This volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and (...) purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. -/- List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood. (shrink)
In this chapter I discuss Charles Taylor's and Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative identity and narratives as a central form of self-interpretation.1 Both Taylor and Ricoeur think that self-identity is a matter of culturally and socially mediated self-definitions, which are practically relevant for one's orientation in life.2 First, I will go through various characterisations that Ricoeur gives of his theory, and try to show to what extent they also apply to Taylor's theory. Then, I will analyse more closely Charles Taylor's, (...) and in section three, Paul Ricoeur's views on narrative identity. (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 aim of this book is to provide an in-depth account of Hegel’s writings on human action as they relate to contemporary concerns in the hope that it will encourage fruitful dialogue between Hegel scholars and those working in the philosophy of action. During the past two decades, preliminary steps towards such a dialogue were taken, but many paths remain uncharted. The book thus serves as both a summative document of past interaction and a promissory note of things to come. (...) We begin this introduction with some general words regarding the philosophy of action before singling out reasons for exploring Hegel’s thought in relation to it. We next present a brief overview of studies conducted to this day, followed by a thematic appraisal of the contributions appearing in this volume. (shrink)
In this paper I argue that moral realism does not, pace Charles Taylor, need “moral sources” or “constitutive goods”, and adding these concepts distorts the basic insights of what can be called “cultural” moral realism.1 Yet the ideas of “moral topography” or “moral space” as well as the idea of “ontological background pictures” are valid, if separated from those notions. What does Taylor mean by these notions?
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)
This collection includes original papers on central philosophical questions concerning personhood. Before introducing the individual contributions, or the specific issues they tackle with, we would like to preliminarily clarify what this collection, as a whole, is about. Saying that the articles focus on personhood is not yet very informative since ‘person’ and ‘personhood’ are words with multiple and often quite unclear meanings. With these introductory remarks we wish to show that behind the multiplicity, there is a unified, even if complex (...) phenomenon, and that it is useful to grasp it synoptically as a whole. Consider the following question. What is the most important thing that you, me, and everyone like us, share and that distinguishes us from everything else? You and I are bound to be similar in many ways; but we are also bound to be different in many ways. Furthermore, you will most certainly consider some of our mutual similarities and differences more important than others, and so will I — and most certainly we will partly agree and partly disagree on what is more and what is less important in our similarities and differences. But is there any chance that we could agree upon a meaningful answer to the posed question: what is the most important thing that you, me, and everyone like us, have in common, and that distinguishes us from everything else? There are two prominent candidates for an answer upon which, initial scepticism settled, we might well end up agreeing on. The first candidate is that despite all our mutual differences, and abstracting from all of our less important similarities, we are humans. The second candidate is that despite all our mutual differences, and abstracting from all of our less important similarities, we are persons. (shrink)
What is the ethical basis for democracy? What reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? When can we justly ignore democratic decisions? These three questions are intimately connected: understanding what is ultimately important about democracy helps us to understand the authority of democratic decisions over our personal views, and the limits of such authority. Thomas Christiano’s ambitious new book, The Constitution of Equality, aims to provide such an understanding through a discussion (...) of all three questions. Briefly put, in Christiano’s view, public equality is the moral foundation of both democracy and liberal rights, and it serves to explain the authority of democracy as well as its limits. The book aims first of all to ground the principle of public equality in a number of principles related to the nature of personhood, dignity, well-being and formal considerations of justice, on the one hand, and in the need for publicity for social justice, on the other (Chaps. 1 and 2). The book then aims to show how both democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways that they can see are treating them as equals (Chaps. 3 and 4). The account clarifies the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life (Chap. 5). Finally, the book argues that democratic decisions have authority over personal views and that violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, and that the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy (Chaps. 6 and 7). I shall begin by addressing Christiano’s view on the basis of equality, and then shall focus mainly on the central argument for public equality, democracy and its.. (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)
This paper examines Charles Taylor’s claim that personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations. Strong evaluations are in this paper analyzed as stable preferences, which are strongly identified with and which are based on qualitative distinctions concerning the non-instrumental value of options. In discussing the role of strong evaluations in personal identity, the focus is on "self-identity", not on the criteria of personhood or on the logical relation of identity. Two senses of self-identity can be distinguished: identity as practical (...) orientation and identity as self-definition in a more encompassing sense. The former consists of one’s strong evaluations only, the latter is a more comprehensive notion, in which strong evaluations have a double role. Strong evaluations are first of all directly a constituent of self-definitions, and secondly, self-definition with respect to other features proceeds in the light of the strong evaluations. (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 analyti- cally 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 rele- vance, 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 paper I defend a ‘culturalist’ but nevertheless non-relativistic moral theory, taking Charles Taylor’s writings on this topic as my guide.1 Taylor is a realist concerning natural sciences, the ontology of persons and the ontology of goods (or meanings, significances or values). Yet, his realisms in these three areas differ significantly from one another, and therefore one has to be careful not to presuppose too rigid views of what realism must be like. Taylor’s moral realism can be called culturalist, (...) phenomenological, hermeneutical or even ‘expressivist’.2 According to culturalist moral realism, cognitivism is the correct view of our ordinary moral and evaluative reactions and responses to situations. In the realm of evaluative judgements, genuinely correct and incorrect (and better and worse) judgements are possible. These judgements can be implicit in our moral emotions and tacit agent’s knowledge, or more explicit in different articulations (section 1). What makes evaluative judgements correct are evaluative properties or ‘imports’ of the situation, and both the evaluative features of situations and our correct responses to them can be further understood in terms of a plurality of (conflicting and incommensurable) goods, ideals or values (section 2). The evaluative realm is not accessible from a disengaged perspective, but only from within an engaged, lifeworldly perspective. Evaluative properties are not merely a matter of subjective projection nor merely a matter of objective properties independent of valuers. Evaluative properties are relational, and neither the objective nor the subjective pole has priority (Section 3). The evaluative realm is in some sense dependent on social forms (concepts and practices), which are historically changing. Yet the validity of goods is (potentially) universal, goods that are valid in our culture would be valid in other cultures as well and vice versa. The correctness of evaluative judgements is not restricted by one’s own (or one’s culture’s) evaluations, framework or orientation (i.e.. (shrink)
