Value Theory, Miscellaneous

In this commentary on Elpidorou‘s book, I first note a certain arbitrariness in his choice, for his purpose of showing the bright side of negative emotions, of boredom, frustration, and anticipation. Many other emotions carry negative valence and might be said to be useful in motivating us to avoid or escape them. I then focus on boredom, and consider four candidates for the role of its formal object. All four turn out to be problematic. I then consider the moral and (...) prudential value of boredom, and conclude that if boredom is to be attributed some sort of intrinsic value, it is more likely to derive it from its complex role in aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Science is not possible in the absence of epistemic values (truth, simplicity), but what are the moral condi- tions (good, right) that secure these epistemic values in a just prosperous society? The question of value of science is not separate from the question of values in science-education. In the study of science and values, we have to ask two complementary questions: what are the values that science is expected to bring to educa- tion, and what are the values that an (...) educated person is expected to bring to the theory and practice of science. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

A significant portion of the secondary literature on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time has focused on interpreting his formal conceptions of death and anxiety. Unlike these previous works, this essay will serve to fill a gap in the Heideggerian portrayal of death. Although he argues that Dasein is anxious about death at a fundamental level and that it proximally and for the most part covers up such anxiety, Heidegger does not provide ontic evidence in support of his claim, instead opting (...) to uncharacteristically take it as something self-evident. I attempt to supplement Heidegger’s framework by introducing Stephen Cave’s immortality narratives and the emerging field of Terror Management Theory as the aforementioned ontic evidence that rounds out Heidegger’s notion of death, before ultimately transitioning from Heidegger’s work into the larger philosophical discourse on death and demonstrating the potential joy that can manifest when one gains a lucid understanding of the ownness of their death and the narratives to which it gives rise. (shrink)

This chapter discusses two different issues about the relationship between legal positivism and robust normativity (understood as the most authoritative kind of normativity to which we appeal). First, the chapter argues that, in many contexts when discussing “legal positivism” and “legal antipositivism”, the discussion should be shifted from whether legal facts are ultimately partly grounded in moral facts to whether they are ultimately partly grounded in robustly normative facts. Second, the chapter explores an important difference within the kinds of arguments (...) that legal philosophers give for the (purported) truth of legal positivism. The difference concerns whether (purportedly) robustly normative facts are appealed to as premises in those arguments or not. (A closely connected issue is whether (purportedly) normative facts that bear one or more important connections to robustly normative facts are appealed to in premises to those arguments.) The chapter argues that thinking about this dividing line helps people better situate the positivist/antipositivist dispute, better understand the space of views in legal philosophy, better evaluate those views, and avoid having merely verbal disputes. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz werden die Fragen nach dem Ort der Werte in der Erfahrung und nach ihrer Natur als Qualität besonderer Art anhand von Ansätzen der Brentanoschule und der Gestaltpsychologie untersucht. Konkret geht es darum, diejenigen Positionen innerhalb dieser Schulen zu analysieren, welche die Werte sowohl in Abhängigkeit von den Eigenschaften des Objektes, an dem diese haften, als auch von der psychophysischen Konstitution des Subjektes, welche sich auf Werte bezieht, verstehen. Brentanos Dispositionalismus, Meinongs erste und zweite dispositionalistische Theorie der Werte (...) und Landmann-Kalischers Theorie der Werte als sekundäre Qualitäten werden exemplarisch als Vertreter der Brentanoschule untersucht, während Köhlers These der Werte als Gestaltqualitäten die Auffassung der Berliner gestalttheoretischen Schule repräsentieren soll. Die Untersuchung dieser Positionen wird einen neuen Blick auf das Wertphänomen werfen, die sich sowohl vom Realismus als auch vom Emotivismus unterscheidet, und welche darin besteht, es in Abhängigkeit von unseren affektiven Dispositionen zu erklären, seien diese als Gemütsbewegungen, Begehrungen, Gefühle oder emotionale Wahrnehmungen verstanden. (shrink)

