Online research in philosophy

GREEK IMPERIALISM IMPERIALISM AND THE CITY-STATE It is my purpose in this opening chapter to define some terms which I shall have to use repeatedly in the ...

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré’s criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely, that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and (...) Walsh’s proposal is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

This book reconstructs in detail some of the formative episodes of the field's early development and arrives at the conclusion that, in actuality, the early ...

Many people in the developing world access essential health services either partially or primarily through programs run by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Given that such programs are typically designed and run by Westerners, and funded by Western countries and their citizens, it is not surprising that such programs are regarded by many as vehicles for Western cultural imperialism. In this chapter, I consider this phenomenon as it emerges in the context of development and humanitarian aid programs, particularly those delivering (...) medical treatment, nutrition and access to clean water. I argue that in order to avoid contributing to cultural imperialism, INGOs have a duty to ensure that they do not offer services in a way that requires their beneficiaries to choose between accessing essential health services and violating or otherwise undermining traditional norms and practices which have significance for their beneficiaries. Following Onora O'Neill, I argue that offers requiring such a choice are effectively “unrefuseable” and so coercive. INGOs therefore, must avoid making such offers, and can accomplish this by means of an iterated process of reciprocal negotiation under conditions of equality, in which both the INGOs’ and the beneficiaries’ deep values and concerns play a role. In essence, I claim that employing such a process is a requirement of procedural justice, given the non-ideal conditions in which INGOs must operate. (shrink)

The widespread embrace of imperial terminology across the political spectrum during the past three years has not led to an increased level of conceptual or theoretical clarity around the word "empire." There is also disagreement about whether the United States is itself an empire, and if so, what sort of empire it is; the determinants of its geopolitical stance; and the effects of "empire as a way of life" on the "metropole." Using the United States and Germany in the past (...) 200 years as empirical cases, this article proposes a set of historically embedded categories for distinguishing among different types of imperial practice. The central distinction contrasts territorial and nonterritorial types of modern empire, that is, colonialism versus imperialism. Against world-system theory, territorial and nonterritorial approaches have not typically appeared in pure form but have been mixed together both in time and in the repertoire of individual metropolitan states. After developing these categories the second part of the article explores empire's determinants and its effects, again focusing on the German and U.S. cases but with forays into Portuguese and British imperialism. Supporters of overseas empire often couch their arguments in economic or strategic terms, and social theorists have followed suit in accepting these expressed motives as the "taproot of imperialism" (J. A. Hobson). But other factors have played an equally important role in shaping imperial practices, even pushing in directions that are economically and geopolitically counterproductive for the imperial power. Postcolonial theorists have rightly emphasized the cultural and psychic processes at work in empire but have tended to ignore empire's effects on practices of economy and its regulation. Current U.S. imperialism abroad may not be a danger to capitalism per se or to America's overall political power, but it is threatening and remaking the domestic post-Fordist mode of social regulation. (shrink)

In a series of insightful publications, Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson have argued for an explanatory ecumenism that is designed to justify a variety of types of social scientific explanation of different “grains”, including structural and rational choice explanations. Their arguments are put in terms of different kinds of explanatory information; the distinction between causal efficacy, causal relevance and explanatory relevance within their program model of explanation; and virtual reality and resilience explanation. The arguments are here assessed from the point (...) of view of the illumination they are able to cast on the issue of economics imperialism, the project of privileging rational choice as a unifying basis for explanations. While the Jackson–Pettit arguments turn out to be helpful in specifying some of the ontological and pragmatic constraints on economics imperialism, they are also shown to conflate distinct dimensions in the purported explanantia (such as small grain and particular grain, and the macro and the existentially quantified) and thereby to miss an important class of individualist causal process explanations of social phenomena. (shrink)

Through a Confucian critique of modern colonial politics and the failure of Western conscience in a number of historical and literary settings (including the Opium Wars, the Holocaust and the modern slavery), the article criticizes the illusory foundation and inexorable predicaments of modern imperialism. The goal of my investigation is to break open the normative authority of modern Western ideologies so as to initiate a new horizon for the hermeneutics of Confucianism and to suggest an alternative vision of humanity (...) and cosmopolitanism in Confucianism. (shrink)

The article reconsiders the generalization of neoclassical economics by modern rational choice theory. Hence, it reexamines the possible theoretical grounds or lack thereof within neoclassical economics for economic imperialism implied in much of rational choice theory. Some indicative instances of rational choice theory's generalization of neoclassical economics are reviewed. The main portion of the article addresses the question as to whether neoclassical economics allows its generalization in rational choice theory and thus legitimizes economic imperialism. Presented are a number (...) of pertinent theoretical reasons why neoclassical economics does not fully justify its generalization into rational choice as a general social theory, particularly into an overarching economic approach to social action and society. Also discussed are some theoretical implications of the rational choice generalization of neoclassical economics. The main contribution of the article is to detect lack of a strong theoretical rationale in much of neoclassical economics for rational choice theory's manifest or latent economic imperialism. (shrink)

