René Descartes (1596-1650)?: un classique de la philosophie, père du rationalisme, disciple du dualisme platonicien et inventeur du cogito. 0Il existe pourtant un autre Descartes, méconnu?: l’observateur de ce qui, en l’homme, se situe à la limite du rationnel et de l’irrationnel. Bref, en cette partie qu’est, aux confins de l’âme et du corps, le non-rationnel?: la sensibilité ou, mieux, l’affectivité. D’où le sens du titre de ce livre?: le clair-obscur de la conscience, réunissant les idées claires et distinctes de (...) l’âme et les idées obscures et confuses du corps. 0C’est donc, chronologiquement, le troisième et dernier Descartes, le moins étudié mais le plus authentique, que l’on analysera ici?: après le savant du Discours de la Méthode, puis le métaphysicien des Méditations, le psychologue des Passions de l’âme. Ainsi est-ce un Descartes original et inédit, réévalué et actualisé à la lumière de la philosophie contemporaine, que le lecteur découvrira en ces pages. (shrink)

Dès la fin du XIe siècle, des traductions du grec, mais surtout de l’arabe, contribuèrent à la refondation en Occident chrétien d’une science médicale. Leurs premiers lecteurs, qui n’étaient pas tous médecins, y trouvèrent une représentation de la nature de l’homme, dans ce qui la rendait semblable au monde inanimé comme dans sa spécificité. Diffusée avant les traductions de textes philosophiques, elle faisait une large place à l’interaction entre états du corps et passions de l’âme, sans postuler ouvertement un déterminisme (...) psychologique, inacceptable en contexte chrétien. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 8-21MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Klossowski's Reading of Nietzsche Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra, StereotypesDaniel W. SmithIn his writings on Nietzsche, Pierre Klossowski makes use of various concepts—such as intensities, phantasms, simulacra and stereotypes, resemblance and dissemblance, gregariousness and singularity—that have no place in Nietzsche's own oeuvre. These concepts are Klossowski's own creations, his own contributions to thought. Although Klossowski consistently refused to characterize himself as a philosopher ("Je (...) suis une 'maniaque,'" he once said, "Un point, c'est tout!"),1 his work in its entirety was marked by an extraordinary conceptual creation. From this point of view, his Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle can be read as a work in philosophy—at least in the idiosyncratic sense given to this term by Gilles Deleuze, who defined philosophy as the creation or invention of concepts [Deleuze and Guattari 2]. No doubt, Klossowski remains an almost unclassifiable figure—philosopher, novelist, essayist, translator, artist—and attempting to analyze his work through the prism of philosophy may seem to be a reductive approach that belies the complexity of his exceptional oeuvre. Reading Klossowski as a conceptual innovator, however, at least has the advantage of allowing us to chart a consistent trajectory through his difficult and often labyrinthine text, without denying its other dimensions (affective, perceptive, literary, and so on). In what follows, then, I would like to examine three of Klossowski's most characteristic and important concepts—impulses and their intensities, phantasms, and simulacra and their stereotypes—as well as the precise interrelations he establishes among them. Taken together, these three concepts describe what Klossowski terms the tripartite economy of soul, which constitutes the implicit model through which he interprets Nietzsche's thought.1Impulses as Fluctuating IntensitiesKlossowski describes his books on both Nietzsche and Sade as "essays devoted not to ideologies but to the physiognomies of problematic thinkers who differ greatly from each other" ["Postface" 137, emphasis added]. This emphasis on the "physiognomy" of thinkers reflects Nietzsche's insistence on taking the body rather than the mind as a guide for philosophy since the body is a more accessible phenomenon, less surrounded by myth and superstition. "The body and physiology as the starting point," Nietzsche wrote. "Why?... The phenomenon of the body is the richer, clearer, more tangible [End Page 8] phenomenon.... Belief in the body is more fundamental than belief in the soul" [WP §§492, 489, 491]. Klossowski himself, however, when writing of the intensive status of the impulses, frequently makes use of the term "soul" (âme), owing in part, no doubt, to his interest in the theological literature of the mystics, such as Meister Eckhardt and Teresa of Avila. For the mystics, the depth of the soul is something irreducible and uncreated: it eludes the exercise of the created intellect, and can only be grasped negatively.2 Nonetheless, if one can find a similar apophaticism (or "negative theology") in Klossowski, it is related exclusively to the immanent and chaotic movements of the soul's intensive affects, and not to the transcendence of God. What is incommunicable in the soul (or body) are its "impulses"—their fluctuations of intensity, their rises and falls, their manic elations and depressive descents, which are in constant variation.Nietzsche himself had recourse to a highly varied vocabulary to describe what Klossowski summarizes in the term "impulse": "drive" (Triebe), "desire" (Begierden), "instinct" (Instinke), "power" (Mächte), "force" (Kräfte), "impulse" (Reize, Impulse), "passion" (Leidenschaften), "feeling" (Gefülen), "affect" (Affekte), "pathos" (Pathos), and so on.3 Klossowski frequently employs the musical term tonalité to describe these states of the soul's fluctuating intensities—their diverse tones, timbres, and changing amplitudes—which can take on various forms ("aggressiveness, tolerance, intimidation, anguish, the need for solitude, the forgetting of oneself" [NVC 6]). At bottom, what these impulses express are what Klossowski calls the "obstinate singularity" of the human soul, which is by nature noncommunicable; they constitute "the unexchangeable depth" (le fond inéchangeable) or "the unintelligible depth" (le fond unintelligible) of the soul. What makes every individual... (shrink)

