Patrick Turmel,François Boucher,Marie-Noëlle Carré.

One of the main characteristics of today’s democratic societies is their pluralism. As a result, liberal political philosophers often claim that the state should remain neutral with respect to different conceptions of the good. Legal and social policies should be acceptable to everyone regard- less of their culture, their religion or their comprehensive moral views. One might think that this commitment to neutrality should be especially pronounced in urban centres, with their culturally diverse populations. However, there are a large number (...) of laws and policies adopted at the municipal level that contradict the liberal principle of neutrality. In this paper, I want to suggest that these perfectionist laws and policies are legitimate at the urban level. Specifically, I will argue that the principle of neutrality applies only indirectly to social institutions within the broader framework of the nation-state. This is clear in the case of voluntary associations, but to a certain extent this rationale applies also to cities. In a liberal regime, private associations are allowed to hold and defend perfectionist views, focused on a particular conception of the good life. One problem is to determine the limits of this perfectionism at the urban level, since cities, unlike private associations, are public institutions. My aim here is therefore to give a liberal justification to a limited form of perfectionism of municipal laws and policies. (shrink)

Arthur Applbaum a nommé éthique adversative la branche de l’éthique professionnelle qui cherche à justifier la moralité des rôles et des pratiques qui permettent aux acteurs d’avoir certains comportements pourtant interdits par la moralité ordinaire. Applbaum considère qu’aucun des différents arguments mis de l’avant par les défenseurs de l’éthique adversative ne justifie de tels écarts de la moralité ; les institutions adversatives et les rôles qu’elles génèrent ne peuvent créer de permissions morales exceptionnelles. Cela découle d’une position métaéthique particulière qu’il (...) nomme positivisme institutionnel (practice positivism), et que l’on peut définir ainsi : la moralité ordinaire a une priorité délibérative sur les règles et les conventions des pratiques et des institutions sociales pour la simple raison que ces dernières sont dépourvues de toute force morale. Cet article cherche à défendre l’éthique adversative contre les critiques d’Applbaum. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the idea that social institutions inform the development and justification of principles of justice. First, I situate this question in the context of contemporary debates in political philosophy. Then, I turn to a particular defense of this idea by looking at the conceptual relation established by John Rawls between the concept and the subject of justice. Finally, I look at works by Paul Ricœur in which he discusses Rawls’s theory of justice. Ricœur insists in various places (...) on the distributive character of social institutions, in a way that helps shed light on the relation between principles and institutions. (shrink)

We argue that Reasons Fundamentalism, as defended by T.M. Scanlon, faces two important difficulties—one ontological, the other epistemological—namely the ontological proliferation problem and the reliability challenge. We suggest that formal constructivism can avoid these difficulties, and that Scanlon would do well to adopt it. We also show that Scanlon’s three main objections to this view depend either on a misunderstanding of what formal constructivism is or on a question-begging argument in favour of realism.

Quelle est la nature de la morale ? Quelle place tient-elle dans l’existence humaine ? La métaéthique ne cherche pas à répondre aux questions éthiques, portant sur ce que nous devons faire ou sur ce qu’est la vie bonne, mais à en éclairer le sens. Elle s’interroge sur la possibilité et sur l’objet de la connaissance morale, sur la fonction réelle des discours moraux ou encore sur l’effet motivationnel qu’ont sur nous les normes et les valeurs. Elle soumet ainsi l’éthique (...) à des questions relevant de l’épistémologie et de l’ontologie, de la sémantique et de la psychologie. Ce manuel, le premier en son genre en langue française, offre un panorama général des questions, des courants et des méthodes de la métaéthique contemporaine. Rassemblant treize études approfondies, il propose une introduction accessible et des contributions originales à ce champ en plein essor. (shrink)

