I knew that this was a book a long time in the making, and one that bore the mark of many years of teaching the philosophy discussed in the work. As a publisher, you come to learn that those who have taught courses on what they’re writing about tend to do a better job than those who haven’t, especially when it comes to books, like this one, intended for a wider audience.

This article explores Stanley Cavell’s ordinary aesthetics through a close reading of one passage inThe Claim of Reason. This close reading leads to the suggestion that educating our aesthetic sense and responsiveness has ethical implications, especially as these relate to the mental health crisis in schools. The article draws implications for individuals in caring relationships with young people, suggesting that Cavell’s thinking on ordinary aesthetics is a powerful tool in our time.

Including international contributors from a variety of disciplines - History, English, Information Studies and Archivists – this book does not seek either to applaud or condemn digital technologies, but takes a more conceptual view of how ...

To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios . We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

We often evaluate belief-forming processes, agents, or entire belief states for reliability. This is normally done with the assumption that beliefs are all-or-nothing. How does such evaluation go when we’re considering beliefs that come in degrees? I consider a natural answer to this question that focuses on the degree of truth-possession had by a set of beliefs. I argue that this natural proposal is inadequate, but for an interesting reason. When we are dealing with all-or-nothing belief, high reliability leads to (...) high levels of truth-possession. However, when it comes to degrees of belief, reliability and truth-possession part ways. The natural answer thus fails to be a good way to evaluate degrees of belief for reliability. I propose and develop an alternative method based on the notion of calibration, suggested by Frank Ramsey, which does not have this problem and consider why we should care about such assessments of reliability even if they are not tied directly to truth-possession. (shrink)

This book provides an original and provocative combination of ethnomethodological analysis and the concepts of linguistic philosophy with a breadth and clarity unusual in this field of writing. It is designed to be read by sociologists, psychologists and philosophers and concerns itself with the contributions of Wittgenstein, defending the claim for his relevance to the human sciences. However, this book goes some way beyond the usual limitations of such interdisciplinary works by outlining some empirical applications of ideas derived from the (...) Wittgenstein tradition. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview, Tony Lawson discussed his role in, and relationship to, Critical Realism as well as various defences of mathematical modelling in economics. In Part 2 he t...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Tony Lawson first discusses his role in the formation of IACR and how he relates to the generalized use of the term ‘Critical Realism’. He then provides com...

There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses (...) on human agency, social structure and their interaction and explores how the understanding of this social phenomena can be used to transform the nature of economic practice. Economics and Reality concludes by showing how this newly transformed economics might set about shaping economic policy. (shrink)

This article argues that "gratitude to" and "gratitude that" are fundamentally different concepts. The former (prepositional gratitude) is properly a response to benevolent attitudes, and entails special concern on the part of the beneficiary for a benefactor, while the latter (propositional gratitude) is a response to beneficial states of affairs, and entails no special concern for anyone. Propositional gratitude, it is argued, ultimately amounts to a species of appreciation. The tendency to see prepositional gratitude and propositional “gratitude” as two species (...) of the same genus results from several deep-seated social and psychological factors, but must be resisted if we are to engage in constructive philosophizing about both gratitude and appreciation. (shrink)

In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, _Virality_ does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates. Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way (...) of the rhetoric of fear used in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over _too much connectivity_, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview. According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

I argue that Husserlian phenomenology is metaphysically neutral, in the sense of being compatible with multiple metaphysical frameworks. For example, though Husserl dismisses the concept of an unknowable thing in itself as “material nonsense”, I argue that the concept is coherent and that the existence of such things is compatible with Husserl’s phenomenology. I defend this metaphysical neutrality approach against a number of objections and consider some of its implications for Husserl interpretation.