La philosophie analytique contemporaine reste confinée à quelques attitudes paradigmatiques: croyance, savoir, désir et intention. Comment élaborer une théorie plus générale des attitudes? Descartes dans Les passions de l’âme analyse les attitudes en termes de croyances et de désirs. Selon mon analyse, les modes psychologiques ont d’autres composantes que leur catégorie de base cartésienne de cognition ou de volition. Les modes d’attitudes comme l’attente, le savoir et l’intention ont une façon propre de croire ou de désirer, des conditions propres sur (...) leur contenu propositionnel ou des conditions préparatoires particulières. Grâce à pareilles composantes je définirai récursivement l’ensemble de tous les modes psycho­logiques possibles d’attitudes propositionnelles. Comme Descartes l’avait anticipé, les deux modes de croyance et de désir sont primitifs. Les autres modes plus complexes sont obtenus en leur ajoutant des composantes nouvelles. De par leur nature, les attitudes, qui sont dirigées vers des objets et faits du monde, ont des conditions de possession et de satisfaction. Les croyances sont satisfaites quand elles sont vraies et les désirs quand ils sont réalisés. Quiconque possède une attitude est dans un certain état mental: il représente comment les choses doivent être dans le monde pour que son attitude soit satisfaite. Le but principal de cet article est d’analyser systématiquement les conditions de possession et de satisfaction des diffé­rences espèces d’attitudes individuelles des agents humains, qu’il s’agisse des attitudes propositionnelles, des sommes d’attitudes comme le doute, des dénégations d’attitudes comme le mécontentement et des attitudes conditionnelles comme l’intention de vendre en cas d’offre inté­ressante. J’utiliserai les ressources d’une théorie de la vérité selon la prédi­cation qui distingue les propositions ayant les mêmes conditions de vérité mais différentes valeurs cognitives. Je traiterai logiquement des possibilités aussi bien subjectives qu’objectives afin d’expliquer pourquoi les agents hu­mains qui sont parfois incohérents restent toujours minima­lement rationnels. (shrink)

Daniel Dumouchel | : Le nom de Johann Georg Sulzer reste attaché à la naissance de l’esthétique philosophique en Allemagne, principalement à travers son oeuvre majeure, la Théorie générale des beaux-arts. Il s’agira de montrer ici comment ce membre influent de la classe de philosophie spéculative de l’Académie de Berlin, fortement influencé par la pensée de Leibniz et de Wolff, mais également très attentif aux particularités psychopathologiques de l’esprit humain et aux composantes corporelles de l’activité psychique, prétend fournir une (...) assise métaphysique à la théorie du beau en la fondant sur ce que, depuis Wolff, on appelle la psychologie. À partir de l’étude d’une série de Mémoires dont la rédaction s’étend de 1751 à 1763, on portera une attention particulière au projet de déduction des sentiments agréables et désagréables, que Sulzer entend opérer à partir du principe d’activité de l’âme, pour mieux saisir la nature des plaisirs que nous procure la beauté. Sur cette base, on reviendra en fin de parcours à la question de la fonction des beaux-arts dans la pensée de Sulzer, pour soutenir l’idée que l’énergie de l’art ne peut être réduite à la question de la beauté. | : Johann Georg Sulzer’s name is associated with the birth of philosophical aesthetics in Germany, above all through his major work, General Theory of the Fine Arts. The paper will show how this influential member of the division of speculative philosophy at the Berlin Academy, who was deeply influenced by the thought of Leibniz and Wolff but who was also attentive to psychopathological particularities of the human mind and to the corporeal components of psychic activity, claims to present a metaphysical foundation for the theory of beauty, by basing it on what, since Wolff, was called psychology. Starting from a study of a series of ‘Mémoires’ composed between 1751 and 1763, we will focus our attention on the project of the deduction of pleasant and unpleasant feelings, something that Sulzer understands to proceed from the principle of activity of the soul, in order better to grasp the nature of the pleasures that beauty affords us. On this basis, we will return at the end to the question of the function of the fine arts in Sulzer’s thought, in order to defend the idea that the energy of art cannot be reduced to the question of beauty. (shrink)