Kant’s claims about supersensible objects, and his account of the epistemic status of such claims, remain poorly understood, to the detriment of our understanding of Kant’s metaphysical and epistemological system. In the Critique of Practical Reason, and again in the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that we have practical cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen) of the moral law and of our supersensible freedom; that this cognition and knowledge cohere with, yet go beyond the limits of, our theoretical cognition; and that (...) this knowledge grounds rational belief (Vernunftglaube) in the existence of God, the immortality of our soul, and the real possibility of the “highest good.” This essay untangles some of these claims about practical cognition, practical knowledge, and practical belief and their relation to Kant’s account of theoretical cognition and theoretical knowledge. There is a core conception of cognition and knowledge underlying the accounts of theoretical cognition and practical cognition, which allows for a principled distinction between cases of practical knowledge and practical belief. Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” turns out to be crucial to his claims about legitimacy of and distinction between the two forms of practical cognition, one which constitutes knowledge and another which cannot. (shrink)

Roughly, animalism is the doctrine that each of us is identical with an organism. This paper explains and defends a hylemorphic version of animalism. I show how hylemorphic animalism handles standard objections to animalism in compelling ways. I also show what the costs of endorsing hylemorphic animalism are. The paper's contention is that despite the costs, the view is worth taking seriously.

Stokes’ earlier chapter in this volume argued that, given the role ethical considerations play in our judgments of what to believe, ethical factors will put limits on the extent to which we can embrace particularism about conspiracy theories. However, that will only be the case if there are ethical problems with conspiracy theory as a practice (rather than simply as a formal class of explanation). Utilising the Lakatosian framework for analysing conspiracy theories developed by Steve Clarke, this paper identifies a (...) morally costly feature of conspiracy theorizing: its tendency to generate and expand new accusations purely to defend the core theory from countervailing evidence. Such 'auxiliary accusations' violate important norms around justified accusation, which supplies a defeasible, but important, reason to be reluctant to take part in the practice of conspiracy theorizing. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to answer two important questions about the issue of normativity in epistemology: Why are epistemic reasons evidential, and what makes epistemic reasons and rationality normative? Bondy's argument proceeds on the assumption that epistemic rationality goes hand in hand with basing beliefs on good evidence. The opening chapters defend a mental-state ontology of reasons, a deflationary account of how kinds of reasons are distinguished, and a deliberative guidance constraint on normative reasons. They also argue in (...) favor of doxastic voluntarism—the view that beliefs are subject to our direct voluntary control—and embrace the controversial view that voluntarism bears directly on the question of what kinds of things count as reasons for believing. The final three chapters of the book feature a noteworthy critique of the instrumental conception of the nature of epistemic rationality, as well as a defense of the instrumental normativity of epistemic rationality. The final chapter defends the view that epistemic reasons and rationality are normative for us when we have normative reason to get to the truth with respect to some proposition, and it provides a response to the swamping problem for monistic accounts of value. (shrink)

Violating the human status : the evil of genocide and crimes against humanity -- Superfluous humanity : the evil of global poverty -- Citizens of nowhere : the evil of statelessness -- Effacing the political : the evil of neoliberal globalization.

__The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations_ first edition was winner of the ISA-Northeast’s Yale H. Ferguson Award, and the ISA Theory Section’s Best Book of the Year award._ _The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations_ provides an introduction to the philosophy of science issues and their implications for the study of global politics. The author draws attention to the problems caused by the misleading notion of a single unified scientific method, and proposes a framework that clarifies the variety of (...) ways that IR scholars establish the authority and validity of their empirical claims. Jackson connects philosophical considerations with concrete issues of research design within neopositivist, critical realist, analyticist, and reflexive approaches to the study of world politics. Envisioning a pluralist science for a global IR field, this volume organizes the significant differences between methodological stances so as to promote internal consistency, public discussion, and worldly insight as the hallmarks of any scientific study of world politics. In this second edition, Jackson has centralised the philosophical history of the ‘science question’ into a single chapter, providing a clearer picture of the connections between contemporary concerns about the status of knowledge and classic philosophical debates about the relationship between human beings and the world they inhabit. The central chapters feature more detailed and pedagogically useful illustrations of the methodological positions discussed, making the book even better suited to clarify the philosophical distinctions with respect to which a scientific researcher must locate herself. The second edition will continue to be essential reading for all students and scholars of International Relations, Political Science and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Aristotelian substance theory tells us that substances have structures (read: forms) as proper parts. This claim has recently been defended by Kathrin Koslicki who dubbed it the ‘Neo-Aristotelian Thesis.’ Strangely, Aristotelianism has not yet been universally embraced by philosophers – partly because some of its claims, such as the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis – are viewed by some as counterintuitive at best. In this paper, I argue for Aristotelianism by showing its philosophical usefulness: specifically, I put it to use in saving the (...) metaphysical doctrine of endurantism and some central mereological doctrines (such as Transitivity) from recent attacks. This utility gives us reason to endorse Aristotelianism. Along the way, I defend Koslicki's argument for the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis from a recent criticism, thus helping provide still more reason to endorse Aristotelianism: namely, Koslicki's vindicated argument. (shrink)

