In thinking of Derrida's notion of deconstruction as an attitude in understanding logocentrism, one might find it necessary to pre-empt this discourse by taking into serious consideration three words: center, consciousness, and difference. These words offer the key towards the problem of logocentrism within Derrida's deconstruction and, as far as these words seem to contextualize themselves within Derrida's texts, they also offer an explanation of how meaning becomes possible. Derrida's deconstruction is a form of writing in which the "I-ness" of (...) the self is given emphasis as both the limitation and possibility of appropriation in so far as context is concerned. Reading for him is already considered as an act of writing, the text, being polysemic in its inscription, already implies that the repetition of the syntax of words will always be rendered by the consciousness with a relative amount of impurity. Every instance of reading then is a form of writing, each time an Other tries to read the singularity of the construction of the text, it is already altered as another occurrence within another consciousness. (shrink)

In the advent of communication, Derrida finds that meaning through signification carries with it the possibility of mis-communication in which the intended meaning behind the text becomes undecidable and inevitably polysemic in its transference. In a short, yet fecund essay “Signature Event Context,” Derrida tackles the problem of communication and the supposed claim of the classical notion of writing’s conception of virtual permanence within the text. The classical notion of writing claims that writing as a medium or a species of (...) communication implies that the transference of meaning is conducted in a homogenous fashion. In the absence, of the author who has abandoned the fleeting singular instance of inscription, the text, according to the classical notion of writing, must be able to transfer meaning within the interplay of the text itself, for if it fails to do so, writing would cease to become useful in its intention to transfer meaning. (shrink)

This book presents a reconstruction of the trajectories of freedom in Axel Honneth's recognition theory in the context of the conflict between autonomy and social cohesion. Honneth's re-appropriation of Hegel's notion of Sittlichkeit, or "ethical life," provides a potent descriptive theoretical perspective of social conflicts and an articulated praxis of Hegel's social theory. Amidst the current critical literature posed against the normative aspect of Honneth's critical theory, there is an already implicit solution to the problem of normativity and reification. By (...) articulating the conflict between freedom and normativity as both a pathological problem and a progressive movement in critical theory, the theme of solidarity is further reinforced in the development of Honneth's social philosophy. Through the consolidation of the process of recognition, and the spheres of social interaction where individuals develop, reinforce, and build their identities, it is possible to develop a reverse analysis of a complementary system of social interactions between personal relations, market economy, and democratic spheres to identify deficiencies in societal needs. The book proposes the Reconstructive Normative Simulation (RNS) to consolidate Honneth's social philosophy. Through RNS, it is possible to examine social pathologies by locating deficiencies in normative resources in the three social spheres. By articulating these deficiencies, the possibility of adjusting societal norms becomes historically bound to existing norms, while at the same time receptive to forthcoming identities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to situate the notion of reification as a neutral foundation for the three spheres of recognition. Reification, as a negative concept, allows the possibility of recognition to take place in Axel Honneth’s three spheres of recognition; namely, love, law, and esteem. My argument is that the givenness of these positive aspects of recognition is made possible by the existence of necessary reifications to which pathologies allow a certain form of intersubjective realisations. This form brings (...) about the possibility of an “otherwise” situation. Drawing from the intersubjective theory of recognition in Georg Hegel’s and Martin Heidegger’s instrumentalist hermeneutics (i.e., Vorhandenheit) of authenticity, I aim to pursue the necessary qualification to which reification is to be considered as a neutral ground for normativity to germinate. My contention is that the neutral state of reification is made possible when it is seen as a productive discourse situation in which recognition becomes possible. (shrink)

I aim to articulate and develop a consolidated model of Axel Honneth’s Recognition Theory. This paper aims at investigating the relationship of asymmetries of identities and social struggles as a progressive process of recognition in Honneth’s works. My paper is divided into three parts. The first part provides a consolidated outlook on Honneth’s Recognition Theory from the Struggle for Recognition to his more recent work Freedom’s Right. The second part covers the relationship between social struggles, social solidarity, and their effects (...) on regenerating the necessary normative resources for individual selfactualization. The last part is my take on Honneth’s Recognition Theory in the form of understanding social pathologies in the context of investigating deficits of normative resources for self-actualization. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to find out whether there is any possibility of coming up with a philosophy that we can call Filipino. Inspired by the works of Prof. Leonardo Mercado, I suggest an exciting new area of philosophy that can get us to an answer: experimental philosophy. Secondly, I shall bridge the connection between experimental philosophy and the search for Filipino philosophy. More specifically, I shall provide an answer as to how experimental philosophy can be expected (...) to lead to a Filipino philosophy. Then, I shall suggest a novel way in how to do experimental Filipino philosophy, that is, experimental philosophy in the service of discovering a Filipino philosophy, and it is by way of traditional empirical methods in anthropology, such as interviews and focus group discussions. Finally, I introduce the charge of limited applicability inspired by Roland Theuas Pada and respond to the objection. I conclude by inviting Filipino philosophers to integrate experimental philosophy in their search for a Filipino philosophy. (shrink)

