Comparable worth is a limited remedy for occupational segregation and the wage gap: It is compatible with meritocratic values, argued for in conventional labor market terms, and may increase tensions among men and women workers. But, while it relies on liberal political discourse, it has also improved the wages of women workers, broadened public thinking about discrimination, and stimulated cross gender wage comparisons unthinkable even a few years ago. This comment explains the limitations of comparable worth, not in terms of (...) the discourse proponents relied upon, but in relation to a specific political agenda and to a historical and political struggle over the control of the debate over comparable worth. As social science advocates for a more radical political agenda, it is our obligation to think more realistically about how we build a radical politics to accompany our discourse. (shrink)

"Lesbian feminism began and has fueled itself with the rejection of liberalism.... In this rejection, lesbian feminists were not alone. They were joined by the New Left, by many blacks in the civil rights movement, by male academic theorists.... What all these groups shared was an intense awareness of the ways in which liberalism fails to account for the social reality of the world, through a reliance upon law and legal structure to define membership, through individualism, through its basis in (...) a particular conception of rationality." In tracing how lesbian feminism came to be defined in uneasy relationships with the Women’s Movement and gay rights groups, Shane Phelan explores the tension between liberal ideals of individual rights and tolerance and communitarian ideals of solidarity. The debate over lesbian sado-masochism—an expression of individual choice or pornographic, anti-feminist behavior?—is considered as a test case. Phelan addresses the problems faced by "the woman-identified woman" in a liberal society that presumes heterosexuality as the biological, psychological, and moral standard. Often silenced by laws defining their sexual behavior as criminal and censured by a medical establishment that persists in defining homosexuality as perversion, lesbians, like blacks and other groups, have fought to have the same rights as others in their communities and even in their own homes. Lesbian feminists have also sought to define themselves as a community that would be distinctly different, a community that would disavow the traditional American obsession with individual advancement in the world as it is. In this controversial study of political philosophy and the women’s movement, Phelan argues that "the failure to date to produce a satisfying theory and program for lesbian action is reflective of the failure of modern political thinking to produce a compelling, nonsuspect alternative to liberalism." In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.

Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics If Chinese philosophy may be said to have begun around 2000 B.C.E., then it represents the longest continuous heritage of philosophical reflection. Trying to mention each philosopher or every significant thinker is not possible. This article is highly selective by choosing philosophers according to two basic principles: Those who … Continue reading Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics →.

How can finite creatures know an infinite God? How do the limits of our intellect and language impact how we know God and talk about God? This book explores a doctrine called divine incomprehensibility in hopes to seek how a proper understand of God's incomprehensibility protects us from both a theological despair in which there is no hope for Christian theology and a theological idolatry in which we are tempted to believe we can capture the essence of God with our (...) thoughts or words. (shrink)

This volume, the first of its kind written in English, interprets the realistic-phenomenological philosophy of Hedwig Conrad-Martius (1888-1966). She was a prominent figure in the Munich-Göttingen Circle, the first generation of phenomenology after Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and was known as the “first lady of German philosophy”.The articles included in this collection deal with the two main themes constituting her realistic-metaphysical phenomenology: Being and the I. The new edition includes an additional chapter opening a new path into the study of Conrad-Martius (...) with Heidegger. In addition, the collection includes a comprehensive Introduction that describes the personal background and the social and philosophical contexts behind Conrad-Martius’s thought, with an emphasis on the mutual influence and fertilization of the group of early phenomenologists in the Munich-Göttingen Circle. The book is aimed at scholars of philosophy and educated readers. (shrink)

In response to an accusation of having said something inappropriate, the accused may exploit the difference between the explicit contents of their utterance and its implicatures. Widely discussed in the pragmatics literature are those cases in which arguers accept accountability only for the explicit contents of what they said while denying commitment to the implicature. In this paper, we sketch a fuller picture of commitment denial. We do so, first, by including in our discussion not just denial of implicatures, but (...) also the mirror strategy of denying commitment to literal meaning and, second, by classifying strategies for commitment denial in terms of classical rhetorical status theory. In addition to providing a systematic categorization of our data, this approach offers some clues to determine when such a defence strategy is a reasonable one and when it is not. (shrink)

