Gaita London Routledge 2000 xxxi, 293 Hardback £17.99 By Raimond Gaita. Routledge. London. Pp. xxxi, 293. Hardback:£17.99.

Let L ω ∞ω be the infinitary language obtained from the first-order language of graphs by closure under conjunctions and disjunctions of arbitrary sets of formulas, provided only finitely many distinct variables occur among the formulas. Let p(n) be the edge probability of the random graph on n vertices. It is shown that if p(n) ≪ n -1 satisfies certain simple conditions on its growth rate, then for every σ∈ L ω ∞ω , the probability that σ holds for the (...) random graph on n vertices converges. In fact, if $p(n) = n^{-\alpha}, \alpha > 1$ , then the probability is either smaller than 2 -n d for some $d > 0$ , or it is asymptotic to cn -d for some $c > 0, d \geq 0$ . Results on the difficulty of computing the asymptotic probability are given. (shrink)

In a series of papers written over the last two decades, Terence Horgan has articulated a radical position on truth and metaphysics that he calls contextual semantics. According to Horgan, we can abandon referentialism – or the idea that truth is always and everywhere understood in terms of the referential relations between words and world – while still sensibly believing in a mind-independent world. The centerpiece of contextual semantics is that it allows for some flexibility about truth: statements of different (...) sorts can be true in different ways depending on the degree to which they correspond to the world. In this paper, I explore the consequences of this position.While I believe that contextual semantics has significant advantages, there is a deep tension between Horgan'stolerance of more than one kind of truth and his belief in one type of reality – a tension that threatens to undermine the entire position. (shrink)

According to alethic functionalism, truth is a higher-order multiply realizable property of propositions. After briefly presenting the views main principles and motivations, I defend alethic functionalism from recent criticisms raised against it by Cory Wright. Wright argues that alethic functionalism will collapse either into deflationism or into a view that takes true as simply ambiguous. I reject both claims.

We reply to discussions of Equality: From Theory to Action by Harry Brighouse, Joanne Conaghan, Cillian McBride and Stuart White. We find many of their points helpful and treat them as a useful contribution to a continuing dialogue on egalitarianism.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how women managers themselves interpret the factors that constrain and those that facilitate management careers for women. We will do this by first reviewing some of the interpretations that have been put forward in the academic literature to explain the relatively small number of women managers and particularly the small number of very senior women managers. In the light of these interpretations, we will examine the opinions of a sample of intermediate and (...) senior women managers in the public and private sectors in Ontario and Québec. More specifically we will look at their answers to questions about what blocks and what facilitates management careers for women generally and what obstacles they themselves have met. We will then compare their interpretations of their own career development with the interpretations that exist in the literature. (shrink)

A recurrent theme in ethnomethodological research is that of instructed actions. Contrary to the classic traditions in the social and cognitive sciences, which attribute logical priority or causal primacy to instructions, rules, and structures of action, ethnomethodologists investigate the situated production of actions which enable such formulations to stand as adequate accounts. Consequently, a recitation of formal structures can not count as an adequate sociological description, when no account is given of the local production ofwhat those structures describe. The natural (...) sciences can be described as a domain of practical action in whichthe use of methods enables the intersubjective reproduction of naturalistic observations and experiments. As numerous sociological studies of laboratory practices have shown, the achievement of intersubjective order cannot be reduced to formal methods; instead, it arises from the work of custom-fitting relevant methods to the local circumstances of the research. In this paper we discuss a possible extension of this idea to cover two intertwined aspects of molecular biology: (1) the work of following instructions on how to perform routine laboratory procedures, and (2) the relationship between cellular orders and the encoded instructions contained in the DNA molecule. We suggest that a classic conception of scientific action is implied by the way formal instructions are treated as a primary basis, both for molecular biologists' actions and the cellular functions they study, and we envision an ethnomethodological alternative to those conceptions of social and biological order. (shrink)

The heart of Richard Rorty's philosophy is his distinction between the private and the public. In the first part of this paper, I highlight the profound influence that the inherited vocabularies of Romanticism and Moralism have had on Rorty's understanding of both the distinction and the problems he intends to solve with it. I also suggest that Rorty shares with Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche philosophical habits that cause him to treat two importantly different problems as one. Once the moral problem (...) is disentangled from the political, it becomes clear that Rorty's distinction is unnecessary to the former and inadequate for the latter. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Rorty's non-foundationalist pragmatism supports the view that the political problem is best resolved by what I call a democratic mechanism of arbitration. It is the lingering influence of Romanticism and Moralism, I suggest, that is the cause of Rorty's reluctance to embrace fully the political priority of democratic consensus. Finally, I discuss why this analysis of Rorty's liberalism may have implications for the general question of how best to resolve political disputes in pluralist societies. (shrink)

For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to (...) sustain what seems to be written "in his name" (Derrida 1988, p. 8). Ein Buch ist ein spiegel; wenn ein Affe hineinguckt, so kann freilich kein Apostel heraussehen (A book is a mirror; if an ape peers into it an apostle will never peer out.) (Lichtenberg 1949, p. 297). (shrink)

For every k ∈ ω, there is an infinite set $A_k \subseteq \omega$ and a d(k) ∈ ω such that for all $Q_0, Q_1 \subseteq A_k$ where |Q 0 | = |Q 1 or $d(k) , the structures $\langle \omega, +, Q_0\rangle$ and $\langle \omega, +, Q_1\rangle$ are indistinguishable by first-order sentences of quantifier depth k whose atomic formulas are of the form u = v, u + v = w, and Q(u), where u, v, and w are variables.