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of responding (...) to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success. (shrink)

The aim of psychology is to understand the human mind and behavior. In contemporary psychology, the method of choice to accomplish this incredibly complex endeavor is the experiment. This dominance has shaped the whole discipline from the self-concept as an empirical science and its very epistemological and theoretical foundations, via research practice and the scientific discourse to teaching. Experimental psychology is grounded in the scientific method and positivism, and these principles, which are characteristic for modern thinking, are still upheld. Despite (...) this apparently stalwart adherence to modern principles, experimental psychology exhibits a number of aspects which can best be described as facets of postmodern thinking although they are hardly acknowledged as such. Many psychologists take pride in being “real natural scientists” because they conduct experiments, but it is particularly difficult for psychologists to evade certain elements of postmodern thinking in view of the specific nature of their subject matter. Postmodernism as a philosophy emerged in the 20th century as a response to the perceived inadequacy of the modern approach and as a means to understand the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the times. Therefore, postmodernism offers both valuable insights into the very nature of experimental psychology and fruitful ideas on improving experimental practice to better reflect the complexities and ambiguities of human mind and behavior. Analyzing experimental psychology along postmodern lines begins by discussing the implications of transferring the scientific method from fields with rather narrowly defined phenomena—the natural sciences—to a much broader and more heterogeneous class of complex phenomena, namely the human mind and behavior. This ostensibly modern experimental approach is, however, per se riddled with postmodern elements: creating phenomena in an experimental setting, including the hermeneutic processes of generating hypotheses and interpreting results, is no carbon copy of “reality” but rather an active construction which reflects irrevocably the pre-existing ideas of the investigator. These aspects, analyzed by using postmodern concepts like hyperreality and simulacra, did not seep in gradually but have been present since the very inception of experimental psychology, and they are necessarily inherent in its philosophy of science. We illustrate this theoretical analysis with the help of two examples, namely experiments on free will and visual working memory. The postmodern perspective reveals some pitfalls in the practice of experimental psychology. Furthermore, we suggest that accepting the inherently fuzzy nature of theoretical constructs in psychology and thinking more along postmodern lines would actually clarify many theoretical problems in experimental psychology. (shrink)

In his recent book, National responsibility and global justice, David Miller conceptualizes and justifies a model of national responsibility. His conceptualization proceeds in two steps: he starts by developing two models of collective responsibility, the like?minded group model and the cooperative practice model. He then proceeds to discuss national responsibility, a species of collective responsibility, and argues that nations have features such that the two models of collective responsibility also apply to them. In this article I focus on the question (...) whether Miller?s like?minded group model and the cooperative practice model are plausible and convincing models of collective responsibility. I will argue that the like?minded model does not provide a plausible conceptualization of collective responsibility, while the collective practice model provides a good model for collective responsibility but is not particularly helpful in conceptualizing national responsibility. (shrink)

C. S. Jenkins has recently proposed an account of arithmetical knowledge designed to be realist, empiricist, and apriorist: realist in that what’s the case in arithmetic doesn’t rely on us being any particular way; empiricist in that arithmetic knowledge crucially depends on the senses; and apriorist in that it accommodates the time-honored judgment that there is something special about arithmetical knowledge, something we have historically labeled with ‘a priori’. I’m here concerned with the prospects for extending Jenkins’s account beyond arithmetic—in (...) particular, to set theory. After setting out the central elements of Jenkins’s account and entertaining challenges to extending it to set theory, I conclude that a satisfactory such extension is unlikely. (shrink)