HR/AL: Professor Taylor, what are you working on these days? CT: Well, several things. One of the things I am working on is something I was lecturing this fall at the New School University, and that I have called ‘modern social imaginaries’. It is an attempt to understand western modernity in terms of the different ways in which people imagine their social existence. These imaginaries are a condition for new kinds of practices that are characteristic of modernity. This research is (...) an internal part of a larger project to understand modern secular civilization, the modern west as a secular civilization. What does that notion exactly mean? What does it amount to? How did it happen? (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)
In the introduction to his Philosophical Papers 1&2 Charles Taylor assures us that his work, while encompassing a range of issues, follows a single, tightly knit agenda. He claims that the central questions concern "philosophical anthropology". Taylor's work on these questions has been presented piecemeal, in the form of articles and papers, and the student has had to imagine what a systematic monograph by Taylor on philosophical anthropology would look like. Neither Hegel, Sources of the Self, Ethics of Authenticity, Catholic (...) Modernity nor Varieties of Religion Today, nor Taylor's forthcoming books on secularization and modern social imaginaries are such treatises on the ontology of the human being. Nicholas H. Smith's monograph Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity (Polity, 2002) puts forward a clear and well-argued assessment of Taylor's entire project, with details on his intellectual biography and political engagement. For the purposes of thinking through Taylor's work so far, this book is probably the best one around. It is divided into eight chapters: "Linguistic Philosophy and Phenomenology", "Science, Action and the Mind", "The Romantic Legacy", "The Self and the Good", "Interpretation and the Social Sciences", "Individual and Community", "Politics and Social Criticism", and "Modernity, Art and Religion". The chapters are thematically ordered, but the order of presentation follows roughly the temporal order of Taylor's career. In this review article, I will begin with what Smith identifies as Taylor's organizing idea, and then focus on Smith's presentation of Taylor's transcendental argumentation concerning 'human constants'. As exemplars, I will discuss two of the.. (shrink)
This essay defends a three-dimensional response-model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three-dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response-model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation-specific reasons and requirements. This three-dimen- sional response-model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the (...) distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay discusses a number of questions related to how recognition of situation-specific reasons, and more general values and principles, is related to recognition of persons. The three- dimensional response-model of recognition of persons is in principle compatible with a constructivist view, which holds that the validity of values and principles is dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement. But even if one is a realist on that issue and thinks of validity as independent of acknowledgement, acknowledging relevant values, reasons and principles is a hugely important precondition of actual interpersonal recognition. The essay analyses these connections. (shrink)
This book focuses on the connections between two contemporary, intensively debated fields of inquiry: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung)i and analytical social ontologyii. The aim of the collection is to make philosophical progress by bringing together the substantially overlapping but in practice so far mostly isolated debates in these fields. If recognition has social ontological significance, as it seems to have, how does taking this seriously fit with the analyses put forward in contemporary social ontology (or, as it is sometimes (...) called by some of the main proponents, “philosophical social theory”, or “philosophy of society”, or “philosophy of sociality”)? Are there ways in which theories of recognition and the current understandings in analytical social ontology could enrich one another? How do leading theorists in these fields, as well as younger scholars familiar with both fields, see the connections? (shrink)
The Philosophy Now series promises to combine rigorous analysis with authoritative expositions. Ruth Abbey’s book lives up to this demand by being a clear, reliable and more than up-to-date introduction to Charles Taylor’s philosophy. Although it is an introductory book, the amount of footnotes and references ought to please those who want to study the original texts more closely. Abbey’s book is structured thematically: morality, selfhood, politics and epistemology get 50 pages each. The focus is on the internal coherence of (...) Taylor’s work, not in its critique of or defence against other positions. The chapters are self-containing, but together they give a good total picture of Taylor’s position. The concluding chapter is a highly interesting preview of Taylor’s unpublished work-in-progress on secularity, which according to Abbey is comparable in magnitude to Sources of the Self. (shrink)
This unique collection examines the connections between two complementary approaches to philosophical social theory: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung), and analytical social ontology.
Misrecognition from other individuals and social institutions is by its dynamic or ‘logic’ such that it can lead to distorted relations-to-self, such as self-hatred, and can truncate the development of the central capabilities of persons. Thus it is worth trying to shed light on how mis recognition differs from adequate recognition, and on how mis recognition might differ from other kinds of mistreatment and disregard. This paper suggests that mis recognition (including nonrecognition) is a matter of inadequate responsiveness to the (...) normatively relevant features of someone (their personhood, merits, needs etc.), and that if the kind of mistreatment in question obeys the general dynamic or ‘logic’ of mutual recognition and relations-to-self, then it may be called ‘misrecognition’. Further, this article considers the multiple connections between misrecognition and human fallibility. The capacity to get things wrong or make mistakes (that is, fallibility) is first of all a condition of misrecognition. Furthermore, there are two lessons that we can draw from fallibility. The first one points towards minimal objectivism: if something is to count as a mistake or incorrect response, there must accordingly exist a fact of the matter or a correct response. The other lesson points towards public equality: if our capacity to get things right on our own is limited, then public, shared norms will probably help. Such norms are easier to know and follow than objective normative truths, and they may contain collective cumulative wisdom; and of course the process of creating public norms embodies in itself an important form of mutual recognition between citizens. (shrink)
Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen (eds), Recognition and Social Ontology Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 134-137 Authors Sybol Cook Anderson, St. Mary's College of Maryland, USA Journal Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy & Social Theory Online ISSN 1568-5160 Print ISSN 1440-9917 Journal Volume Volume 13 Journal Issue Volume 13, Number 1 / 2012.
