La filosofía fue entre nosotros, durante largo tiempo, un “juego social”, en las últimas décadas se ha venido transformando en (pseudo)campo, y en la actualidad está expuesta a sucumbir a la heteronomía, decayendo a la degradada situación de “espacio de servicios”. Así la doctrina de Bourdieu esclarece el surgimiento, la situación actual, y en cierto modo también la peripecia futura de la filosofía en España. Y al mismo tiempo consigue explicar porque, en este preciso momento, es plausible el pesimista (...) diagnóstico de que el peligro de regresión a la heteronomía compromete la existencia del incipiente campo filosófico español. Simplemente ocurre que en las situaciones de crisis las percepciones de los agentes adquieren una relevancia de la que suelen carecer en etapas más apacibles. En los períodos de desilusión los agentes se vuelven lúcidos, en una palabra, porque entonces resulta más difícil “seguir el juego” que el campo les exige. Ya que tomar parte en dicho juego no es más, según Bourdieu, que una forma de ilusión. (shrink)

A post-Bourdieu version of field theory can produce nuanced analyses of the relationship between media change, the new citizen movements and ongoing struggles for democratic renewal. Through the case of Spain’s indignados (15M) movement and its political offshoots, I explore the potential uses of a range of field concepts and propose a conceptual distinction between «field of civic action» and «dispersed civic space». Spain’s recent political changes are not a continuous flow of events but rather a series (...) of discrete, ephemeral fields of civic action separated by a long hiatus of dispersed civic space. These complexly mediated fields are socio-political «games» in which civic players with technopolitical and other skills interact with other players in pursuit of specific goals and rewards. As a result, new citizen-led initiatives (e.g. PAH, Podemos, Barcelona en Comú) have bridged the alternative vs. mainstream media divide to great social and political effect.Una versión de la teoría de campos post-Bourdieu puede producir análisis matizados de la relación entre el cambio de los medios de comunicación, los nuevos movimientos ciudadanos y las luchas por la renovación democrática actuales. Partiendo del movimiento de los indignados en España (15M), exploro los usos potenciales de una serie de conceptos de campo y propongo una distinción conceptual entre «campo de acción cívica» y «espacio cívico disperso». Los recientes cambios políticos en España no son un flujo continuo de acontecimientos, sino una serie de campos discretos y efímeros de acción cívica separados por un largo período de dispersión del espacio cívico. Estos campos complejamente mediados son «juegos» sociopolíticos en los que actores cívicos con habilidades tecno-políticas y de otra índole interactúan con otros jugadores en busca de metas y recompensas específicas. Como resultado, las nuevas iniciativas dirigidas por los ciudadanos (por ejemplo, pah, Podemos o Barcelona en Comú) han sido capaces de salvar las distancias entre los medios de comunicación alternativos y los principales medios de comunicación de masas y han tenido un gran efecto social y político. (shrink)

This is a paperback edition of a major contribution to the field, first published in hard covers in 1977. The book outlines a general theory of rational behaviour consisting of individual decision theory, ethics, and game theory as its main branches. Decision theory deals with a rational pursuit of individual utility; ethics with a rational pursuit of the common interests of society; and game theory with an interaction of two or more rational individuals, each pursuing his own (...) interests in a rational manner. (shrink)

Conducted among parents of young ice hockey players, this field experiment tested if making salient increasingly popular social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and having fun in sports, increases parents’ own self-determined endorsement of these behaviors and values, improves their psychological well-being, and impacts on their children’s on-ice behaviors. Hockey parents were randomly assigned to the experimental condition vs. control condition. Parents’ motivations for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey were then assessed. Score (...) sheets for the games that followed the study provided access to their children’s on-ice behaviors, as indicators of sportspersonship. Parents in the experimental condition reported higher self-determination for encouraging their child to learn and have fun in hockey compared to parents in the control condition. Furthermore, children of parents in the experimental condition had more assists. A mediation model revealed that the dynamic norms manipulation increased parents’ self-determined motivation for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey, which in turn, predicted higher psychological well-being. Together, these results provide support for the contention that highlighting increasingly popular social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and fun in sports, represents a promising strategy for creating positive social change in this life context. (shrink)