Recent enactive accounts of cognition have begun to disentangle social and normative aspects of the human mind. In this paper, we will contribute to this debate by developing an enactive account of moral development, i.e. the learning of ethical norms, and critical engagement with these norms through social affordances, participatory sense-making, and moral concern. The difficulty in articulating such an account is in reconciling the affective embodied aspects of moral experiences with the more orthodox aspects of ethics like critical reflection. (...) In order to respond to this difficulty, we bring Ricoeur’s hermeneutics into dialogue with enactivism. Complementing the enactive tradition, we frame critical ethical learning as embodied interaction with diverse ethical dimensions allowing us to incorporate moral values in the form of critical narratives and the social imaginary. We agree with enactivist theories that participation and democratic dialogue are essential parts of critical reflection on ethical norms. Yet, we also contend that this kind of critical reflection benefits from hermeneutical interpretation, challenging larger participatory networks, such as social institutions, which nourish inequality and maintain unethical values. (shrink)

Concepts are central in applied ethics as points of reference for moral deliberation. Applied ethicists generally rely on shared methodological standards for the justification of the use of concepts, such as standards of coherence and of relevance; concepts that are incoherent or irrelevant for the purposes of any particular moral inquiry are not justified as points of reference in that inquiry. This article treats one such standard of justification, namely, the standard of usefulness. According to that standard, concepts are not (...) justified as points of reference if they do not contribute to solving real-world problems. It is argued that many applied ethicists implicitly rely on the standard of usefulness, which merits the attention of applied ethicists and theorists dedicated to methodological problems in applied ethics. (shrink)

This paper analyses how security affects well-being. Security is understood as someone’s sureness of enjoying some good in the future; well-being is treated as a matter of human flourishing. Security can contribute to our well-being in various ways: if we are in fact bound to enjoy a good, in principle this is positive for our flourishing in the future; if we also believe that we will enjoy this good, we can be more efficient in pursuing our well-being; if we also (...) feel secure, this supports our enjoyment of our physical and mental capacities. For some of these benefits to obtain fully, however, it is important that our beliefs and feelings align with the facts. Furthermore, mirroring security’s upsides, there are also ways in which security can hamper our flourishing: it can obstruct the change, surprise, and pleasurable fear that are sometimes required for a good life too. (shrink)

In a series of intriguing and far-reaching papers, Hannah Ginsborg introduced the notion of “primitive normativity” as the cornerstone of a novel account of the normativity of concepts, thought, and meaning. Her account is supposed to steer a middle course between what she regards as the two horns of a dilemma first laid out by Saul Kripke in his seminal reading of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following. I propose to investigate Ginsborg’s conception. I begin by establishing the conceptual relations between the (...) notions of having concepts and of following rules, between concepts and normativity, in Section 7.1. I outline the Kripkean dilemma in Section 7.2 and derive from it, in Section 7.3, a criterion of adequacy for any philosophical account purporting to explain what it is to have concepts in terms of normativity. I go on to explain Ginsborg’s notion of primitive normativity and how it is supposed to meet the criterion of adequacy. In Sections 7.4 and 7.5, I introduce and evaluate two core claims of her position and argue that each of them leads her account to founder on its own criterion of adequacy. Thus I conclude that the notion of primitive normativity offers no viable escape from the Kripkean dilemma. (shrink)

Recent AI ethics has focused on applying abstract principles downward to practice. This paper moves in the other direction. Ethical insights are generated from the lived experiences of AI-designers working on tangible human problems, and then cycled upward to influence theoretical debates surrounding these questions: 1) Should AI as trustworthy be sought through explainability, or accurate performance? 2) Should AI be considered trustworthy at all, or is reliability a preferable aim? 3) Should AI ethics be oriented toward establishing protections for (...) users, or toward catalyzing innovation? Specific answers are less significant than the larger demonstration that AI ethics is currently unbalanced toward theoretical principles, and will benefit from increased exposure to grounded practices and dilemmas. (shrink)

The ‘black box’ in Stoic axiology refers to the mysterious connection between the input of Stoic deliberation (reasons generated by the value of indifferents) and the output (appropriate actions). In this paper, I peer into the black box by drawing an analogy between Stoic and Kantian axiology. The value and disvalue of indifferents is intrinsic, but conditional. An extrinsic condition on the value of a token indifferent is that one's selection of that indifferent is sanctioned by context-relative ethical principles. The (...) value of an indifferent that does not meet this condition is normatively silenced, such that it fails to constitute a reason for action. (shrink)