Michael Oakeshott’s distinction between ‘civil association’ and ‘enterprise association’ has inspired international society theorists to conceive of international society as not just a ‘purposive association’ constructed by states to satisfy their interests but also as a ‘practical association’ providing formal and pragmatic rules that are not instrumental to particular goals of state policy. While this article is supportive of the Oakeshottian turn in international society theory, it suggests that somewhat different conclusions can be drawn from it. The article sketches out (...) an alternative conception of international ‘civil association’, one that transcends the boundaries of communities. It is argued that such a notion of civil association is both possible and at the same time anchored in the experiences of the modern state. It is suggested that this notion of international civil association, when sustained by an adequate legal conception, promotes the enforcement of moral and political responsibility acr... (shrink)

This accessible introduction to formal, and especially Montague, semantics within a linguistic framework, presupposes no previous background in logic, but takes students step-by-step from simple predicate/argument structures and their interpretation to Montague's intentional logic.

This paper examines the Megg, Mogg and Owl stories of Simon Hanselmann, an Australian artist whose serialized comics both depict acts of contemporary roguery committed by a group of friends in an inner city sharehouse and test the generic limits of its own storytelling conventions, thereby becoming contemporary instances of “rogue texts.” The paper positions the adventures of Megg, a witch, Mogg, her familiar, Owl, their housemate, and associated characters including Booger and Werewolf Jones as contemporary variations of both the (...) Australian genre of grunge fiction and the broad international tradition of rogue literature. It shows how Megg, Mogg, Owl and their friends use the structure of the sharehouse to make their own rules, undertake illegal behaviour, and respond to the strictures of mainstream society, which alongside legal restrictions include normative restrictions on gender and behaviour. It shows the sharehouse as a response to their economic, as well as cultural and social conditions. The paper then shows how Megg and particularly Owl come up against the limitations of the permissiveness and apparent security of their “rogue” society, and respond by beginning to “go rogue” from the group. Meanwhile, the text itself, rather than advancing through time, goes over the same chronology and reinscribes it from new angles, becoming revisionist and re-creative, perhaps behaving roguishly against the affordances of episodic, vignette form. The paper argues that Simon Hanselmann’s Megg, Mogg and Owl comics can be understood as contemporary rogue texts, showing characters responding to social and generic limits and expressing them through a restless and innovative comics text. (shrink)

I would have preferred that the Special Section on Children as Organ Donors had focused on the donation of a specific organ because morally relevant differences are obscured when the subject is discussed in general terms. The donation of a lobe of liver and peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells does not result in the permanent loss of vital tissue because these organs regenerate; however, a kidney does not regenerate and its donor loses a vital organ permanently. Liver tissue (...) and peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells are typically required to save a life, but, because most patients with end-stage renal disease can be kept alive on dialysis, the donation of a kidney is rarely life saving. Also, donor risk is organ specific; for example, it is more dangerous to donate a lobe of liver than it is to donate peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells. (shrink)

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation. In addition to theoretical and methodological reflections by leading scholars in their fields, the book contains studies of the relationship between language and argumentation from two different viewpoints. While some chapters take a specific argumentative move as their point of departure and investigate the ways in which it is linguistically manifested in (...) discourse, other chapters start off from a linguistic construction, trying to determine its argumentative function and rhetorical potential. The Language of Argumentation documents the currently prominent research on stylistic aspects of argumentation and illustrates how the study of argumentation benefits from insights from linguistic models, ranging from theoretical pragmatics, politeness theory and metaphor studies to models of discourse coherence and construction grammar. (shrink)

Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest that it is possible for an omnipotent being, Jove, to create randomly a world from a continuum of ever more perfect possible worlds. They then go on to argue that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable despite creating a surpassable world. I raise a number of problems for the view that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable when he creates (randomly or not) a surpassable world.

Overview CHARLES E. CATON The part of philosophy known as the philosophy of language, which includes and is sometimes identified with the part known as ...

