Online research in philosophy

In this paper recognition is taken to be a question of social ontology, regarding the very constitution of the social space of interaction. I concentrate on the question of whether certain aspects of the theory of recognition can be translated into the terms of a socio-ontological paradigm: to do so, I make reference to some conceptual tools derived from John Searle's social ontology and Robert Brandom's normative pragmatics. My strategy consists in showing that recognitive phenomena cannot be isolated (...) at the level of human interaction, and are, rather, in part proper to animal interaction as well. Furthermore, it is argued that recognitive powers are constitutive powers more basic than deontic ones and play a role much broader than the one they in fact assume in Searle and in Brandom. (shrink)

Research on mirror self-recognition where animals are observed for mirror-guided self-directed behaviour has predominated the empirical approach to self-awareness in nonhuman primates. The ability to direct behaviour to previously unseen parts of the body such as the inside of the mouth, or grooming the eye by aid of mirrors has been interpreted as recognition of self and evidence of a self-concept. Three decades of research has revealed that contrary to monkeys, most great apes (humans, common chimpanzees, pygmy chimpanzees (...) and orangutans but not the gorilla) have convincingly displayed the capacity to recognize self by mirrors. The putative discontinuity in phylogeny of the ability suggests the existence of a so-called cognitive gap between great apes and the rest of the animal kingdom. However, methodological and theoretical inconsistencies regarding the empirical approach prevail. For instance, the observation of self-directed behaviour might not be as straightforward as it seems. In addition, the interpretation of mirror self-recognition as an index of self-awareness is challenged by alternative explanations, raising doubt about some assumptions behind mirror self-recognition. To evaluate the significance of the test in discussions of the concept of self this paper presents and analyses some major arguments raised on the mirror task. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze interpersonal and institutional recognition and discuss the relation of different types of recognition to various principles of social justice (egalitarianism, meritarianism, legitimate favouritism, principles of need and free exchange). Further, I try to characterize contours of good autonomous life, and ask what kind of preconditions it has. I will distinguish between five kinds of preconditions: psychological, material, cultural, intersubjective and institutional. After examining what the role of recognition is among such preconditions, and (...) how they figure in the work of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Charles Taylor, I suggest a somewhat complex and hopefully rich picture of interpersonal and institutional recognition as a precondition of autonomous good life. (shrink)

The topic of recognition has come to occupy a central place in contemporary debates in social and political theory. Rooted in Hegel's work, developed by George Herbert Mead and Charles Taylor, it has been given renewed expression in the recent program for Critical Theory developed by Axel Honneth in his book The Struggle for Recognition. Honneth's research program offers an empirically insightful way of reflecting on emancipatory struggles for greater justice and a powerful theoretical tool for generating a (...) conception of justice and the good that enables the normative evaluation of such struggles. (shrink)

In this commentary I use recent empirical evidence and theoretical analyses concerning the importance of language and the meaning of self-recognition to reevaluate the claim that the right mute hemisphere in commissurotomized patients possesses a full consciousness. Preliminary data indicate that inner speech is deeply linked to self-awareness; also, four hypotheses concerning the crucial role inner speech plays in self-focus are presented. The legitimacy of self-recognition as a strong operationalization of self-awareness in the right hemisphere is also questioned (...) on the basis that it might rather tap a preexisting body awareness having little to do with an access to mental events. I conclude with the formulation of an alternative interpretation of commissurotomy according to self-awareness — a “complete” one in the left hemisphere and a “primitive” one in the right hemisphere. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour proper) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour proper is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition--of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for (...) creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour proper in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour proper and the relations to others it impels us to establish. (shrink)

This paper examines how three central aspects of personhood -- the capacities of individuals, their normative status, and the social aspect of being recognized -- are related, and how personhood depends on them. The paper defends first of all a 'basic view' that while actual recognition is among the constitutive elements of full personhood, it is the individual capacities (and not full personhood) which ground the basic moral and normative demands concerning treatment of persons. Actual recognition depends analytically (...) on such pre-existing normative requirements: it is a matter of responsiveness to them. The paper then discusses four challenges. The challenges claim that pace the basic view, the relevant capacities depend on recognition, that recognition seems to have normative relevance, and that the basic view cannot as such explain the equality either of persons, or of humans. Responding to these challenges amounts to refining the basic view accordingly. (shrink)

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a (...) bridgeconcept that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

Recognition theorists have claimed that a culturally egalitarian societal environment is a crucial social basis of a sense of self-worth. In doing so they have often drawn on noncogntivist social-psychological theorizing. This paper argues that this theorizing does not support the recognition theorist's position. It is argued that attachment theory, together with recent empirical evidence, support a more limited vision of self-worth's social bases according to which associational ties, basic rights and liberties, and economic and educational opportunity are (...) what really matter. (shrink)

The paper proposes a reconstruction of some fragments of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts concerning the natural genesis of recognitive spiritual consciousness. On this basis it will be argued that recognition has a foothold in nature. As a consequence, recognition should not be understood as a bootstrapping process, that is, as a self-positing and self-justifying normative social phenomenon, intelligible within itself and independently of anything external to it.

Introduction: Redeeming recognition -- Oppression reconsidered -- Foundations of a liberal conception -- Toward a liberal conception of oppression -- Conclusion : A liberal conception of oppression -- Misrecognition as oppression -- Exploitation and disempowerment -- Cultural imperialism -- Marginalization -- Violence -- Conclusion: Misrecognition as oppression -- Overcoming oppression : the limits of toleration -- Contemporary differences : matters of toleration -- John Rawls : political liberalism -- Will Kymlicka : multicultural citizenship -- Conclusion: Accommodating differences : the (...) limits of toleration -- Beyond toleration : toward a concept of recognition -- Hegel's early Jena theory of recognition -- Axel Honneth's critical social theory of recognition -- Charles Taylor's politics of recognition -- Conclusion: Toward a concept of public recognition -- Hegel's theory of recognition in the phenomenology : recognitive understanding and freedom -- The centrality of recognition in the phenomenology -- The pure concept of recognition and its failure in mastery and slavery -- The achievement of mutual recognition through recognitive understanding -- Challenges to Hegel's recognition theory -- Conclusion: Hegel's theory of recognition in the phenomenology -- Recognition in the philosophy of right : particularity and its right -- Recognition in the philosophy of right -- Particularity in the free market : the benefits and liabilities of free subjectivity -- Conclusion: The significance of the right of particularity -- Winning the right of particularity : recognizing difference in ethical life -- How particularity wins its right : the bildung of true conscience -- Exercising the right of particularity : corporations as sites of public recognition -- Challenges to Hegel's treatment of difference in ethical life -- Conclusion: The public recognition of difference in civil society -- Conclusion: Hegel, recognition, and ethical liberal modernity. (shrink)

The immune system, to protect the body, must discriminate between the pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes and respond to them in different ways. How the mucosal immune system manages to make this distinction is poorly understood. We suggest here that the distinction between pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes is made by an integrated system rather than by single types of cells or single types of receptors; a systems biology approach is needed to understand immune recognition.