Contrairement à la majorité des interprètes du Timée de Platon, nous ne croyons pas que la figure du démiurge représente réellement une cause productrice. Ce type de causalité, explicitement attribué au νοῦς dans le Phédon, ne peut, selon nous, être associé qu’à l’activité de l’âme du monde et des dieux de la tradition. Le démiurge joue un autre rôle. Représentant le meilleur des êtres intelligibles éternels (37a), un dieu éternel (34a), le démiurge ne peut, à ce titre, être un principe (...) de mouvement, puisque l’intelligible, selon Platon, n’exerce qu’une causalité paradigmatique. La figure du démiurge est, en fait, la représentation mythique de la causalité paradigmatique. Le démiurge représente, plus précisément, à titre de « fabricant » de l’espèce des dieux, la forme intelligible du dieu. Certaines caractéristiques du démiurge (sa corporéité, ses pensées et son activité productrice) sont indissociables de l’analogie employée pour représenter la dépendance des dieux à l’égard des formes intelligibles : le travail artisanal. Le démiurge, en tant que cause productrice, n’a pas de valeur ontologique réelle. Néanmoins, ce qu’il représente, la forme intelligible du dieu, constitue, selon Platon, la cause qui fonde l’immortalité de l’univers et des dieux de la tradition, une cause qui permet ainsi au νοῦς de ces divinités d’exercer leur causalité productrice. (shrink)

L’article s’emploie à comparer la doctrine de l’Incarnation dans les trois grandes œuvres spéculatives de saint Thomas : Scriptum super Sententiis, Summa contra Gentiles, Summa theologiae. Il examine d’abord le plan suivi dans les trois ouvrages pour traiter ce thème ; puis la façon dont saint Thomas remédie à deux lacunes de la christologie du Lombard (convenances de l’Incarnation, mystères de la vie du Christ) ; ensuite, les deux opinions christologiques du Lombard rejetées par les docteurs parisiens et concernant, l’une, (...) l’âme séparée du corps et, l’autre, la question de savoir si, durant le triduum mortis, le Christ était un homme ; enfin, dix-sept des articuli in quibus. Malgré son caractère pointilliste, cette recherche permet d’explorer les aspects essentiels de la christologie de saint Thomas, de souligner les progrès de sa pensée et aussi de relever quelques positions problématiques de son enseignement. (shrink)

This book offers another in a long line of Creighton Peden’s contributions to understanding the thought of perhaps neglected religious thinkers in the American liberal tradition. Peden has stated that his approach in writing about figures like Gerald Birney Smith, George Burman Foster, and Edward Scribner Ames has not been critical or even comparative, but explicative. His goal is to make more of their work more accessible. And Peden is especially well positioned to do so in the case of (...) Bernard Meland, as he has been a long-standing student, colleague, interlocutor, and ultimately literary executor to Meland.The book has a slightly quirky structure. The first twenty or so pages are an intellectual autobiography.. (shrink)

Berkeley's doctrines about mind, the language of nature, substance, minima sensibilia, notions, abstract ideas, inference, and freedom appropriate principles developed by the 16th-century logician Peter Ramus and his 17th-century followers (e.g., Alexander Richardson, William Ames, John Milton). Even though Berkeley expresses himself in Cartesian or Lockean terms, he relies on a Ramist way of thinking that is not a form of mere rhetoric or pedagogy but a logic and ontology grounded in Stoicism. This article summarizes the central features of (...) Ramism, indicates how Berkeley adapts Ramist concepts and strategies, and chronicles Ramism's pervasiveness in Berkeley's education, especially at Trinity College Dublin. (shrink)

