This work explores topics such as: globalism, justice, and federalism; State sovereignty; world community; violence and coercion; and designing social institutions.

A collection of essays arising from the first International Conference on Social Philosophy, which addressed some of the issues facing humankind at the end of the 20th century including: justice; freedom; power; equality; privacy; conscience versus law; technology and changing values; population; business ethics; nuclear war; violence; terrorism; and peace.

Part 1: Technology, Anxiety, and Harm; Part 2: The Impact of Clinical Technology on Women; Part 3: Guilt, Innocence and Responsibility; Part 4: Perspectives on Machiavelli and Contract Theory.

In this study, the contributors maintain that forcefully-expressed ideas have in fact wrought huge changes in the world - sometimes of great good, sometimes of overwhelming evil. The theme of these essays is that the hope of the next century of human history hangs on our ability to recapture our faith in the social power of ideas. This book is a collection of papers presented at the 11th International Social Philosophy Conference, held in Helsinki, in the summer of 1993.

This paper argues that, despite the widespread assumption that everyone has an absolute right to hold any religious belief whatever, no matter how bizarre or irrational, there are limits to responsible belief. Epistemic responsibility means that we are not entitled to hold beliefs that, by recognized epistemic methods, have been discredited. The paper distinguishes epistemic responsibility from legal and from moral responsibility. Because our beliefs tend to affect our behavior, epistemically irresponsible beliefs become morally irresponsible when they conduce to discrimination (...) or harm. To insist that scripture and religious doctrine must be believed literally and in every detail is epistemically irresponsible, because they have been shown to be, at many points, inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical knowledge. Such beliefs are morally irresponsible when they encourage racism or discrimination against women, gays and lesbians, ethnic groups, the poor, or any other individual or group. (shrink)

This paper argues that, despite the widespread assumption that everyone has an absolute right to hold any religious belief whatever, no matter how bizarre or irrational, there are limits to responsible belief. Epistemic responsibility means that we are not entitled to hold beliefs that, by recognized epistemic methods, have been discredited. The paper distinguishes epistemic responsibility from legal and from moral responsibility. Because our beliefs tend to affect our behavior, epistemically irresponsible beliefs become morally irresponsible when they conduce to discrimination (...) or harm. To insist that scripture and religious doctrine must be believed literally and in every detail is epistemically irresponsible, because they have been shown to be, at many points, inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical knowledge. Such beliefs are morally irresponsible when they encourage racism or discrimination against women, gays and lesbians, ethnic groups, the poor, or any other individual or group. (shrink)

A discussion of the issues related to liberalism, communitarianism and distributive justice among scholars in social philosophy. Topics include: the foundations of moral theory; liberal morality in practice; liberalism in a Conservative society; and philosophy and community.

Sayers announces that his objective in this book is to develop and defend a realist account of knowledge. It is an epistemology in the Marxist tradition which extends the theories of Lenin and Engels and attempts to correct what is admittedly unsatisfactory in their position. By a realist epistemology Sayers means one that affirms an objective, material world, existing independently of consciousness, but knowable by consciousness. It is a materialist theory in the sense that it denies the existence of consciousness (...) independent of matter and affirms that all reality is ultimately material. It affirms a reflection theory of knowledge—that the objective world can be known by consciousness only because consciousness is a reflection of reality. Without such a reflective connection between consciousness and objective reality, an unbridgeable gap is created and knowledge is impossible. This is the trouble with traditional empiricist, rationalist, and Kantian positions which make knowledge merely a matter of contemplating our own ideas which may or may not resemble objective reality. (shrink)

Sayers announces that his objective in this book is to develop and defend a realist account of knowledge. It is an epistemology in the Marxist tradition which extends the theories of Lenin and Engels and attempts to correct what is admittedly unsatisfactory in their position. By a realist epistemology Sayers means one that affirms an objective, material world, existing independently of consciousness, but knowable by consciousness. It is a materialist theory in the sense that it denies the existence of consciousness (...) independent of matter and affirms that all reality is ultimately material. It affirms a reflection theory of knowledge—that the objective world can be known by consciousness only because consciousness is a reflection of reality. Without such a reflective connection between consciousness and objective reality, an unbridgeable gap is created and knowledge is impossible. This is the trouble with traditional empiricist, rationalist, and Kantian positions which make knowledge merely a matter of contemplating our own ideas which may or may not resemble objective reality. (shrink)

In this rehabilitation of the relational transaction of compromising, we follow Paul Ricoeur in arguing that at the intersection of diverse orders of value, compromising rises to the level of a moral duty. Thus, an ethics of compromise, rooted in recognition theory, provides a virtuous means of moral engagement with otherness in the context of pluralism. Virtue theory needs to move in an interactive direction by enlisting moral epistemology, for a shift in focus from the individual agent to the interaction (...) of agents ; attending to the political theorists and sociologists who ground meaningful compromise in mutual recognition; and tailoring such recognition to bounded human capacities for rationality and empathy, via "psychological realism"—all in service of attenuating the discomfort and even moral pain that agents may feel when called upon to compromise. (shrink)