This article presents a new interpretation of the concept of social relations of production in Marx. Against G.A. Cohen, it argues that social relations of production are relations of interaction between persons, not relations of de facto control between persons and means of production. It argues further that these relations are relations of 'de facto recognition', that is, relations constituted by actions in which individuals treat each other as if they recognised each other in certain ways, whether or not (...) the relevant recognitional attitudes are present. (shrink)

The theory of recognition arises within Hegel's confrontation with epistemological skepticism and aims at responding to the questions raised by modern skepticism concerning the accessibility of the external world, of other minds, and of one's own mind. This is possible to the extent that the theory of recognition is the guiding thread of a critique of the modern foundational theory of knowledge and, at the same time, the point of departure for an alternative approach. In this article I (...) will dwell on six stages of the evolution of Hegel's thought prior to the Phenomenology (1797-1806),stages shed great light on the direction taken by his argumentative strategy. Synthetically, the stages are as follows: 1. Hegel naturalizes the epistemological questions; 2. to do so he critiques foundationalism qua theory of empirical knowledge; 3. and qua theory of epistemic justification; 4. the critique of foundationalism is linked to a critique of the corresponding representationalistic theory of perception; 5. this, in turn, is linked to a critique of the monological theories of self-consciousness and to the development of a model of the rise of self-conscious knowing; 6. finally, Hegel synthesizes these epistemological views in a theory of knowledge qua recognition and in a metaphilosophical theory of philosophical rationality qua self-recognition: knowledge without foundation is thus the condition of possibility of philosophy’s self-justification. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of J. G. Fichte's transcendental argument for the necessity of mutual recognition (Anerkennung) in Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte's argument purports to show that, as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness, we must take ourselves to stand in relations of mutual recognition with other agents like ourselves. After reconstructing the steps of Fichte's argument, I present what I call the ‘modal dilemma’, which highlights a serious ambiguity in Fichte's deduction. According (...) to the modal dilemma, the conclusion to Fichte's transcendental argument—that as a condition of the possibility of our self-consciousness, we must recognize and be recognized by others—expresses either metaphysical or normative necessity. However, no normative conclusion follows from Fichte's premises, and the metaphysical claim that does follow from his argument appears to be implausibly strong. Thus the argument looks like a failure on either interpretation of the conclusion's modality. In the penultimate section of the paper, I propose a new interpretation of the argument that avoids the modal dilemma and provides a normative grounding of Fichte's concept of right. (shrink)

Abstract The view that mirror self-recognition (MSR) is a definitive demonstration of self-awareness is far from universally accepted, and those who do support the view need a more robust argument than the mere assumption that self-recognition implies a self-concept (e.g. Gallup in Socioecology and Psychology of Primates, Mouton, Hague, 1975 ; Gallup and Suarez in Psychological Perspectives on the Self, vol 3, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1986 ). In this paper I offer a new argument in favour of the view (...) that MSR shows self-awareness by examining the nature of the mirror image itself. I argue, using the results of ‘symbol-mindedness’ experiments by Deloache (Trends Cogn Sci 8(2):66–70, 2004) , that where self-recognition exists, the mirror image must be functioning as a symbol from the perspective of the subject and the subject must therefore be ‘symbol-minded’ and hence concept possessing. Further to this, according to the Concept Possession Hypothesis of Self-Consciousness (Savanah in Conscious Cogn 2011 ), concept possession alone is sufficient to demonstrate the existence of self-awareness. Thus MSR as a demonstration of symbol-mindedness implies the existence of self-awareness. I begin by defending the ‘mark test’ protocol as a robust methodology for determining self-recognition. Then follows a critical examination of the extreme views both for and against the interpretation of MSR as an indication of self-awareness: although the non-mentalistic interpretation of MSR is unconvincing, the argument presented by Gallup is also inadequate. I then present the symbol-mindedness argument to fill in the gaps in the Gallup approach. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s10539-012-9318-2 Authors Stephane Savanah, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD), Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Journal Biology and Philosophy Online ISSN 1572-8404 Print ISSN 0169-3867. (shrink)

Based on theoretical considerations of Aurell (1979) and Block (1995), we argue that object recognition awareness is distinct from purely sensory awareness and that the former is mediated by neuronal activities in areas that are separate and distinct from cortical sensory areas. We propose that two of the principal functions of neuronal activities in sensory cortex, which are to provide sensory awareness and to effect the computations that are necessary for object recognition, are dissociated. We provide examples of (...) how this dissociation might be achieved and argue that the components of the neuronal activities which carry the computations do not directly enter the awareness of the subject. The results of these computations are sparse representations (i.e., vector or distributed codes) which are activated by the presentation of particular sensory objects and are essentially engrams for the recognition of objects. These final representations occur in the highest order areas of sensory cortex; in the visual analyzer, the areas include the anterior part of the inferior temporal cortex and the perirhinal cortex. We propose, based on lesion and connectional data, that the two areas in which activities provide recognition awareness are the temporopolar cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Activities in the temporopolar cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the remote past (consolidated object recognition), and those in the medial orbitofrontal cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the recent past. The activation of the sparse representation for a particular sensory object in turn activates neurons in one or both of these regions of cortex, and it is the activities of these neurons that provide the awareness of recognition of the object in question. The neural circuitry involved in the activation of these representations is discussed. (shrink)

The question I want to answer is if and how the recognition approach, taken from the works of Axel Honneth, could be an adequate framework for addressing the problems of global justice and poverty. My thesis is that such a globalization of the recognition approach rests on the dialectic of relative and absolute elements of recognition. (1) First, I will discuss the relativism of the recognition approach, that it understands recognition as being relative to a (...) certain society or a set of institutions. The same is true for various forms of disrespect such as denigration or exclusion. The recognition approach is a form of internal reconstructive critique, which does not want to refer to absolute or ahistorical standards. (2) Second, I show that this relative understanding of recognition and disrespect rests on an absolute core of recognition, which transcends any given society. In short, this core is the possibility of undistorted self-realization, which is the main and universal element of a good life. Such an absolute core is necessary for distinguishing between justified and unjustified claims of relative recognition. It also serves as the normative benchmark for any society. (3) Finally, I will discuss the relation of these relative and absolute elements of recognition against the background of global justice. Claims of recognition can refer to this absolute core and demand that intersubjective conditions and social relations should change in order to make undistorted self-realization possible. This is the main point of reference for a recognition-based concept of global justice. (shrink)

In The Paradigm of Recognition. Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death Paul Cobben elaborates a paradigm of recognition based on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

This unique collection examines the connections between two complementary approaches to philosophical social theory: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung), and analytical social ontology.

This article attempts to show, first, that for Hegel the role of property is to enable persons both to objectify their freedom and to properly express their recognition of each other as free, and second, that the Marx of 1844 uses fundamentally similar ideas in his exposition of communist society. For him the role of ‘true property’ is to enable individuals both to objectify their essential human powers and their individuality, and to express their recognition of each other (...) as fellow human beings with needs, or their ‘human recognition’. Marx further uses these ideas to condemn the society of private property and market exchange as characterised by ‘estranged’ forms of property and recognition. He therefore uses a structure of ideas which Hegel had used to justify the institutions of private property and market exchange, in order to condemn those same institutions. (shrink)

If it seems fully legitimate to introduce Marx in the contemporary discussion about recognition, it is more disputable to attribute to Marx an unified conception of recognition. There is no doubt that Marx hasn’t provided any systematic account of recognition, but he has tackled the issue of recognition from various points of view. Could these various points of view be unified in a general conception of recognition? This article claims that this is not the case (...) since three accounts of recognition should be distinguished that are hardly compatible one with the other: one Feuerbachian account of recognition of the species being in the other, one account of recognition related to the dynamics of disrespect as social experience, and one account of recognition through social roles. (shrink)

This article argues that notwithstanding Martin Heidegger’s explicit intentions to the contrary, his existential analysis in Being and Time provides more than the mere conditions for the possibility of ethics. More specifically, Heidegger’s account of solicitude, where he distinguishes between leaping in for and leaping ahead of the other, can be read as an account of recognition that has normative implications. This account is developed in light of both Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth’s positions on recognition. It is (...) concluded that Heidegger’s phenomenological elaboration of recognition goes beyond the transcendental aspect of his project of fundamental ontology. (shrink)

