Why do we say that something is unspeakable, even though we know the issue well? We find in many cultural contexts the classification of something as ‘unspeakable'. Using semantics and semiotic theory separating between ‘concept', ‘sign', and ‘reference object of the sign' in several cases where the ‘unspeakable' is described, we will discuss the functions of ‘the unspeakable‘ as a cultural phenomenon. Philosophers use the term frequently with reference to their culture. In our article we will look at the socio-cultural (...) conditions of the concept of ‘the unspeakable'. While it seems that this concept is universal, functions and meanings of this concept vary depending on the cultural settings. We will examine in this article the functions of this concept comparing the use of it in different cultures with religious and mythological impact expressed in this concept. Furthermore, we will look at the linguistic settings that allow us a construction like ‘the unspeakable' to be used as a representation for something not spoken in speech, but existing in another cultural or transcendental sphere. We will show that the expression serves as a semiotic replacement for issues that could be articulated, but due to cultural limits like religion or myths as act of cultural censorship should not be articulated in speech. (shrink)

This article presents a model and a case study of the narrative structures that are present in the interactive media design of multimedia applications in the mass media. As basic categories for the history and structure of media, we employ the model of the modes of the physical, analog, and digital presentation/representation. In this case study of the online edition of the New York Times, we have the case of a newspaper that in the digital edition employs multi-media applications. Contrasting (...) the traditional concept of “narrativity” with the current status quo of the digital media outlets, we will examine the specific conditions of the multimedia applications in the mass media with this sample case of the New York Times. As narrative structure of interactive design in multimedia for mass communication, we analyze the types of narrative media and general narrativity in the New York Times with the background of its processes of interactivity and media convergence. (shrink)

Peirce's Law of Triviality: The Implementation of the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. Basic Categories for Linguistics and Literature Studies from a Universal Semiotic Theory This article focuses on the aspects that refer to linguistics in the works of Charles S. Peirce. His pragmatic philosophy implemented many other sciences and among them is the traditional trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, which Peirce divided into different kinds of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While the impact of the work of Peirce (...) on theses sciences is weak, the integration of the sciences in his philosophy is interesting as a step in the history of science and his work is an example for ecclecticism and historism of science in the 19th century and the universalism of science deducted from a philosophy that uses the sign as an unitarian principle. Triple constructions are a very common feature in the writings of Peirce, and the trivium is an example of an academic construction Peirce implemented. (shrink)

This is an anthology of writings about art, art history, esthetics, and art theory from the 18th to 20th century.

Theme of this article is the ancient Roman tradition of criticism based of the standard ">institutio oratoria« of the late Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilianus and the reception of rhetorical and critical theory among German 18th century philologists. Just like Immanuel Kant's terminology of 'Kritik' the Latin terms critica and ars critica became in the 18th century basic terms for the research in the history of philology and the social importance of this scientific work. The researchers' documentations in the 18th (...) century demonstrate the ancient tradition between criticism and the liberal arts of the trivium which are studies in rethoric, dialectic and grammar. (shrink)

A Reader of Philosophy from its Ancient Beginnings to the 20th Century.

When a term is used in science, we tend to integrate its origins, functions, and history to see if the term is a scientific one or comes from other fields. The term «empathy» is an example to such a case. This article challenges the widespread view that empathy is the capability of a person to understand emotions and thoughts of others. We will deconstruct the concept of empathy as an academic one by focusing on its limits. We will discuss the (...) possibility of empathy for humans in critically reconstructing the meaning of the word and its meanings from its ancient origins to contemporary research. Our question is centered on cognitive actions that enable empathy as an emotional way of understanding others. Based on our findings, we argue that the concept of empathy is a recently established academic term. As a concept, it matches with some alternative concepts such as apathy and sympathy. In rhetoric, it is the pathos of the speech that affects the speaker by emotions since no specific receptive ability of the speaker is needed. Similarly, when we use the term empathy, we should use it as a category of the sender, not that of the receiver. This concept of logical empathy opposes to the classical view of empathy studies emphasizing that empathy is a receptive category of the receiver. So, empathy is nothing else but the ability to send emotional or intellectual content suitable to a capable receiver. Also, the comparative study in the concept of empathy in Buddhism gives us evidence that empathy is a spiritual or mental concept whose applications are in the area of pre-linguistic states and esoteric contexts. In rhetorical terms we could define it as a persuasive mood of pathos-driven speech. (shrink)