The paper that follows continues a discussion with Tomis Kapitan in the pages of this journal over the compatibility of divine agency with divine foreknowledge. I had earlier argued against two premises in Kapitan's case for omniscient impotence: (i) that intentionally A-ing presupposes prior acquisition of the intention to A, and (ii) that acquiring the intention to A presupposes prior ignorance whether one will A. In response to my criticisms, Kapitan has recently offered new defences for these two premises. I (...) show in reply why neither defence succeeds in rehabilitating the case against omniscient agency. (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 volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and (...) purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair Macintyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood. (shrink)
What is the point of asking yourself what to do and then thinking hard about it if all the thinking is settled in advance? What is the point of trying to figure out how to run your life if determinism governs your every reflection? Do we not have to suppose that determinism is false if we are to take our own deliberations seriously? The question has long been taken to bedevil the doctrine of determinism. It has been supposed that determinists (...) can have no good answer to it. Well, Professor Kapitan is one good philosopher who thinks otherwise. He takes things forward. His piece will repay your close attention. (shrink)
Corporations today have been engineered by CEOs and other business advocates to look increasingly green and responsible. However, alarming cases such as Enron, Parmalat and Worldcom bear witness that a belief in corporate goodness is still nothing other than naïve. Although many scholars seemingly recognize this, they still avoid touching on the most sensitive and problematic issues, the taboos. As a consequence, discussion of important though problematic topics is often stifled. The article identifies three ‘grand’ taboos of CSR discourse (...) and explicitly raises them for discussion. They are the taboos of amoral business, continuous economic growth, and the political nature of CSR. It is suggested that CSR can only be as advanced as its taboos. The critical potential of the field remains underdeveloped as a consequence of the taboos, and in many cases the CSR discourse merely produces alluring but empty rhetoric about sustainability and responsible business. (shrink)
My aim in this paper is to suggest that intentions are, as G. E. M. Anscombe puts it, not exclusively “private and interior” act-descriptions that agents alone determine. Rather, I argue that the true intention of an action is frequently constrained, and sometimes even determined, by the intersubjective and retrospective view of an action. I begin by offering an interpretation of Hegel’s account of intention in The Philosophy of Right—an interpretation that fits well with work by Charles Taylor and Michael (...) Quante, but not with a recent paper by Arto Laitinen. Next I offer examples that support the view—consistent with my reading of Hegel—that sometimes the intersubjective and retrospective account of an action trumps the agent’s prior subjective act-description. Finally, I suggest that the Hegelian view I sketch might be taken as a kind of externalism about intentions, on the order of externalism about epistemic justification. (shrink)
Research ethics is predominantly taught and practiced in Anglophone countries, particularly those in North America and Western Europe. Initiatives to build research ethics capacity in developing countries must attempt to avoid imposing foreign frameworks and engage with ethical issues in research that are locally relevant. This article describes the process and outcomes of a capacity-building workshop that took place in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2011. Although the workshop focused on a specific ethical theme – the (...) responsibilities of researchers to provide health-related care to their research participants – we argue that the structure of the workshop offers a useful method for engaging with research ethics in general, and the theme of ancillary care encourages a broad perspective on research ethics that is highly pertinent in low-income countries. The workshop follows an interactive, locally driven model that could be fruitfully replicated in similar settings. (shrink)
From "word-images' to "chapter-shots: The irnagiuist montage of Anatolij Mariengof. The article discusses the three dominant imaginist principles of Anatolij Mariengofs (1897-1962) poetic technique, as they are translated into prose in his first fictional novel Cynics (1928). These principles include the "catalogue of images", a genre introduced by Vadim Shershenevich, i.e. poetry formed of nouns, which Mariengof makes use of in his longer imaginist poems. Another dominant imaginist principle, to which Mariengof referred in his theoretic articles and poetic texts, is (...) similar to the creating of shocking images typical of Russian futurism. Mariengofs application is the juxtaposition of "pure" (chistyj) and "impure" (nechistyj), either a conflict between the vehicle and the object within a metaphor or a conflict between metaphors. This is an essential poetic feature in both Mariengofs poetry and prose. The third, maybe the most Mariengofian imaginist principle, relevant to the study of Cynics, is the poetics of transition (poetika sdviga), i.e. a certain fragmented structure of the text, which is related to Mariengors use of heteroaccentual rhyme. All these principles can be treated as fundamental elements in Mariengofs use of montage technique in his fictional prose. (shrink)
The article is devoted to the notion of autogenesis and mechanism of unpredictable emergence in culture. The notion is treated in the context of the semiotics ofculture and the theory of semiosphere. The examples are drawn mainly from Russian avant-garde culture.
The past 25 years have witnessed a vigorous discussion of an argument directed against the compatibilist approach to free will and responsibility. This reasoning, variously called the “consequence argument,” the “incompatibility argument,” and the “unavoidability argument,” may be expressed informally as follows: If determinism is true then whatever happens is a consequence of past events and laws over which we have no control and which we are unable to prevent. But whatever is a consequence of what’s beyond our control is (...) not itself under our control. Therefore, if determinism is true then nothing that happens is under our control, including our own actions and thoughts. Instead, everything we do and think, everything that happens to us and within us, is akin to the vibration of a piano string upon being struck, with the past as pianist, and could not be otherwise than it is. While a number of philosophers take this reasoning to crush the prospects of compatibilism, others challenge its assumption that unavoidability “transfers” from sufficient condition to necessary condition or from cause to effect. The ensuing debate has occasionally been vitriolic— Hume once remarked that the free will issue is “the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science”—yet undeniably fruitful in generating more detailed examinations of ability and practical freedom. Whether we incline towards compatibilism or 2 incompatibilism, this latter development is likely to be of lasting value. As a compatibilist, I believe that the consequence argument fails to prove incompatibilism, and here I will develop criticisms of it that, for the most part, are already in the existing literature. Although a short essay cannot provide the theoretical account of practical freedom needed to underpin and justify this compatibilist critique, it will clarify the tasks that lie ahead. (shrink)
Two claims have been prominent in recent discussion of self-consciousness. One is that first-person reference or first-person thinking is irreducible {Irreducibility Thesis), and the other is that awareness of self accompanies at least all those conscious states through which one refers to something. The latter {Ubiquity Thesis) has long been associated with philosophers like Fichte, Brentano and Sartre, but recently variants have been defended by D. Henrich and M. Frank. Facing criticism from three arguments which nevertheless cannot decisively refute the (...) Self-Ascription theory it turns out that Frank is correct to seek the grounds for the Ubiquity Thesis in indexical thinking and that his insights can be exploited in an alternative argument for the Ubiquity Thesis. (shrink)
My concern today is with the last of these questions. But, it is virtually impossible to say anything intelligent about this matter unless some effort is made to delineate the phenomenon under scrutiny. So I will begin by addressing the first question, and this requires that something be said about the semantics and pragmatics of the terms, ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’.