Pt. I Hegelian Roots -- 1. From Desire to Recognition: Hegel's Grounding of Self-Consciousness -- 2. The Realm of Actualized Freedom: Hegel's Notion of a P̀hilosophy of Right' -- pt. II Systematic Consequences -- 3. The Fabric of Justice: On the Limits of Contemporary Proceduralism -- 4. Labour and Recognition: A Redefinition -- 5. Recognition as Ideology: The Connection between Morality and Power -- 6. Dissolutions of the Social: The Social Theory of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot (...) -- 7. Philosophy as Social Research: David Miller's Theory of Justice -- pt. III Social and Theoretical Applications -- 8. Recognition between States: On the Moral Substrate of International Relations -- 9. Organized Self-Realization: Paradoxes of Individualization -- 10. Paradoxes of Capitalist Modernization: A Research Programme (with Martin Hartmann) -- pt. IV Psychoanalytical Ramifications -- 11. The Work of Negativity: A Recognition-Theoretical Revision of Psychoanalysis -- 12. The I in We: Recognition as a Driving Force of Group Formation -- 13. Facets of the Presocial Self: Rejoinder to Joel Whitebook -- 14. Disempowering Reality: Secular Forms of Consolation. (shrink)

Through computational modeling, here we examine whether visual and task characteristics of writing systems alone can account for lateralization differences in visual word recognition between different languages without assuming influence from left hemisphere (LH) lateralized language processes. We apply a hemispheric processing model of face recognition to visual word recognition; the model implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception that posits low spatial frequency biases in the right hemisphere and high spatial frequency (HSF) biases in the (...) LH. We show two factors that can influence lateralization: (a) Visual similarity among words: The more similar the words in the lexicon look visually, the more HSF/LH processing is required to distinguish them, and (b) Requirement to decompose words into graphemes for grapheme-phoneme mapping: Alphabetic reading (involving grapheme-phoneme conversion) requires more HSF/LH processing than logographic reading (no grapheme-phoneme mapping). These factors may explain the difference in lateralization between English and Chinese orthographic processing. (shrink)

An attempt at moral interpretation of Hegelian ‘struggle for recognition’. The Author shows how the Hegelian figures of ‘Lord’ and ‘Bondsman’ (from The Phenomenology of Spirit) can be used to explain social role and importance of the idea of tolerance in the context of (intolerant) group moralities and the universal morality. The text is built of three parts: (1) the author sketches the connection of the traditional idea of tolerance and sociological understanding of morality on the basis of Hegel’s (...) understanding of recognition (Anerkennung). In the second step (2), he gives an outline of Hegelian two accounts of mutual recognition, finally (3) the author shows the moral dimension of recognition, as referred to the idea of tolerance and universalistic morality. (shrink)

This volume stages a debate between two philosophers, one North American, the other German, who hold different views of the relation of redistribution to ...

In a criticism of Habermas, Honneth,Rawls and others, this work argues that this relation has to be developed as a systematic elaboration of the mind-body ...

This collection of essays considers some of the conceptual and philosophical contentions that Fraser?s model has provoked and presents some compelling examples ...

Sometimes the fact that something is the law can be justified by the law. For example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is the law because it was enacted by Congress pursuant to the Commerce Clause. But eventually legal justification of law ends. The ultimate criteria of validity in a legal system cannot themselves be justified by law. According to H.L.A. Hart, justification of these ultimate criteria is still available, by reference to social facts concerning official acceptance - facts about what Hart calls (...) the "rule of recognition" for the system. -/- Drawing upon criticisms of sociological accounts of the law that can be found in the writings of Hans Kelsen, I argue in this essay that Hart's approach cannot account for statements about the law that assert the independence of legal validity from rule of recognition facts. I offer as an alternative a legal quietist approach, which can account for such statements. For the quietist, legal justification exhausts the possible justification for law. If our judgments about the law are fundamental, in the sense that they cannot be justified by other judgments about the law, then they have no justification (which is not to say that they should be abandoned). I argue that legal quietism is exemplified - if somewhat imperfectly - in Kelsen's writings, and I end the essay by exploring some difficulties that the quietist approach must face. (shrink)

It is argued that at the center of Hegel’s phenomenology of consciousness is the notion that experience is shaped by identification and sacrifice. Experience is the process of self-constitution and self-transformation of a self-conscious being that risks its own being. The transition from desire to recognition is explicated as a transition from the tripartite structure of want and fulfillment of biological desire to a socially structured recognition that is achieved only in reciprocal recognition, or reflexive recognition. (...) At the center of the Hegelian notion of selfhood is thus the realization that selves are the locus of accountatibility. To be a self, it is concluded, is to be the subject of normative statuses that refer to commitments; it means to be able to take a normative stand on things, to commit oneself and undertake responsibilities. Key Words: commitments • desire • experience • G.W.F.Hegel • identity • recognition • risk • sacrifice • self-consciousness • self-constitution. (shrink)

Judith Butler's recent work expands the Foucaultian notion of subjection to encompass an analysis of the ways in which subordinated individuals becomes passionately attached to, and thus come to be psychically invested in, their own subordination. I argue that Butler's psychoanalytically grounded account of subjection offers a compelling diagnosis of how and why an attachment to oppressive norms – of femininity, for example – can persist in the face of rational critique of those norms. However, I also argue that her (...) account of individual and collective resistance to subjection is plagued by familiar problems concerning the normative criteria and motivation for resistance that emerge in her recent work in new and arguably more intractable forms, and by new concerns about her conceptions of dependency, subordination and recognition. (shrink)

One of the principal lessons of The Concept of Law is that legal systems are not only comprised of rules, but founded on them as well. As Hart painstakingly showed, we cannot account for the way in which we talk and think about the law - that is, as an institution which persists over time despite turnover of officials, imposes duties and confers powers, enjoys supremacy over other kinds of practices, resolves doubts and disagreements about what is to be done (...) in a community and so on - without supposing that it is at bottom regulated by what he called the secondary rules of recognition, change and adjudication. Given this incontrovertible demonstration that every legal system must contain rules constituting its foundation, it might seem puzzling that many philosophers have contested Hart's view. In particular, they have objected to his claim that every legal system contains a rule of recognition. More surprisingly, these critiques span different jurisprudential schools. Positivists such as Joseph Raz, as well as natural lawyers such as Ronald Dworkin and John Finnis, have been among Hart's most vocal critics. In this essay, I would like to examine the opposition to the rule of recognition. What is objectionable about Hart's doctrine? Why deny that every legal system necessarily contains a rule setting out the criteria of legal validity? And are these objections convincing? Does the rule of recognition actually exist? This essay has five parts. In Part One, I try to state Hart's doctrine of the rule of recognition with some precision. As we will see, this task is not simple, insofar as Hart's position on this crucial topic is often frustratingly unclear. I also explore in this part whether the United States Constitution, or any of its provisions, can be considered the Hartian rule of recognition for the United States legal system. In Part Two, I attempt to detail the many roles that the rule of recognition plays within Hart's theory of law. In addition to the function that Hart explicitly assigned to it, namely, the resolution of normative uncertainty within a community, I argue that the rule of recognition, and the secondary rules more generally, also account for the law's dexterity, efficiency, normativity, continuity, persistence, supremacy, independence, identity, validity, content and existence. In Part Three, I examine three important challenges to Hart's doctrine of the rule of recognition. They are: 1) Hart's rule of recognition is under- and over-inclusive; 2) Hart cannot explain how social practices are capable of generating rules that confer powers and impose duties and hence cannot account for the normativity of law; 3) Hart cannot explain how disagreements about the criteria of legal validity that occur within actual legal systems, such as in American law, are possible. In Parts Four and Five, I address these various objections. I argue that although Hart's particular account of the rule of recognition is flawed and should be rejected, a related notion can be fashioned and should be substituted in its place. The idea, roughly, is to treat the rule of recognition as a shared plan which sets out the constitutional order of a legal system. As I try to show, understanding the rule of recognition in this new way allows the legal positivist to overcome the challenges lodged against Hart's version while still retaining the power of the original idea. (shrink)