The author sets out to respond to the student complaint that ‘Philosophy did not answer “the big questions”’, in particular the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ The response first outlines and evaluates the most common religious answer, that human life is given a meaning by God who created us and informs us that this life is just the pilgrim way to the next eternal life in heaven. He then discusses the response that, from the point of view of (...) post-Darwinian science and the evolution of the universe and all that is in it, human life on Earth must be afforded no more meaning than the meaning we would give to a microscopic planaria or to some creature on another planet in a distant universe. All things including human creatures on Planet Earth just exist for a time and that is that. There is no plan or purpose. In the last sections the author outlines the view that it is we humans ourselves who give meaning to our lives by our choices of values or things that are worth pursuing and through our resulting sense of achievement or the opposite. Nevertheless the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ can mean quite different things in different contexts, and so merit different if related answers. From one point of view one answer may lie in terms of the love of one human for another. (shrink)

In this paper, I am dealing with the phenomena of “life” and “death.” The questions that I attempt to answer are “What is life, and what is death?” “Is it bad to die?” and “Is there life after death?” The method that I am using in this paper is that of phenomenology. The latter I understand as an inquiry into meaning, that is, what makes this or that phenomenon as such. Thus, I am approaching the phenomena in question from the (...) point of view of their meaning in the first place. I claim that ordinarily we constitute phenomena of “life” and “death” in a twofold way. When it comes to “life,” one can specify “life-as-biological,” and “life-as-a-possibility” senses. The former I understand as a cluster of biological processes that unfold in physical time. By “life-as-a-possibility,” I understand a cluster of projects, potentials that depend on our subjectivity. I claim that we essentially perceive life-as-biological through life-as-possibility. When it comes to “death,” I argue that we essentially constitute this phenomenon in a similar manner. On the one hand, we perceive “death” in the “death-as-biological/physical” sense which signifies the end of the organism’s biological processes. On the other hand, we constitute “death” as the “existential/practical death”/“death-of-possibility.” By that I mean an annihilation of all possibilities, and projects. In short, it is a situation when one’s life suddenly loses all its meaning and value: death of meaning. I argue that what constitutes the significance of “death-as-biological” for us is what I call the “existential/practical death” or “death-of-possibility.” I use the phenomena of mourning and suicide to illustrate my point better. -/- Reflecting on whether it is bad to die, I claim that if we accept the hypotheses I am defending in the paper, it appears that death is bad because it entails the loss of all possibilities. I also want to show that people’s desire for immortality is in fact reasonable, because the more one lives, the more possibilities one is able to realize. In other words, people’s desire for immortality is grounded in the essential understanding of the phenomenon of “life” as a possibility. -/- Reflecting on whether there is life after death, my answer is twofold. Since there is no scientific evidence of life after physical/biological death, I think there is no reason to believe in such as well. But when it comes to the question whether there is life after the existential/practical death, my answer is positive: “Yes, there is!” I try to show that it is always possible to find the meaning of life even in the light of the most terrible events. In this sense, there is always a light in the end of the tunnel. (shrink)

The paper examines Fritz Jahr as a possible role-model in bioethical education. It consists of two parts. The first part builds upon the acknowledged data and theories about how Fritz Jahr proposed the bioethical imperative and changed his way of thinking. It provides arguments for and against known claims and expands the knowledge background with the focus on reconstructing the thought process and some presumptions that led to the formulation of bioethical imperative. The second part uses these results to infer (...) five features to show how we can extract and define methodological features from Jahr’s personality and activity, which confirm and enhance integrative projects. An attempt has been made to understand that something such as “Jahrian methodology”, might be sensible enough to provide scientific knowledge and cultural orientation without simplifying the bios, but that it is pointless without integration with educational models, and to emphasise this I conclusively consider the role of bioethicists in the 21st century. (shrink)

