Online research in philosophy

Introduction : action, thought, pragmatism -- Neo-pragmatism and its critics -- Methodology : reconstructive dialectics -- A history of action theory -- Defining actions -- The explanation of action -- A material explication of agency -- Agency and existence.

Some philosophers have developed comprehensive interactive models that purport to exhibit the various normative constraints that agents need to adopt in order to achieve what otherwise would be an unattainable and unsustainable social order. Robert Brandom’s semantic inferentialism purports to show how a rational construction of social coordination is enacted and maintained through specific mappings that agents make of each other’s commitments (beliefs) and entitlements (justified beliefs). Strongly influenced by Brandom’s account, Joseph Heath reconstructs a number of historically emergent deontic (...) constraints that solve what are otherwise unsolvable game-theoretic problems in the maintenance of the social order. But both accounts omit a sufficient analysis of the way in which individual agents, who comprise the normative order, are effectively addressed by norms when they act. How does an agent, who is facing a unique interactive situation with more than one normative path to choose, make a decision? One solution, attractive to some continental thinkers, is to appeal to an innate irrational component of decision-making that lies outside of rational bounds (e.g., Nietzsche’s will to power or Adorno’s das Hinzutrentende). The model I will defend lies in an existential account of agency that occupies a middle ground between a pure naturalism (where instinct dominates) and a pure regularism, or “normativism” (where reason dominates). The existential model asserts that the given normative field within which an agent operates conditions the formation of the agent’s intention to act but does not determine the effecting of an action as such — whether individual or collective. On this model, the specification of the acting or not acting on the normative intention is determined only retrospectively on the basis of what the agent actually did in a way that is in principle public and observable. Thus the content of the agency can be reconstructed only historically. The embodied character of the agent is what makes the action relatable to the sum of conditions that were co-determinative of the action at the time it occurred. The advantage of this view is that it does not overreach the highly limited access that we have to the inner workings of intentions to act while at the same time providing an account of agency independent of simply the agent’s relation to norms. (shrink)

v. 1. The engagement with postmodernity and phenomenology. Hermeneutics and epistemology. Metaphysics -- v. 2. Normativity and reason. Discourse ethics -- v. 3. Law, democracy, and the public sphere. Cosmopolitanism and the nation state -- v. 4. Habermas and psychology. Habermas and bioethics. Habermas and feminism. Aesthetics. Habermas and religion. Habermas and science.

rgen Habermas both agree that all theoretical and practical determinations are normative affairs. But what grants this normative order the power to be objective ? While Brandom assumes that ever new appeals to reliable perceptual judgments and inferentialist determinations eventuate objectivity, Habermas thinks that such an objectivistic presumption fails to sustain a thoroughgoing critique of norms. He insists that Brandom’s model of the determination of norms cannot transcend the limits of the given social community the actors share. Habermas thus delimits (...) an additional intersubjective space, internal to the structure of speech, by which discursive actors can distance themselves from the limits of a de facto system of norms and construct norms that have a universal extension. While pointing out that in a more recent work Brandom in fact has made a stronger case for objectivity, I explore a model that is distinct from each of their approaches: Davidson’s. Davidson holds onto a causal story about rationality, while appealing to an objectivity that requires neither inferentialism nor a trans-subjective discursive space. Davidson is more sparing: he requires as the basis of the rational only the existence of another interpreter and an assumption about the basic veridicality of one’s beliefs about the world. This weak naturalist move, I conclude, furnishes an adequate answer to the objectivity problem while relying upon fewer problematic assumptions about what constitutes rationality. Key Words: Robert Brandom • causation • Donald Davidson • discourse • Jürgen Habermas • inferentialism • normativity • objectivity • pragmatism • triangulation. (shrink)

Ethics: Contemporary Readings is designed for anyone interested in the subject, presenting carefully selected classic and contemporary articles. The book includes pieces by the leading figures in the field and provides an excellent entry to the topic. The book complements Harry Gensler's Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 1998), or can be used as a stand-alone volume.

In response to William Rehg's and Barbara Fultner's criticisms, I clarify and extend some arguments found in my book Reflection Revisited. I first redescribe how Hegel's critique of Kant's theory of reflection opens up the possibility for an intersubjective reflection. Habermas, I argue, can exploit such a theory of reflection since it is immune from the problems attendant on a 'theory of consciousness'. Second, I address how by means of meta-discourses temporal claims can be formalized for the pragmatics Habermas is (...) developing. Finally, I take up Fultner's suggestion that Robert Brandom provides a fruitful point of comparison with Habermas's theory, and argue that norms are in fact formed and critiqued on the basis of - as Brandom describes - the modal capabilities or incompatibilities of their entailments. Key Words: Robert Brandom • commitments • contextualization • discourse ethics • Jürgen Habermas • reflection • time • truth. (shrink)

This is the first systematic assessment of the work of Jürgen Habermas - the key theorist of the later Frankfurt School, whose writing has had a major impact on social theory and sociology. These four volumes comprise the key secondary literature on Habermas. Edited by David Rasmussen and James Swindal, leading commentators on Habermas's work, this will be the standard reference work on one of the canonical theorists of the 20th century. VOLUME ONE: THE FOUNDATIONS OF HABERMAS'S PROJECT Habermas as (...) a Critical Theorist \ Habermas, Hermeneutics and Critical Theory \ The Modernity/Postmodernity Debate VOLUME TWO:LAW AND POLITICS Law and Democratic Theory \ The Public Sphere \ Culture and Society VOLUME THREE: ETHICS Discourse Ethics \ Rethinking Discourse Ethics \ Autonomy and Authenticity VOLUME FOUR: COMMUNICATIVE RATIONALITY, FORMAL PRAGMATICS, SPEECH ACT THEORY AND TRUTH Communicative Rationality \ Formal Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory \ Nature, History and the Logic of Development \ Truth. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas, particularly in his master work Theory of Communicative Action (1981), takes us several of the basic insights of the philosophical tradition of reflection initiated by Kant, and sets it on a new and highly original emancipative path. He claims that reflection not only can determine the limits of reasoning about thought and action, but also can grasp the limits that human agents face in freeing themselves form unjust social and economic structures. Human agents can engage in constructive and (...) emancipative communication with others by determining the limits not of their own consciousness, but of the intersubjective structures shared in everyday communication. Reflection Revisited examines Habermas’ own two-stage development of this theory of emancipative reflection and explicates how he applies reflection specifically to the problems of personal identity development and ethics. (shrink)