The name Charles Sanders Peirce is associated with the science of signs called semiotics, which studies the sign as the carrier of meaning that is placed in the center of his work. Peirce developed a system of concepts that describe how the sign as such is understood by the mind. For the conditions of its interpretations Peirce established various so-called interpretants for the explanation of signs associated with the utterer and interpreter and a shared process that enables the communication between (...) communicators. Further to the renovation of the theory of rhetoric and communication, we show that medium and communication must be understood within the framework of his theory in association to the sign and the object. Throughout his manuscripts the triads of his concepts are realized in the text in rhetorical tricola as terms of his philosophy. In comparison to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which employed the sign as a means for reasoning, we will show how Peirce developed techniques of reasoning based on Aristotle’s work and his model of mental understanding of the sign while foreshadowing a theory of communication that aims at describing the exchange of information in a model. (shrink)

This article identifies limitations in traditional approaches to engineering ethics pedagogy, reflected in an overreliance on disaster case studies. Researchers in the field have pointed out that these approaches tend to occlude ethically significant aspects of day-to-day engineering practice and thus reductively individualize and decontextualize ethical decision-making. Some have proposed, as a remedy for these defects, the use of research and theory from Science and Technology Studies to enrich our understanding of the ways in which technology and engineering practice are (...) intricated in social and institutional contexts. While endorsing this approach, this article also argues that STS scholarship may not sufficiently address the kinds of questions about normativity and agency that are essential to engineering ethics. It proposes making use of the growing body of research in a field called “postphenomenology,” an approach that combines STS research with the traditional phenomenological concern with the standpoint of lived-experience. Postphenomenology offers a method of inquiry that combines STS’s investigation into social and institutional dimensions of technology with phenomenological reflection on our lived experience of embodied engagement with technical objects and sociotechnical systems, particularly the ways in which these involvements affect our moral perception and agency. The aim in using this approach in engineering ethics is thus to illuminate moral dimensions of everyday professional life of which practitioners may not typically be aware. The article concludes with some concrete curricular interventions for engineering ethics classrooms. (shrink)

The development and use of large and dynamic health data repositories designed to support research pose challenges to traditional informed consent models. We used semi-structured interviewing to elicit diverse research stakeholders' views of a model of consent appropriate to participation in initiatives that entail collection, long-term storage, and undetermined future research use of multiple types of health data. We demonstrate that, when considering health data repositories, research stakeholders replace a concept of consent as informed with one in which consent is (...) engaged. In engaged consent, a participant's ongoing relationship with a repository serves as a substitute or adjunct to information exchange at enrollment. We detail research stakeholders' views of the risks of engaged consent and suggest questions for further study about engagement and consent procedures in initiatives that aim to store data for future unspecified research purposes. (shrink)

Many philosophical accounts of manipulation are blind to the extent to which actual people fall short of the rational ideal, while prominent accounts in political science are under-inclusive. We offer necessary and sufficient conditions – Suitable Reason and Testimonial Honesty – distinguishing manipulative from non-manipulative influence; develop a ‘hypothetical disclosure test’ to measure the degree of manipulation; and provide further criteria to assess and compare the morality of manipulation across cases. We discuss multiple examples drawn from politics and from public (...) policy with particular attention to recent debates about the ethics and politics of nudge. (shrink)