Résumé La théorie classique de l’art subordonnerait le beau au respect des règles et des exactes proportions. Mais chez Félibien, au-dessus de la beauté, vient se placer la grâce, qui advient sans règle, par un génie du peintre qui ne s’enseigne pas. Félibien cherche de fixer l’instable nature de la grâce en sollicitant l’union de l’âme et du corps : une figure, un tableau pleins de grâce rendent, pour leur spectateur, l’âme présente au corps. L’excellent peintre saura donc, dans sa (...) pratique et non par son savoir, animer les choses étendues. (shrink)

Depuis près de quarante ans, Pierre Manent trace une voie originale et féconde. Ses livres interrogent les formes politiques qui donnent sens à l'expérience historique, de la cité grecque aux nations européennes, en passant par l'Empire romain et l'Eglise chrétienne. Cet ouvrage, le premier entièrement consacré à Pierre Manent, aborde les grands thèmes de son oeuvre, autour de trois axes: la philosophie, la politique et la religion. Il examine également les principales étapes de la pensée politique : Aristote, Machiavel, Pascal, (...) Tocqueville... L'histoire et la philosophie politique éclairent les enjeux du présent, en particulier la crise de la démocratie et de la nation en Europe. Pour Pierre Manent et ceux qui s'en inspirent, la politique constitue le fait générateur des sociétés humaines. Elle façonne l'humanité de l'homme, qui se réalise dans la vie en commun. Aller vers la politique, c'est aller vers l'âme. Une incitation à lire et relire une oeuvre forte et pénétrante. (shrink)

Les notions de «mort» et de «mourir», parfois utilisées sans distinctions dans la littérature, font référence à deux dimensions fort différentes pour la personne en fin de vie, de même que pour toutes les personnes appelées à en prendre soin . Alors que la personne malade voit venir la mort, elle doit vivre son mourir. La mort succède ainsi au mourir, dans le temps. Par ailleurs, une réflexion d’ordre philosophique permet de préciser que la mort s’avère une ordonnance de la (...) nature, elle est privation de la vie et un mystère. Et en tant que mystère, elle prendra forme selon les différentes croyances attribuées à l’immortalité de l’âme. Quant au mourir, il est l’épreuve par excellence d’une situation-limite. De plus, en dépit du caractère unique et individuel de cette expérience nouvelle pour tous, il assume différents visages. Si l’espoir de «connaître une belle mort» se conçoit aisément, le mourir n’en demeure pas moins le moment le plus tragique de l’existence humaine. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or (...) meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

How should medical services be distributed within society? Who should pay for them? Is it right that large amounts should be spent on sophisticated technology and expensive operations, or would the resources be better employed in, for instance, less costly preventive measures? These and others are the questions addreses in this book. Norman Daniels examines some of the dilemmas thrown up by conflicting demands for medical attention, and goes on to advance a theory of justice in the distribution of health (...) care. The central argument is that health care, both preventive and acute, has a crucial effect on equality of opportunity, and that a principle guaranteeing equality of opportunity must underly the distribution of health-care services. Access to care, preventive measures, treatment of the elderly, and the obligations of doctors and medical administrations are fully discussed, and the theory is shown to underwrite various practical policies in the area. (shrink)

Reasoning about situations we take to be impossible is useful for a variety of theoretical purposes. Furthermore, using a device of impossible worlds when reasoning about the impossible is useful in the same sorts of ways that the device of possible worlds is useful when reasoning about the possible. This paper discusses some of the uses of impossible worlds and argues that commitment to them can and should be had without great metaphysical or logical cost. The paper then provides an (...) account of reasoning with impossible worlds, by treating such reasoning as reasoning employing counterpossible conditionals, and provides a semantics for the proposed treatment. (shrink)

Précis for a book symposium, with contributions from Meg Wallace, Louis deRosset, and Chris Tillman and Joshua Spencer.

Our ability to locate moral responsibility is often thought to be a necessary condition for conducting morally permissible medical practice, engaging in a just war, and other high-stakes endeavors. Yet, with increasing reliance upon artificially intelligent systems, we may be facing a wideningresponsibility gap, which, some argue, cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility. How then, if at all, can we make use of crucial emerging technologies? According to Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach, the advent of so-called ‘artificial moral (...) agents’ (AMAs) is inevitable. Still, this notion may seem to push back the problem, leaving those who have an interest in developing autonomous technology with a dilemma. We may need to scale-back our efforts at deploying AMAs (or at least maintain human oversight); otherwise, we must rapidly and drastically update our moral and legal norms in a way that ensures responsibility for potentially avoidable harms. This paper invokes contemporary accounts of responsibility in order to show how artificially intelligent systems might be held responsible. Although many theorists are concerned enough to develop artificial conceptions ofagencyor to exploit our present inability to regulate valuable innovations, the proposal here highlights the importance of—and outlines a plausible foundation for—a workable notion ofartificial moral responsibility. (shrink)

Distinguished scholars discuss the problem of self-deception, or rather, self and deception.