This paper shows that while there seems to be more or less a general acceptance for plurality as a condition of world politics and at least a vague commitment to a pluralist ideal, the challenge remains to formulate a fruitful account of international pluralism. While dominating approaches to international theory present international pluralism as essentially a by-product and instrumental, this paper suggest an alternative way to conceive of international pluralism when defending the ancient concept variety as a better guide to (...) approach both the understanding of plurality as the human condition and the notion of international pluralism. The paper concludes that it is preferable to accept a variety of pluralist conceptions rather than go on searching for a theoretical conception standing above the controversy; accepting pluralism in a sense involves rejecting just one version of pluralism. (shrink)

In this paper we adopt the hypothesis that languages are mechanisms for interaction, and that grammars encode the means by which such interaction may take place, by use of procedures that construct representations of meaning from strings of words uttered in context, and conversely strings of words are built up from representations of content in interaction with context. In a review of the systemic use of ellipsis in dialogue and associated split-utterance phenomena, we show how, in Dynamic Syntax, words give (...) rise to a range of procedures for the building of representations of the content of some utterance, which both speakers and hearers use. We then extend the discussion to take account of adjuncts, showing how they contribute to content construction both in single utterances and across speakers. The same mechanisms are then shown to underlie the building of inferential extensions of meaning in context, giving rise to the creation of the ad hoc concepts expressed by phrases or single words in relation to the utterance context and ultimately to the creation of metaphorical uses of language. (shrink)

The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a problem since its founding days. A large contribution to the discussion of possible interpretations of quantum mechanics is given by the so-called impossibility proofs for hidden variable models; models that allow a realist interpretation. In this thesis some of these proofs are discussed, like von Neumann’s Theorem, the Kochen-Specker Theorem and the Bell-inequalities. Some more recent developments are also investigated, like Meyer’s nullification of the Kochen-Specker Theorem, the MKC-models and Conway and Kochen’s (...) Free Will Theorem. This last one is taken to suggest that the problems that arise for certain interpretations of quantum mechanics are not limited to realist interpretations only, but also affect certain instrumentalist interpretations. It is argued that one may arrive at a more satisfying interpretation of quantum mechanics if one adopts a logic that seems more compatible with the instrumentalist viewpoint namely, intuitionistic logic. The motivations for adopting this form of logic rather than classical logic or quantum logic are linked to some of the philosophical ideas of Bohr. In particular a new interpretation of Bohr’s notion of complementarity is proposed. Finally some possibilities are explored for linking the intuitionistic interpretation of quantum mechanics to the mathematical formalism of the theory. (shrink)

We are pleased to provide two explorations on the topic of dialogue in Chinese philosophy. In this paper, we consider the educational and theoretical dialogues in China resulting from the encounter...

The key work of the early Johann Gottlieb Fichte is the Grundlage ser gesammten Wissenschaftslehre [Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Science] of 1794-95. The very circumstances of its publication ensure that it is a rather terse and disjointed statement of Fichtean philosophy. It consists of a very short preface, a “famous” section devoted to first principles, the so-called “basic propositions of the entire doctrine of science,” and eight discourses of widely diverging length. The first discourse, devoted to the “theoretical” (...) Wissenschaftslehre is one and a half times the length of the other seven. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth are barely a few pages long. It is an extremely peculiar work and not merely due to the circumstances of its publication. Its very argumentative structure threatens to trap the reader in forming hasty and preliminary judgements on the exact nature of the philosophical claims being made, and, quite specifically, those philosophical claims which might be ascribed to the author himself. The following contends that lack of attention to the structure of a work that, admittedly, exhibits very little in an overt fashion has led to wholesale confusion about the early system and its philosophical intent. Specifically, that too much attention has been paid to the famous section on grounding principles, and, furthermore, that attention only to these sections will lead to fundamental confusion and misunderstanding. This paper will attempt to examine this peculiar Fichtean text via the readings made by Dieter Henrich and Frederick Neuhouser, respectively. (shrink)