There is a Turing computable embedding $\Phi $ of directed graphs $\mathcal {A}$ in undirected graphs. Moreover, there is a fixed tuple of formulas that give a uniform effective interpretation; i.e., for all directed graphs $\mathcal {A}$, these formulas interpret $\mathcal {A}$ in $\Phi $. It follows that $\mathcal {A}$ is Medvedev reducible to $\Phi $ uniformly; i.e., $\mathcal {A}\leq _s\Phi $ with a fixed Turing operator that serves for all $\mathcal {A}$. We observe that there is a graph G (...) that is not Medvedev reducible to any linear ordering. Hence, G is not effectively interpreted in any linear ordering. Similarly, there is a graph that is not interpreted in any linear ordering using computable $\Sigma _2$ formulas. Any graph can be interpreted in a linear ordering using computable $\Sigma _3$ formulas. Friedman and Stanley [4] gave a Turing computable embedding L of directed graphs in linear orderings. We show that there is no fixed tuple of $L_{\omega _1\omega }$ -formulas that, for all G, interpret the input graph G in the output linear ordering $L$. Harrison-Trainor and Montalbán [7] have also shown this, by a quite different proof. (shrink)

In this paper I make a case for differentiating the process of decolonization in education from the process of dismantling the values of the empire and their continuing, subliminal role in our thought and practice (the gaze of the empire). I argue that ignoring the empire within (particularly the word ‘empire’ itself) is what sustains the colonial gaze and what constitutes decolonization’s greatest obstacle. I employ a poststructuralist framework (Foucault, 1980), which helps me explore notions of power and knowledge through (...) language and the gaze. To illuminate discussions, I make use of some of the historical context necessary to understand the spirit and the tragedy of empire, with its language as principal instrument, as well as some of the literary aspects (Magical Realism and poetry) that have been used to gaze at the colonized and redeem the conqueror. (shrink)

Traditional studies have shown that the moral judgments are influenced by many biasing factors, like the consequences of a behavior, certain characteristics of the agent who commits the act, or the words chosen to describe the behavior. In the present study we investigated a new factor that could bias the evaluation of morally relevant human behavior: the perceived similarity between the participants and the agent described in the moral scenario. The participants read a story about a driver who illegally overtook (...) another car and hit a pedestrian who was crossing the street. The latter was taken to the hospital with a broken leg. The driver was described either as being similar to the participant (a student, 21 years old, the same gender as th­e participant) or dissimilar (a retired person, 69 years old, different gender as the participant). The results show that the participants from the increased similarity group expressed more lenient evaluations of the immorality of the driver’s behavior compared to the participants from the decreased similarity group. The results are discussed within a framework which puts emphasis on motivational and protective reasons. (shrink)

Common symptoms of multiple sclerosis include motor impairments of the lower extremities, particularly gait disturbances. Loss of balance and muscle weakness, representing some peripheral effects, have been shown to influence these symptoms, however, the individual role of cortical and subcortical structures in the central nervous system is still to be understood. Assessing [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in the CNS can assess brain activity and is directly associated with regional neuronal activity. One potential modality to increase cortical excitability and improve motor function in (...) patients with MS is transcranial direct current stimulation. However, tDCS group outcomes may not mirror individual subject responses, which impedes our knowledge of the pathophysiology and management of diseases like MS. Three PwMS randomly received both 3 mA tDCS and SHAM targeting the motor cortex that controls the more-affected leg for 20 min on separate days before walking on a treadmill. The radiotracer, FDG, was injected at minute two of the 20 min walk and the subjects underwent a Positron emission tomography scan immediately after the task. Differences in relative regional metabolism of areas under the tDCS anode and the basal ganglia were calculated and investigated. The results indicated diverse and individualized responses in regions under the anode and consistent increases in some basal ganglia areas. Thus, anodal tDCS targeting the M1 that controls the more-affected leg of PwMS might be capable of affecting remote subcortical regions and modulating the activity of the circuitry connected to these regions. (shrink)