An important issue in epistemology concerns the source of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialism maintains that epistemic norms are genuine norms in virtue of the way in which they are conducive to epistemic value, whatever epistemic value may be. So, for example, the epistemic consequentialist might say that it is a norm that beliefs should be consistent, in that holding consistent beliefs is the best way to achieve the epistemic value of accuracy. Thus epistemic consequentialism is structurally similar to the family (...) of consequentialist views in ethics. Recently, philosophers from both formal epistemology and traditional epistemology have shown interest in such a view. In formal epistemology, there has been particular interest in thinking of epistemology as a kind of decision theory where instead of maximizing expected utility one maximizes expected epistemic utility. In traditional epistemology, there has been particular interest in various forms of reliabilism about justification and whether such views are analogous to—and so face similar problems to—versions of consequentialism in ethics. This volume presents some of the most recent work on these topics as well as others related to epistemic consequentialism, by authors that are sympathetic to the view and those who are critical of it. (shrink)

Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Logicians have focused on the structure of individual arguments-how they divide into premises and conclusions, which in turn divide into various constituents. In contrast, I focus on the structure of sets of arguments, showing how arguments are themselves constituents in high-level dialectical structures. I represent debates and positions by graphs whose vertices correspond to arguments and whose edges correspond to two inter-argument relations: "dispute" (...) and "support," respectively. On this basis I develop a theory of the structure of debate. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates in us the virtue of (...) gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude. (shrink)

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need (...) not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect. (shrink)

This eagerly anticipated new book from Tony Lawson contends that economics can profit from a more explicit concern with ontology than has been its custom. By admitting that economics is not exactly a picture of health at the moment, Lawson hopes that we can move away from the bafflingly intransigent belief that economics is at its core reliant upon mathematical modelling. This maths-envy is the reason why economics is in a state of such disarray. Far from being a polemic (...) against the mainstream, this excellent new book is concerned that if economics is to be saved from itself then there must be a realistic dialogue between the classical heterodox fields. Of interest to philosophers, sociologists and social scientists as well as economists, this comprehensive, logical book is a vital contribution to an important debate. (shrink)

This is the second in a series of two papers by the same author on organisational values. The first paper, in the previous issue of Philosophy of Management,1 showed how senior managers interpret texts to constitute organisational values. The research showed that organisational values are constituted through three hermeneutic circles — fragmentation/integration, conceptuality/contextuality and temporality — that provide an integrated medium for interpreting values. The three hermeneutic circles are mediated by a fourth: the tropological circle, where metaphor and homonymy fuse (...) horizons, and synecdoche and metonymy relate parts and whole. Both texts and tropes mediate the transvaluation of organisational values across time. The first paper reported the findings and built a theoretical framework, while this second paper builds on the theoretical and empirical work to consider the implications for management practice. (shrink)

A range of stakeholders are interested in organisational values, with demands from consumers, trade unions and pressure groups. Organisations face the challenge of integrating employees from several cultures and overcoming value differences. Coupled with this emphasis on organisational values there is increasing interest in the role of discourse in constituting meaning. This research shows how texts constitute organisational values. Hermeneutics is used to analyse the texts of the Open University and UK FTSE4good companies. The research shows that organisational values are (...) constituted through three hermeneutic circles — fragmentation/integration, conceptuality/contextuality and temporality — that provide an integrated medium for interpreting values. The three hermeneutic circles are mediated by a fourth: the tropological circle, where metaphor and homonymy fuse horizons, and synecdoche and metonymy relate parts and whole. Both texts and tropes mediate the transvaluation of organisational values across time. In recontextualising its values the organisation becomes a metaphor of itself. (shrink)

