I argue that Kotzee’s model of meta- debate succeeds in identifying illegitimate or fallacious charges of bias but has the unintended consequence of classifying some legitimate and non-fallacious charges as fallacious. This makes the model, in some important cases, counter-productive. In particular, cases where the call for a meta- debate is prompted by the participant with epistemic privilege and a charge of bias is denied by the participant with social advantage, the impasse will put the epistemically advantaged at far greater (...) risk. Therefore, I propose treating epistemic privilege as a variety of expert opinion specifically in cases where meta- debate participants come to an impasse in deliberation. My proposal exposes the problem of interpreting debate contexts as both adversarial and free from social power differentials. (shrink)

This essay explores the evolving systems ofjustz$5cation and morality that emerge fiom mother and child dialogues. Contrasting a mother's ethic of care with a surrounding cultural climate of violence, I argue that children are capable of providing insigljt to this seeming socialcontradiction.Ifocus on a series cfconversa- tionsI've had with my nowJiveyear oldson with regard to naturally occurringharm (i.e.yfloods,disease...) and human createdharm (i.e. war, violence,physical intimi- dation). I argue that my son's effortsto "makethe symbolic reap are consistent with philosopher Gareth Matthews' (...) (1980) claim that young children are capable of complexphilosophicalthinkingthoughitmaygodormantatabouteightornineyears of age. M y view is thatphilosophicalthinking between mother and child typifies the feminist ideal that respecful investigation can occur between two parties who are uneyual in terms of socialpower. Though my son is smaller, less experienced, and physically weaker, he has come to believe that these qualities will not be relevant in others' assessment of his explanations of the world. (shrink)

MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY PRESENTS A PECULIAR PUZZLE to the historian of ideas. For most of the early modern period, philosophers throughout Europe had allied themselves with the Enlightenment in its self-proclaimed struggle against dogma, superstition, and ignorance. Yet beginning in late eighteenth century Germany, this situation began to change—so much so that by the early decades of the twentieth century, Germany had become the undisputed home of the philosophical Counter-Enlightenment. If today the most celebrated Counter-Enlightenment figures hail from France or (...) Italy, that should not obscure the fact that the ideas of such authors as Derrida and Foucault, Vattimo and Virilio descend directly from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger. All of these theorists are united in their opposition to the Enlightenment and what they see as its detrimental social and political effects in the modern world. Moreover, all of them deny the core assumptions of the Enlightenment: the possibility and goodness of rational discourse dispelling darkness and mystery from human life. Hence, their writings tend to take the form of deconstructive commentaries on seminal texts from the Western philosophical and literary traditions or radically critical analyses of the social and intellectual practices common to the post-Enlightenment world. Above all, these works claim to show that what might superficially appear to be examples of disinterested argument and rational impartiality in those texts and practices are, instead, attempts at violating, marginalizing, delegitimizing, and dominating the “other”—with the “other” defined as the nonrational, unusual, different, or abnormal dimensions of human life and experience. The role of the Counter-Enlightenment theorist is to liberate the “other” from its subjugation at the hands of reason by exposing the myriad ways in which all supposedly enlightened discourses and practices are themselves permeated by the “other” and thus always one step away from collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In other words, Counter-Enlightenment philosophy seeks to expose reason’s own inevitable and fatal dependence upon unreason. (shrink)

MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY PRESENTS A PECULIAR PUZZLE to the historian of ideas. For most of the early modern period, philosophers throughout Europe had allied themselves with the Enlightenment in its self-proclaimed struggle against dogma, superstition, and ignorance. Yet beginning in late eighteenth century Germany, this situation began to change—so much so that by the early decades of the twentieth century, Germany had become the undisputed home of the philosophical Counter-Enlightenment. If today the most celebrated Counter-Enlightenment figures hail from France or (...) Italy, that should not obscure the fact that the ideas of such authors as Derrida and Foucault, Vattimo and Virilio descend directly from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger. All of these theorists are united in their opposition to the Enlightenment and what they see as its detrimental social and political effects in the modern world. Moreover, all of them deny the core assumptions of the Enlightenment: the possibility and goodness of rational discourse dispelling darkness and mystery from human life. Hence, their writings tend to take the form of deconstructive commentaries on seminal texts from the Western philosophical and literary traditions or radically critical analyses of the social and intellectual practices common to the post-Enlightenment world. Above all, these works claim to show that what might superficially appear to be examples of disinterested argument and rational impartiality in those texts and practices are, instead, attempts at violating, marginalizing, delegitimizing, and dominating the “other”—with the “other” defined as the nonrational, unusual, different, or abnormal dimensions of human life and experience. The role of the Counter-Enlightenment theorist is to liberate the “other” from its subjugation at the hands of reason by exposing the myriad ways in which all supposedly enlightened discourses and practices are themselves permeated by the “other” and thus always one step away from collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In other words, Counter-Enlightenment philosophy seeks to expose reason’s own inevitable and fatal dependence upon unreason. (shrink)