Using a sample of over 700 business people and students, this study tested the premise of promise-keeping as a core ethical value in the work place.The exercise consisted of in-basket planning for layoffs within an organization. Only one of the five employees within the group had been given an express commitment/promise of continued employment for a two year period. The layoffs were being considered six months after the two year promise had been made. All five employees were performing their jobs (...) adequately, and each had either personal or work attributes representing competing values that would have made it difficult to choose among them. (shrink)

Andrew Collier is the boldest defender of objectivity - in science, knowledge, thought, action, politics, morality and religion. In this tribute and acknowledgement of the influence his work has had on a wide readership, his colleagues show that they have been stimulated by his thinking and offer challenging responses. This wide-ranging book covers key areas with which defenders of objectivity often have to engage. Sections are devoted to the following: 'objectivity of value', 'objectivity and everyday knowledge', 'objectivity in political (...) economy', 'objectivity and reflexivity', 'objectivity, postmodernism and feminism', 'objectivity and nature'. The diverse contributions range from social and political thought to philosophy, reflecting the central themes of Collier's work. (shrink)

Book Symposium on Andrew Feenberg’s Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity Content Type Journal Article Pages 203-226 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0017-8 Authors Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Division of Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY 10065, USA David B. Ingram, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626, USA Sally Wyatt, e-Humanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) & Maastricht University, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT Amsterdam, The Netherlands Yoko Arisaka, Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie (...) Hannover, Gerberstrasse 26, 30169 Hannover, Germany Andrew Feenberg, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 2. (shrink)

In “Friendship Amongst the Self-Sufficient: Epicurus” (this Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2001), Andrew Mitchell explores the Epicurean view of the relationship between self-sufficiency and friendship by contrasting it with the views of Aristotle and the Stoics. Epicurus, Aristotle, and the Stoics do indeed have interestingly different views on friendship that are well worth comparing. Yet Mitchell’s characterization of Aristotelian friendship is misleading, his account of Stoic friendship is inaccurate, and his interpretation of Epicurean friendship is curiously imaginative (...) but ultimately rather strange. (shrink)

For someone who is inclined towards truth monism and moral realism, reading this book is like journeying through a foreign country: somewhat disconcerting, but nonetheless enjoyable. Michael Lynch’s world is a stoutly naturalistic world, in which representation is conceived in terms of causal or teleological relations. This is a world in which it is hard to fit normative facts. Thus, the reader is told that there are good reasons to think that ‘moral properties, should they exist, would not be (...) the sort of properties with which we enter into causal contact’ (p. 161). But it is also a world in which thought is conceived of as unified, in the sense that propositions of all kinds, whether about middle-sized dry goods, mathematical objects, or morals, are truth-apt and cognitive, so that they can intermingle in reasoning. What we have, then, is the following: no moral facts in any serious sense of that term, but ordinary moral truth nonetheless. This is an interesting, but difficult, position. What it requires is a decidedly original account of truth, which Lynch dubs the functionalist theory of truth, according to which truth is both one and many. (shrink)

This review essay is an in-depth evaluation of Michael P. Lynch's book Truth in Context. Lynch argues that metaphysical pluralism-- the idea that truth propositions and facts concerning the nature of reality are relative to conceptual schemes or worldviews-- is compatible with realism about truth. It is argued that Lynch is correct that there are consistent, interesting, and nontrivial forms of pluralism. However, much needs to be done to think that pluralism is the correct theory of truth.

Andrew Feenberg's Questioning Technology (1999) is his third book in a series of studies which undertake to provide critical theoretical and democratic political perspectives to engage technology in the contemporary era. In Critical Theory of Technology (1991), Feenberg draws on neo-Marxian and other critical theories of technology, especially the Frankfurt School, to criticize determinist and essentialist theories. In this ground-breaking work (which will go into its second edition in 2001), he discusses both how the labor process, science, and technology (...) are constituted as forms of domination of nature and human beings, and how they could be democratically transformed as part of a program of radical social transformation. In Alternative Modernity (1995), Feenberg turns to focus on constructivist theories and the ways in which individuals and groups can reconstruct technology to make it serve more humane and democratic goals. His most recent book draws on his earlier work while polemically developing his own positions within contemporary debates over technology. (shrink)

Review of Michael P. Lynch's "Truth as One and Many".