In recent years, compatibilism has been the target of two powerful challenges. According to the consequence argument, if everything we do and think is a consequence of factors beyond our control (past events and the laws of nature), and the consequences of what is beyond our control are themselves beyond our control, then no one has control over what they do or think and no one is responsible for anything. Hence, determinism rules out responsibility. A different challenge--here called the manipulation (...) argument--is that by allowing agents to be fully determined compatibilist accounts of practical freedom and responsibility are unable to preclude those who are subject to global manipulation from being free and responsible. (shrink)
By deliberation we understand practical reasoning with an end in view of choosing some course of action. Integral to it is the agent's sense of alternative possibilities, that is, of two or more courses of action he presumes are open for him to undertake or not. Such acts may not actually be open in the sense that the deliberator would do them were he to so intend, but it is evident that he assumes each to be so. One deliberates only (...) by taking it for granted that both performing and refraining from any of the acts under consideration are possible for one, and that which is to be selected is something entirely up to oneself. What is it for a course of action to be presumed as open, or for several courses of action to present themselves as a range of open alternatives? Answering these questions is essential for an understanding of deliberation and choice and, indeed, for the entire issue of free will and responsibility. According to one common view, a deliberator takes the considered options to be open only by assuming he is free to undertake any of them and, consequently, that whichever he does undertake is, as yet, a wholly undetermined matter. Built into the structure of deliberation, on this theory, is an indeterministic bias relative to which any deliberator with deterministic beliefs is either inconsistent or condemned to a fatalistic limbo. An unmistakable challenge is thereby posed: is there an alternative conception of the presuppositions underlying deliberation more congenial to a deterministic perspective yet adequate to the data? Convinced that there is, I develop a partial account of deliberation that, though highly similar to the aforementioned view, diverges at a critical juncture. (shrink)
It is said that faith in a divine agent is partly an attitude of trust; believers typically find assurance in the conception of a divine being's will, and cherish confidence in its capacity to implement its intentions and plans. Yet, there would be little point in trusting in the will of any being without assuming its ability to both act and know, and perhaps it is only by assuming divine omniscience that one can retain the confidence in the efficacy and (...) direction of divine agency that has long been the lure of certain religious traditions. (shrink)
It is widely agreed that the references of indexical expressions are fixed partly by their relations to contextual parameters such as the author, time, and place of the utterance. Because of this, indexicals are sometimes described as token-reflexive or utterance-reflexive in their semantics. But when we inquire into how indexicals help us to identify items within experience, we find that while utterance-reflexivity is essential to an interpretation of indexical tokens, it is not a factor in a speaker's identificatory use of (...) indexicals. Tokens cannot be interpreted unless they are first produced, and obviously the speaker who produces them does not depend upon utterance parameters in order to identify their referents in the way that hearers do. Consequently, the standard reflexive accounts of indexicals are of little use in explaining the speaker's identificatory use of indexicals, and must be either replaced or complemented by a further theory of the role of indexicals in thought. This paper provides an account of indexical identification that is attentive to a speaker's as well as a hearer's identification and reveals how indexicals are inextricably perspectival. (shrink)
Adrian. In the Apology, Socrates said that since death involves one of two alternatives, either nonexistence or transition to a better place, then it is not to be feared. Now I think he was absolutely wrong about this for the simple reason that non-existence is a frightful alternative. For those of us who love life, who want to continue living—and admittedly, that's most people in the world—the prospect of ceasing to exist is a cause of legitimate fear.
Essential to Peirce's distinction among three kinds of reasoning, deduction, induction and abduction, is the claim that each is correlated to a unique species of validity irreducible to that of the others. In particular, abductive validity cannot be analyzed in either deductive or inductive terms, a consequence of considerable importance for the logical and epistemological scrutiny of scientific methods. But when the full structure of abductive argumentation — as viewed by the mature Peirce — is clarified, every inferential step in (...) the process can be seen to dissolve into familiar forms of deductive and inductive reasoning. Specifically, the final stage is a special type of practical inference which, if correct, is deductively valid, while the creative phase, surprisingly, is not inferential at all. In neither is abduction a type of inference to the best explanation. The result is a major reassessment of the relevance of Peirce's views to contemporary methodological studies. (shrink)
The use of predicate and sentential operators to express the practical modalities -- ability, control, openness, etc. -- has given new life to a fatalistic argument against determinist theories of responsible agency. A familiar version employs the following principle: the consequences of what is unavoidable (beyond one's control) are themselves unavoidable. Accordingly, if determinism is true, whatever happens is the consequence of events in the remote past, or, of such events together with the laws of nature. But laws and the (...) remote past are not under our control and, by the principle, neither are their consequences. Therefore, none of our choices and actions, nor anything that results from them, is under our control.1 Whether refinements of the closure principle underlying this unavoidability argument are acceptable depends upon the precise sense of 'consequence' and 'unavoidable' involved. Roughly, a proposition P is a consequence of a set of propositions M iff it is impossible that P be false when each member of M is true, or, conversely, when M necessitates P. Since P is unavoidable for S when P is true and S is (was) unable to prevent P from being true, it might seem that if P is unavoidable the same should hold of what is necessitated by P. There is, in fact, 1 an easy defense of the principle which utilizes the incompatibilist condition that S is able to do action K only if it is as yet undetermined whether or not S will K. With it, there is no question but that one is unable to accomplish what is already determined by what one was unable to prevent. Of course, this reasoning is unlikely to impress the compatibilist who rejects the condition outright and, expectedly, it is not the procedure of the proponents of the unavoidability argument. The latter might rest content with appeals to intuition, but more significant are defenses of the closure principle and independent derivations of the unavoidability argument that rely upon distinct principles concerning the logic of the practical modalities, for example, closure of ability under entailment (Cross 1986, Brown 1988) or, claims about the "fixity of the past" and the "inescapability of laws" (Ginet 1990).. (shrink)
I will discuss the so-called “Master Argument” attributed to Diodorus Cronos in the light of some contemporary speculations on indexicals. In one version, this argument goes as follows: Premise 1. The past, relative to any time t, is necessary. Premise 2. The impossible cannot follow from the possible. Therefore.