Before it succumbed to political censorship in Croatia in 1974 and afterward, a movement known as praxis philosophy reached its pinnacle as a critical response to the conceptually and socially corrupted dialectical and historical materialism which dominated the former Yugoslavian region. Two of the most prominent philosophers of "praxis movement" – Milan Kangrga and Gajo Petrović – the Praxists – remained to be an inspirational source for junior and senior scholars to date. Recently, a debate was initiated regarding the value (...) of "praxis philosophy", and has notably produced a series of assessments that were atypical in comparison to virtually all previous reviews. The praxis movement was scorned by many commentators who concluded that Praxists were logically inconsistent and that their errors were covered up by too abstract, confusing concepts that lacked proper articulation. Among other things, it was significantly pointed out that their philosophical investigations neither had nor will have any useful application in our society. In this paper, I offer (1) a refutation of these conclusions by (2) describing the structure of praxis philosophy, thus far absent from praxis studies. My ultimate objective was to show that Praxists intentionally developed an alternative philosophical thought to subdue the type of thinking which is fundamental for sterile criticism, and thus I aimed to explain that Praxists self-consciously chose to oppose the approach they were accused of neglecting. Their central idea was to send a message opposite of what their recent criticists think they failed to do. (shrink)

Heuristička propulzivnost bioetike u posljednjih trideset godina potaknula je na značajno proširenje područnog opsega: na metodološkom planu razvoj je obilježen kretanjem od disciplinarnosti do transdisciplinarnosti, a na problemskom planu od biotehničkih izazova do mišljenja cjeline živog svijeta. Međutim, bioetička ispitivanja još uvijek u obzir ne uzimaju probleme iz humanističke i prirodoznanstvene kozmologije, čak ni u sklopu projekta integrativne bioetike, što je izrazito problematično s obzirom na važnost njihovih jezgri znanja. Razvijanje ljudskog društva prema objedinjavanju s prostorom izvan planeta Zemlje te (...) čvrsta povezanost fenomena života s osnovnom ustrojstvom i dinamikom pojmljivog svemira poziva na pripremno usmjeravanje pozornosti na bioetičke i društveno–znanstvene probleme u kojima kozmološki elementi nose važnu ulogu. Cilj je ovoga članka ponuditi istraživačko gledište u kozmobioetike kao ispomoći u daljnjem proširenju spoznajne senzibilnosti za istinu o kompleksnosti (društvenog) bivstvovanja na Zemlji i oko nje. Obrada problema zasniva se na multidisciplinarnoj komunikaciji relevantnih jezgri znanja metodom klasičnog filozofijskog izlaganja. (shrink)

Some think that life is worth living not merely because of the goods and the bads within it, but also because life itself is good. I explain how this idea can be formalized by associating each version of the view with a function from length of life to the value generated by life itself. Then I argue that every version of the view that life itself is good faces some version of the following dilemma: either (1) good human lives are (...) worse than very long lives wholly devoid of pleasure, desire-satisfaction, knowledge, or any other goods, or (2) very short lives containing nothing but suffering are worth living. Since neither result is plausible, we ought to reject the view that life itself is good. On the view I favor, any given life may be worth living because of the goods that it contains, but life itself is neutral. (shrink)

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that intrinsically desiring nothing other than pleasure can prevent one from obtaining pleasure. In this article, I show how the paradox of hedonism can be used as the basis for an objection against hedonism about well-being, and one that is more defensible than has been commonly recognized. Moreover, I argue that the challenge presented by the paradox can be used to target not only hedonism about well-being, but also desire satisfactionism and the hybrid (...) theory. However, I argue that certain sophisticated versions of all three theories can escape it. (shrink)

Discussions of aesthetic reasons and normativity are becoming increasingly popular. This piece outlines six basic questions about aesthetic reasons, normativity, and value and discusses the space of possible answers to these questions. I divide the terrain into two groups of three questions each. First are questions about the shape of aesthetic reasons: what they favour, how strong they are, and where they come from. Second are relational questions about how aesthetic reasons fit into the wider normative landscape: whether they are (...) distinctive, what their normative status is, and how they interact with each other and with non-aesthetic reasons. This piece aims to provide a taxonomy to clarify and organise the burgeoning literature and to make a few concrete suggestions for avenues of future research. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam spent much of his career criticizing the fact/value dichotomy, and this became apparent already during the phase when he defended internal realism. He later changed his epistemological and metaphysical view by endorsing natural realism, with the consequence of embracing alethic pluralism, the idea that truth works differently in various discourse domains. Despite these changes of mind in epistemology and in theory of truth, Putnam went on criticizing the fact/value dichotomy. However, alethic pluralism entails drawing distinctions among discourse domains, (...) especially between factual and nonfactual domains, and these distinctions are in tension with the rejection of the fact/value dichotomy, as this would in principle hinder factual domains as genuine. This issue raises, prima facie, some doubts about the effective compatibility of these views. (shrink)

