Corruption is a more important idea for Hobbes than has been recognized: a state of nature can result from corruption of the people, corruption of counsellors and corruption of legal processes. Hobbes often uses a 'cognitive' conception of corruption — the distortion of mental processes, by faulty reasoning or improper attitudes. Corruption means that citizens think they benefit from sedition, counsellors advise with self-interested rhetoric rather than impartial logic, witnesses lie and judges settle cases by bribes or pity. Although corruption (...) is often thought to involve the pursuit of private gain, Hobbes only talks about corruption in terms of misjudged private gain, where an individual is motivated by his apparent, short-tem self-interest, rather than his real, long- term self-interest. That is why corruption can lead to a state of nature. (shrink)

When someone thanks someone for something, or advises him against something, or refuses something from him, his action is directed not merely at but to the other. He addresses the other. But is it only actions that exemplify this mode of directedness? This essay argues that it is not.

This paper advances a version of physicalism which reconciles the “a priori entailment thesis” (APET) with the analytic independence of our phenomenal and physical vocabularies. The APET is the claim that, if physicalism is true, the complete truths of physics imply every other truth a priori. If so, “cosmic hermeneutics” is possible: a demon having only complete knowledge of physics could deduce every truth about the world. Analytic independence is a popular physicalist explanation for the apparent “epistemic gaps” between phenomenal (...) and physical truths. The two are generally seen as incompatible, since the demon’s deductions seem to presuppose analytic connections between physical and phenomenal terms. I begin by arguing, in support of the APET, that implications from the complete truths of physics to phenomenal truths cannot be a posteriori. Such implications are (according to the physicalist) necessarily true. But they cannot be Kripke-style a posteriori necessities, since (according to the physicalist) the complete truths of physics fix any relevant a posteriori facts about the reference of terms. I then show how the physicalist can turn the tables: the demon can exploit the physical fixing of reference to bridge the gap between the vocabularies, by deducing when phenomenal and physical terms co-refer. This opens the way for a “type-C” physicalism, which accepts in-principle deducibility while still appealing to analytic independence to explain why we (who are not demons) find it impossible to see phenomenal-physical connections a priori. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most interesting and important philosophers working today, known chiefly for his theoretical explorations of popular culture and contemporary politics. This book focuses on the generally neglected and often overshadowed philosophical core of Žižek’s work—an essential component in any true appreciation of this unique thinker’s accomplishment. His central concern, Žižek has proclaimed, is to use psychoanalysis to redeploy the insights of late-modern German philosophy, in particular, the thought of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. By taking this (...) avowal seriously, Adrian Johnston finally clarifies the philosophical project underlying Žižek’s efforts. His book charts the interlinked ontology and theory of subjectivity constructed by Žižek at the intersection of German idealism and Lacanian theory. Johnston also uses Žižek’s combination of philosophy and psychoanalysis to address two perennial philosophical problems: the relationship of mind and body, and the nature of human freedom. By bringing together the past two centuries of European philosophy, psychoanalytic metapsychology, and cutting-edge work in the natural sciences, Johnston develops a transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity—in short, an account of how more-than-material forms of subjectivity can emerge from a corporeal being. His work shows how an engagement with Žižek’s philosophy can produce compelling answers to today’s most vexing and urgent questions as inherited from the history of ideas. (shrink)

Beginning with Zagzebski (The Philosophical Quarterly 44:65–73, 1994), some philosophers have argued that there can be no solution to the Gettier counterexamples within the framework of a fallibilist theory of knowledge. If true, this would be devastating, since it is believed on good grounds that infallibilism leads to scepticism. But I argue here that these purported proofs are mistaken and that the truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is both cogent and fallibilist in nature. To show this I develop the (...) notion of evidence of a state of affairs, a crucial concept in the truthmaker theory. I also argue that a common principle of the transmission of evidence through entailment is false, and the cause of much of the trouble. (shrink)

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The significance of Max Black’s indistinguishable spheres for the nature of particles in quantum mechanics is discussed, focusing in particular on the use of the idea of weak indiscernibility. It is argued that there can be four such Black spheres but that five are impossible. It follows from this that Black’s example cannot serve as a model for indistinguishability in physics. But Black’s discussion of his spheres gave rise to the idea of weak discernibility and it is argued that such (...) predicates are unsatisfiable in the way intended. The underlying problem with weak discernibility spreads out to also undermine the whole notion that indistinguishability rests on a notion of the permutation invariance of particles. A better foundation is indicated. (shrink)

This paper develops a way of understanding G. E. M. Anscombe's essay “The First Person” at the heart of which are the following two ideas: first, that the point of her essay is to show that it is not possible for anyone to understand what they express with “I” as an Art des Gegebenseins—a way of thinking of an object that constitutes identifying knowledge of which object is being thought of; and second, that the argument through which her essay seeks (...) to show this is itself first personal in character. Understanding Anscombe's essay in this light has the merit of showing much of what it says to be correct. But it sets us the task of saying what it is that we understand ourselves to express with “I” if not an Art des Gegebenseins, and in particular what it is that we understand ourselves to express with sentences with “I” as subject that might seem to express identity judgments, such as “I am NN”, and “I am this body”. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 26-29.