I offer two potential diagnoses of the behavioral norms governing post‐truth politics by comparing the view of language, communication, and truth‐telling put forward by David Lewis (extended by game theorists), and John Searle. My first goal is to specify the different ways in which Lewis, and game theorists more generally, in contrast to Searle (in the company of Paul Grice and Jurgen Habermas), go about explaining the normativity of truthfulness within a linguistic community. The main difference is that (...) for Lewis and game theorists, “truthful” signaling follows from an align- ment of interests, and deception follows from mixed motives leading to the calculation that sending false information is better for oneself. Following in the Enlightenment tradition, Searle argues that practical reasoning, which involves mastery of at least one language, requires that actors intend to communicate. This intention includes constraining the content of statements to uphold veracity conditions. After distinguishing between these two accounts, I will artic- ulate the implications for explaining, and even informing actions, constitutive of post‐truth politics. I argue that the strategic view of communication is suffi- cient neither to model everyday conversation nor to reflect a public sphere useful for democratic govern- ment. Both the pedagogy of strategic communication as cheap talk, and its concordance with new digital information technologies, challenge norms of truthful- ness that underlie modern institutions essential to an effective public sphere. (shrink)

This paper argues for a comprehensive conception of empathy as comprising epistemic, affective, and motivational elements and introduces the ancient Stoic theory of attachment as a model for describing the embodied, emotional response to others that we take to be distinctive of empathy. Our argument entails that in order to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the interdisciplinary study of empathy one must extend the scope of recent “simulationalist” and “enactivist” accounts of empathy in two important respects. First, against the (...) enactivist assumption that human mindreading capacities primarily rely on an immediate, quasi-perceptual understanding of other’s intentional states, we draw on Alfred Schutz’ analysis of social understanding to argue that reflective types of understanding play a distinct, but equally fundamental role in empathic engagements. Second, we insist that empathy also involves an affective response toward the other and their situation. We suggest analyzing this response in terms of the Stoic concepts of attachment, concern, and a fundamental type of prosocial motivation, that can best be described as an “extended partiality.” By way of conclusion, we integrate the above concepts into a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of empathy and briefly relate them to current debates about empathic perception and prosocial motivation. The result, we argue, is an account that stays neutral with regard to the exact nature of the processes involved in producing empathy and can therefore accommodate discussion across theoretical divides—e.g., those between enactivist, simulationalist, and so-called theory-theorist approaches. (shrink)

This paper is presented as a sociological account of social action and as part of the “cognitive and cultural turn” in sociology. It retains Weber’s definition of social action as meaningful behavior directed toward another, but employs concepts developed by Noam Chomsky, Pierre Bourdieu and Ludwig Wittgenstein to refine and amplify Weber’s understanding of meaning and subjectivity. It attempts to ground symbolic interaction in innate properties of mind suggested by Chomsky and others. It attempts to enrich Bourdieu’s concept (...) of the habitus with concepts taken from cognitive psychology. Finally it attempts to further integrate Wittgenstein’s language games in to the ethnomethodolical analysis of social situations while grounding ethnomethodological analysis in Bourdieu’s concept of social fields. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author articulates two Hobbesian models of interpersonal power relations that can be used to understand gender relations: what he will call the dominion model and the deference model. Hobbes himself analyses the relation between men and women through the dominion model. The author lays out Hobbes's model of interpersonal power relations as dominion, including his application of the model to the case of gender relations. The centerpiece of Hobbes's method is his “state of nature” thought experiment. (...) Hobbes's analysis is radical insofar as he understands familial relations according to the general model of interpersonal relations just outlined, without any reference to sui generis principles. The author indicates some shortcomings of the dominion model for grasping contemporary social life. The much‐celebrated social contract between equal male citizens is quietly underpinned by the sexual contract, a contract of domination between men and women. (shrink)

The term ‘social capital’ is a way of defining the intangible resources of community, shared values and trust upon which we draw in daily life. It has achieved considerable international currency across the social sciences through the very different work of Pierre Bourdieu in France and James Coleman and Robert Putnam in the United States, and has been widely taken up within politics and sociology as an explanation for the decline in social cohesion and community values in (...) western societies. It has also been adopted by policy makers, particularly in international governmental bodies such as the World Bank. (shrink)

In recent years, many qualitative sociologists, anthropologists, and social theorists have critiqued the use of algorithms and other automated processes involved in data science on both epistemological and political grounds. Yet, it has proven difficult to bring these important insights into the practice of data science itself. We suggest that part of this problem has to do with under-examined or unacknowledged assumptions about the relationship between the two fields—ideas about how data science and its critics can and should relate. (...) Inspired by recent work in Science and Technology Studies on interventions, we attempted to stage an encounter in which practicing data scientists were asked to analyze a corpus of critical social science literature about their work, using tools of textual analysis such as co-word and topic modelling. The idea was to provoke discussion both about the content of these texts and the possible limits of such analyses. In this commentary, we reflect on the planning stages of the experiment and how responses to the exercise, from both data scientists and qualitative social scientists, revealed some of the tensions and interactions between the normative positions of the different fields. We argue for further studies which can help us understand what these interdisciplinary tensions turn on—which do not paper over them but also do not take them as given. (shrink)