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments. Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, (...) and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built. Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions." A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible (...) in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational. (shrink)

Uses a comparative hermeneutical method to explain the most important terms in the classical Confucian philosophical texts, in an effort to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms.

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new account of bounded or minimal doxastic rationality (in the sense of Cherniak 1986), based on the notion that beliefs are answers to questions (à la Yalcin 2018). The core idea is that minimally rational beliefs are linked through thematic connections, rather than entailment relations. Consequently, such beliefs are not deductively closed, but they are closed under parthood (where a part is an entailment that answers a smaller question). And instead of avoiding all inconsistency, minimally rational (...) believers only avoid blatant inconsistencies (where some beliefs are blatantly inconsistent when they contradict one another on a particular question). Rather than cohering into a single overall world view, beliefs are more loosely connected in what is best described as a web of questions. This view of minimally rational belief naturally gives rise to an account of deductive inquiry on which deductive reasoning is a matter of posing new questions. (shrink)

Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind of exclusion that (...) has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (shrink)

I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

While the contemporary philosophical literature is replete with discussion of the control or freedom required for moral responsibility, only more recently has substantial attention been devoted to the knowledge or awareness required, otherwise called the epistemic condition. This area of inquiry is rapidly expanding, as are the various positions within it. This chapter introduces two major positions: the reasonable expectation view and the quality of will view. The chapter then explores two dimensions of the epistemic condition that serve as fault (...) lines along which these two views diverge. The first dimension concerns different kinds of ignorance. The second concerns what agents can be directly blameworthy for. The chapter closes by sketching a novel approach that incorporates advantages of opposing positions on this topic. (shrink)

This chapter introduces readers to the view that praise is a form of address, or is communicative in the sense of seeking uptake from its target. The proposal that praise is communicative will seem counterintuitive if we take blame to be our paradigm of what it is for a responsibility-response to be communicative. This is because blame is communicative in a manner that intuitively presupposes some normative failure; it involves calling its target to account (or answer) for some wrongdoing. But, (...) the ‘rightdoer’ already properly regarded the relevant reasons in acting praiseworthily. So, there is nothing for which the praiseworthy agent must similarly account or answer for. How then could praise be communicative in sense of seeking uptake from its target? This chapter develops the view that praise is communicative in that it invites the praiseworthy agent to accept credit by co-valuing their action in the evaluative terms supplied by the praiser. This proposal is defended against three objections, namely that it is descriptively inadequate regarding our actual practices, that it is morally mistaken about when we owe others a response, and that it implies redundant communication. (shrink)

This volume provides a detailed account of the syntax of expressive language, that is, utterances that express, rather than describe, the emotions and attitudes of the speaker... Daniel Gutzmann demonstrates that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of these utterances, and argues that expressivity is in fact a syntactic feature on a par with other established features such as tense and gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies (...) of expressive adjectives, intensifiers, and vocatives; their puzzling properties are accounted for through a minimalist approach to syntactic features and agreement, which shows that expressivity can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and be selected for syntactically. The analysis not only supports the hypothesis of expressive syntax, but also highlights the hidden role that grammar may play in phenomena that are traditionally considered to be solely semantic in nature" -- Publisher. (shrink)

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. (...) class='Hi'>Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world. Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual. In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets. The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation. (shrink)

Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...) and predicts the decisions of agents who, like ourselves, fail to be logically omniscient: that is, of agents whose beliefs may not be deductively closed, or even consistent. (Winner of the 2021 Isaac Levi Prize.). (shrink)

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more”—or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon “Balancing Argument” rests on what social choice theorists call “(Positive) (...) Responsiveness,” Kamm’s “Aggregation Argument” assumes that “equal” lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory-neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s critical project. It is well known that Foucault’s genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the agent’s freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states that critique is tasked (...) with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault’s critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above-mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth-telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth-telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth-telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique’s methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re-evaluating Foucault’s critical project as a whole. By showing that truth-telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault’s critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. (shrink)