In what sense can one claim that intentional explanations are essentially normative, given that people’s actions and thinking are replete with various irrationalities, yet are still pretty well exp...

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 380-387, January 2020.

لما يقرب من نصف قرن، سُمح لسقراط بممارسة التفلسف دون عوائق في شوارع مسقط رأسه، حيث كان السعي وراء المعرفة بالنسبة له ضروريًا كالهواء الذي نتنفسه، قد لا نعرف عنه على وجه اليقين سوى مقولته المشهورة: «الشيء الوحيد الذي أعرفه هو أنني لا أعرف شيئًا» ولكن للأسف لا يوجد دليلٌ حقيقي على نسبة هذه المقولة إليه، حيث تم توثيقها لأول مرة من قبل «شيشرون» بعد أكثر من ثلاثمائة عام من إعدام «سقراط» في أثينا سنة 399 قبل الميلاد! لكن المؤكد، وفقًا (...) لكُتاب سيرته الذاتية: «أفلاطون» و«زينوفون»، أنه لم يكن يبحث فقط عن معنى الحياة، ولكن عن مغزى وجدوى حياتنا، وطرح تساؤلات أساسية عن الوجود البشري: ما الذي يجعلنا سعداء؟ ما الذي يجعلنا صالحين؟ ما الفضيلة؟ ما الحب؟ ما الخوف؟ وكيف يجب أن نعيش حياتنا بشكل أفضل؟. (shrink)

Engaging with the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch, we submit that there are difficulties associated with providing a good description of morality that are intimately connected with difficulties in understanding other human beings. We suggest three senses in which moral philosophical reflection needs to account for our understanding of others: the failure to understand someone is not merely an intellectual failure, but also engages us morally; the moral question of understanding is not limited to the extent to which we understand (...) a particular person, but also presents itself in how we picture difficulties in understanding people; and “philosophical pictures of morality” fundamentally shape the conceptual framework we use to investigate morality, as well as the analysis of morality we find illuminative and satisfactory. Exploring the implications of these claims, we ask what it means to think of others as the same, or as different, from ourselves. We then consider the ethical significance of finding, or not finding, our feet in our encounters with others, dwelling on how the metaphor of movement reveals one way in which we are never at peace in the exploration of morality. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that the animated TV-show Rick and Morty depicts several important and relevant themes about the impact of technology in contemporary societies. By using certain concepts and ideas from the philosophy of technology, especially from thinkers like Jacques Ellul, Jacques Derrida, Neil Postman, and George Ritzer, we investigate how this show brings to the fore certain ontological and ethical assumptions and problems that stem from the advance of technology. We shall use the term technopolitical thinking to (...) refer to these core assumptions and principles which are inherent in contemporary technological societies. By providing various examples from certain episodes and scenes of the show, we shall illustrate how this animated series can provide a basis for a more extensive discussion. (shrink)

The temporal unity of the self cannot be accounted for by the continuity of causal, factual, or contiguous relations between independently definable mental events, as proposed by Locke and Parfit. The identity of the self over time is normative: it depends on the institutional context of social rules external to the self that determine the relationship between past commitments and current responsibilities. (2005).