In this issue of the Report, Eric Juengst, Michael Flatt, and Richard Settersten, Jr., explore the positioning of genomic research as a “paradigm changer.” This notion has given the field a certain cache quite aside from its actual contributions to improved medical care. Genomic research is described to funders, health care leaders, and the public in language that includes a vision of the future. It will move us beyond the inadequacies of current medical care into a bold new world of (...) personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory medicine. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between philosophy and science in the writings of Karl Jaspers and with its reception in the wider scholarly literature. The problem discussed is how to characterize the relationship that exists between science—defined on pure Kantian grounds as a universally valid knowledge of phenomenal objects—and philosophy—conceived by Jaspers as the transcending mode of thinking of personal Existenz rising towards the totality and unity of Being. Two solutions to that problem arise from Jaspers’s writings. The oppositionist (...) view is based in his earlier philosophy of Existenz. It describes the discrepancy between determinateness, bestowed by science to its objects, and freedom of self-determination, which is both a synonym and a condition of possibility for Existenz. The reciprocal view is based in Jaspers’s later works, where he focuses on exploration of his concept of Being (das Umgreifende). By contrast with most of Jaspers’s commentators, the present interpretation is anchored in a developmentaland contextual understanding of Jaspers’s thought. Showing the transcendental background of this topic, the proposed interpretation allows us to abstain from viewing the two solutions as incoherent or contradictory and instead to see them as constitutive of a single philosophical course. (shrink)

Almost 60,000 people in the United States with end stage renal disease are waiting for a kidney transplant. Because of the scarcity of organs from deceased donors live kidney donors have become a critical source of organs; in 2001, for the first time in recent decades, the number of live kidney donors exceeded the number of deceased donors. The paradigm used to justify putting live kidney donors at risk includes the low risk to the donor, the favorable risk-benefit ratio, the (...) psychological benefits to the donor, altruism, and autonomy coupled with informed consent; because each of these arguments is flawed we need to lessen our dependence on live kidney donors and increase the number of organs retrieved from deceased donors. An “opting in” paradigm would reward people who agree to donate their kidneys after they die with allocation preference should they need a kidney while they are alive. An “opting in” program should increase the number of kidneys available for transplantation and eliminate the morally troubling problem of “organ takers” who would accept a kidney if they needed one but have made no provision to be an organ donor themselves. People who “opt in” would preferentially get an organ should they need one at the minimal cost of donating their kidneys when they have no use for them; it is a form of organ insurance a rational person should find extremely attractive. An “opting in” paradigm would simulate the reciprocal altruism observed in nature that sociobiologists believe enhances group survival. Although the allocation of organs based on factors other than need might be morally troubling, an “opting in” paradigm compares favorably with other methods of obtaining more organs and accepting the status quo of extreme organ scarcity. Although an “opting in” policy would be based on enlightened self-interest, by demonstrating the utilitarian value of mutual assistance, it would promote the attitude that self-interest sometimes requires the perception that we are all part of a common humanity. (shrink)

A well known logical loophole for Bell’s theorem is that it relies on setting independence: the assumption that the state of a system is independent of the settings of a measurement apparatus probing the system. In this paper the implications of rejecting this assumption are studied from an operationalist perspective. To this end a generalization of the ontic models framework is proposed that allows setting dependence. It is shown that within this framework Bell’s theorem reduces to the conclusion that no-signaling (...) requires randomness at the epistemic level even if the underlying ontology is taken to be deterministic. The ideas underlying the framework are further used to defend setting dependence against the charges of being incompatible with free will and scientific methodology. The paper ends however with the sketch of a new problem for setting dependence: a necessary gap between the ontic and the epistemic level that may prevent the formulation of a successful setting dependent theory. (shrink)

_Husserl and Other Phenomenologists_ addresses a fundamental question: what is it in the thinking of the founding father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, that on the one hand enables the huge variety in the phenomenological discourse and, at the same time, necessitates relying on his phenomenology as a point of departure and an object before which philosophizing is conducted. The contributors to this volume, each with his or her own focus on a specific figure in the phenomenological school vis-à-vis Husserl's thinking, (...) demonstrate that every reference to Husserl is necessarily bound up with modifying his ideas and crossing the boundaries of his phenomenology. In this sense, and given the insight that Husserlian phenomenology is already imbued with the potential modifications and revisions, the post-Husserlian phenomenologies may be included together with Husserl in one so-called ‘Phenomenological Movement’. The discussions in the book open for philosophers and intellectuals a window upon phenomenology, which has been one of the richest and most influential cultural phenomena since its very appearance at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book also conveys the complex interpretive dynamic within which a given framework of ideas becomes a sort of magnetic field, with attracting and repelling forces acting on its participants, and thanks to which the great ideas of modernity maintain their vitality and relevance a hundred years after their first appearance. This book was originally published as a special issue of _The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms. _. (shrink)