By introducing the theory of social co-governance into the field of e-commerce intellectual property protection, this paper builds an evolutionary game model among the government, e-commerce platforms, and rights holders, and studies the conditions under the stakeholders form a stable equilibrium state under different constraints. Combined with numerical simulation, the influence of individual factors and factor combinations on the system stability is analyzed. Results shows that: Strictly controlling the action costs and response costs of all parties can (...) enhance their willingness to actively deal with infringement issues; reasonable adjustment of the reward and punishment measures of government supervisory agencies can produce sufficient reverse shock and positive guidance to platform and operators; penalties should be imposed on government supervisory agencies that are not sufficiently supervised; strengthen the construction of the social environment for intellectual property protection, improve the social benefits of actively responding to infringement issues, and increase the sense of acquisition by the government, platforms and rights holders. And it provides certain positive references and suggestions for the government to formulate relevant policies. (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. This paper suggests that the "new institutionalist" focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by focusing on the construction of local orders. This paper criticizes the conception of actors in both rational choice and sociological versions of these theories. A more sociological view of action, what is called " (...) class='Hi'>social skill," is developed. The idea of social skill originates in symbolic interactionism and is defined as the ability to induce cooperation in others. This idea is elaborated to suggest how actors are important to the construction and reproduction of local orders. I show how its elements already inform existing work. Finally, I show how the idea can sensitize scholars to the role of actors in empirical work. (shrink)

Recent developments in social science methods have made most of the objectivism-subjectivism arguments in the philosophy of social science obsolete. Developments in experimental methods have made possible a behavioristic treatment of everything cherished as important in human action by the subjectivists; developments in computer and mathematical models have made possible a type of theory which carries out the program of the subjectivists but is not vulnerable to the arguments of the objectivists. What remains of the philosophical argument are (...) two types of theory (for example, game theory and learning theory) which are both useful, both scientific, and frequently equivalent. Choice between them by scientists can be made on empirical grounds rather than on the grounds developed in the philosophical controversy. (shrink)

Each Olympic Games will offer fresh research material in the fields of social and sports philosophy. This article uses Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games (B2022WOG) as an illustration to discuss the difficulty in viewing sports as contributors to social progress. We have examined the phenomena of fusing classical Chinese philosophy with social sports philosophy, as exemplified by the current Olympic movement. The key finding is that the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures and civilizations is responsible for (...) sports revival as a social force in the modern era. As a result, new social cognition emerges. The leadership of the nations hosting the Olympic Games gains knowledge and the chance to showcase their own political, economic, and solid philosophical underpinnings. The B2022WOG, taking place in a completely new societal environment (COVID-19 pandemic, world power realignment), is used as a case study for analysis. Using this example, the artіcle shows the social significance of the Olympic Games and emphasizes that the social value of sports and the Olympic movement is reflected in the "spirit of fair competition" and the "spirit of peace", "human intelligence". This is a relatively new direction in the development of researcհ in the field of physical education and social philosophy, and the special contrіbutіon of this study is to study one of the promising trends in the development of sports, that is, the modern Olympic movement, integrated with the national culture of different countries, B2022WOG were utilized as a case study for research since they are taking place in a totally new social context (COVID-19 pandemic, realignment of global power). By using this illustration, the article highlights the social significance of the Olympic Games and stresses how the "spirit of fair competition", "spirit of peace" and "human intelligence" are reflections of the social worth of sports and the Olympic movement. This is a relatively new area of study in the fields of physical education and social philosophy, and the focus of this research is to examine one of the most encouraging developments in the field of sports — the modern Olympic movement — as it interacts with various national cultures. (shrink)