Prendre soin d’un parent souffrant de la maladie d’Alzheimer place l’ensemble de la famille dans des circonstances complexes et difficiles. Cet article s’emploie à comprendre comment la maladie d’Alzheimer vient convoquer l’histoire familiale, ses conflits et ses traces du négatif, perturbant à la fois les liens familiaux et l’inscription des proches dans leur rôle d’aidant. Les auteures rendent compte d’entretiens cliniques à visée de recherche menés auprès d’une fratrie de quatre sœurs confrontées à la dépendance de leur mère atteinte de (...) la maladie d’Alzheimer. À partir d’une analyse phénoménologique, elles montrent l’importance de la désorganisation des liens familiaux et la réactivation des conflits dans l’organisation concrète des aidants autour du parent malade. Les enfants confrontés à la maladie grave d’un parent doivent non seulement réaliser un travail d’acceptation de la maladie, mais aussi réélaborer l’histoire familiale ainsi réactivée. (shrink)

As an introduction to the case studies collected in the current special issue, this review article provides a brief, and by no means exhaustive, overview of research that proves to be relevant to the development of a concept of an aesthetics of knowledge in the academic study of religion and in science and technology studies. Finally, it briefly discusses recent work explicitly addressing the aesthetic entangle-ment of science and religion.

Contributions of science of culture to the research in organizational communication field. The present paper aims to discuss the conditions of likelihood ofinserting a methodological option in the field of organisational communication, an option that rose from the project of Ernst Cassirer to formulate a general theory of symbolic forms. In fact, it is about stating a theoretical and methodological frame capable of answering a concrete need, phenomenological in nature, to study the communication structure of organisations not as a given (...) fact, not as a finite and given construction, but as an ensemble of spiritual manifestations which build and enforce the human being. Access to the methodological contributions of symbolic form philosophy in the research of organisational communication is suggested by Cassirer himself through the thesis according to which the goal of his studies on symbolic forms will be truly attained only if its problematic will be reengaged and debated by each disciplinary field in turn. In this context, the thoretical frame suggested here delimits an approach which takes as its starting concept the immediate alternative of the concept of society, in other words the concept of culture, whose content is inextricably linked with the fundamental forms and propensities of the spirit. The main task of such a research frame is to approach the original source of human action, the cultural products - the words of the language, the images of the myth, of art, the intellectual symbols of knowledge, etc. From this point of view, the ground of organisational communication can be delimited and clarified to the extent in which it is regarded from the perspective of its subject, meaning in what regards the thinking in act of this communication. It is about a key mutation brought about by the methodology of the symbolic form philosophy, the mutation from object towards subject. In order to understand the organisational communication one must start from its subject, following the hypothesis that there is organisational communication in what regards the human being to the extent in which there is organisational communication in humans, since individual himself became, at a certain point, organisational communication. Therefore, the trasfer of methodological contribution herein proposed is based not on the capacity to approach organisational communication in its entirety, but on that of the subject as animal symbolicum and as inhabitant of a community which permanently insitutes a world within which he communicates, to which he refers and which he changes. The research in organisational communication participates, from this point of view, to the field of science of culture. (shrink)

Any system of taxation depends on a substantial degree of compliance from the taxpayer. But do ethical considerations stop at obeying the letter of the tax law, or do they drive one to take a more critical and socially responsible attitude towards tax avoidance as well as evasion? Dr Alan Stainer is Head of Engineering Management at Middlesex University, Bounds Green Road, London N11 2NQ, and Founder Director of the International Society for Productivity & Quality Research; Lorice Stainer is Senior (...) Lecturer in Business Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire Business School and a Business Ethics Consultant; and Alexandra Segal is a Chartered Accountant, Taxation Manager with Keelings Chartered Accountants, London, and a Taxation Consultant. (shrink)