To counter possibilities for human rights as cultural imperialism, (1) I develop a notion of human rights as culturally particular and valid only locally. But they are an increasingly generalizable particularism. (2) Because the incommensurability of different cultures does not entail an uncritical tolerance of just about anything, but rather allows for an objectivating stance toward other communities or cultures, locally valid human rights have a critical capacity. (3) Locally valid human rights promote a community's self-representation and thus allow (...) for diversity, rejecting the coercive (mis)representation of a community or culture as incapable of representing itself. (shrink)

Most discussion of the unity of science has concerned what might be called vertical relations between theories: the reducibility of biology to chemistry, or chemistry to physics, and so on. In this paper I shall be concerned rather with horizontal relations, that is to say, with theories of different kinds that deal with objects at the same structural level. Whereas the former, vertical, conception of unity through reduction has come under a good deal of criticism recently (see, e.g., Dupré 1993), (...) horizontal unity has generally been conceded to be an important goal. The most pressing questions about horizontal unification arise in the study of human behavior. Numerous sciences including psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology, and parts of biology, attempt to provide explanations of human behavior. It is possible that some of these sciences may be able to coexist peacefully or even cooperatively. However things do not always go so smoothly, and at least two approaches to human behavior, those deriving from economics and evolutionary biology, often involve clearly imperialist tendencies. Devotees of these approaches are inclined to claim that they are in possession not just of one useful perspective on human behavior, but of the key that will open doors to the understanding of ever wider areas of human behavior. In this paper I shall consider some areas in which economic and evolutionary imperialists are currently staking claims. It is of particular interest to look at situations where two the two imperialist programs are staking the same claim, but limitations of space force me to focus here mainly on economics, and my remarks on evolutionary imperialism will be cursory. As well as some specific insights into the particular strategies of these scientific programs, I hope that my discussion will throw some more general light on the limits of such general theoretical strategies and, thereby, I shall suggest some motivations for adhering to a horizontal pluralism of science that matches the vertical pluralism advocated by anti-reductionists. (shrink)

Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abstraction, the same instruments of thought and the same method of reasoning. (Black 1998, 354) Proponents as well as opponents of economics imperialism agree that imperialism is a matter of unification; providing a unified framework for social scientific analysis. Uskali Mäki distinguishes between derivational and ontological unification and argues that the latter should serve as a constraint for the former. We (...) explore whether, in the case of rational-choice political science, self-interested behavior can be seen as a common causal element and solution concepts as the common derivational element, and whether the former constraints the use of the latter. We find that this is not the case. Instead, what is common to economics and rational-choice political science is a set of research heuristics and a focus on institutions with similar structures and forms of organization. (shrink)

Imperialism is thought to be wrong by virtually everyone today. The consensus may be correct. However, there may be a few good things to be said for empire. More importantly for political philosophy, empires are not harder to justify or legitimate than states, or so I argue. The bad press that empires receive seems due to a methodological suspect comparison of nasty empires to nice states. When nice empires are considered they do not fare much worse than (nice) states. (...) I suggest that empires can have the same weak kind of legitimacy that states have and that both lack fuller or stronger legitimacy. a Footnotesa An earlier version of this essay was presented at James Madison University and discussed at a workshop of the Committee for Politics, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. I am grateful to members of both audiences for critical questions and comments, in particular to John Brown, Farid Dhanji, Douglas Grob, Peter Levine, Jerry Segal, and Karol Soltan (others are thanked in the notes). Gratitude is also owed to Jose Idler-Acosta, David Lefkowitz, and Ellen Paul for helpful written comments. (shrink)

words express the sentiment which sways the British nation in its dealings with the Boer republics; and this sentiment it is which, definitely displayed in this case, pervades indefinitely the political feeling now manifesting itself as Imperialism. Supremacy, where not clearly imagined, is vaguely present in the background of consciousness. Not the derivation of the word only, but all its uses and associations, imply the thought of predominance – imply a correlative subordination. Actual or potential coercion of others, individuals (...) or communities, is necessarily involved in the conception. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the recent appearance in Russian letters of ultra-nationalist fantasies about the restoration of Russia’s imperial or totalitarian status. This new trend has its roots not only in the increasingly patriotic tone of Russian society and politics, but also in the dynamics of the literary field itself. ‘Imperialist writers’ such as Aleksandr Prokhanov and Pavel Krusanov have both revived and reacted against postmodern themes and motifs from earlier decades. Relying on the legacy of sots-art and stiob , the (...) ‘imperialists’ advance a new model in Russia’s postmodern tradition, one that is balanced on the very borderline between irony and ideological militancy. In playing the game of ambiguous fanaticism, these writers have been able to attract the attention of a broad and diverse public, and have moved from an intellectual periphery into the cultural mainstream. (shrink)