I argue against the idea (made popular by H.L.A. Hart) that the key to a legal system is its "rule of recognition." I argue that much of the work allegedly done by a rule of recognition is either done by a different kind of secondary rule (what Hart called "a rule of change") or it is not done at all (and doesn't have to be done). A rule of change tells us the procedures that must be followed and (...) the substantive conditions that must be satisfied if law is to be changed legislatively; and a judge "recognizes" changes simply by using this checklist. In common law, there is no clear rule of change (because we are profoundly ambivalent about judicial lawmaking). But we get by without one, and without a determinate rule of recognition that would tell us precisely how to infer rules from precedents. It is quite liberating, really, to abandon the idea of a rule of recognition. Apart from anything else, it relieves us from having to participate in endless debates about whether the US Constitution is (or contains) a rule of recognition for American law. The Constitution contains rules of change; that's what matters. (shrink)

Axel Honneth draws a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love, (2) respect and (3) social esteem. In his The Struggle for Recognition, the recognition of cultural particularity is situated in the third sphere. It will here be argued that the logic of recognition of cultural identity also demands a non-evaluative recognition, namely a respect for difference. Difference-respect is formal because it is a recognition of the value of a particular culture not "for (...) society" or "as such", but for the social group involved. Yet, although it is formal, difference-respect cannot be reduced to respect for personal autonomy and its preconditions, as Honneth wrongly suggests in Redistribution or Recognition? It is argued here that difference-respect is oriented towards another dimension of the person, namely social attachments. This kind of respect entails a separate register of formal recognition with a corresponding concept of personal identity and a parallel category of social disrespect. What morally justifies difference-respect from a recognition-theoretic approach is the practical relation-to-self that thus becomes possible, namely self-respect as a sense of belonging. The formal conception of the good life that Honneth articulates should include the insight that this sense of belonging is as much a necessary condition for the good life as is personal autonomy. (shrink)

Contrary to some popular interpretations, I argue that Hegel and Habermas share many basic assumptions in their respective accounts of freedom. In particular, both respond to weaknesses in Kant's idea of freedom as acting from (certain kinds of) reasons by explicating this idea with reference to specific social practices or 'forms of recognition' that in turn express suppositions and expectations that actors adopt with respect to one another. I illustrate this common strategy in each and suggest that it may (...) offer an alternative to Rawls's 'political' account of public reason. Key Words: freedom • Habermas • Hegel • intersubjectivity • Kant • positive liberty • practical reason • public reason • rational action • Rawls • recognition. (shrink)

Semantic priming has been a focus of research in the cognitive sciences for more than 30 years and is commonly used as a tool for investigating other aspects of perception and cognition, such as word recognition, language comprehension, and knowledge representations. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition examines empirical and theoretical advancements in the understanding of semantic priming, providing a succinct, in-depth review of this important phenomenon, framed in terms of models of memory and models of (...) word recognition. The first section examines models of semantic priming, including spreading activation models, the verification model, compound-cue models, distributed network models, and multistage activation models (e.g. interactive-activation model). The second section examines issues and findings that have played an especially important role in testing models of priming and includes chapters on the following topics: methodological issues (e.g. counterbalancing of materials, choice of priming baselines); automatic vs. strategic priming; associative vs. "pure" semantic priming; mediated priming; long-term semantic priming; backward priming; unconscious priming; the prime-task effect; list context effects; effects of word frequency, stimulus quality, and stimulus repetition; and the cognitive neuroscience of semantic priming. The book closes with a summary and a discussion of promising new research directions. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses Axel Honneth's theory of recognition as a specific constellation, i.e. as a theoretical endeavour spanning over and interrelating positions in the fields of anthropology, social theory, and politics. As essential components in this constellation I discern an anthropology of recognition, a social philosophy of different forms of recognition, a morality of recognition, a theory of democratic ethical life as a social ideal, and a notion of political democracy as an ambitious reflexive (...) form of social cooperation. A tentative attempt is also made to elucidate the motivational history that underlies and animates Honneth's theoretical endeavour and accounts for its specific 'spirit'. (shrink)

This article suggests first that the concept of interpersonal recognition be understood in a multidimensional (as opposed to one-dimensional), practical (as opposed to symbolic), and strict (as opposed to broad) way. Second, it is argued that due recognition be seen as a reason-governed response to evaluative features, rather than all normativity and reasons being seen as generated by recognition. This can be called a response-model, or, more precisely, a value-based model of due recognition. A further suggestion (...) is that there is a systematic basis for distinguishing three dimensions of recognition, depending on whether recognition is given to someone qua a person, qua a certain kind of person, or qua a certain person. Finally, it is argued that recognition is a necessary condition of personhood, but whether it is of direct or indirect relevance depends on our theories of personhood (social vs. capacity-theory) and practical identity (dialogical definition model vs. feature-model). Despite the apparent opposition, it is shown that interpersonal recognition is both a response to value and a precondition of personhood. (shrink)

It is always great good fortune for an author to have his writings meet with a receptive circle of readers who take them up in their own work and clarify them further. Indeed, it may even be the secret of all theoretical productivity that one reaches an opportune point in one's own creative process when others' queries, suggestions, and criticisms give one no peace, until one has been forced to come up with new answers and solutions. The four essays collected (...) here, in any event, jointly represent an ideal form of such a challenge: I am now compelled to make further theoretical developments and clarifications that lead me to a whole new stage of my own endeavours, well beyond what I initially had in mind in The Struggle for Recognition . For this reason, I will not concentrate here on interpretative issues regarding my earlier work but will instead take up the problems and challenges that have occasioned several revisions on my part. For this reason, it makes sense to begin (in section I) with the points that Carl-Göran Heidegren makes, in terms of a history of social theory, regarding my proposed theory of recognition. The issues that still motivate me today can best be expressed via an engagement with the conscientious interpretations he offers. The core of this rejoinder is based on Heikki Ikäheimo's and Arto Laitinen's suggestions and corrections, which they have used to develop my initial approach further, to the point where the theoretical outlines of a precise and general concept of recognition come into view. It is primarily these two contributions that helped me develop a productive elaboration of my originally vague intuitions (section II). By way of conclusion (in section III), I take up the penetrating questions raised by Antti Kauppinen regarding the use of the concept of recognition in the broader context of social criticism; he has compelled me to take on several extremely helpful clarifications, and they give me the opportunity, in conclusion, to summarize my overarching intentions. (shrink)

This paper pursues two questions derived from psychoanalysis that are central to the theory of recognition: must the image or force of negativity classically derived from Freud necessarily be thought of as an elementary component of human beings equipped with drives? Or, can this image or force of negativity be conceptualised as an unavoidable result of the unfolding processes of internalised socialisation? The first question is pursued in a consideration of its legacy for the older representatives of the Frankfurt (...) School, whilst the second question is pursued for its contribution to the theory of recognition that places the force of negativity within the domain of the social and not in a theory of the drives. (shrink)

When can ever be justified in banning a religious practice? This paper focusses on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Certain religious practices create a clash between capabilities where the capability to religious belief and expression is in conflict with the capability of equal status and nondiscrimination. One example of such a clash is the case of polygamy. Nussbaum argues that there may be circumstances where polygamy may be acceptable. On the contrary, I argue that the capabilities approach cannot justify polygamy in (...) any circumstance. Her approach rules out polygamy, but may not rule out all non-monogamous relationships, such as polyamory. Finally, I conclude that the capabilities approach would benefit from a more robust understanding of recognition. (shrink)

It is not clear that "cultural recognition" should be a central goal of leftist politics. The idea that cultures have value simply by virtue of being cultures seems absurd, so it might be better to talk simply about eliminating prejudice and stigmatisation.