‘Globalization’ has become in recent years one of the central themes of social scientific debates. Social theories of globalization may be regarded as specific academic and analytic manifestations of wider forms of ‘global consciousness’ to be found in the social world today. These are ways of thinking and perceiving which emphasize that the whole world should be seen as ‘one place’, its various geographically disparate parts all being interconnected in various complex ways. In this article we set out how both (...) a general ‘ecumenical sensibility’ involving such ways of thinking, and its specifically academic variant, an ‘ecumenical analytic’, are simultaneously responses to ‘globalizing conditions’ and also products of the latter. We demonstrate how social theories of globalization, locatable in the overall set we call the ‘ecumenical analytic’, are reflexive thought-products, in that they both seek to investigate, and are made possible by, ‘globalizing conditions’. Rejecting the view that both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic are solely products of modernity, we show how such modes of consciousness and analysis were present in the period of Greek history between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire. We show how at that period a socio-political situation akin in certain ways to modern ‘globalizing conditions’ generated both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic, the latter most forcefully represented by a revolutionary new genre in historiography called Universal History. By examining the ideas of its most famous practitioner, the historian Polybius, we demonstrate that Universal History both provided a framework for understanding what we today would call ‘globalization’, and exhibited a remarkable degree of reflexive awareness about its own conditions of possibility. We seek to show that an attentiveness to ‘global’ processes and a reflexive understanding of what makes that form of thinking possible in the first place, are not solely confined to modernity but were identifiable features of intellectual production in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. In this way we argue that scholars today should not imagine that the contemporary ‘global turn’ in social thought is either unique or wholly historically unprecedented. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher has advanced an epistemology of science that purports to be naturalistic. For Kitcher, this entails that his epistemology of science must explain the correctness of belief-regulating norms while endorsing a realist notion of truth. This paper concerns whether or not Kitcher's epistemology of science is naturalistic on these terms. I find that it is not but that by supplementing the account we can secure its naturalistic standing.

Das Buch etabliert, vor dem Hintergrund einer Darstellung der herkömmlichen Begriffe und Vorstellungen, eine - als phänomenologisch bezeichnete - Konzeption des Lebens als Erleben und des Todes als Nichterleben und entwickelt und exemplifiziert auf dieser Grundlage eine Erweiterung einerseits des Konzepts des Lebens und andererseits des Konzepts des Todes, des letzteren in Form von phänomenologischem Tod innerhalb des biologischen Lebens und des ersteren in Form von - allerdings nur sekundärem - phänomenologischem Leben vor dem biologischen. Flucht- und Zielpunkt des Buches (...) aber ist die Entwicklung einer - auf die Erkenntnis der Janusköpfigkeit von Leben und Tod gegründeten - Konzeption von biologischem Leben nach dem biologischen Tod, einer Konzeption von Wiedergeburt und Folgeleben unter Beibehaltung nur des innersten Kerns unseres Ichbewußtseins. (shrink)

A comprehensive reference work for everyone concerned with the complicated moral issues of this world, this unique volume clearly communicates what Scripture teaches about the ethical dilemmas facing our society. Biological warfare, corporate responsibility, human rights, computer ethics, and much more are discussed by over fifty scholars who explain the moral guidelines in the Bible and historic Christian teachings. R.K. Harrison, author and editor of over thirty books on biblical studies, has brought together a valuable A to B treasury of (...) thought for every believer searching for guidance. (shrink)

Is it permissible to kill an innocent person against her will in order to prevent several other innocent persons from being killed against their will? The answer to which this essay comes after extensive discussion is – under certain conditions and limitations – affirmative. On the way to this answer, the book offers a comprehensive in-depth discussion of so-called deontic restrictions – that is, the idea of an action’s being prohibited in circumstances in which performing it once would be the (...) only way to prevent its being performed multiple times. The book’s leading question is whether there is a plausible rationale for deontic restrictions. To this effect, a taxonomy and critical discussions of the most important approaches to justify deontic restrictions are provided – where many of these approaches undergo a deeper examination for the first time ever. In addition, the book clarifies some adjoining questions, such as why deontic restrictions are often perceived as being problematic or how the concept of agent-relativity should best be understood and formalized. Put into broader perspective, the conclusions offered should have a bearing on a number of debates in normative ethics, not least on the debate between deontologists and consequentialist. (shrink)

Why does Catullus in his eleventh poem tell Furius and Aurelius to take an unpleasant message to his girl-friend? After all, in the eighth poem he imagines himself able to do the job alone: ‘uale puella’ . Has his courage just evaporated? Or is it that he wants to put his messengers, whom he perhaps does not like, in an awkward position ? Kroll is not sure why the poet chooses intermediaries. Some think they came in the first place from (...) the girl, who wanted reconciliation, and that this poem is Catullus' response. But the poet is usually able to make it plain, as in poems 7 and 85, that he is replying to a question ; here that standard device is missing, and should not be introduced. This note offers a new solution to the problem, and identifies the imagined situation in such a way that the eleventh poem can be seen to be in harmony with the poet's attitude to his idealised love-affair. (shrink)