Disputes over territory are among the most contentious in human affairs. Throughout the world, societies view control over land and resources as necessary to ensure their survival and to further their particular life-style, and the very passion with which claims over a region are asserted and defended suggests that difficult normative issues lurk nearby. Questions about rights to territory vary. It is one thing to ask who owns a particular parcel of land, another who has the right to reside within (...) its boundaries and yet another to determine which individuals or groups have political rights of citizenship, sovereignty, and self-determination within it. It must also be asked how these rights—if ‘rights’ is the correct term—are acquired. When attention turns to the territorial rights of communities, national groups or states, sovereignty is the principal concern. Within international law, de facto power over a territory, say, of occupying forces or trustees, is insufficient to possess or acquire sovereignty (Brownlie, 1990, p. 111). The central conceptions underlying modern democratic thought are that sovereignty over a politically demarcated territory is vested in the resident population, and that governmental authority is derived from the consent of that population. It is simple enough to identify the latter with the citizenry of a state, but demographic and political flux makes this a loose criterion. States come and go, and sometimes a territory is stateless. Also, large-scale demographic shifts during upheavals and peacetime immigrations change the assessments of who belongs where. Does everyone residing in a place at a particular time have a right to share in its governance then? What about illegal immigrants? Presumably, sovereignty rests with the established population or.. (shrink)
Discussions of free will have frequently centered on principles concerning ability, control, unavoidability and other practical modalities. Some assert the closure of the latter over various propositional operations and relations, for example, that the consequences of what is beyond one's control are themselves beyond one's control.1 This principle has been featured in the unavoidability argument for incompatibilism: if everything we do is determined by factors which are not under our control, then, by the principle, we are unable to act and (...) choose other than we actually did. A second family of principles concerns the fixity of the past and the laws of nature. If no one is able to alter the past or violate the laws it seems but a small step to conclude that no one can do anything such that if they did it then the past would be altered or the laws violated. Accordingly, if an agent's performing an act is necessitated by the past and laws, then the agent is unable to refrain from that act at that time. Generalizing, determinism precludes anyone from doing anything other than what he or she did.2. (shrink)
Everyday reasoning is replete with arguments which, though not logically valid, nonetheless harbor a measure of credibility in their own right. Here the claim that such arguments force us to acknowledge material validity, in addition to logical validity, is advanced, and criteria that attempt to unpack this concept are examined in detail. Of special concern is the effort to model these criteria on explications of logical validity that rely on notions of substitutivity and logical form. It is argued, however, that (...) such a parallel is not easily located and that it is uncertain that a construal of material validity can be fashioned after traditional accounts of logical validity. Attention is also given to the topics of enthymemes and to the proper domain of logic. (shrink)
Any intelligent discussion of terrorism must demarcate its subject matter, for the term ‘terrorism’ is differently understood and where there is no accord on its meaning there is little chance for agreement on its application or normative status. The best course is to sketch a morally neutral definition that classifies as ‘terrorist’ as many widely-agreed upon cases as possible. Definitions that explicitly render terrorism illegitimate make classification contentious, and it is more informative to base moral assessment on an examination of (...) the case rather than through apriori stipulation. Most writers on the topic agree that terrorism is (i) a deliberate use or threat of violence, (ii) politically-motivated, and (iii) directed against non-military personnel, that is, against civilians or noncombatants. Taking these as the only essential features of terrorism, the simplest and more accurate reportive definition is this: Terrorism is deliberate, politically-motivated violence, or the threat of such, directed against civilians.1 By contrast, Ted Honderich describes terrorism as small-scale violence, driven by a political aim, that violates national or international law and is prima facie morally wrong. He thereby counts a good deal of resistance activity and guerilla warfare as terrorist, even when directed against military personnel, while excluding the large-scale military actions of governments. Of course, he may define the word as he chooses, but given its common.. (shrink)
According to Hector-Neri Castañeda, indexical reference is our most basic means of identifying the objects and events we experience and think about. Its tokens reveal our own part in the process by denoting what are "referred to as items present in experience" (Castañeda 1981, 285-6). If you hear me say, "Take that box over there and set it next to this box here," you learn something about my orientation towards the referents in a way that is not conveyed by, "Take (...) the red box and set it next to the blue box." My indexical tokens express what they do not only because they issue from a unique spatio-temporal perspective that I happen to occupy, but also because they reflect my encounter with referents that are differently situated in that perspective. From your perspective, my here might be your there, my you your she, and within my own, a this differs from a that and one this diverges from another. Encounter and orientation within a perspective are the essential ingredients in indexical identification without which particular 'this's, 'that's, 'then's, 'here's, and 'beyond's would be denuded of individuating powess.1 There are several consequences of this description. First, indexical reference is ephemeral because perspective is constantly changing, rendering the indexical status of an entity relative to a given perspective temporary: 1 A this quickly turns into a that, and soon enough it is lost to experience and is not even a remote that; a you goes away and is replaced by another . . . Nothing is really an enduring you -- except God perhaps for the abiding mystic. (Castañeda 1989a, 69) Second, indexical reference is irreducible since non-indexical mechanisms of reference fail to express the subject's involvement or encounter with the referents that indexicals convey. Nor can the various indexicals be reduced to each other.2 Third, because each perspective is unique, indexical reference is essentially subjective.. (shrink)
John Searle describes our sense of freedom as an experience of a “gap” between an intentional action and its psychological antecedents, specifically, our reasons.. Since the gap is itself understood as a lack of causation, then no agent can accept the antecedent determination of voluntary action except at the price of “practical inconsistency.” I argue that despite Searle’s insightful discussion, the sense of freedom is not an experience of a gap as he describes it but, instead, is a higher-order attitude (...) concerning one’s limited grasp of causes. As a result, a determinist can engage in voluntary action without falling into inconsistency. (shrink)