What a pleasure to have such subtle thinkers and scholars as Bill Martin and Andrew Cutrofello reflect on the relation of irony and comedy to politics and philosophy through their commentary on my new book. To set the tone, Martin begins with a koan, or a parody of one, “What if a tree told a joke in the woods and there was no one there to hear it?” He means, I believe, to sound a warning on the limits of (...) irony in our serious, or perhaps, Martin would say, our seriously idiotic, times. By the end of his discussion, Martin wonders if perhaps a politics of irony might not lead to greater cynicism in our morally upside-down times and if those Wall Street rip-off artists merit something more than satire—they may .. (shrink)

Andrew Wayne (1995) discusses some recent attempts to account, within a Bayesian framework, for the "common methodological adage" that "diverse evidence better confirms a hypothesis than does the same amount of similar evidence" (112). One of the approaches considered by Wayne is that suggested by Howson and Urbach (1989/1993) and dubbed the "correlation approach" by Wayne. This approach is, indeed, incomplete, in that it neglects the role of the hypothesis under consideration in determining what diversity in a body of (...) evidence is relevant diversity. In this paper, it is shown how this gap can be filled, resulting in a more satisfactory account of the evidential role of diversity of evidence. In addition, it is argued that Wayne's criticism of the correlation approach does not indicate a serious flaw in the approach. (shrink)

This paper responds to discussions of my book When Truth Gives Out by Michael Lynch, Nenad Miščević, and Isidora Stojanović. Among the topics discussed are: whether relativism is incoherent (because it requires one to think that certain of one’s views are and are not epistemically superior to views one denies); whether and when sentences in which one slurs an individual or group are truth valued; whether relativism about matters of taste gives an account of “faultless disagreement” superior to certain (...) “absolutist” accounts of the matter. (shrink)

This essay explores Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” and Andrew Goldsworthy’s artworks. Both Heidegger and Goldsworthy can be seen as refashioning our ontological bearings towards nature through the work of art. After introducing a set of distinctions (e.g., world/earth) in the context of Heidegger’s conception of the artwork as the event of truth, I argue that Heidegger’s releasing of the work of art from metaphysical notions of “the thing” illuminates the ambiguous status of Goldsworthy’s artworks as (...) things. Goldsworthy’s crafting of artworks from natural materials exemplifies Heidegger’s concept of technē as the bringing forth of a work in the midst of phūsis, or beings that arise of their own accord. (shrink)

(2013). Andrew Gleeson, A Frightening Love: Recasting the Problem of Evil (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Philosophical Papers: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 127-131. doi: 10.1080/05568641.2013.774726.

This essay examines the contrasting conceptualizations of reason in the thought of John Henry Newman and Andrew Martin Fairbairn in their articles published in The Contemporary Review in 1885. This essay articulates both Fairbairn’s charge of philosophical scepticism against Newman as well as Newman’s defense of his position and concomitantly details Fairbairn’s and Newman’s competing notions of the efficacy of reason to provide reliable knowledge of God. The positions of Fairbairn and Newman remain two of the most important perspectives (...) on the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge about God in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian theology. (shrink)

These reflections on Andrew Grosso’s recent book Personal Being highlight his philosophical construction of a concept of personhood based on themes from the writings Of Michael Polanyi and his use of this conception to express creatively elements of the traditional Christian doctrines on the trinity. Additional clarifications are sought regarding his formulations on the divine personhood of Jesus, the adequacy of his formulations on the intra-trinitarian relations, and the insightfulness of the absolute personhood of the divine. This study is (...) a helpful model for extending Polanyian insights into the realm of dogmatic theology. (shrink)

Advocates of traditional views on truth such as the correspondence and coherence theories converge on two theses about truth: substantivism and monism. According to the former thesis, truth consists in some substantive property or relation F. According to the latter thesis, there is exactly one property or relation (whether substantive or not) in terms of which truth is to be accounted for across all truth-apt domains of discourse. The correspondence theorist thus has it that a proposition is true just in (...) case it corresponds with reality, i.e. just in case a certain substantive relation holds between language and the world. Furthermore, this is so for any truth-apt discourse: whether we are dealing with propositions about mathematics, medium-sized dry goods, or legal matters truth always and everywhere consists in correspondence with reality.1 Recently, resistance to alethic traditionalism has emerged from two camps. The deflationist takes issue with substantivism: there is nothing more to truth than what is captured by instances of the following well-known schema: (T) 〈p〉 is true iff p. 2 According to the deflationist, substantive properties (or relations) such as correspondence and coherence have no role to play in an account of truth. At most, a deflationist will allow that all true propositions share a “lightweight” property of falling under the concept of truth. Deflationists about truth thus reject the metaphysical project that aims to uncover the deep or substantive nature of truth. Truth, according to the deflationist, is merely a logical device that serves certain functions such as endorsing a proposition and making (potentially infinite) generalizations. For instance, instead of saying that the empty set is a subset of every set and that Bob believes 〈the empty set is a subset of every set〉, the power set of an infinite set is uncountable and Bob believes 〈the power set of an infinite set is uncountable〉, and so on for Bob’s other beliefs about set.... (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 4, Page 743-746, December 2011.

Essay review of Andrew Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (Routledge, 2005).

What does quantum field theory (QFT) tell us about the furniture of the world? Seventeen essays gathered in the four parts of Ontological Aspects of Quantum Field Theory address this question from different angles and with different objectives. Together, they form a wide-ranging and up-to-date volume that makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing discussion, which, due to the comprehensive introduction by the editors, can be of interest to experts and novices alike.