Many philosophers conceive of freedom as non-interference. Such conceptions unify two core commitments. First, they associate freedom with non-constraint. And second, they take seriously a distinction between the interpersonal and the non-personal. As a result, they focus our attention exclusively on constraints attributable to other people’s choices – that is, on interference. I argue that these commitments manifest two distinct concerns: first, for a wide range of options; and second, for other people’s respect. However, construing freedom as non-interference unifies these (...) concerns in a way that does justice to neither. In particular, it focuses our attention on phenomena that are at best tangential, and at worst hostile, to our interest in respect. If we wish to preserve the distinctive significance of the interpersonal, we would be better served by a conception of freedom that focuses immediately on what I call "the social conditions of respect.". (shrink)

Theories of social norms frequently define social norms in terms of individuals’ beliefs and preferences, and so afford individual beliefs and preferences conceptual priority over social norms. I argue that this treatment of social norms is unsustainable. Taking Bicchieri’s theory as an exemplar of this approach, I argue, first, that Bicchieri’s framework bears important structural similarities with the command theory of law; and second, that Hart’s arguments against the command theory of law, suitably recast, reveal the fundamental problems with Bicchieri’s (...) framework. I then draw on Hart’s critique to develop and defend an alternative approach, arguing that we should conceive of social norms as the norms internal to a “socially sanctioned representational practice.” This approach makes social norms conceptually independent of individuals’ beliefs and preferences by locating them within social practices that transcend their individual participants, structuring the social landscape even before individuals form their own beliefs and preferences. (shrink)

Many political philosophers argue that interference (or vulnerability to interference) threatens a person’s agency. And they cast political freedom in opposition to interpersonal threats to agency, as non-interference (or non-subjection). I argue that this approach relies on an inapt model of agency, crucial aspects of which emerge from our relationships with other people. Such relationships involve complex patterns of vulnerability and subjection, essential to our constitution as particular kinds of agents: as owners of property, as members of families, and as (...) participants in a market for labor. We should construct a conception of freedom that targets the structures of our interpersonal relations, and the kinds of agents these relations make us. Such a conception respects the interpersonal foundations of human agency. It also allows us to draw morally significant connections between diverse species of unfreedom—between, for instance, localized domination and structural oppression. (shrink)

Leslie Houts Picca and Joe Feagin argue that whites strive to isolate racial discourse to all-white social spaces. We can explain this practice by assuming that many whites—including “non-racist” whites—think of racism as shameful. Shame essentially concerns not what we do but how we are perceived. Maintaining their identities as “not racist,” then, seems to these whites primarily to involve the management of non-white people's perceptions of them. By isolating much of white racial discourse to all-white spaces, the white construal (...) of racism as shameful denies non-whites’ standing to participate in the construction of the social norms governing whites’ relationships with them. We should instead treat racism as disrespectful, and so requiring public correction because of its role in sustaining racist social norms. (shrink)

Since at least the 1980s, police departments in the United States have embraced a set of practices that aim, not to enable the prosecution of past criminal activity, but to discourage people from breaking the law in the first place. It is not clear that these practices effectively lower the crime rate. However, whatever its effect on the crime rate, I argue that preventive policing is essentially distinct from legal governance, and that excessive reliance on preventive policing undermines legal governance. (...) To show this, I emphasize law’s unique aptitude to define legal subjects’ ‘manifest’ status relations – that is, the rights and obligations that live within their local practices. I then argue, first, that preventive policing does not aim to define these relationships; and second, that excessive preventive policing threatens the relationship that law must bear with its subjects if law is to define their manifest relations authoritatively. (shrink)

One common approach to autonomy begins by drawing boundaries around the agent, dividing her from external forces that limit her options, hostile agents who would harness her to their projects, and rebellious motivations embedded within her own psychology. Relational approaches to autonomy blur these boundaries, demonstrating the ways in which autonomy is possible only in mutually respectful, caring relationships. I develop a particular kind of relational approach, on which autonomy requires others’ recognition that certain choices belong to us. That is (...) because agency involves responsibility for one’s actions. Crucially, the responsibility in question is not simply causal responsibility. Rather, to be an agent is to be the proper object of reactive attitudes like resentment or gratitude for specific actions. Whether one is responsible (in this sense) for any state of affairs depends, not simply on whether one caused that state of affairs to occur, but on whether the choice to bring this state of affairs about belonged to you. Moreover, I argue that that while some tools – specifically, violence – might bolster one’s causal powers, they simultaneously threatening the social contexts that make “choice-ownership” possible. While these tools seem apt to secure our agency, they in fact threaten to destroy it. (shrink)

This is a collection of papers presented at the Symposium "Are There are Laws of Biology?", in the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. It includes four separate papers: "Why Do Biologists Argue Like They Do?" by John Beatty, "Does Biology Have Laws? The Experimental Evidence" by Robert Brandon, "Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology" by Elliott Sober, and "Pragmatic Laws" by Sandra D. Mitchell.