China’s E-commerce market is very active. Despite the impact of COVID-19, the market has ushered in major development opportunities. Alongside, the level of intellectual property protection in China is constantly improving. However, there are relatively few studies on intellectual property protection in the field of E-commerce. This study introduces the theory of social cogovernance and explores the construction of China’s E-commerce intellectual property protection system with the participation of collective organizations. Evolutionary game method is applied to model (...) construction. Through numerical simulation, the study analyzes the evolution of E-commerce platform and collective organization strategic choice. The results depict that improving the open space provided by E-commerce platforms for collective organizations and strengthening their public service capabilities can promote the construction of social cogovernance systems. The establishment of reasonable reward and punishment mechanisms can increase cooperation enthusiasm. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications for governments, E-commerce platforms, and collective organizations, to improve the level of intellectual property protection in E-commerce. This study can provide suggestions for China’s E-commerce intellectual property protection, improve the overall level of intellectual property protection in China, and provide a reference for global E-commerce intellectual property protection. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites or mass movements. However, the book argues that these (...) understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychopathy, Other-Regarding Moral Beliefs, and ResponsibilityLloyd Fields (bio)AbstractIn this paper I seek to show that at least one kind of psychopath is incapable of forming other-regarding moral beliefs; hence that they cannot act for other-regarding moral reasons; and hence that they are not appropriate subjects for the assessment of either moral or legal responsibility. Various attempts to characterize psychopaths are considered and rejected, in particular the widely held view (...) that psychopaths are, in general, incapable of understanding moral concepts. The particular disability proposed here, the incapacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, is then derived from an analysis of what is required for someone to be a responsible agent. This is illustrated with a detailed case history. A defect of this kind is shown to vitiate moral responsibility, because it renders the psychopath irresponsive to the social pressures which normally ensure respect for moral norms. It is also shown that the psychopath is not a suitable subject for the assessment of legal responsibility, because he lacks the capacity to act from common prudence to avoid sanctions. I conclude that the attempt to characterize particular defects from among the heterogeneity of psychopathic subjects, could lead to better targeted, and hence to more effective, management of particular cases.KeywordsCriminality, mental illness, personality disorder, blame, liability, moral beliefs, guilt, social moralityIntroductionThe term “psychopath” has been used with a wide variety of different meanings and, no doubt, covers a heterogeneous group of subjects (Criminal behaviour and mental health 1992). My aim in this paper is to argue that at least a subgroup of those subjects are characterized by an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs—and hence, for this particular reason, are not morally responsible agents—and that they also lack the capacity for prudence, and hence are not legally responsible agents.I begin by distinguishing the particular sense in which I will be using the term “psychopathy.” I then consider some suggestions in the literature regarding the defect by which psychopaths might be characterized—that they are mentally ill, or incapable of understanding moral concepts. In rejecting these, I come to the suggestion that the relevant defect is an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs, a defect which is graphically illustrated by a case report from the literature. I explore the implication of this kind of defect for [End Page 261] moral responsibility as a socially-embedded notion, and the implication of the psychopath’s inability to exercise prudence in relation to legal liability.Nothing in this paper should be taken to suggest that psychopaths are irredeemable. On the contrary, as I argue in an endnote, correctly characterizing the defect from which they suffer leads directly to forms of treatment whose effectiveness has acquired a measure of empirical support.The Nature of PsychopathyPsychopathy is not a homogeneous concept; there are different types of psychopaths. For example, Henderson identified a type of psychopath who he classified as “Predominantly Creative,” exemplified by such figures as T. E. Lawrence and Joan of Arc. In people of this type genius is associated with heightened sensitivity, psychosexual immaturity and emotional instability (Henderson 1939, 108–20; Henderson and Gillespie 1969, 317). Predominantly creative psychopaths do not come within my purview.By “psychopathy” I shall mean the specific form of personality disorder described by Cleckley in his book, The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley 1964). Cleckley’s description forms the basis of Hare’s Revised (20-item) Psychopathy Checklist. The Checklist includes the following personality traits and deviant behaviors:1. Glibness/superficial charm.2. Grandiose sense of self-worth.3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom.4. Pathological lying.5. Conning/manipulative.6. Lack of remorse or guilt.7. Shallow affect.8. Callous/lack of empathy.9. Parasitic lifestyle.10. Poor behavioral controls.11. Promiscuous sexual behavior.12. Early behavior problems.13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans.14. Impulsivity.15. Irresponsibility.16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.17. Many short-term marital relationships.18. Juvenile delinquency.19. Revocation of conditional release.20. Criminal versatility (Hare 1986, 18). 1This conceptualization resembles in many respects the category of Antisocial Personality Disorder as described in the American Psychiatric... (shrink)