Aesthetics is commonly considered a complicated field of inquiry, particularly for students. Nevertheless, aesthetic experiences often raise questions about the nature of music which philosophical aesthetics is intended to answer. To bring students in contact with aesthetics depends primarily on the choice of appropriate methods. Case studies exemplify aesthetic theory in a small story. They can engage students in aesthetic inquiry directly related to students' musical world. Case studies also offer further applications to music education in terms of performing, improvising, (...) or giving pre-concert lectures. Music education could use the opportunities which aesthetics offers in order to enhance making music and aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or watching TV, (...) as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

It is often said that the advent of the Freudian talking cure around 1900 revolutionised the psychiatric setting by giving patients a voice. Less known is that for decades prior to the popularisation of this technique, several researchers had been experimenting with another, written practice aimed at probing the mind. This was particularly the case in France. Alongside neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s spectacular staging of hypnotised bodies, ‘automatic writing’ became widely used in fin-de-siècle clinics and laboratories, with French psychologists regularly asking (...) entranced patients to scribble down words to validate their nascent theories on the divided self. This article traces the emergence of automatic writing in French psychological discourse at the close of the 19th century. By focusing on the early work of Dr Pierre Janet and some of his contemporaries, it re-examines the role played by this practice in what Henri Ellenberger famously called ‘The Discovery of the Unconscious’. It also considers the various levels of reconstruction at play in recent historical accounts. What does it mean to give subjects a (written) voice? How does automatic writing differ from the Freudian talking cure as respective expressions of the unspeakable? And how might these questions inform future historical practice? (shrink)

First, we argue that the appeal of effective altruism (henceforth, EA) depends significantly on a certain empirical premise we call the Heavy Tail Hypothesis (HTH), which characterizes the probability distribution of opportunities for doing good. Roughly, the HTH implies that the best causes, interventions, or charities produce orders of magnitude greater good than the average ones, constituting a substantial portion of the total amount of good caused by altruistic interventions. Next, we canvass arguments EAs have given for the existence of (...) a positive (or “right”) heavy tail and argue that they can also apply in support of a negative (or “left”) heavy tail where counterproductive interventions do orders of magnitude more harm than ineffective or moderately harmful ones. Incorporating the other heavy tail of the distribution has important implications for the core activities of EA: effectiveness research, cause prioritization, and the assessment of altruistic interventions. It also informs the debate surrounding the institutional critique of EA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or watching TV, (...) as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

In recent years, the internationalization of music education has become an important topic. Scholars of various research traditions try to find the best solutions for problems in music education theory and practice by taking a look at what other countries do. English as common language seems to facilitate this recent development. However, in spite of this seemingly unproblematic way of communicating, there are various obstacles which make the mutual understanding and the internationalization of music education difficult. This particularly concerns different (...) scholarly cultures and traditions of presenting research, both in written papers and oral presentations. Most scholars realize that there are difficulties, but because they mostly only know one culture of research well, they are not aware of the reasons for these problems. Therefore, it is important to take a critical look at the scholarly traditions in Germany and the United States, examining reasons and suggesting solutions for an internationalization of music education that takes into account the strengths of various traditions, while at the same time fostering international understanding and the improvement of music education all over the world. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and (...) the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr.. (shrink)

In metaethics, empirical approaches are not just complementary to, but continuous with, traditional approaches to the subject. This chapter addresses traditional and empirical approaches to metaethics. It discusses how empirical approaches have been brought to bear on some central metaethical questions. The chapter illustrates not just the diversity of topics within metaethics itself but also the diversity of empirical methods and approaches that philosophers and psychologists working on these topics are using. The debate between internalists and externalists is a debate (...) concerning the psychology of moral judgment, but also a debate about our concept of moral judgment. As such, it has implications for other metaethical debates. Antirealists such as relativists and noncognitivists often defend internalism, and argue that their views are best equipped to explain the link between moral judgment and motivation. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, (...) despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life. (shrink)