Central to Fischer and Ravizza's theory of moral responsibility is the concept of guidance control, which involves two conditions: (1) moderate reasons-responsiveness, and (2) mechanism ownership. We raise a worry for Fischer and Ravizza's account of (1). If an agent acts contrary to reasons which he could not recognize, this should lead us to conclude that he is not morally responsible for his behaviour; but according to Fischer and Ravizza's account, he satisfies the conditions for guidance control and is therefore (...) morally responsible. We consider ways in which the account of guidance control might be mended. (shrink)

The thrust of the argument presented in this paper is that phenomenological ontology survives the criticism of “correlationism” as advanced by speculative realism, a movement that has evolved in continental philosophy over the past decade. Correlationism is the position, allegedly occupied by phenomenology, that presupposes the ontological primacy of the human subject. Phenomenology survives this criticism not because the criticism misses its mark, but because phenomenology occupies a position that is broader than that of correlationism. With its critique of correlationism, (...) speculative realism rightly identifies a battle that no longer needs to be fought: the battle against 19th century brands of mechanical realism. Free from the impatient and defensive posturing against the mechanization of the human, phenomenology is also free to explore the world beyond its emphasis on human experience. Doing so requires a return to Husserl's discussion of hylé and the “twofold bed” of phenomenology. Phenomenology may emphasize hylé – that is, material; or it may emphasize nous – the world as it appears to or is transformed by consciousness. By returning to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, a case is made for hyletic phenomenology. Hyletic phenomenology allows for ontological reversibility and recognizes the “unhuman” elements in things. It is hyletic phenomenology that grounds phenomenological ontology after the critique of correlationism has been assessed. (shrink)

Rawls’s difference principle and the position dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ are often viewed as competing theories of distributive justice. However, recent work has emphasised that Rawlsians and luck egalitarians are working with different understandings of the concept of justice, and thus not only propose different theories, but different theories of different things. Once they are no longer seen in direct competition, there are some questions to be asked about whether these two theories can be consistently endorsed alongside one another. In this (...) essay, I (begin to) investigate whether Rawls’s theory (or elements of it) and (some form of) luck egalitarianism can be consistently endorsed. -/- I begin by outlining the main aspects of Rawls’s theory and luck egalitarianism, showing them to be different kinds of theory and therefore not in direct competition. I then propose an understanding of how these ideas came to be seen to be in direct competition. Finally, I outline five different ways in which one might consistently be (some kind of) a luck egalitarian and (some kind of) a Rawlsian, and try to say something about what is to be said for and against each of these ways of combining the theories. (shrink)