Sociology is becoming fragmented. With specialised fields spinning off beyond the capacity of a unifying theoretical frame to embrace them, the prospect exists that sociology's vital centre may not hold. Proceeding from a social constructionist perspective, this work examines the existence and probes the origins of the specialised sociological fields of social problems and social movements. Conceptual ambiguities that currently plague both specialisations are noted, as are their effective theoretical isolation from general sociological theory. Each field (...) is traced to its roots in sociology's formative period in the nineteenth century. Two modes of doing sociology are found to have evolved, respectively, in the United Stales and in Continental Europe, each conditioned by distinctive historical experiences and resonating with the prevailing social and political concerns on the two continents. American sociology emerged in response to social perceptions that progress is inhibited by a proliferation of 'social problems'. Continental European sociology arose in reaction to Enlightenment principles failing to be institutionalised, inviting the perceived social threat of either revolution or anarchy. Both sociologies are thus seen as ideologically contaminated, and their respective dominant perspectives, through the 1950s, are contrasted as the 'social problem orientation' and the 'social movement orientation'. Comparative analysis of these orientatations probes such issues as ahistorical vs. historical treatments: methodological individualism vs. collectivism: differential conceptions of class; the discipline's need to inhibit ideological contagion through a sociological reconstruction of prevailing social constructions of reality; the vital distinction between structural and processual conceptualisations. The study concludes that temporality serves as a crucial but much-neglected dimension in much of American sociology. So-called social problems and social movements are found to be grounded in essentially similar empirical social circumstances, with their alternate conceptualisations attributable to differential time-frames through which such circumstances are sociologically apprehended. This points to the potential theoretical integration of these two fields. Scientific, ideological. and social policy implications of alternative constructions of reality are also explored. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genevieve Lloyd argues that when we follow Spinoza in understanding reason as a part of nature, we gain new insights into the human condition. Specifically, we gain a new political insight: we should respond to cultural difference with a pluralist ethos. This is because there is no pure universal reason; human minds find their reason shaped differently by their various embodied social contexts. Furthermore, we can use the resources of the imagination to bring this ethos about. In my (...) response, I offer a friendly challenge to Lloyd’s characterisation of the lessons of Spinoza’s philosophy. I argue that Lloyd’s Spinoza remains excessively unpolitical, even in the moment that he is brought to bear on contemporary politics. An unpluralistic attitude may well be rationally inferior, but is it really explained by insufficient or inappropriate imagination? To the contrary, a properly Spinozist account of reason must include an account of the concrete determinants of reason’s imperfect realisation in the world. In Spinoza’s own oeuvre, this is carried out through an ever-increasing—and ever more sociological—interest in the political structures within which individual reason flourishes or withers. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

The crisis of confidence in the social sciences has many corollaries which impact our research practices. One of these is a push towards maximal and mechanical objectivity in quantitative research. This stance is reinforced by major journals and academic institutions that subtly yet certainly link objectivity with integrity and rigor. The converse implication of this may be an association between subjectivity and low quality. Subjectivity is one of qualitative methodology’s best assets, however. In qualitative methodology, that subjectivity is often (...) given voice through reflexivity. It is used to better understand our own role within the research process, and is a means through which the researcher may oversee how they influence their research. Given that the actions of researchers have led to the poor reproducibility characterising the crisis of confidence, it is worthwhile to consider whether reflexivity can help improve the validity of research findings in quantitative psychology. In this report, we describe a combination approach of research: the data of a series of interviews helps us elucidate the link between reflexive practice and quality of research, through the eyes of practicing academics. Through our exploration of the position of the researcher in their research, we shed light on how the reflections of the researcher can impact the quality of their research findings, in the context of the current crisis of confidence. The validity of these findings is tempered, however, by limitations to the sample, and we advise caution on the part of our audience in their reading of our conclusions. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2012). 'Democracy and the multitude: Spinoza against Negri'. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 59(131), 21-40. Translated by María Cecilia Padilla and Gonzalo Ricci Cernadas. Negri celebra una concepción de la democracia en la que los poderes concretos de los individuos humanos no se alienan sino que se agregan: una democracia de la multitud. Pero ¿cómo puede actuar la multitud sin alienar el poder de nadie? Para contestar esta dificultad, Negri (...) explícitamente apela a Spinoza. Sin embargo, en este trabajo, sostengo que la filosofía de Spinoza no respalda el proyecto de Negri. Por el contrario, argumento que la multitud spinozista evita la jerarquía interna por medio de la mediación de las instituciones políticas y no a pesar de ellas; de la misma manera, estas instituciones tampoco simplemente emanan de la multitud tal cual es, sino que estructuran, contienen y canalizan sus pasiones. En particular, las instituciones requeridas no son las de la democracia simple y directa. Puede ser que existan otros argumentos no spinozistas en los cuales Negri pueda basar su teoría, pero no puede defender legítimamente su concepción de la multitud democrática apelando a Spinoza. (shrink)