It’s a truism of philosophy that Realists must not postulate more than we could reasonably hope to know, while Anti-Realists must not leave us with so little that all knowledge is impossible. But balance is not easily come by—and even less in philosophy than in life. So philosophy continues to struggle over the hard cases, with neither the Realist nor the Anti-Realist able to score an easy victory.

In this paper, we extend Michel Foucault’s final works on the ‘care of the self’ to an empirical examination of research practice in community-based research (CBR). We use Foucault’s ‘morality of behaviors’ to analyze interview data from a national sample of Canadian CBR practitioners working with communities affected by HIV. Despite claims in the literature that ethics review is overly burdensome for non-traditional forms of research, our findings suggest that many researchers using CBR have an ambivalent but ultimately productive relationship (...) with institutional research ethics review requirements. They understand and use prescribed codes, but adapt them in practice to account for the needs of participating community members, members of their research teams and the larger communities with whom they work. Complying with ethics protocols was seen as only the beginning, a minimum standard; our research suggests that the real ethical work happens in the field, where CBR practitioners encounter community members in diverse public roles and must forge ethical consensus across communities. CBR represents an ethical terrain in which practitioners challenge themselves to work differently, and as a result they care for themselves—and others—in ways that often resist the propensity for domination through public health research.‘…there are different ways to “conduct oneself” morally, different ways for the acting individual to operate, not just as an agent, but as an ethical subject of action.’ (Foucault, 1985: 26). (shrink)

What does it mean to have an Anthropocene body? The Anthropocene period is putatively defined by flows of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives (fuels, plastics, fertilizers, etc.), and the very term ‘Anthropocene’ suggests an increasing awareness of the finitude and contingency of contemporary corporealities. This article explores the idea of modelling an Anthropocene body as a living/non-living metabolic process. While identifying bodies with molecules raises a host of problems, metabolism and hydrocarbon biomolecules display a gamut of forms of possession and ways (...) of having a body. Conversion between living and non-living forms of possession can be traced in contemporary genomic science and particularly in synthetic biology as they engineer microbes to produce next-generation biofuels. In contrast to fossil fuels, these fuels derive from genomically re-engineered microbes that digest biomass or photosynthesize to produce hydrocarbons. The problematic contemporary production of these fuels might help us to articulate what it means to have a body as a metabolic manifold of living and non-living forms of possession. (shrink)

Brian Earp and colleagues argue that the major harms associated with the use of illicit drugs largely arise from, or are at least exacerbated by, the fact that their use attracts criminal pe...

What are the leading forces and ideas that are shaping our age? In the West, a decade of financial disruption, austerity, and stagnant wages has produced a popular rejection of market fundamentalism that prevailed for over forty years. Mass immigration and multiculturalism have contributed to rapid changes in both family and community life that leave many people feeling dispossessed or even humiliated. Unresponsive government is exacerbating people’s sense of powerlessness and anger. The revolt against the status quo is fuelling a (...) political insurgency against the establishment that replaces the old opposition of left versus right with a similarly simplistic dichotomy pitting the people against the elites. We are witnessing the failure of dualistic thinking and this will not be resolved by substituting one binary for another. Our contemporary conjuncture is such a period of interregnum and a war of position between the hitherto hegemonic ideology of liberalism and its populist rivals. The popular revolt against liberalism, which is driving the political insurgency across the West, highlights the collapse of the authority of the professional political class dominated by liberals. In what follows I shall argue that the emergent ideologies which are vying for hegemony are hyper-liberalism, nationalist traditionalism, and tech utopianism. All of them are variously anti-humanist, to which one can oppose updated versions of one-nation conservatism and ethical socialism. Before setting out the unfolding ‘war of position,’ I will first explore the new anti-humanism that underpins the main ideological movements. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article examine la manière dont Jean Scot Érigène s’approprie et emploie de façon constructive l’anthropologie de Maxime le Confesseur. Il s’agit de montrer que la division en cinq parties de l’être, puisée dans l’ Ambiguum 41 de Maxime le Confesseur, constitue le cadre du Periphyseon. Selon l’auteur, la compréhension de l’être humain de Maxime le Confesseur comme « un atelier de création », comme la synthèse de tous les aspects de la création, comme un agent d’unification, fournit la (...) prémisse anthropologique pour la division dialectique du genre de la nature propre à Érigène. C’est dans le cadre de l’ontologie de Maxime centrée sur « l’homme comme un atelier de création » qu’Érigène a recours à la tradition des arts libéraux. Par conséquent, la division du genre de la nature comme un exercice dialectique doit être comprise dans le cadre de l’appropriation par Érigène de la division en cinq parties de l’être de Maxime le Confesseur, ainsi que de son corollaire, l’anthropologie de l’ officina omnium o. Le projet du Periphyseon est guidé par la possibilité qu’à travers l’application des arts, l’homme pourrait devenir l’ officina omnium, en dépit de la chute ; si la connaissance intellectuelle de la création peut être achevée, alors le retour de toute la création à l’unité de l’être humain intelligible et ultimement à celle de Dieu pourrait être garanti. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars employs the metaphor of the space of reasons to express a certain conception of knowledge: “in characterising an episode or state as that of knowing … one is placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says”.1 A growing number of philosophers employ the same metaphor to express a conception of at least some (other) mental states: in characterising a state as that of belief, or intention, one is placing (...) it in the same logical space.2 The burden of Alan Millar’s characteristically careful and thought-provoking book is to tell us what this conception amounts to, and to argue for its truth. Its central claim is that the concepts of belief and intention, and what they are concepts of, are (in a sense to be explained) normative. Chapter four – “the heart of the book”, in Millar’s view3 – is devoted to explaining, and defending this claim. (shrink)