I have argued that since (i) intentional agency requires intention-acquisition, (ii) intentionacquisition implies a sense of an open future, and (iii) a sense of an open future is incompatible with complete foreknowledge, then (iv) no agent can be omniscient. Alternatively, an omniscient being is omniimpotent.i David Hunt continues to oppose this reasoning, most recently, in Religious Studies 32 (March 1996). It is increasingly clear that the debate turns on larger issues concerning necessity and knowledge, but let me here offer a (...) few comments in defense of my position. (shrink)
Indexicals are inevitably autobiographical, even when we are not talking about ourselves. For example, if you hear me say, "That portrait right there is beautiful," you can surmise not only that I ascribe beauty to an object of my immediate awareness but also something about my spatial relation to it. Again, if I praise you directly within earshot of others by using the words, "You did that very well!," my concern need not be to cause them to think the exact (...) thought I have; they might not be in a position to address you as you and I might not care what they think of your performance. My purpose is to get them to ascribe to me an attitude that I express with a second-person indexical, to convince them that I am an encouraging and supportive person inasmuch as I addressed someone with words of praise. Indexicals are autobiographical not only because they issue from a speaker--all utterances do--but because they reveal something about the speaker's orientation toward and encounter with objects in a way that non-indexical language fails to do. For this reason, care must be taken in reporting indexically-expressed thoughts. Suppose the Chair of my Department informs me, (1)I am upset about the Dean's report. I cannot relate what he said by reiterating his words within indirect discourse, viz., (2)The Chair said that I am upset about the Dean's report. Because 'I' expresses speaker's reference, my assertion of (2) would cause a hearer to misconstrue who is said to be upset.i Alternatively, the sentence, (3)The Chair said that the Chair is upset about the Dean's report. (shrink)
The role of reason, and its embodiment in philosophical-scientific theorizing, is always a troubling one for religious traditions. The deep emotional needs that religion strives to satisfy seem ever linked to an attitudes of acceptance, belief, or trust, yet, in its theoretical employment, reason functions as a critic as much as it does a creator, and in the special fields of metaphysics and epistemology its critical arrows are sometimes aimed at long-standing cherished beliefs. Understandably, the mere approach to these beliefs (...) through organized philosophical activity, however well-intended, is viewed with suspicion by ecclesiastical authorities and the devout. The attitude towards philosophical inquiry on the part of the Islamic religious community might be thought to typify this reaction. As one of the great prophetic religions, the self-avowed image of Islam is of a tradition which already possesses the truth as set forth in the divine revelation of the Qur'an. What need is there for philosophizing on fundamental matters, e.g., the ultimate nature of reality, the foundations of morality, the modes whereby the divine is connected with the temporal? The structure of creation is already made clear, the "straight path" for living already manifest. how can philosophical activity be anything but a source of divisive controversy, for as it turns its gaze to the foundations upon which the Shari`a' (Islamic Law) rests, or to the grounds for religious belief itself, it cannot avoid turning up alternative viewpoints, different perspectives on divine revelation, noting various weaknesses in received 1 interpretations? In short, isn't the practice of philosophy a threat to Islam's promise of providing a comprehensive way of living devoid of skepticism and uncertainty about the place of a human in God's creation and his or her role in the 'umma (Islamic community)? This problem is not unique to Islam, nor is it a new one within Islam. We know that it has been debated by Islamic thinkers since the translations of the Greek philosophers began to appear in an organized Islamic world during the 8th Century A.. (shrink)
In 'You and She*' (ANALYSIS 51.3, June 1991) C.J.F. Williams notes the importance of reflexive pronouns in attributions of propositional attitudes, and claims to improve upon an earlier account of Hector-Neri Castaneda's in [1]. However, to the extent which his remarks are accurate, they reveal nothing that Castaneda hasn't already said, while insofar as they are new, they obliterate distinctions vital to Castaneda's theory. Castaneda called these pronouns quasi-indicators and noted that they function as linguistic devices used for attributing indexical (...) reference to others. For example, in hearing Arthur say 'I am wise' we would report his claim in English with, (1) Arthur thinks that he himself is wise. where 'he himself' is a quasi-indicator used to attribute to Arthur reference to himself qua self -- an expression that Castaneda abbreviated with 'he*.' Note that (1) is quite different from, (2) Arthur thinks that I am wise for 'I', functioning here as an indexical term, represents only the speaker's reference. Nor can (1) be identified with, (3) Arthur thinks that Arthur is wise. for this fails to represent the indexical character of Arthur's thought. Thus, (3) falls short of the informational content of (1). Moreover, as Williams, echoing Castaneda, points out, Arthur might not know that he himself is Arthur, or that he is named 'Arthur.' Hence, (3) might be false even if (1) is true. Williams observes that 'she' can also be used in oratio obliqua to report an indexical 1 usage, e.g., in (4) Arthur told Mary that she ought to talk to Shirley Makepeace's.. (shrink)
Let’s say that you are omniprescient iff you always believe—occurrently and with maximal confidence—all and only truths, including ones about the future. Several philosophers have argued that an omniprescient being couldn’t engage in certain kinds of activity.[1] In what follows, I present and assess the most promising such argument I know of—what I’ll call the Serious Deliberation Argument (SDA). It concludes that omniprescience rules out serious deliberation—i.e., trying to choose between incompatible courses of action once you know that none is (...) conclusively favored by your reasons.[2] The SDA—which (I’ll argue) should disturb many traditional theists—derives from an argument due to Tomis Kapitan[3]; and my favored objection to the SDA—roughly: that it fails because dependent on the alleged incompatibility of omniprescience and freedom—superficially resembles a reply to Kapitan’s argument due to David Hunt.[4] Along the way, then, I’ll briefly discuss Kapitan’s argument, and Hunt’s reply, to show how they differ from the SDA and my favored objection to it. I begin by presenting the Serious Deliberation Argument. (shrink)