It is common to assimilate Marx’s and Spinoza’s conceptions of democracy. In this chapter, I assess the relation between Marx’s early idea of “true democracy” and Spinozist democracy, both the historical influence and the theoretical affinity. Drawing on Marx’s student notebooks on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, I show there was a historical influence. However, at the theoretical level, I argue that a sharp distinction must be drawn. Philosophically, Spinoza’s commitment to understanding politics through real concrete powers does not support with Marx’s (...) anti-institutional conception of true democracy. And as a matter of social theory, the gap between civil society and the state which so troubles Marx is a development of modernity that has not entered Spinoza's premodern field of view. Marx’s true democracy was also influenced by his study of Rousseau, and theoretically, it is just as close if not closer to Rousseau as to Spinoza. (shrink)

Serious re-examination of participatory traditions of democracy is long overdue. Iconically central to such traditions of democratic education is the practice of whole School Meetings. More usually associated with radical work within the private sector, School Meetings are here explored in detail through two examples from publicly funded education, Epping House School, a mixed residential primary/elementary school for students with severe emotional, social and behavioural difficulties and secondary/high schools within the Just Community School movement in the USA. In addition (...) to providing richly textured accounts of the multiple realities and challenges of pioneering overtly democratic practices such as School Meetings within the publicly funded sector of education substantial attention is paid to analytic engagement with the kind of organisational structures, practices and cultures that seem to play an important role in their successful operation and development. The different phenomenological and theoretical strands weaving their way through the texture of Meeting practices also raise a number of key issues within the fields of social and political philosophy, in particular, whether School Meetings are best understood as predominantly political or communal phenomena. In gesturing towards the philosophical groundwork of a satisfactory answer I argue for the importance of the undeservedly neglected notion of democratic fellowship within the lexicon of democratic polity and aspiration. (shrink)

A. Belden Fields invites people to think more deeply about human rights in this book in an attempt to overcome many of the traditional arguments in the human rights literature. He argues that human rights should be reconceptualized in a holistic way to combine philosophical, historical, and empirical-practical dimensions. Human rights are viewed not as a set of universal abstractions but rather as a set of past and ongoing social practices rooted in the claims and struggles of peoples against (...) what they consider to be political, economic, or social domination. By aptly showing how a people’s fight for recognition is often closely tied to rights claims, Fields argues that these connections to identity can help bridge the gulf between universalistic and cultural relativistic arguments in the human rights debate. (shrink)

This paper outlines an analysis of the word ‘fun’, as it is used in everyday English sentences to describe various activities and asks why some things are labeled as fun while others seem unable to be properly described as such. One common unspoken idea, for example, is that a fun activity is deemed fun due to having a particular phenomenology, in a way that might be comparable to being in a ‘flow state’. Due to the trouble such psychological accounts of (...) fun have in explaining both the precise conditions of fun and also why some activities are thought to be enjoyable but not fun, a deflationary theory is instead introduced. This proposed alternative account suggests that the use of the word ‘fun’, when describing activities in English sentences, signals that the sentence is a generic sentence, an idea based on a semantic distinction made by Greg Carlson (1989). Further, it is argued that the words ‘pleasurable’ and ‘enjoyable’ are reserved for non-generic sentences, leaving the use of the word ‘fun’ to signal something akin to a grammar relation, rather than referring to a feeling or psychological state. (shrink)

I propose a theory of popular power, according to which a political order manifests popular power to the extent it robustly maintains an egalitarian basic structure. There are two parts to the theory. First, the power of a political order lies in the basic structure's robust self-maintenance. Second, the popularity of the political order’s power lies in the equality of relations between the society's members. I will argue that this theory avoids the perverse consequences of some existing radical democratic theories (...) of popular power which focus on mass expression, either in plebiscites or in social movements, as popular power's canonical instances. In particular, my theory does not valourise momentary expression over durable effect, and it offers a ready framework for conceptualising the sometimes-oligarchic substructure of the supposedly canonical instances of popular power. I will show that this theory has strong precedents within a certain republican tradition of political philosophy. (shrink)

Distinguished feminist philosophers consider the future of their field and chart its political and ethical course in this forward-looking volume. Engaging with themes such as the historical trajectory of feminist phenomenology, ways of perceiving and making sense of the contemporary world, and the feminist body in health and ethics, these essays affirm the base of the discipline as well as open new theoretical spaces for work that bridges bioethics, social identity, physical ability, and the very nature and boundaries (...) of the female body. Entanglements with thinkers such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, and Arendt are evident and reveal new directions for productive philosophical work. Grounded in the richness of the feminist philosophical tradition, this work represents a significant opening to the possible futures of feminist phenomenological research. (shrink)