The social sciences often fail to examine in any systematic way the nature of their subject matter. Demonstrating that this is a central explanation of the widely acknowledged failings of the social sciences, not least of modern economics, this book sets about rectifying matters. Providing an account of the nature of social material in general, as well as of the specific natures of central components of the modern world, such as money and the corporation, Lawson also considers the implications of (...) this theory regarding possibilities for social change. Readers will gain an understanding of how social phenomena, from tables and chairs, to money and firms, and nurses and Presidents are constituted. Fundamental to Lawson's conception is a theory of community-based social positioning, whereby people and things within a community become constituted as components of emergent totalities, with actions governed by the rights and obligations of relevant members of the community. This theory isolates a set of basic principles that will offer the reader an understanding of the natures of all social phenomena. The Nature of Social Realityis for all those, academics and non-academics alike, who wish to gain a grasp on the nature of social phenomena that goes beyond the superficial. isolates a set of basic principles that will offer the reader an understanding of the natures of all social phenomena. The Nature of Social Realityis for all those, academics and non-academics alike, who wish to gain a grasp on the nature of social phenomena that goes beyond the superficial. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch’s Gestalt-inspired “field theory of consciousness” was introduced in the same period as Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of “electrical brain fields.” I consider parallels between these theories, drawing on results that have emerged in the last five years. First, I consider the claim that fields of consciousness supervene on electromagnetic fields in the brain, then I outline Gurwitsch’s field theory of consciousness, and finally I consider how the structures described by Gurwitsch might relate to structures in the brain’s electro-magnetic field. (...) Along the way, I expose a dogma (that qualia are paradigmatic conscious states) and develop an interpretation of Gurwitsch’s field theory. (shrink)

This paper proposes that, in many cases, conversational norms permit gaslighting when socially subordinate speakers report systemic injustice. Section 1 introduces gaslighting and the kinds of cases on which I focus—namely, cases in which multiple people gaslight. I give examples and statistics to suggest that these cases are common in response to reports of race- or gender-based injustice; and I appeal to scholarship on epistemologies of ignorance to suggest that this kind of gaslighting is common because it is systematically produced (...) by dominant epistemic systems. Section 2 draws on Lynne Tirrell’s account of language games that’ve been influenced by oppression to make the case that conversational norms make gaslighting “appropriate” when socially subordinate speakers report systemic injustice. Together, these points make the case that the kind of gaslighting discussed in this paper (i) occurs systematically and (ii) is mutually reinforcing with systems of ignorance. The discussion is meant to help us understand and address the conditions that make gaslighting commonplace. If it’s true that gaslighting occurs systematically in part thanks to our warped conversational norms, then we may be able to mitigate the prevalence of gaslighting by attending to these norms. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1989 discusses an issue central to all philosophical argument – the relation between persuasion and truth. The techniques of persuasion are indirect and not always fully transparent. Whether philosophers and theoreticians are for or against the use of rhetoric, they engage in rhetorical practice none the less. Focusing on Plato, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, this book uncovers philosophical rhetoric at work and reminds us of the rhetorical arena in which philosophical writings are produced (...) and considered. (shrink)

Slavoj Zizek is no ordinary philosopher. Approaching critical theory and psychoanalysis in a recklessly entertaining fashion, Zizek's critical eye alights upon a bewildering and exhilarating range of subjects, from the political apathy of contemporary life, to a joke about the man who thinks he's a chicken, from the ethicial heroism of Keanu Reeves in speed , to what toilet designs reveal about the national psyche. Tony Myers provides a clear and engaging guide to Zizek's key ideas, explaining the main (...) influences on Zizek's thought, most crucially his engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis, using examples drawn from popular culture and everyday life. Myers outlines the key issues that Zizek's work has tackled, including: * What is a Subject and why is it so important? * The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real * What is so terrible about Postmodernity? * How can we distinguish reality from ideology? * What is the relationship between men and women? * Why is Racism always a fantasy? Slavoj Zizek is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the thought of the critic whom Terry Eagleton has described as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.". (shrink)