The origins of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition lie in his earlier project to correct the conceptual confusions and empirical shortcomings of historical materialism for the purpose of an adequate post-Habermasian critical social theory. Honneth proposed to accomplish this project, most strikingly, by reconnecting critical social theory with one of its repressed philosophical sources, namely anthropological materialism. In its mature shape, however, recognition theory operates on a narrow concept of interaction, which seems to lose sight of the material (...) mediations with which intersubjective relations are imbricated. The paper argues that a circumspect return to this twofold materialist heritage could substantively correct and enrich contemporary critical theory. The paper provides an illustration of this with the paradigmatic example of work. (shrink)

The field comprising both the theory and practice of struggles over recognition developed over the last 50 years in relative independence of the parallel field of deliberative and agonistic democracy. Over the last decade these two fields, in both theory and practice, have merged because courts, legislatures, ministries and rival armies around the world have often turned the reconciliation of struggles over recognition over to various institutions and practices of negotiation and deliberation. The result is the emergence of (...) a new hybrid field of recognition and dialogue. This paper is a critical examination of the emergence and the strengths and weaknesses of this new and important field of politics and law. (shrink)

Artists, art critics, art historians, and cognitive psychologists have asserted that visual artists perceive the world differently than nonartists and that these perceptual abilities are the product of knowledge of techniques for working in an artistic medium. In support of these claims, Kozbelt (2001) found that artists outperform nonartists in visual analysis tasks and that these perceptual advantages are statistically correlated with drawing skill. We propose a model to explain these results that is derived from a diagnostic framework for object (...) recognition and recent research in cognitive neuroscience on selective visual attention. This research demonstrates that endogenous shifts of visual attention enhance the encoding of expected features in the visual field and inhibit the perception of potential distracters. Moreover, it demonstrates complementary roles for spatial schemata and motor plans in visual attention. We argue that artists develop novel spatial schemata, which enable them to recognize and reproduce stimulus features sufficient for adequate artistic production in a medium, and that these schemata become encoded as motor plans as artists develop technical proficiency in a medium. We hypothesize that artists' perceptual advantages can therefore, be explained by the role spatial schemata and motor plans play in selective attention. (shrink)

This article provides a phenomenological analysis of the difference between self-recognition and recognition of another, while referring to some contemporary neuroscientific studies on the rubber hand illusion. It examines the difference between these two forms of recognition on the basis of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s work. It argues that both phenomenologies, despite their different views on inter-subjectivity, allow for the specificity of recognition of another. In explaining self-recognition, however, Husserl’s account seems less convincing. Research concerning the (...) rubber hand illusion has confirmed that self-recognition involves more than an immediate experience of oneself. Merleau-Ponty’s later work, describing self-recognition as the result of assimilative identification, will be used to explain the possibility of illusion between one’s “hereness” and “thereness”. The possibility of this illusion is inherent to self-recognition, while it is lacking in recognition of another. (shrink)

Reasons and Recognition brings together fourteen new papers on an array of topics from the many areas to which Scanlon has made path-breaking contributions, ...

Recognition plays a central role in international affairs and in moral and political theory. Hegel noted the connections between these two contexts, and this article explores Hegel's approach with reference to the work of two political philosophers (Honneth and Rawls) and debates in international law. The conclusion is that while recognition has a constitutive role in international affairs, it has a different role in moral and political theory: morality is the evaluative recognition of the significance of individual (...) autonomy. (shrink)

I begin with the assumption that a philosophically significant tension exists today in feminist philosophy of religion between those subjects who seek to become divine and those who seek their identity in mutual recognition. My critical engagement with the ambiguous assertions of Luce Irigaray seeks to demonstrate, on the one hand, that a woman needs to recognize her own identity but, on the other hand, that each subject whether male or female must struggle in relation to the other in (...) order to maintain realism about life and death. No one can avoid the recognition that we are each given life but each of us also dies. In addition, I raise a more general, philosophical problem for analytic philosophers who attempt to read Continental philosophy of religion: how should philosophers interpret deliberately ambiguous assertions? For example, what does Irigaray mean in asserting, 'Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign'? To find an answer, I turn to the distinctively French readings of the Hegelian struggle for recognition which have preoccupied Continental philosophers especially since the first half of the last century. I explore the struggle for mutual recognition between women and men who must face the reality of life and death in order to avoid the projection of their fear of mortality onto the other sex. This includes a critical look at Irigaray's account of subjectivity and divinity. I turn to the French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff in order to shift the focus from divinity to intersubjectivity. I conclude that taking seriously the struggle for mutual recognition between subjects forces contemporary philosophers of religion to be realist in their living and dying. With this in mind, the lesson from the Continent for philosophy of religion is that we must not stop yearning for recognition. Indeed, we must even risk our autonomy/divinity in seeking to recognize intersubjectivity. (shrink)

A considerable body of recent work in developmental psychology and animal behavior has addressed the cognitive processes required to recognize oneself in a mirror. Most models of such "mirrored self-recognition" (MSR) treat it as the result of inferential processes drawing on the subject’s possession of some sort of mature "self-awareness". The present chapter argues that such an approach to MSR is not obligatory, and suggests some empirical grounds for rejecting it. We also sketch the outlines of an alternative, "embodied" (...) theory of MSR, and propose a way to evaluate it using the tools of adaptive robotics. (shrink)

In the 1980s extra-parliamentary social movements and critical theories of race, class, and gender added a new sociocultural understanding of justice—recognition—to the much older socioeconomic one. The best-known form of the struggle for recognition is the identity politics of disadvantaged groups. I argue that there is still another option to conceptualize their predicament, neglected in recent political philosophy, which understands exclusion not in terms of injustice, more particularly a lack of sociocultural recognition, but in terms of a (...) lack of freedom. I draw my inspiration from Hannah Arendt's model of political action. Arendt diagnoses exclusion not solely as a mode of injustice, but as a lack of participation and public freedom. Consequently, she advocates a struggle for participation, political equality, and freedom as a strategy for emancipation or empowerment. Arendt could help feminists see that collective empowerment is made possible not by a shared identity (the target of poststructuralist critics) but by common action in the service of a particular worldly issue or common end. In other words, feminists would do well to appreciate the revolutionary quality and heritage of the feminist movement better, that is, its character as a set of practices of freedom. (shrink)

Normative political philosophy always refers to a standard against which a society's institutions are judged. In the first, analytical part of the article, the different possible forms of normative criticism are examined according to whether the standards it appeals to are external or internal to the society in question. In the tradition of Socrates and Hegel, it is argued that reconstructing the kind of norms that are implicit in practices enables a critique that does not force the critic's particular views (...) on the addressee and can also be motivationally effective. In the second part of the article, Axel Honneth's theory of recognition is examined as a form of such reconstructive internal critique . It is argued that while the implicit norms of recognition made explicit in Honneth's philosophical anthropology help explain progressive social struggles as moral ones, his theory faces two challenges in justifying internal critique. The Priority Challenge asks for the reasons why the implicit norms of recognition should be taken as the standard against which other implicit and explicit norms are to be judged. The Application Challenge asks why a social group should, by its own lights, extend equal recognition to all its members and even non-members. The kind of functional, prudential, conceptual, and moral considerations that could serve to answer these challenges are sketched. (shrink)

This paper examines the theme of recognition in Hegel's account of self-consciousness, suggesting that there are unresolved difficulties with the relationship between the normative sense of mutual recognition and phenomenological cases of unequal recognition. Recent readings of Hegel deal with this problem by positing an implicit distinction between an 'ontological' sense of recognition as a precondition for autonomous subjectivity, and a 'normative' sense of recognition as embodied in rational social and political institutions. Drawing on recent (...) work by Robert Pippin and Axel Honneth, I argue that Hegel's conception of rational freedom provides the key to grasping the relationship between the ontological and normative senses of recognition. Recognitive freedom provides a way of appropriating Hegel's theory of recognition for contemporary social philosophy. (shrink)

This article critiques recent UK transgender law reform. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 is to be welcomed in many respects. Formerly one of the European states most resistant to social change in this area, the UK now occupies pole position among progressive states willing to legally recognise the sex claims of transgender people. This is because the UK is, at least ostensibly, the first state to recognise sex claims irrespective of whether applicants have undertaken any surgical procedures or had (...) hormonal treatments. The article highlights the significance of this development through providing an overview of the trajectory of common law reform around the world. The legislation clearly benefits transgender people unable to undertake surgery due to financial reasons and/or medical contra-indications. It also benefits transgender people whose search for harmony does not require surgical intervention. However, the Act also perpetuates a mental illness model for understanding transgender desires; contributes to the break-up of legally recognised marriages; insists on the permanence of gender crossings and assumes that surgery will occur. The Act also contains exceptions to the generality of legal recognition provided by the state. In this respect the article considers concessions to religious and sporting lobbies. Finally, the article highlights how non-disclosure of gender history prior to a marriage assumes a kind of legal significance under the Act which non-disclosure of other facts generally lacks in relation to marriage. In this regard, the article will contend that a biological understanding of sex operates as a subtext within the Act. (shrink)

Introduction -- Recognition as identification -- recognizing oneself -- Mutal recognition -- Conclusion: A review.