Awareness that moral beliefs and practices have changed across time threatens our confidence in our current moral beliefs: if past moral beliefs turned out to be wrong, how can we be sure ours aren't likewise mistaken? In this paper, I set up four desiderata for a successful theory of moral progress: it must allow us to judge that progress has occurred, avoid the image of increasing correspondence towards ahistorical truthmakers, allow for revision in belief, and yet not be disobligating. Rorty's (...) pragmatist account of moral progress delivers on the first three, but at the cost of failing to meet the fourth: it drains moral beliefs of their categorical force. I then outline K.E. Løgstrup’s understanding of the relation between the ‘ethical demand’ and changing, socially mediated norms. While Løgstrup does posit an unchanging ground of normativity - the "ethical demand" to act for the sake of the other whose welfare is in our hands – he also thinks that changing social norms are an indispensable part of ethical life. I argue that Løgstrup's discussion of the ‘refraction’ of the ethical demand through changing social norms provides resources for an account of moral progress that fulfils these four desiderata. (shrink)

The individualist nature of much contemporary just war theory means that we often discuss cases with single attackers. But even if war is best understood in this individualist way, in war combatants often have to make decisions about how to distribute harms among a plurality of aggressors: they must decide whom and how many to harm, and how much to harm them. In this paper, I look at simultaneous multiple aggressor cases in which more than one distribution of harm among (...) aggressors is available. I show how such cases pose deep questions concerning the nature, role, and scope of the necessity principle, and its relationship to both liability and narrow proportionality. I argue that a hitherto unrecognised measure – ‘narrow proportionality shortfall’ – and its distribution is relevant in choosing how to distribute harms across aggressors. I then extend this analysis to show how this may help us with a puzzle concerning sequential attacks. (shrink)

Reinterpreting the American Dream is a uniquely pragmatic book on ethics and religion in today's world. Primeaux uncovers the complexity of human nature, in all of its potential for evolution. Though written from a Catholic viewpoint, the book encourages openness in the search for truth, postulating that this quest is the ultimate meaning in life. In an approach that emphasizes honesty with respect for others, and pragmatism with an eye for growth, the author sets the stage for those individuals who (...) want to escape from the 'disconnections of independence and the connections of dependence into the interconnections of interdependence.' A challenging read on a personal level, yet highly applicable to business ethics and the larger society, Reinterpreting the American Dream will be of interest to philosophers, sociologists, students of ethics and the general educated public. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a theory of substance. There are three steps in the argument. First, I present and explain my definition of substance. Second, I argue that the definition yields the right results: that is, my definition rules that (among other things) events and universals, privations and piles of trash, are not substances, but at least some ordinary physical objects are. Third, I defend the definition by rebutting two obvious objections to it.

One hundred years of French social theory : from structuralism to pragmatism -- The biological metaphor : functionalism and neo-functionalism -- The enigma of everyday life : symbolic interactionism, the dramaturgical approach and ethnomethodology -- The invasion of economic man : from rational choice theory to the new institutionalism -- Sociology meets history : Giddens's theory of modernity -- The history and the present : Foucault's archaeology and genealogy -- The spread of reason : Habermas's critical theory and beyond -- (...) A brave new world? : the empirical turn in social theory -- Conclusion : social theory for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The author argues for the importance of non-Markovian causality in the social sciences because Markovian conditions often cannot be satisfied. Two theorems giving conditions for non-Markovian causes to be transitive are proved. Applications of non-Markovian causality in psychology and economics are outlined.

The ability to conduct logical reasoning is a fundamental aspect of intelligent behavior, and thus an important problem along the way to human-level artificial intelligence. Traditionally, symbolic methods from the field of knowledge representation and reasoning have been used to equip agents with capabilities that resemble human reasoning qualities. More recently, however, there has been an increasing interest in applying alternative approaches based on machine learning rather than logic-based formalisms to tackle this kind of tasks. Here, we make use of (...) state-of-the-art methods for training deep neural networks to devise a novel model that is closely coupled to symbolic reasoning methods, and thus able to learn how to effectively perform basic ontology reasoning. This term describes an important and at the same time very natural kind of problem settings where the rules for conducting reasoning are specified alongside with the actual information. Many problems in practice may be viewed as such reasoning tasks, which is why the presented approach is applicable to a plethora of important real-world problems. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested method, we present the outcomes of several experiments that have been conducted on both toy datasets as well as real-world data, which show that our model learned to perform precise reasoning on a number of diverse inference tasks that require comprehensive deductive proficiencies. Furthermore, it turned out that the suggested model suffers much less from different obstacles that prohibit symbolic reasoning. (shrink)