John Dupr argues that 'scientific imperialism' can result in 'misguided' science being considered acceptable. 'Misguided' is an explicitly normative term and the use of the pejorative 'imperialistic' is implicitly normative. However, Dupr has not justified the normative dimension of his critique. We identify two ways in which it might be justified. It might be justified if colonisation prevents a discipline from progressing in ways that it might otherwise progress. It might also be justified if colonisation prevents the expression of (...) important values in the colonised discipline. This second concern seems most pressing in the human sciences. (shrink)

Recent work such as Steven Levitt's Freakonomics has prompted economic methodologists to reevaluate the state of relations between economics and its neighboring disciplines. Although this emerging literature on ?economics imperialism? has its merits, the positions advanced within it have been remarkably divergent: some have argued that economics imperialism is a fiction; others that it is a fact attributable to the triumph of neoclassical economics; and yet others that the era of economics imperialism is over. We believe the (...) confusion results in part from a lack of historical understanding about the nature and aims of economics imperialists. We seek to improve historical understanding by focusing on the activities of a cadre of economists at the epicenter of economics imperialism, the University of Chicago. These activities ? led, in the first instance, by Aaron Director and, in the second, by George Stigler ? stemmed from the effort to forge a new liberalism or a ?neoliberalism.? We then consider Steven Levitt's Freakonomics in light of the insights gained from our historical study. Our analysis leads us to question each of the three positions on economics imperialism held by economic methodologists. (shrink)

Concern for the rights and safety of individuals has caused clinical researchers to develop informed consent protocols for research involving human subjects. The applicapability of these regulations to social science research is often tenuous, since such research usually focuses on populations rather than individuals, and potential damage is apt to be political rather than personal. In cross-cultural social research, the protocols developed by Western clinical researchers may be not only ludicrously inapplicable, but intrusive and disruptive within the cultural context, raising (...) questions of the intellectual imperialism of Western research ethics. (shrink)

It has been alleged that Carolus Linnaeus practised Eurocentrism, sexism and racism in naming plant genera after famous botanists, and excluding ‘barbarous names’. He has therefore been said to practise ‘linguistic imperialism’. This paper examines whether Linnaeus applied ‘linguistic imperialism’ to the naming of Chinese plants. On the basis of examples such as Thea (¼Camellia), Urena, Basella, Annona, Sapindus (¼Koelreuteria), and Panax, I conclude that Linnaeus used generic names of diverse origins. However, he misidentified Chinese plants’ habitats, and (...) acted on these misapprehensions. (shrink)

Universalism in science, when conceived in methodological terms, leads to the problem of the limits of science. On the one hand, there is “methodological imperialism“ which in principle involves a form of universalism. On the other hand, there is the multivariate complexity - structural and dynamic, as well as epistemological and ontological - which represents a huge problem for methodological universalism, as may be seen with the obstacles for scientific prediction. Within the context of the limits of science, there (...) is a better understanding of the issues of expansionism and imperialism. 1. Varieties of Methodological Universalism 1.1. Levels of Methodological Analysis 1.2. The Historical Dimension 2. The Limits for Methodological Universalism: The Problem of Complexity 2.1. Obstacles to Methodological Universalism Due to Complexity 2.2. Methodological Universalism and the Obstacles to Predictors from the Angle of Complexity 3. Coda: Limits of Science, Expansionism and Imperialism. (shrink)

Economics and psychology are both sciences of human behaviour. This paper gives a survey of their interaction. First, the changing relationship between the two sciences is discussed: while economics was once imperialistic, it has become a science inspired by psychological insights. In order to illustrate this, recent developments and evidence for three major areas are presented: bounded rationality, non-selfish behaviour, and the economics of happiness.

I argue against the claim, advanced by David Albert and Barry Loewer, that all non-fundamental laws can be derived from those required to underwrite the second law of thermodynamics.