Axel Honneth makes initial and promising steps towards what could be called a two-level account of recognition, according to which the normatively substantial forms of recognition represent various manners in which the primordial acquaintedness with others is expressed. It will be argued that Honneth's promising approach must be revised in regard to the issue of intentionality, which may be achieved by reference to earlier critical theorists such as Adorno and Arendt. With such a foundation, critical theory can enter (...) into new fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

This article presents a novel defense of Sartrean ethics based on the concept of interpersonal recognition. The immediate post-war texts Anti-Semite and Jew, What is Literature? and Notebooks for an Ethics express Sartre's inchoate yet ultimately defensible view of obligations to others. Such obligations are not best understood as Kantian duties, but rather as Hegelian obligations of mutual recognition. The emerging portrait of Sartrean ethics offers a strong reply to the classical criticism that authenticity would license vicious lifestyles (...) like serial killing. In addition to acting with clarity and responsibility, existentially authentic individuals must respect others. (shrink)

The paper applies insights from Axel Honneth's recent book, The Struggle for Recognition , to the South African situation. Honneth argues that most movements for justice are motivated by individuals' and groups' felt need for recognition. In the larger debate over the relative importance of recognition compared with distribution, a debate framed by Taylor and Fraser, Honneth is presented as the best of both worlds. His tripartite schema of recognition on the levels of love, rights (...) and solidarity, explains how concerns for equality and difference are two separate needs, even though both must be satisfied. Past and ongoing struggles in South Africa can be understood as struggles for recognition. The African Renaissance itself, to be successful, must address economic and recognition issues simultaneously. Key Words: African Renaissance • recognition • social movements. (shrink)

This chapter is an essay in a volume that examines constitutional law in the United States through the lens of H.L.A. Hart's "rule of recognition" model of a legal system. My chapter focuses on a feature of constitutional practice that has been rarely examined: how jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. Although a vast body of scholarship provides arguments for or against various interpretive methods -- such as textualism, originalism, "living constitutionalism," structure-and-relationship reasoning, representation reinforcement, minimalism, and so (...) forth -- very little scholarship shifts to the meta-level and asks: What are the considerations that jurists and scholars bring to bear in arguing that one or another interpretive method is legally favored? And can we "make sense" of this body of argument? Is there a model of legal discourse that both accurately describes how U.S. jurists and scholars actually argue about interpretive methods, and that vindicates this discourse (in the sense of seeing these actors as making valid arguments)? I find that Hart's rule-of-recognition model fails to describe or vindicate how U.S. jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Hart sees legal argument as asserting or presupposing the social fact of contemporary official acceptance of a rule of recognition. By contrast, jurists and scholars typically point to social facts other than contemporary official acceptance in arguing for the legal status of an interpretive method -- for example, the fact that the method is supported by Framers' intent, or by U.S. culture and tradition, or by precedent. Further, jurists and scholars very often argue that some interpretive method is legally favored even though the method is controversial. On Hart's model, such a claim is problematic -- because, on his model, the content of the rule of recognition is not controversial, but rather a matter of consensus among officials. The upshot may just be that Hart's model is a failure. However, another possibility is to adopt an "error theory" of U.S. constitutional discourse. It may perhaps be the case that U.S. jurists and scholars often make claims for the favorable legal status of some interpretive method that are inconsistent with the best understanding of the nature of law. (shrink)

Although Judith Butler regards recognition as the theme unifying her work, one finds a striking absence of dialogue between her and the authors of the normative theories of recognition — Honneth, Habermas, Ricoeur, etc. In the present article I seek to call into question this sentiment, shared by the two sides, of a radical theoretical heterogeneity. First I seek to show that the theory of performativity which Butler developed initially, contrary to all expectations, sets her relatively apart from (...) the tradition to which she conforms (the French reading of Hegel), and brings her closer to the proposition represented by the normative theories of recognition in general, and that of Honneth in particular. Then I highlight how the recent modulations in her theory, through the appearance of the idea of a constitutive vulnerability, which enables her to found an ethics, undermine for once and for all the claim of irreducibility maintained by each of the two theories in relation to the other. (shrink)

This paper pays special attention to T.H. Green's account of rights as developed in the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. Green's theory can be viewed as having at least two main levels. The first level is his general account of rights, emphasizing the notions of social recognition, of a power or capacity that each right-holder has, and of the common good subserved by proper rights. The second level is that of universal rights; here special attention will be (...) paid to Green's critique of seventeenth-century natural rights and to the theory of human rights that Green evolved to replace and improve upon the old natural rights tradition. In its account of contemporary human rights theory, the paperwill emphasize the special role that social recognition plays in both the moral project of justifying human rights and in the institutionalization that is a necessary feature of any fully constituted human right, functioning at full capacity. (shrink)

According to those that would label Fanon a theorist of recognition, anti-colonial struggles for liberation are struggles for recognition. I will argue, however, that Fanon's discussion of recognition in Black Skin, White Masks offers a critique of the struggle for recognition, understood as the struggle to impose oneself on the other in order to be recognized as who one truly is. Fanon is critical of the idea that the freedom of colonial subjects will be realized when (...) they are recognized by the colonizer. Indeed, the struggle to be recognized by the colonizer actually perpetuates the oppression of the colonized, insofar as this struggle is a struggle to be recognized within the terms of a discourse that is dictated largely by the colonizer. As Fanon demonstrates, the social categories within which subjects become socially visible beings nevertheless work in the service of subjection. Insofar as this is the case, the struggle to be recognized in socially intelligible terms will yield, at best, ambiguous results. Therefore, I argue that Fanon, unlike contemporary theorists of recognition, is skeptical of the liberatory potential of a struggle for recognition that is directed at securing recognition from the colonial "master." Furthermore, Fanon uses the instance of colonial racial misrecognition as the occasion to criticize the concept of recognition more broadly. (shrink)

Recent research has suggested that the Pirahã, an Amazonian tribe with a number-less language, are able to match quantities > 3 if the matching task does not require recall or spatial transposition. This finding contravenes previous work among the Pirahã. In this study, we re-tested the Pirahãs’ performance in the crucial one-to-one matching task utilized in the two previous studies on their numerical cognition, as well as in control tasks requiring recall and mental transposition. We also conducted a novel quantity (...) recognition task. Speakers were unable to consistently match quantities > 3, even when no recall or transposition was involved. We provide a plausible motivation for the disparate results previously obtained among the Pirahã. Our findings are consistent with the suggestion that the exact recognition of quantities > 3 requires number terminology. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarianism is commonly criticized for being insufficiently sensitive to status inequalities and the effects of misrecognition. I examine this criticism as it applies to Ronald Dworkin’s ‘equality of resources’ and argue that, in fact, liberal egalitarians possess the resources to deal effectively with recognition-type issues. More precisely, while conceding that the distributive principles required to realize equality of resources must apply against a particular institutional background, I point out, following Dworkin, that among the principles guiding this background is (...) a ‘principle of independence,’ and that this principle, properly interpreted, requires government to protect people against the disadvantageous effects of wrongful prejudicial discrimination. Moreover, I give an account of wrongful prejudice which is grounded in a particular interpretation of the abstract egalitarian principle Dworkin requires for a government to be legitimate and which goes a long way toward acknowledging status inequalities. Finally, I suggest other resources within the theory for responding to residual problems of recognition not addressed by the principle of independence. (shrink)