This article investigates a puzzle about gratitude—the proper response, in a beneficiary, to an act of benevolence from a benefactor. The puzzle arises from three platitudes about gratitude: 1) the beneficiary has certain obligations of gratitude; 2) these obligations are owed to the benefactor; and 3) the benefactor has no right to the fulfillment of these obligations. These platitudes suggest that gratitude is a counterexample to the “correlativity thesis” in the moral domain: the claim that strict moral obligations correlate to (...) moral rights on the part of the person to whom the obligation is owed. The goal of this chapter is to determine whether the three gratitude platitudes are true, and, if they are, what they tell us about the correlativity thesis. Sections 1 through 3 argue for the truth of each of the platitudes. It is then argued that while benefactors lack standing to demand, they do possess an imperfect right to gratitude: a special and morally significant standing to remonstrate with ungrateful beneficiaries. These facts suggest the following modification of the standard correlativity thesis: moral obligations entail moral rights on the part of the person to whom they are owed, which may be perfect (demandable) or imperfect. (shrink)

These essays, by widely respected scholars in fields ranging from social and political theory to historical sociology and cultural studies, illuminate the significance of the public/private distinction for an increasingly wide range of ...

I describe and partially formalize two aspects of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, in a way that highlights their relevance to cognitive science. First, I describe “constitutive phenomenology”, the study of structures (what I call phenomenological “models”) that constitute a person’s sense of reality. These structures develop incrementally over the course of a person’s life, and serve a variety of functions, e.g. generating expectations relative to actions, and determining the contents of context awareness. Second, I describe “transcendental-eidetic phenomenology”, which posits a (...) hierarchy of laws, each governing the way consciousness must be organized in order for a particular type of thing (a physical thing, a person, a social institution, etc.) to appear. (shrink)

: According to Kant, the arguments of rational psychology are formal fallacies that he calls transcendental paralogisms. It remains heavily debated whether there actually is any formal error in the inferences Kant presents: according to Grier and Allison, they are deductively invalid syllogisms, whereas Bennett, Ameriks, and Van Cleve deny that they are formal fallacies. I advance an interpretation that reconciles these extremes: transcendental paralogisms are sound in general logic but constitute formal fallacies in transcendental logic. By formalising the paralogistic (...) inference, I will pinpoint the error as an illegitimate existential presupposition. Since - unlike transcendental logic - general logic abstracts from all objects, this error can only be detected in transcendental logic. (shrink)

The philosophical literature contains at least three formulations of the problem of causal exclusion. Although each of the three most common formulations targets theories according to which some effects have ‘too many determiners’, no one is reducible to either of the others. This article proposes two ‘new’ exclusion problems and suggests that exclusion is not a single problem but a family of problems unified by the situations they problematize. It is shown, further, that for three of the most popular attempts (...) to solve one or another of the ‘old’ problems, each remains vulnerable to one of the ‘new’ exclusion problems. (shrink)

Discussions surrounding music and ethical responsibility bring to mind arguments about legal ownership and purchase. Yet the many ways in which we experience music with others are usually overlooked. Musical experience and practice always involve relationships with other people, which can place limitations on how we listen to and act upon music. In Music and Ethical Responsibility, Jeff Warren challenges current approaches to music and ethics, drawing upon philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's theory that ethics is the responsibilities that arise from our (...) encounters with other people. Warren examines ethical responsibilities in musical experiences including performing other people's music, noise, negotiating musical meaning, and improvisation. Revealing the diverse roles that music plays in the experience of encountering others, Warren argues that musicians, researchers, and listeners should place ethical responsibility at the heart of musical practices. (shrink)

I apply the Zhuangzi 莊子 to assess the contemporary value of personal autonomy. Focusing on two concepts, wuwei 無為 and you 遊, I clarify the “wandering ideal” in the Zhuangzi to challenge the ideal of autonomy as central to a well-lived life. Drawing on Sneddon’s persuasive recent account of autonomy, the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, as well as recent secondary scholarship on the text, I show that the wandering ideal suggests a stark move away from the controlled and self-reflective (...) life of the autonomous person. My goal is to draw on the Zhuangzi to contribute to dialogue on the ideal of autonomy, rather than to provide an innovative way of reading the Zhuangzi. I argue that both autonomy and wandering are higher-order ideals that can be applied to individual actions and to a person’s form of life, but at both levels, wandering and personal autonomy are in tension. The conclusion briefly reflects on the significance of the tension. (shrink)