A number of philosophers :171–187, 2011; Arnold 2011, in Ethics Politics XV:101–138, 2013) have argued that agent-based, evolutionary game theory models of the evolution of cooperation fail to provide satisfying explanations of cooperation because they are too disconnected from actual biology. I show how these criticisms can be answered by employing modeling approaches from the situated cognition research program that allow for more biologically detailed models. Using cases drawn from recent situated cognition modeling research, I show how agent-based models (...) of the evolution of cooperation can become more empirically-informed and relevant to explaining the evolution of cooperation in real populations. I argue that because situated cognition models allow for more detailed representations of not just agents’ brains but bodies and environments as well, they can be informed by a much wider breadth of empirical research than traditional agent-based models. Moreover, because the simulated bodies of these agents exhibit particular behaviors, they can be more readily compared to the behaviors of actual organisms. I conclude that employing situated cognition approaches to modeling the evolution of cooperation is a more promising way to investigate the evolution of cooperation than more traditional agent-based evolutionary game theory models. (shrink)

Distinguished feminist philosophers consider the future of feminist phenomenology and chart its political and ethical future in this forward-looking volume. Engaging with themes such as the historical trajectory of feminist phenomenology, ways of perceiving and making sense of the contemporary world, and the feminist body in health and ethics, these essays affirm the base of the discipline as well as open new theoretical spaces for work that bridges bioethics, social identity, physical ability, and the very nature and boundaries of (...) the female body. Entanglements with thinkers such as Arendt, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Deleuze are evident as they reveal new directions for productive philosophical work. Grounded in the richness of the feminist philosophical tradition, this lively volume represents a significant opening to the possible futures of feminist phenomenological research. (shrink)

This paper takes a close look at a central aspect of the work of Peter Senge,1 namely his advocacy of the learning organisation and the ‘Communities of Commitment’ that he suggests are its central dynamic. Echoing strands of the liberal-communitarian debate, Senge argues for ‘the primacy of the whole’ and ‘the community nature of the self ’ as two of the three Galilean shifts2 which have the potential to enable business to accomplish fundamental changes in our ways of thinking and (...) being which have thus far eluded other agencies of social and political transformation. My concern is that Senge is not at all clear about the relationship between organisation and community, or, indeed, what community actually is. Arguing that his account is disappointingly partial and damagingly flawed, I then suggest a number of sites for future philosophical work for those who wish to develop an emancipatory notion of community. I end by advocating the work of John Macmurray as a major source of philosophical insight and human wisdom, both with regard to community and the development of a person-centred philosophy of work. A second paper will explore some of this ideas on these matters more fully.. (shrink)

Despite publishing nearly forty books between 1963 and 2003, Jeff Nuttall remains a minor figure in the history of the International Underground of the long 1960s. Drawing on his uncatalogued papers at the John Rylands Library, this article seeks to recoup Nuttall as one of the key architects of the International Underground. In so doing, my article argues that Nuttalls contributions to global counterculture challenge the critical consensus that British avant-garde writers were merely imitators of their US counterparts. By exploring (...) the impact of Nuttalls My Own Mag and Bomb Culture, it can be shown that Nuttall was a central catalyst of, and contributor to, the International Underground. As a poet, novelist and artist, Nuttalls multidisciplinary contributions to art were at the forefront of avant-garde practices that sought to challenge the perceived limitations of the novel as a social realist document and visual art as a medium confined to canvas. (shrink)