What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation? What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical social theory (...) to approach these and other questions? Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics, group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,1 others have attempted to develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of identity-deforming disrespect and denigration. (shrink)

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of (...) our semantic knowledge about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object (e.g., living things) cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory (HIT), we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of (1) lesions at different levels of processing and (2) different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object. Key Words: category-specific deficits; functional imaging; hierarchical models; interactive activation models; neuropsychology; object recognition; perceptual and functional knowledge. (shrink)

Generally we think it good to tolerate and to accord recognition. Yet both are complex phenomena and our teaching must acknowledge and cope with that complexity. We tolerate only what we object to, so our message to students cannot be simply, 'promote the good and prevent the bad'. Much advocacy of toleration is not what it pretends to be. Nor is it entirely clear what sort of conduct should count as intolerant. Sometimes people are at fault for tolerating what (...) they should not, or for tolerating what they should find unexceptionable. So virtue does not always lie with toleration. Tolerance can also seem condescending; should we therefore replace it with recognition? But recognition may not be able to coexist with the disapproval that makes toleration necessary. However, not everything about toleration and recognition is controversial; there are fixed points from which students can grapple with the issues presented by both. (shrink)

It has been argued that, in political theory and political practice, a concern with the distribution of economic opportunities and resources has recently been displaced by a preoccupation with the acknowledgement of cultural identities and differences. In their jointly authored book, Redistribution or Recognition?, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth present their very different reactions to this development. While Fraser argues that redistribution and recognition are two mutually irreducible elements of an account of social justice, Honneth contends that a (...) suitably differentiated account of recognition can provide the basis of a theory of justice on its own. This article critically assesses the relative merits of these two positions by focusing on their accounts of the nature of capitalism, the sort of social theories that are needed in light of these accounts, and the moral philosophies associated with these social theories. This assessment leads to a number of conclusions about the proper relationship between recognition and redistribution in a theory of social justice. (shrink)

This article makes several conceptual proposals for a closer analysis of recognition more or less in line with Axel Honneth's account of recognition: (1) a proposal as to the genus of recognitional attitude and recognition, (2) a sketch of an analytical scheme intended to be heuristically useful for analysing the different species of recognitional attitude and recognition, (3) some proposals as to the precise contents of self-conceptions involved in each species and subspecies of recognition, and (...) (4) suggestions as to the relation of the species of recognitional attitude to social settings and concrete personal relationships as well as to the totalities of attitudes instantiated in these settings and relationships. A guiding idea is that the somewhat mechanistic Meadian vocabulary of 'urges' and 'internalizations' of Honneth's original formulations should be replaced with formulations where recognition is consistently conceptualized as consisting of attitudes with propositional or judgmental content. (shrink)

This article examines Hegel's treatment of self-consciousness in light of the contemporary problem of the other. It argues that Hegel tries to subvert the Kantian opposition between theoretical and practical reason and tries to establish a form of idealism that can avoid solipsism. All of this requires that Hegel get beyond the Kantian concept of the object - or the other. Hegel attempts to establish an other that is not marginalized, dominated, or negated. What he gives us is a valuable (...) alternative to post modernism, which attempts instead to deconstruct or dissolve the other. Key Words: mastery • objectification • recognition • self-consciousness • solipsism. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper explicates and defends the thesis that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for justification, whether in cognition or in morals, is fundamentally socially and historically conditioned. This puts paid to the traditional distinction, still influential today, between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. The present analysis highlights and defends key themes from Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of rational judgment and justification, including four fundamental features of the ‘autonomy’ of rational judgment and one key point of Hegel’s account of (...) ‘mutual recognition’. These themes are linked to Kant’s and Hegel’s transformation of the modern natural law tradition. The results explain why Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophy are indeed the origins of the properly pragmatic account of rationality, why the pragmatic account of rationality provides genuine rational justification and why this pragmatic account of rational justification is consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about moral norms. > Russian translation (original version): Nelly Motroshilova, ed., К 200-летию выхода в свет «Феноменологии духа» Гегеля (Москва: Канон+, 2009) (200 Jahre der „Phänomenologie des Geistes“ von G. W. F. Hegel, Moscow: Kanon+, 2009), 195–219. > Turkish translation (excerpt): ‘Hegel’in Tinin Görüngübilimi’nde Karşihkh Onanma ve Ussal Gerekçelendirme’. MonoKL 4–5 (2008):212–231. (http://www.monokl.net/html/yenisayi.html). (shrink)

Recognition and toleration are ways of relating to the diversity characteristic of multicultural societies. The article concerns the possible meanings of toleration and recognition, and the conflict that is often claimed to exist between these two approaches to diversity. Different forms or interpretations of recognition and toleration are considered, confusing and problematic uses of the terms are noted, and the compatibility of toleration and recognition is discussed. The article argues that there is a range of legitimate (...) and importantly different conceptions of both toleration and recognition that are often not clearly distinguished, and that compatibility varies across this range and depending on what one considers the conceptions in relation to. (shrink)

There is an underlying idea of symmetry involved in most notions of rationality. From a dialogical philosophical standpoint, however, the symmetry implied by social contract theories and so-called Golden Rule thinking is anchored to a Cartesian subject–object world and is therefore not equipped to address recognition – at least not if recognition is to be understood as something happening between subjects. For this purpose, the dialogical symmetry implied by Habermas' communicative action does a much better job. Still, it (...) is insufficient to embrace those kinds of recognition that are dependent on asymmetry and concrete difference. This article explores how communicative action could meet the demand of recognition by investigating a complementary source of validity in communicative rationality, apart from Habermas' validity claims, in which ‘inter’ is better characterized as mutuality than as symmetry. By recognizing both sources of validity, communicative action can open the door more fully to all aspects of recognition without giving up its universal pragmatic core. Key Words: communicative action • communicative rationality • discourse ethics • Jürgen Habermas • Axel Honneth • recognition • universal pragmatics. (shrink)

Basing its understanding on the two uses of the notion of violence in Honneth’s theory of recognition, this paper aims at developing a framework for the analysis of the thesis of the moral justification of political violence, whenever forms of political violence can be defined as legitimate struggles of recognition. Its contention is that the requalification of some forms of collective violence as recognition conflicts makes it possible to establish a hierarchy of justification for forms of violence (...) which cannot be constructed through a priori criteria, but should rather be the result of a descriptive social philosophy enquiry. (shrink)

The importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many<br>years ago by Paul Grice. More recently, the rich debate on “theory of mind” has convinced many<br>that intention reading may in fact play a key role also in current, cognitively oriented theories of<br>pragmatics: Relevance Th eory is a case in point. On a close analysis, however, it is far from clear<br>that RT may really accommodate the idea that intention reading drives comprehension. Here<br>I examine RT’s diffi culties with that idea, (...) and propose a framework where intention reading is<br>actually assigned a signifi cant role. Th is framework is compatible with RT’s account of a unifi ed,<br>automatic mechanism of interpretation in lexical pragmatics, to the extent that the account<br>shares many features of associative and constraint-based explanations of other linguistic phenomena.<br>In fact, my suggestion is that our sensitivity to others’ intentions depends crucially on the<br>availability of specifi c patterns of intentional behaviour grounded in social regularities. In other<br>words, intention reading would be just a case, though a very special one, of pattern recognition. (shrink)

This paper deals with some issues underlying the role of education in the preparation of students for democratic participation. Throughout, I maintain two basic ideas: first, that a political action undertaken to obtain practical ends reflects a set of privately held values whose recognition is therefore essential to any idea of the political; second, that the continued viability of liberal democracy is dependent upon its openness to alteration through its recognition of private values. In order to bring these (...) ideas to light more clearly, I will develop my position in the form of a critique of some contemporary liberal theories of civic education, most notably Amy Gutmann's, as expressed in her influential work Democratic Education. Maintaining Gutmann's requirement of educational relativism, I intend to show how her emphasis on individual deliberation as a goal of education fits within a system of deliberative democracy, and that the two serve to minimize, on the individual level, the ability of individuals to seek recognition within the public sphere, and on the political level, the ability of democratic institutions to be renewed through participation. (shrink)