In his book Democratic Authority, David Estlund puts forward a case for democracy, which he labels epistemic proceduralism, that relies on democracy's ability to produce good – that is, substantively just – results. Alongside this case for democracy Estlund attacks what he labels ‘utopophobia’, an aversion to idealistic political theory. In this article I make two points. The first is a general point about what the correct level of ‘idealisation’ is in political theory. Various debates are emerging on this question (...) and, to the extent that they are focused on ‘political theory’ as a whole, I argue, they are flawed. This is because there are different kinds of political concept, and they require different kinds of ideal. My second point is about democracy in particular. If we understand democracy as Estlund does, then we should see it as a problem-solving concept – the problem being that we need coercive institutions and rules, but we do not know what justice requires. As democracy is a response to a problem, we should not allow our theories of it, even at the ideal level, to be too idealised – they must be embedded in the nature of the problem they are to solve, and the beings that have it. (shrink)

My wife and I and our three children may stand in various relations: being a family, being a basketball team, and so on. I show that Frege's doctrine of existence, when coupled with this simple point, easily solves the problem of material constitution and blocks the overdetermination argument for eliminativism. It does all this work while providing a plausible and clear reductionistic account of material objects. These seem to be very good reasons for accepting Frege's doctrine of existence.

Philosophy of science is a paradigm of contemporary intellectual rigor. It offers a challenge of clarification, a promise of systematic understanding, and an invitation to innovative conceptual exploration. Such is its appeal. The occult traditions are steeped in antiquity. They reach us with an atmosphere of mystery, a whisper of wisdom, and a hint of beckoning unknown. Such is their appeal. This is an attempted to bring the two together.

Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve (...) paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the ambiguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to fill this gap. First, I argue that substructural logicians should care about these connectives; next, I describe a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and review the logical properties of ambiguous connectives; and finally, I highlight how ambiguous connectives can explain our intuitions about logical rivalry. (shrink)

It is uncontroversial that there is a historical connection between Reid and American pragmatism. What is unclear is whether, as has recently been suggested, Reid’s own views—in particular, his epistemological views—contain an important pragmatist element. This chapter agues in the affirmative, but suggests that commentators have mischaracterized the pragmatist character of Reid’s position, including his response to the skeptic: “the primacy of practice” constitutes an essential feature of his epistemological views proper and his distinctive “third way” between dogmatism and skepticism.

Die Studie handelt von Nietzsches ursprünglicher Fragestellung, Sie geht von Nietzsches Satz in der vorrede zur Genealogie der Moral "Was habe ich mit Widerlegungen zu schaffen!" aus und zeigt, wie er zu verstehen ist. Nietzsche verschiebt sowohl die Fragestellung wie die Methode des Philosophierens: von der traditionellen Frage nach der Wahrheit über die Frage nach den Werten , nach der décadence, der Moral und der Rangordnung zur Frage nach der Kultur und zur Aufgabe der "Züchtung" im Sinne einer "Erhöhung der (...) Kultur". Diese Aufgabe ist das zweite Strukturmoment von Nietzches Denken neben der Genealogie.Diese bereitet die "Erhöhung der Kultur" nur vor.The purpose of this study is to identify the original problem which organizes the whole of Nietzsche's reflection. Starting from the statement, "what have I to do with refutations!" and the analysis of its meaning, it shows that Nietzsche imposes a mutation on both the problem of philosophy and its method; he dismisses the traditional question of truth and replaces it with the problem of culture, of which the questions of values , of morals, of décadence or hierarchy are particular aspects. Consequently, the task he assigns to the philosopher is that of Züchtung, which is to be understood as "the enhancement of culture". This task appears therefore as the second dimension of Nietzsche's reflection, in addition to geneology, which merely prepares the "enhancement of culture". (shrink)