Virtue and deontological ethics are now commonly contrasted as rival approaches to moral inquiry. However, I argue that neither metaethical party should seek complete, solitary domination of the ethical domain. Reductive treatments of the right or the virtuous, as well as projects that abandon the former or latter, are bound to leave us with a sadly diminished map of the moral territories crucial to our lives. Thus, it is better for the two parties to seek a more cordial and equal (...) relationship, one that permits metaethical pluralism, and acknowledges mutual dependence. I do not seek to prescribe how that relationship should look: this essay offers less a positive metaethical position than a prolegomenon to such a position, one that attempts to head off harmful attempts to reduce the territory of the aretaic to that of the deontic, or that of the deontic to the aretaic. (shrink)

The end of the Cold War unleashed an impressive flow of rhetoric assuring the world that the West would now be free to pursue its traditional dedication to freedom, democracy, justice, and human rights unhampered by superpower rivalry, though there were some—called “realists†in international relations theory—who warned that in “granting idealism a near exclusive hold on our foreign policy,†we may be going too far and might harm our interests. [1] Such notions as “humanitarian intervention†and “the responsibility to (...) protect†soon came to be salient features of Western discourse on policy, commonly described as establishing a “new norm†in international affairs. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a brief summary of the context, outline the arguments for and against the controversial use of placebo controls, and focus on particular areas that I believe merit further discussion or clarification. On balance, I argue that the researchers failed in their duties to protect the best interests of their research subjects, and to promote distributive justice. I discuss the difficulties of obtaining valid consent in this research context, and argue that it is unethical to inform (...) women of their 'HIV' status without at least offering them prophylactic treatment for their unborn children. (edited). (shrink)

Half-truths, misinformation and hidden agendas have characterised official pronouncements about US war motives in Iraq from the very beginning. The recent revelations about the rush to war in Iraq stand out all the more starkly amid the chaos that ravages the country and threatens the region and indeed the world.

Pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840Ð1910) was a prolific and astute historian of the early American republic. His work is informed by both his classical liberalism and his understanding of economics. He authored eight major works including major biographies and thematic studies concentrating on the vital subjects of currency, banking, business cycles, foreign trade, protectionism, and democratic politics.

DAVID BARSAMIAN: REGIME CHANGE is a new term in the lexicon. Kind of like change of address. It sounds somewhat innocuous. It certainly sounds a lot better than invasion, overthrow and occupation. The U.S. is an old hand at regime change. We’re in a year that marks a couple of anniversaries. Today is the 30th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Chile. October 25 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Grenada. But I’m particularly thinking of regime change (...) in Iran. 50 years ago, in August 1953, Operation Ajax, carried out by a CIA agent who was incidentally Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson, overthrew the conservative parliamentary democracy led by Mohammed Mossadeq and restored the Shah to the Peacock Throne, where he ruled for the next 25 years. (shrink)

The structural and magnetic properties of Y(Fe1-xMnx)12 compounds and their nitrides (x = 0.2 and 0.4) have been studied by using X-ray diffraction and magnetic measurements. It is found that the lattice parameters increase, while the saturation magnetization and Curie temperature decrease with Mn content increment in Y(Fe1-xMnx12 compounds. Y(Fe0.8Mn0.2)12 compound shows a weak easy-c axis magnetization direction, but Y(Fe0.6Mn0.4)12 compound is in a paramagnetic state at room temperature. Upon nitrogenation, the lattice parameters, Curie temperature are notably increased and the (...) saturation magnetization is greatly increased by about 50%. The easy magnetization direction for both compound nitrides all lies in the basal plane at room temperature. (shrink)

It is fashionable today to deride the domino theory, but in fact it contains an important kernel of plausibility, perhaps truth. National independence and revolutionary social change, if successful, may very well be contagious. The problem is what Walt Rostow and others sometimes call the "ideological threat" specifically, "the possibility that the Chinese Communists can prove to Asians by progress in China that Communist methods are better and faster than democratic {6} methods".2 The State Department feared that "A fundamental source (...) of danger we face in the Far East derives from Communist China's rate of economic growth which will probably continue to outstrip that of free Asian countries, with the possible exception of Japan", a matter of real as well as psychological impact elsewhere (DOD, book 10, 1198; June, 1959). The Joint Chiefs repeated the same wording two weeks later (1213), adding further that "The dramatic economic improvements realised by Communist China over the past ten years impress the nations of the region greatly and offer a serious challenge to the Free World" (1226). State therefore urged that the U.S. do what it can to retard the economic progress of the Communist Asian States (1208),3 a decision that is remarkable in its cruelty. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on the justice/injustice of past public health policy can inform current and future policy creation and assessment. For eight years in the 1980s, Haitians were prohibited from donating blood in the USA due to their national origin, a supposed risk factor for AIDS. This case study underlines the racial stereotypes and cultural ignorance at play in risk assignment—which simultaneously marked Haitians as risky ‘others’ and excluded them as significant participants in policy-making. This article also discerns Haitian understandings of (...) justice related to this donor policy and explores how dimensions of this past policy relate to current blood donor policy. (shrink)