There is today a wide consensus that ‘recognition’ is something that we need a clear grasp of in order to understand the dynamics of political struggles, and, perhaps the constitution and dynamics of social reality more generally. Yet, the discussions on ‘recognition’ have so far often been conceptually rather inexplicit, in the sense that the very key concepts have remained largely unexplicated or undefined. Since the English word ‘recognition’ is far from unambiguous, it is possible, and to (...) our mind also actually the case, that different authors have meant partly different things with this word. In what follows, we will make a number of conceptual distinctions and clarificatory proposals that are meant to bring to sharper focus the field of phenomena that are being discussed under the catchword ‘recognition’. This is meant to serve a dual purpose: to suggest a number of distinctions which are of help in formulating rival views, and to propose what strikes us as the best overall position formulated in terms of those distinctions. (shrink)

A serious problem confronting discourses on recognition is that of showing equal respect for citizens? diverse cultural identities whilst at the same time attending to feminist concerns. This article focuses on the complex issues emerging from the recent legislation prohibiting the Muslim veil in French state schools. I respond to these problems by defending two conditions of a postcolonial and feminist approach to the politics of recognition. This approach should be, first, transformative, in the sense of widening its (...) conception of core values through an engagement with cultural difference. Second, it should be critical in its orientation to practices affecting women adversely within any social group. An integration of these concerns is proposed in terms of ?affective citizenship?. This approach supports the different components of women?s autonomous functioning, through a universalistic commitment to the creative expression of their hybrid identities. (shrink)

In an article in Utilitas Theo van Willigenburg has argued that moral valuation is distinguished from other forms of valuation by the Kantian concept of respect. He criticizes, from that standpoint, an account I put forward, which builds on the connections between moral wrongdoing, blame and withdrawal of recognition. I examine the difference between these two approaches and defend my own.

Understanding how look-ahead search and pattern recognition interact is one of the important research questions in the study of expert problem solving. This paper examines the implications of the template theory Gobet & Simon, 1996a , a recent theory of expert memory, on the theory of problem solving in chess. Templates are chunks Chase & Simon, 1973 that have evolved into more complex data structures and that possess slots allowing values to be encoded rapidly. Templates may facilitate search in (...) three ways: a by allowing information to be stored into LTM rapidly; b by allowing a search in the template space in addition to a search in the move space; and c by compensating loss in the minds eye due to interference and decay. A computer model implementing the main ideas of the theory is presented, and simulations of its search behaviour are discussed. The template theory accounts for the slight skill difference in average depth of search found in chess players, as well as for other empirical data. (shrink)

Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computational steps might be used, however, in simulation-style (...) emotion detection? Four alternative models are explored: a generate-and-test model, a reverse simulation model, a variant of the reverse simulation model that employs an “as if” loop, and an unmediated resonance model. (shrink)

Multiculturalist theories of recognition consist of explanatory-descriptive social theoretical accounts of the position of the minorities whose predicaments the theories seek to address, together with normative principles generating political implications. Although theories of recognition are often based on illiberal principles or couched in illiberal-sounding language, it is possible to combine proper liberal principles with the kind of social theoretical accounts of minority groups highlighted in multiculturalism. The importance of ‘the social bases of self-respect’ in Rawls’s political liberalism is (...) used to illustrate how a liberal theory of recognition might be constructed, and it is argued that such a theory can capture some, though not all, of the concerns of multiculturalism, even though the resulting ‘politics of recognition’ is neither a ‘politics of difference’ nor a kind of ‘identity politics’. (shrink)

Doubts about the enterprise of cultural recognition have helped to fuel a backlash against the politics of multiculturalism in Europe during the last decade. Such doubts are well-founded. Charles Taylor's seminal discussion of the politics of recognition neglects serious difficulties that arise for the activity of recognition when the objective and subjective dimensions of cultural identity diverge. Narratives of cultural ?passing? help to highlight these difficulties and demonstrate that recognition can sometimes contribute to identity-based oppression. However, (...) this conclusion does not commit us to a politics of cultural indifference or assimilation: the rejection of recognition does not entail the rejection of perception in general. Iris Murdoch's notion of ?attention? provides a corrective to our understanding of recognition and thereby supplies a potentially superior ethical and perceptual basis for European multiculturalism in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Modality specificity in priming is taken as evidence for independent perceptual systems. However, Easton, Greene, and Srinivas (1997) showed that visual and haptic cross-modal priming is comparable in magnitude to within-modal priming. Where appropriate, perceptual systems might share like information. To test this, we assessed priming and recognition for visual and auditory events, within- and across- modalities. On the visual test, auditory study resulted in no priming. On the auditory priming test, visual study resulted in priming that was only (...) marginally less than within-modal priming. The priming results show that visual study facilitates identification on both visual and auditory tests, but auditory study only facilitates performance on the auditory test. For both recognition tests, within-modal recognition exceeded cross-modal recognition. The results have two novel implications for the understanding of perceptual priming: First, we introduce visual and auditory priming for spatio-temporal events as a new priming paradigm chosen for its ecological validity and potential for information exchange. Second, we propose that the asymmetry of the cross-modal priming observed here may reflect the capacity of these perceptual modalities to provide cross-modal constraints on ambiguity. We argue that visual perception might inform and constrain auditory processing, while auditory perception corresponds to too many potential visual events to usefully inform and constrain visual perception. (shrink)

: Care work straddles the divide between activities performed out of love and those performed for pay. The tensions created for workers by this divide raise questions concerning connections between recognition and redistribution. Through an analysis of mobilization among childcare workers, we argue that care workers can address redistribution and recognition simultaneously through vocabularies of both skill and virtue. We conclude with a discussion of strategies to overcome the false dichotomy between recognition and redistribution.

Top-down feedback does not benefit speech recognition; on the contrary, it can hinder it. No experimental data imply that feedback loops are required for speech recognition. Feedback is accordingly unnecessary and spoken word recognition is modular. To defend this thesis, we analyse lexical involvement in phonemic decision making. TRACE (McClelland & Elman 1986), a model with feedback from the lexicon to prelexical processes, is unable to account for all the available data on phonemic decision making. The modular (...) Race model (Cutler & Norris 1979) is likewise challenged by some recent results, however. We therefore present a new modular model of phonemic decision making, the Merge model. In Merge, information flows from prelexical processes to the lexicon without feedback. Because phonemic decisions are based on the merging of prelexical and lexical information, Merge correctly predicts lexical involvement in phonemic decisions in both words and nonwords. Computer simulations show how Merge is able to account for the data through a process of competition between lexical hypotheses. We discuss the issue of feedback in other areas of language processing and conclude that modular models are particularly well suited to the problems and constraints of speech recognition. Key Words: computational modeling; feedback; lexical processing; modularity; phonemic decisions; reading; speech recognition; word recognition. (shrink)

Recognition is not only a response to social pathologies. It is also an unstable and often ambivalent relationship that has its own pathologies. Owing to the intertwining between recognition and power, certain forms of recognition turn out to be forms of alienation in or from the world. Such pathologies affect inter-individual recognition as well as the recognition between individuals and the socio-political institutions. The article proposes a joint reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy (...) of Right , which provide norms for identifying and dealing with these pathologies. The norm for inter-individual recognition is set out in the Phenomenology of Spirit , the norm for state/citizen recognition in the Philosophy of Right . The analysis envisages two other aspects of recognition: the interference of the ‘I–Me’ with the ‘I–You’ relationship and the incorporation of the ‘I–We’ into the ‘We–Us' dimension of recognition. As regards the interpretation of Hegel’s practical philosophy, the article analyses the link between Hegel’s concept of recognition and his theory of action. In this view, the highest form of recognition has more to do with reconciliation – reconciliation between human beings, reconciliation with the ‘finitude of action’ – than with the problematic of individual and collective identity. (shrink)