Religious therapeutics is the term I use to designate relations between health and spirituality, and medicine and religion. Dimensions of religious therapeutics include religious meanings that inform medical theory, religious means of healing, health as part of religious life, and religion as a remedy for human suffering. Classical Yoga is analyzed to establish an initial matrix of religious therapeutics with 5 branches: philosophical foundations, soteriology, value theory, physical practice, and cultivation of consciousness. Through comparative criticism of classical Yoga, the study (...) presents a heuristic of religious therapeutics: a model for interpreting relations among healing and liberative functions in world religions. ;Body and health are of instrumental but not ultimate value in classical Yoga: the body is used to transcend itself for attainment of Yoga's soteriological goal, realization of self as pure consciousness. Yoga's Samkhya-based metaphysics contains an unreconciled dualism, and while practice of Yoga is paradigmatic of mind/body holism, Yoga prescribes realization of a spiritual self, independent of material and psychological nature. The study rehabilitates the body in respect of the compatibility of embodiedness with religiousness. ;Other Indian and world traditions suggest dimensions of religious therapeutics both resonant with classical Yoga and lacking from it. India's Ayurvedic medicine represents the sixth branch of religious therapeutics: medical therapeutics. I distill from Ayurvedic and Western sources a set of determinants of health: biological, medical/psychological, cultural, and metaphysical. Significant determinants of health are wholeness, self-identity, and freedom; these are incorporated in discussion of the complementary functions of medicine and religion, grounding the claim that in classical Yoga, liberation is healing in an ultimate sense. ;Tantric yogas utilize material nature for human spiritual progress, and unlike classical Yoga, esteem nature, body/mind, the feminine, and relationality. Tantra provides another branch of religious therapeutics: aesthetic therapeutics. The study anticipates elements of health/medicine in western religions, Buddhism, and Lakota religious philosophy. Sacred speech and song are explored to demonstrate comparative inquiry into religious therapeutics; some Native American Indian and Hindu applications of sacred language are considered. Finally, the model of religious therapeutics is supplemented with community, embracing ecological, social, and religious relationality and communication. (shrink)

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at least (...) some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . (shrink)

As the Nietzsche industry continues to thrive, offering Zarathustra zealots everything from coffee table photography books to quasi-fictional accounts of Nietzsche’s mad dance into insanity and posterity, Daniel Conway offers a sober account of Nietzsche’s late writings, choosing to address quite seriously the shrill excesses that mark Nietzsche’s work from 1885–8. Conway undertakes to present Nietzsche’s own decadence and inheriting readership as evidence of the failure of his later project. Nietzsche embarks on voyages toward terrible seas, seeking to unsterilize wisdom (...) and set his revaluation of values in motion by announcing his presence as “dynamite”; Conway exposes Nietzsche’s later works as just that, a tremendous power with erratic and often misguided aim. Whereas Kaufmann, Schacht, and others defend Nietzsche’s thought as apolitical, and gloss over or ignore altogether the vitriol and self-aggrandizement of Nietzsche’s last five works, Conway treats Nietzsche’s critique of modernity in light of Nietzsche’s self-referential motif. Unfortunately, Nietzsche crumbles under the burden of such scrutiny, as he emerges as the decaying embodiment of those upon whom he sets. Conway portrays Nietzsche as a cunning strategist who employs various techniques to obfuscate his own enervation. Nietzsche here is cast as the self-avowed decadent whose descent is marked by his solicitation of discipleship, and who knows full well that those worthy heirs will turn on him in an act of perfidy. The shameless shepherding of flatterers, reprobates, and misfits signals his decadence; Nietzsche recruits scions from the fringes of society instead of fostering his militia from within the latently noble ranks. Resuscitating the modern community is rejected as a futile project for Nietzsche; he casts himself as the neo-Christ figure whose immediate audience, owing to their own decadence, has a flash point too high for Nietzsche to ignite. The modern pilot light has been snuffed out, Nietzsche concedes, and a new one must be lit. (shrink)

Language-Game vs. Complete Language. The article formulates a criticism of Wittgenstein's later philosophy which, in its substance, I would like to think, is fairly the same as the (hermeneutic) criticism issued by Apel and Habermas in the sixties. Contrary to these philosophers, however, I try to make the point by focusing on the distinction between language game and language, respectively between intralanguage relations of 'family resemblance' (between language games) and interlanguage translation relations. The notion of a 'complete language' (...) is introduced - 'completeness' of a language being, roughly, its possibility in principle of being translated into any (other) language - and the criticism of Wittgenstein is formulated as the allegation that he does not, or will not, acknowledge such a concept of completeness. So far the contents of the first part of the article. The rest of it assembles some hints, remarks and reminders which bear upon the question of the 'completeness' of a language. These considerations include comments on the conditions of translatability, on the performative (agent's) knowledge or 'intention-in-action' of the acting person, on Habermas' concept of communicative competence and on the notion of a responsible subject of action. It is alleged that to speak of 'translation' and 'reporting an event' as language games is misleading. (shrink)

Sandra Field, Jeffrey Flynn, Stephen Macedo, Longxi Zhang, and Martin Powers discussed Powers’ book China and England: The Preindustrial Struggle for Social Justice in Word and Image at the American Philosophical Association’s 2020 Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia. The panel was sponsored by the APA’s “Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies” and organized by Brian Bruya.