In "Omniprescient Agency" (Religious Studies 28, 1992) David P. Hunt challenges an argument against the possibility of an omniscient agent. The argument—my own in "Agency and Omniscience" (Religious Studies 27, 1991)—assumes that an agent is a being capable of intentional action, where, minimally, an action is intentional only if it is caused, in part, by the agent's intending. The latter, I claimed, is governed by a psychological principle of "least effort," viz., that no one intends without antecedently feeling that (i) (...) deliberate effort is needed to achieve desired goals, (ii) such effort has a chance of success, and (iii) it is yet contingent whether the effort will be expended and the goals realized. The goals can be anything from immediate intentional doings, tryings or basic actions, to remote and perhaps unlikely consequences of actions, e.g., global justice. The thrust of the principle is that it would be impossible for a wholly rational self-aware agent to intend without a background presumption of an open future as concerns the desired state and the means to it. But this presumption embodies a sense of contingency which, in turn, requires an acknowledged ignorance about what the future holds, otherwise the future would appear closed relative to present knowledge with the desired state presented as either guaranteed (necessary) or ruled out (impossible). Regardless whether this self-directed attitude is accurate, it follows that intentional action precludes complete knowledge of one's present and future. Consequently, no omniscient or omniprescient being can be an agent. (shrink)
My topic today is Europe’s responsibility for the creation and resolution the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most bitter and explosive political struggles in the world today. In the past 60 years, it has consumed thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and endless hours of debate. It is not localized; it is at the heart of on-going tensions between the West and the Islamic world, and it is directly related to the current American aggression in southern Asia. The fate of (...) international relations during the 21st century depends on its resolution as, arguably, it is single greatest threat to world peace. The situation is made even more serious by the fact that there are no immediate prospects of a resolution of this conflict, a fact that should cause anyone concerned about justice, peace, and international stability to give serious thought about what ought to be done. This requires an effort to understand the historical roots of the dispute. The neglect of history, an ignorance of past causes of present conflicts, grievances, passions, and trends, is dangerous for any country, especially for a democracy where citizens need reliable information if they are to make wise decisions, and most crucially, for a democracy that is, or aspires to be, a superpower. (shrink)
Let me begin with definition. Many observers have pointed out that despite the fact that for over three decades, “terrorism” has been deemed a threat to the civilized world, to democratic values, or to “our way of life,” and despite the fact that our country is now engaged in a “war on terror,” there is no universally agreed upon definition of terrorism—not even the various agencies within the U.S. Government are agreed—and, hence, there is no clarity about what we are (...) warring against. (shrink)
The use of single letters in displaying patterns, functions, generalizations, and unknowns, dominates mathematical expression, and for that reason, appears in every domain of theoretical and technical discourse employing even the slightest bit of mathematical language. These variables, as they have come to be called, are the very mark of abstract power and precision, ingenious tools for expressing functionality and valid formulae and, thereby, for providing solutions to types of problems as well as facilitating the calculation of unknowns. Compare, for (...) example, the ease with which we grasp and work with the formula. (shrink)
To experience is to undergo a process, to be in a state of receiving input which affords information about our environment. For highly developed beings like ourselves, the inputs determining states of conscious sensory perception are among the most important for our survival. At first glance, these states seem relational, each being a situation wherein a percipient X is passively conscious of something Y--its object, subject-matter, or content--without any apparent effort. Of course, the briefest reflection convinces us that despite a (...) seemingly passive reception of data from without, a good deal of interpretation goes into the making of perceptual judgments, as evidenced by their wide variance in the face of like sensory stimulation. One person looking at the slope of a mountain notices a patch of whitish stones; another sees a flock of sheep grazing. They are distinguished by their different reactions to similar input, whether or not these are best construed as inferences, interpretations, or, simply, differing degrees of attentiveness. (shrink)
As practical beings, we act with a sense of freedom, or, to use Kant’s memorable phrase, “unter der Idee der Freiheit.” This attitude is present whenever we are deciding what to do, and it is most clearly revealed when we reflect on what we take for granted while deliberating. Consider a young man, Imad, who lives under an oppressive military occupation and deliberates about whether to join the resistance, leave the country, or continue quietly in his studies hoping that the (...) occupation will be eliminated through the efforts of others. Taking any of these alternatives is likely to have momentous consequences upon his physical safety, his self-esteem, and realization of his goals. Yet, he can no longer tolerate his indecision and feels that he must commit himself somehow. One thing is apparent; Imad faces alternative courses of action, each of which he regards as open for him to undertake at the time. Were he to come to believe of any of the alternatives that it is no longer a genuine option, he would cease deliberating about whether to take it. An agent’s “sense” or “awareness” of personal freedom is nothing more than a presumption of open alternatives made explicit in reflection. But what exactly is its content? What does one accept in presuming a course of action to be “open”? To fix.. (shrink)
Any intelligent discussion of terrorism must have some way of identifying the phenomenon under scrutiny. Only then is it possible to devise criteria for describing a given action, agent, or organization as ‘terrorist’, to investigate the causes and objectives of terrorism, and to set parameters for a legitimate response to what some regard as a fundamental challenge to world peace. Scholars have long recognized these points, but the same is not true of more prominent forces shaping contemporary Western perceptions. In (...) the United States, the mainstream media (newspapers, television, cinema), the independent “think tanks,” and the main sectors of the Government, have sponsored a public discourse about terrorism devoid of any serious inquiry into, or concern about, the nature, origins, and goals of terrorist actions. The rhetoric, with which they assail popular consciousness, deflects attention away from a critical examination of these issues, and thereby contributes to the increasing spiral of hatred and atrocity. This happens because the use of ‘terror’ and its cognates obscures the causes of political unrest and, consequently, impedes the development of rational policies for dealing with underlying grievances. The rhetoric of ‘terror’ is not always innocent; there are those who employ it deliberately in pursuit of specific political objectives. This is especially true in the popular discourse about political tensions in the Middle East, particularly, concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The result has been disastrous, not only for the lives and well-being of individual Palestinians and 1 Israelis, but increasingly, for the entire world. Unless we diminish the use of emotive language in describing the circumstances, actions, and tendencies constituting this and similar such conflicts, we risk multiplying the amount of terrorist violence in the world and moving even further from just and peaceful resolutions of pressing political problems.. (shrink)