A prevailing understanding of realism, chiefly among its critics, casts realists as those who seek a ‘distinctively political normativity’, where this is interpreted as meaning nonmoral in kind. Moralists, on this account, are those who reject this and believe that political normativity remains moral. Critics have then focused much of their attention on demonstrating that the search for a nonmoral political normativity is doomed to fail which, if right, would then seem to fatally undermine the realist endeavour. This paper makes (...) the case that casting the difference between realism and moralism in these terms is a mistake, one which overlooks the substantial body of realist work which is clear that it has no such aspirations to develop a nonmoral political normativity. The hope is that in drawing attention to this mistake a line can be drawn under these unhelpful debates, and we can move on to more fruitful constructive and critical discussions between realists and their critics. (shrink)

Normative notions are central to Husserl’s account of intentionality: intending an object is a normative achievement, essentially admitting of fulfillment or disappointment. So is teleology: intentional conscious life is inseparable from a horizontal orientation toward “ideas in the Kantian sense.” How are they related? Is teleology essential for intentionality as a normative achievement? Or, in Husserl’s way of putting it, do relative truths “demand” ideal truths? This article explores some reasons for agreeing with Husserl that this is indeed the case. (...) In Sec. 2, I will identify a “normative turn” in Husserl’s account of the basic structure of perceptual intentionality and spell out the teleological character of this normative account. This sense of teleology is a minimal one. A more robust teleology, in the sense of an orientation toward infinite ideality, is then justified in Sec. 3 by virtue of its function in the constitution of genuine objectivity. In Sec. 4, I will turn to the noetic, especially the ego-oriented side of Husserl’s analysis, in order to clarify the normative force of infinite telos. All in all, I will argue that the normative and the teleological sides of the story are inextricably intertwined in Husserl’s account of intentional conscious life. (shrink)

A central tension shaping metaethical inquiry is that normativity appears to be subjective yet real, where it’s difficult to reconcile these aspects. On the one hand, normativity pertains to our actions and attitudes. On the other, normativity appears to be real in a way that precludes it from being a mere figment of those actions and attitudes. In this paper, I argue that normativity is indeed both subjective and real. I do so by way of treating it as a special (...) sort of artifact, where artifacts are mind-dependent yet nevertheless can carve at the joints of reality. In particular, I argue that the properties of being a reason and being valuable for are grounded in attitudes yet are still absolutely structural. (shrink)

Rosa M. Calcaterra's new book is a critical interpretation of Richard Rorty's intellectual path as structured around the problem of normativity. How can we justify our normative claims in epistemology, morality, and politics, without lapsing into either ahistorical foundationalism or some form of skepticism? Calcaterra discusses the Rortyan answers to this question with a critical but sympathetic eye. In doing so, she stresses Rorty's relation to the broader pragmatist family even more than Rorty himself would have been willing to do. (...) Overall, three major strategies to bridge contingency and normativity emerge from the book. The first centers on meliorism as a powerful instrument to make sense of the idea of... (shrink)

Giving advice is very important in hard cases that include ignorance and uncertainty. Despite the fact that there is a lot of research on advice, the normativity of advice is rarely investigated. Why we ought to follow the advice? How to understand word “ought” that is commonly used when giving advice? How advice creates obligation? This paper will focus on the aforementioned questions concerning normativity of advice. On the view that we advance, the investigation on normativity of advice might be (...) useful for realizing how to face challenges in times of crisis. (shrink)

This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology. -/- Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about (...) what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others. -/- Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology. (shrink)