The dissertation involves an examination of recent work in Social Epistemology. In particular, I am concerned with the question of how one's social position could affect judgments regarding evidence and confirmation. To answer this question I undertake an investigation of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. Feminist epistemologists have raised criticisms of the traditional analysis of knowledge by arguing against the primacy of the individual and for a more thorough-going analysis of the community in accounts of knowledge. This shift, in (...) my view, is an important contribution toward a more complete theory of knowledge. Yet feminist epistemology is a controversial contributor to the area of social epistemology generally construed. Thus, in the first chapter I offer a defense of the contributions of feminist epistemology to analytic philosophy, against its various critics. ;In Chapters Two and Three I examine feminists' reliance on Naturalistic models of theory-choice such as Quinean Holism or the later Wittgenstein's Social Constructivism. I argue that the reliance on these models is a tactical mistake for feminists since these models are based on problematic accounts of meaning and truth. Alternatively, I advocate the adoption of a realist meaning theory along the lines proposed by Katz, as well as a rationalized epistemology in the service of explaining deductive and inductive inference. My argument involves showing how realism and rationalism entail the kind of strong program of justification and rational censure which is required if feminists want to successfully condemn existing biased practices. ;Consequently, I propose a reformulation of the distinction between a context of discovery and context of justification. My reformulation differs from the past positivist distinction in that "discovery" rather than being wholly random and subjective, is instead reflective of patterns of social experience. "Justification" is conceived of as more sensitive to the epistemic privilege of varying social standpoints. However, a separation is still maintained between how one comes to arrive at a belief and the methods for justifying that belief. My conclusion is that a partnership between rationalized epistemology and feminist theory can provide rich possibilities for both disciplines. (shrink)

German Idealism can be said to have arisen from two main tensions in Kant’s critical philosophy. The first of these concern its epistemological status. Kant had conceived of the Critique of Pure Reason as, at least in part, a “science of ignorance” that clearly delineated what man could count as knowledge from what he could never possibly know. But what was the basis of Kant’s claim to know what can and what cannot count as knowledge? Strictly speaking, the content of (...) Kant’s own philosophy could not be knowledge in the same sense that the findings of the empirical sciences are knowledge, since the “truths” of the critical philosophy are not determined empirically. Rather, Kant arrives at them through an a priori “transcendental deduction” from the “conditions of the possibility of experience.” The critical philosophy would seem to be open to the charge that it represents an arbitrary attempt on the part of one man to dictate what can and what cannot be regarded as knowledge–that, far from being genuinely critical, it was instead an example of the height of dogmatism. For ambitious young admirers of Kant like Reinhold, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel, this was unacceptable. (shrink)

In her 2007 book "Epistemic Injustice" Miranda Fricker argues that "the silent by products of residual prejudice in a liberal society" are often the most difficult biases to eradicate. In this essay, I provide several examples of the kind of residual prejudice Fricker describes. I then propose a principle of "intellectual empathy" (with four component elements) as a methodological remedy for eradicating this kind of bias in good critical thinking.

Linda Alcoff, Real Knowing (reviewed by Maureen Linker).

Over the last year, pundits looking for an explanation for the improbable victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election have turned to the opioid epidemic, a public health crisis qua political crisis. Since the widespread closure of steel mills and other manufacturing plants throughout middle America in the 1980s, a new so-called "Oxy electorate" has emerged, citizens who rely on painkillers to ameliorate the material realities of economic decline and loss of community. According to postelection statistics, six of (...) the nine counties in Ohio that flipped from traditionally Democratic to vote Republican in 2016 logged an overdose rate that well exceeded the national average. Historian Kathleen Frydl... (shrink)

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre Bayle. (...) Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this debate, and will therefore be essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy and its intelletual context. All the texts are newly translated and extensively annotated; many appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

8 chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits of (...) knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

t. 1. Apo ton prōto skeptomeno anthrōpo mechri ton 6. aiōna M.Ch. -- t. 2. Apo ton 7. aiōna M.Ch. mechri to sēmera.

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret.

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

In Seeing Things as They Are (Searle 2015), Searle developed a direct realist’s theory of perception. According to direct realism, physical objects are directly and immediately perceived. Searle claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception goes against direct realism. For Searle, Berkeley’s theory suggests that only subjective experiences (ideas) are directly and immediately perceived, not physical objects. Contrary to Searle, G. S. Pappas claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception is consistent with the view that physical objects are immediately perceivable (Pappas 1982; (...) Pappas 1987). Given the conflicting interpretations of Berkeley’s theory of perception, this paper attempts to defend Searle’s position on Berkeley’s theory of perception. It refutes Pappas’ interpretation by arguing that he is inconsistent with Berkeley’s theses of ontological phenomenalism and heterogeneity thesis. (shrink)