This paper describes and discusses a new postgraduate course based on the dialogue-seminar method. The course and the method have been developed within the research area of skill and technology, based at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The main features of the course were dialogue and reflection on practice of research inspired by reading of the source texts from the history of science and philosophy written by: Descartes, Leibniz, Diderot, D’Alembert, Gadamer, Galileo and Darwin. The concept of liberal (...) education was of importance in the design of the course. Doctoral students were all adults interested in applying of research in order to improve practices at their own work places. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent of the critiques that La Beaumelle gives to Voltaire in the annotated edition of the Siècle de Louis XIV, published in 1753, and his response in the Supplément au Siècle de Louis XIV, published a few months later. This, on the other hand, sheds some light on a number of tensions in the Voltaire’s historiographical project. It is shown that in the historical and historiographical works of the philosopher, there are (...) different methodology criteria and that the joint between them is problematic. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 12-14, February 2012.

John Dryzek's justification of deliberative democracy rests on a critique of instrumental rationality and a defence of Habermas's idea of communicative rationality. I question each stage of Dryzek's theory. It defines instrumental rationality broadly but only criticises narrow applications of it. It conflates communicative rationality with Habermas's idea of ‘discourse’ – the real motor of Dryzek's democratic theory. Deliberative democracy can be better defended by avoiding overstated criticisms of instrumental rationality, by altering the emphasis on communicative rationality, and by focusing (...) more on different models of politics than different models of rationality. Dryzek's theory can thus present deliberative democracy as a better means to better ends – a more powerful and more positive position. (shrink)

donkey anaphora, quantificational and modal subordination, static and dynamic approaches to mood, tense and aspect, entailment in natural language, parallels between the individual, temporal and modal domain.

The paper proposes a novel analysis of quantificational subordination, e.g. Harvey courts a woman at every convention. {She is very pretty. vs. She always comes to the banquet with him.} (Karttunen 1976), in particular of the fact that the indefinite in the initial sentence can have wide or narrow scope, but the first discourse as a whole allows only for the wide scope reading, while the second discourse allows for both readings. The cross-sentential interaction between scope and anaphora is captured (...) in terms of structured anaphora to quantifier domains, formalized in a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic; given the underlying type logic, Montague-style compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically. Modal subordination (Roberts 1987) is analyzed in a parallel way, thereby capturing the parallels between the individual and modal domains argued for in Stone (1999). Several other phenomena are analyzed in terms of structured anaphora: exceptional wide scope, weak / strong donkey readings, anaphoric / uniqueness-implying definite descriptions and interactions between same / different and quantifier scope. (shrink)

donkey anaphora, quantificational and modal subordination, static and dynamic approaches to mood, tense and aspect, entailment in natural language, parallels between the individual, temporal and modal domain.

Future technology may dramatically extend the human lifespan. Peter Singer argues that we should reject life extension because developing it would result in a world with lower total and average happiness. Singer’s argument depends on the claim that we should maximise average happiness per moment. I will argue that developing the life-extending drug would not be impermissible because doing so will maximise average happiness per person. I offer an independent argument for why we should adopt a consequentialist principle which says (...) to maximise average happiness per person. (shrink)

Over the last decade, aesthetic and art theory has played an increasingly significant role in the way work and its organization has come to be understood. Bringing together the work of an international spectrum of academics, this collection contributes, in an overall more critical vein, to such emerging debates. Combining both empirical and theoretical material, each chapter re-evaluates the emerging relationship between art, aesthetics, and work, exploring its potential as both a medium of critical analysis, and as a site of (...) conflict and resistance. (shrink)

The trajectory of yoga has been long and steady. It was only natural that it would become an official item in the global discourse on well-being and health, leading to an International Day of Yoga. Nevertheless, there are various preconceptions about the practice, as well as different political and social issues that are worth querying. What and whose is yoga? What sort of disputes does this bear in the religious arena within India? Does the novel international celebration bridge the gap (...) between different cultural and geopolitical worlds? Is there an implied political agenda? This paper will offer both a brief account of the International Day of Yoga, and a critical view on all these issues with a view to foster a wider debate. (shrink)