The autopoietic enactive account of cognition explains the emergence of normativity in nature as the norm of self-maintenance of life. The autonomous nature of living agents implies that they can differentiate events and regulate their responses in terms of what is better or worse to maintain their own precarious identity. Thus, normative behavior emerges from living organisms. Under this basic understanding of normativity as self-maintenance, autopoietic enactivism defends a continuity between biological, cognitive, and social norms. The self-maintenance of an agent’s (...) sensorimotor identity establishes the cognitive norms that regulate its behavior, and the self-maintenance of its social identity determines the social norms. However, there is no clear explanation of how individuals, who by their very constitution are primarily moved to interact with the world under the norm of self-maintenance, could interact with the world driven by non-individual norms. Furthermore, understanding all normativity as self-maintenance makes it unclear how agents establish genuine social interactions and acquire habits that have no implication for their constitution as individuals. So, to face these challenges, I propose an alternative notion of normativity grounded on a Wittgensteinian, action-oriented, and pragmatic conception of meaning that distinguishes between an agent with a normative point of view and external normative criteria. I defend that a normative phenomenon is an interaction that is established by an individual point of view as defined by autopoietic enactivism and that is part of a self-maintaining system. The latter establishes the external normative criteria to evaluate the interaction, and it may or may not coincide with the identity of the interacting agent. Separating external normative criteria from the self-constitution of the interactant agent not only solves the challenge but potentially explains the situated and relational character of agency. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes between several senses of “normativity”. For example, that we ought to abstain from causing unnecessary suffering is a normative, not descriptive, claim. And so is the claim that we have good reason, and ought to drive on the right, or left, side of the road because the law requires us to do that. Reasons and oughts are normative, by definition. Indeed, it may be that “[t]he normativity of all that is normative consists in the way it is, (...) or provides, or is otherwise related to reasons” (Raz 1999, 67) . That is what the “reasons-first” view holds, but there are also other views, and what is by definition a normative statement, or a normative fact if you like, depends on how we define normativity. -/- It may seem that requirements are also by definition normative. But it seems that there can also be requirements that one has no reason to meet: it is less clear whether such requirements are normative in the same sense that reasons and oughts are normative. This paper will go through various further phenomena, which are candidates for being normative in some other sense than normative reasons and oughts, defending however the view that not all of them are. But arguably four or so different senses of normativity can be distinguished. -/- The paper will accept the view that the normativity of reasons and oughts, which is here called normativity1, is central. It is an open question whether all requirements or expectations or socially constructed norms are normative in that sense. Arguably it depends on the contents and content-independent authority of the legislators, whether we have good reasons, or ought, to meet the requirements, obey the law, or to follow the etiquette, or to conform to others’ interpersonal expectations, requests, demands or prescriptions. Whether and when we do have such reasons is a difficult and important substantive question, which concerns the normativity1 of requirements of law. -/- In another sense, norms (intended to guide behavior) are trivially or by definition normative, and constitute normativity: some forms of behavior are ruled as acceptable (e.g. driving on the right) and others as unacceptable (e.g. driving on the left) in light of the norm. Even in the case of a bad norm (that we have no reason to follow, and which ought to be changed, and ought not prevail) classifies behaviours as acceptable or unacceptable in light of the norm. Surely norms are by definition normative? Call this conformity to social norms and actual expectations normativity2. It is not an open question whether social norms are normative in that sense – they are by definition normative2. But importantly, it is an open question whether one has good reasons, or sufficient reason, or ought, to follow any social norm – that is, whether the norm in question is normative1. -/- The first section of the article characterizes further the difference between these two senses of normativity, and additionally introduces various other candidate senses of “normativity”. These possible senses of “normativity” may be at stake in the debates about normative requirements of rationality , about so called ought-to-be -rules , about normativity of linguistic meaning , about “directions of fit” of beliefs and desires , about subjective authority of intentions and decisions and interpersonal authority or co-authority of concrete others. -/- In later sections these cases are discussed. Do they constitute separate senses of normativity? And are the later phenomena such that they give agents good reasons: do they include normativity1 – the core sense? A “normative power -model” is suggested as a framework for examining whether actual social norms, laws, expectations provide good reasons and oughts or not. Once we understand the relation between the first two senses of normativity, do the later phenomena follow the same pattern – is the “normative powers – model” relevant for them as well? (shrink)

This volume examines the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas's work to recent developments in analytic philosophy. Contemporary analytic philosophers working in metaethics, the philosophy of mind, and the metaphysic of personal identity have argued for views similar to those espoused by Levinas. Often disparately pursued, Levinas's account of "ethics as first philosophy" affords a way of connecting these respective enterprises and showing how moral normativity enters into the structure of rationality and personal identity. In metaethics, the volume shows how Levinas's moral (...) phenomenology relates to recent work on the normativity of rationality and intentionality, and how it can illuminate a wide range of moral concepts including accountability, moral intuition, respect, conscience, attention, blame, indignity, shame, hatred, dependence, gratitude and guilt. The volume also tests Levinas's innovative claim that ethical relations provide a way of accounting for the irreducibility of personal identity to psychological identity. The essays here contribute to ongoing discussions about the metaphysical significance and sustainability of a naturalistic but nonreductive account of personhood. Finally, the volume connects Levinas's second-person standpoint with analogous developments in moral philosophy. (shrink)

While Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy is often depicted in an ahistorical fashion, this book explores the consequences of placing his work in its historical context. In order to show how Sellars’ early publications depend on contextual factors, Peter Olen reconstructs the conceptions of language, psychological, and social explanation that dominated American philosophy in the early 20th century. Because of Sellars’ differing explanations of language and behaviour, Olen argues that many of Sellars’ early commitments are incompatible with his later works. In the (...) course of doing so, Olen highlights problematic tensions between Sellars’ early and later conceptions of language, meta-philosophy, and normativity. Supplementing the main text is a collection of previously unpublished archival material from Wilfrid Sellars, Gustav Bergmann, Everett Hall, and other early 20th century philosophers. This text will be a useful resource to those with an interest in the history of American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy, and the myriad issues surrounding normativity and language. (shrink)

African Philosophical Perspectives on the Meaning of Life The question of life’s meaning is a perennial one. It can be claimed that all other questions, whether philosophical, scientific, or religious, are attempts to offer some glimpse into the meaning—in this sense, purpose—of human existence. In philosophical circles, the question of life’s meaning has been given … Continue reading African Philosophical Perspectives on the Meaning of Life →.

Charting new territory in the interface between science and ethics, this monograph is a study of how the scientific mentality can affect the building of character, or the attainment of virtue by the individual. Drawing on inspiration from virtue-ethics and virtue-epistemology, Caruana argues that science is not just a system of knowledge but also an important factor determining a way of life. This book goes beyond the normal strategy evident in the science-ethics realm of examining specific ethical dilemmas posed by (...) scientific innovations. Here Caruana deals with more fundamental issues, uncovering morally significant tendencies within the very core of the scientific mentality and explaining how science, its method, history, and explanatory power can shape a conception of the good life. (shrink)

In my 2002 piece ‘The Meaning of Life’ I argued that Life, meaning the sum of the lives of all living things, had a meaning if and only if it had been purposefully brought about by a designer or creator. Michael Hauskeller has recently criticized this argument, responding that this sense of ‘meaning’ is not the one in view when we are discussing ‘the meaning of life’. In this piece I respond to Hauskeller's argument, and, while I stand by my (...) 2002 argument in terms of one meaning of ‘meaning’, I admit that it does not apply to the different question of what makes a life meaningful. I assert that glorifying God is the activity that contributes the most meaningfulness to a life, though I deny that this is the only activity that can contribute meaningfulness to a life. This makes me, in terms due to Thaddeus Metz, a moderate supernaturalist rather than an extreme supernaturalist. Despite this distinction, Metz has argued in this volume that moderate supernaturalism is vulnerable to the same objection as in his view defeats extreme supernaturalism, and I close by responding to this argument. (shrink)

One way to examine the enigmatic meaningfulness of human life is to ask under which conditions persons ask in earnest for assistance to die, either through euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. The counterpart of intolerable suffering must consist in some form of, however minimal, flourishing that makes people want to go on with their lives, disregarding other reasons to reject assisted dying that have more to do with religious prohibitions. To learn more about why persons want to hasten death during (...) the last days, weeks or months of their lives, what kinds of suffering they fear and what they hold to be the main reasons to carry on or not carry on living, the paper offers some examples from a book written by the physician Uwe-Christian Arnold. He has helped hundreds of persons in Germany to die with the aid of sedative drugs the last 25 years, despite the professional societies and codes in Germany that prohibit such actions. The paper discusses various examples from Arnold's book and makes use of them to better understand not only why people sometimes want to die but what made their lives meaningful before they reached this final decision. (shrink)

Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. Exploring the place of limits within a well-lived human life this work develops and defends an original account of limiting virtues, which are (...) concerned with recognizing proper limits in human life. The limiting virtues that are the focus are humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty, and they are explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. These virtues have been underexplored in discussions about virtue ethics, and when they have been explored it has not been with regard to the general issue of the place of limits within a well-lived human life. The account of the limiting virtues provided here, however, is intended as a counter to other prominent approaches to ethics: namely, autonomy-centered approaches and consequentialist (or maximizing) approaches. This account is also used to address a number of important contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, distributive justice, cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism, and the ethical status of growth-based economics. (shrink)