A familiar means of enhancing the descriptive power of attitudinal reports is the distinction between de re and de dicto readings of ascriptions or, alternatively, between internal and external occurrences of terms and phrases used in ascribing attitudes.i While there is little agreement about the philosophical significance or viability of these contrasts, supporters of cognitive theories of content -- those which take the that-clause of an ascription to express something to which the subject bears a psychological relation, viz., what he (...) or she believes, doubts, wishes for, etc. -- invoke the de re mode whenever the ascriber does not claim to represent the subject's exact content, though, for descriptive or explanatory purposes, finds a partial specification appropriate.ii The strategy is particularly useful for understanding ascriptions containing indexicals. For example, if I overhear Andrea praising my insights, strategies, and calculations, I might report her thoughts as follows: (1) Andrea thinks that I am clever. This ascription is misleading if taken to convey Andrea's exact content; the occurrence of 'I' expresses my thought of myself, not hers. Since she does not think of me in a first-person way, (1) cannot be understood as reporting her disposition to assent to the sentence 'I am clever,' nor to affirm the proposition that I am clever, regardless if the I in question is herself or myself. On certain views of indexical content, I might be unable to specify exactly the proposition she does accept, but I can at least allude to what she has in mind by exporting the pronoun as in, (2) I am someone whom Andrea believes to be clever. or, to retain an overt that-clause, (3) There is someone x who is identical to me and Andrea believes.. (shrink)
After the 1970 civil war in Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) moved its operations to Lebanon, recruiting fighters from Palestinian refugee camps. Its presence altered the balance of power among Lebanon's sects, and in 1975 the PLO was drawn into a civil war with its Lebanese allies against the Maronite community whose military strength was centered in the Phalangist militia. PLO advances against the Phalangists led to Syrian intervention in 1976 to restore the status quo.
Preface The conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has endured for a century. It centers on control of territory and, as common in such disputes, is characterized by conquest, destruction, and revenge, with all the animosity and sorrow that these actions bring. Because the land in question is terra sancta to three major religions, the conflict evokes powerful passions involving identity, honor, and the propriety of cultural claims. That its disputants employ sophisticated arguments and armaments, that they are willing (...) to combat not only each other but rival voices within their own ranks, and that decades of international diplomacy have failed to produce a satisfactory solution, render it "one of the most difficult political problems of our time, perhaps the most difficult of them all" (Martin Buber). Marked by a series of surprising achievements, deceptions and atrocities in which each side has underestimated the tenacity and resourcefulness of the other, it guarantees fascinating study. (shrink)
Philip E. Devine has presented insightful proposals for defining religion in his essay “On the Definition of Religion” (Faith and Philosophy, July 1986). But despite his illuminating discussion, particularly the treatment of borderline cases, his account fails to distinguish religion as a process or goal-oriented activity from religion as a body of doctrine, and is mistaken (or perhaps unclear) in its proposal that religion per se is committed to the existence of superhuman agents. These deficiencies are exposed herein, and a (...) sketch of an alternative view of religion, inspired by the views of both William James and Josiah Royce, is set forth. (shrink)
Towards the end of the first world war, a “principle of self-determination” was proposed as a foundation for international order. In the words of its chief advocate, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, it specified that the “settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship” is to be made “upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage (...) of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for sake of its own exterior influence or mastery” (Wilson 1927, 233). The principle played a significant role in deliberations about lands newly liberated by the first world war, and, in the aftermath of the second, it was enshrined within Article 1 of the United Nations Charter which called upon member nations “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Its status within international law was further heightened by the 1966 Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, whose first articles specify the following: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.” In 1970, General Assembly Resolution 2625 added that, “every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provision of the Charter.”. (shrink)
Terrorism, as a form of politically motivated violence, is as ancient as organized warfare itself, emerging as soon as one society, pitted against another in the quest for land, resources, or domination, was moved by a desire for vengeance or found advantages in military operations against noncombatants or other ‘soft’ targets. It is sanctioned and glorified in holy scriptures and has been part of the genesis of states and the expansion of empires from the inception of recorded history. The United (...) States itself emerged through the systematic ethnic cleansing of native Americans, a nearly 300-year campaign that featured the destruction of homes and crops, the theft of land, forced expulsions, massacres, and tears.1 While terrorist violence has been employed by both sides in the conflict over Palestine for over 80 years, the prevalence of the rhetoric of ‘terror’ to describe Arab violence against Israeli and Western targets is a more recent phenomenon. For more than three decades, this rhetoric has fostered the popular perception that Arab terrorism is the central problem in the Middle East crisis, and that once solved, progress can be made on other issues. Nothing could be more illusory. The Western obsession with Arab terrorism not only overlooks the fact that terrorist activity between Arabs and Jews has been reciprocal, but, more generally, that attempts to remove an effect without touching its causes are utterly futile. Terrorism between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is the product of deep divisions, entrenched strategies, and fundamental grievances and will not disappear so long as both sides cling to their present political ambitions and convictions. No informed discussion of its normative status can ignore its historical and political context. At.. (shrink)