Republicans have traditionally opposed democracy, arguing that rule by a majority is a form of despotic or lawless rule, and liberalism due to its emphasis on private goods over public projects and shared or public interests. Today, however, republicanism is associated with certain kinds of ‘democratic’ institutions and deliberative practices, whereas democracy is considered a means of assuring significant liberal protections for individual freedom. This chapter examines the link between republicanism and the nature of law. It describes at least (...) two separate complexes of constitutional prescriptions that can be found in republican thought: the classical complex that can be seen in various forms in Rome and Athens. It argues that modern republicans endorse institutions that are different from those advocated by their classical forbearers because they have a different understanding of society and social conflict, and traces this difference to ‘social ontology’. The chapter also contends that a republican notion of the common good depends at least in part on what is believed to be the greatest danger or threat to the republic. (shrink)

This book presents a rethinking of the world legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in this era of unspeakable global violence. Through interdisciplinary research, key Gandhian concepts are revisited by tracing their genealogies in multiple histories of world contact and by foregrounding their relevance to contemporary struggles to regain the ‘humane’ in the midst of global conflict. The relevance of Gandhian notions of ahimsa and satyagraha is assessed in the context of contemporary events, when religious fundamentalisms of various kinds are competing with (...) the arrogance and unilateralism of imperial capital to reduce the world to a state of international lawlessness. Covering a wide and comprehensive range of topics such as Gandhi’s vegetarianism and medical practice, his successes and failures as a litigator in South Africa, his experiments with communal living and his concepts of non-violence and satyagraha. The book combines historical, philosophical, and textual readings of different aspects of the leader’s life and works. _Rethinking Gandhi in a New World Order_ will be of interest to students and academics interested in peace and conflict studies, South Asian history, world history, postcolonial studies, and studies on Gandhi. (shrink)

John Beatty (1995) and Alexander Rosenberg (1994) have argued against the claim that there are laws in biology. Beatty's main reason is that evolution is a process full of contingency, but he also takes the existence of relative significance controversies in biology and the popularity of pluralistic approaches to a variety of evolutionary questions to be evidence for biology's lawlessness. Rosenberg's main argument appeals to the idea that biological properties supervene on large numbers of physical properties, but he also (...) develops case studies of biological controversies to defend his thesis that biology is best understood as an instrumental discipline. The present paper assesses their arguments. (shrink)

The recent crises of BSE and FMD in the United Kingdom have revealed widespread concerns on the part of farmers and consumers about government regulations and handling of animal movements, animal welfare, and food safety. Both crises raised issues of government accountability and the lack of openness in public debate. The issues of democratic process and decision-making were especially strong in relation to the mass slaughter policy of the government to control FMD. This article explores public disquiet about these matters, (...) as expressed through the reports of two public inquiries, and the perceived links between government decision-making and the needs of global agribusiness, to the detriment of family farms and animal welfare. In light of the growing evidence about the environmental and economic costs of agribusiness, the argument is made that strong programs of citizen action, such as the Devon Foot and Mouth Inquiry, that are grounded in an ethical stance on animal welfare can challenge the perspectives of central governments about concepts of cost, efficiency, and safety in agriculture. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the historical and philosophical context from which originated G. Bachelard's concept of "phenomenotechnique". It analyzes why phenomenotechnique is crucial for science studies. By incorporating the concept of phenomenotechnique into Hacking's and Galison's models of science, I argue that we can avoid the radicalism of both while also preventing the analysis of scientific practices from collapsing into the interpretive frames mandated by social constructivists.

This article presents some of the findings from the original research carried out with asylum seeking and refugee women in Ireland who were pregnant or who had recently given birth. The explosion in numbers in Ireland from 1998 onwards has been such that this group now comprises more than one in five of every birth in the country's three major maternity hospitals, all based in Dublin. The article explores the background reasons for the major increase in recent years of this (...) group of women. It discusses the difficult circumstances encountered by women who must engage with a system of maternity care unused to such complex needs, amidst a general policy climate of uncertainty and even hostility towards asylum seekers. The research findings contribute to the feminist literature on maternity and challenge us to examine the way in which globalization is impacting on women as mothers and the need for challenging Western states anew on the development of a more coherent model of maternity care in response to the needs of such women. (shrink)

What counts as scientific ideology for Canguilhem and Kuhn is functionally distinct. However, in this article I argue that metaphysical and other non-scientificbeliefs brought about by scientists into their research traditions and that Kuhn sees as generating scientific change coincide closely with Canguilhem’s conception of scientific ideology. Kuhn failed to describe clearly those ideological and metaphysical elements influencing the work of science. He chose to focus on psychological factors intrinsic to paradigms and present in paradigm shifts and in scientific revolutions (...) and also in the internal mechanisms of science itself such as the discovery process. Canguilhem triangulated scientific ideologies with the traditional demarcation criterion between science and non-science and with the intertwining of practice, theory, and external (social) beliefs in scientific thought while distancing himself from the psychological dynamic in science characteristic in Kuhn’s work. Their views are complementary. (shrink)

The discipline of knowledge translation (KT) emerged as a way of systematically understanding and addressing the challenges of applying health and medical research in practice. In light of ongoing and emerging critique of KT from the medical humanities and social sciences disciplines, KT researchers have become increasingly aware of the complexity of the translational process, particularly the significance of culture, tradition and values in how scientific evidence is understood and received, and thus increasingly receptive to pluralistic notions of knowledge. Hence, (...) there is now an emerging view of KT as a highly complex, dynamic, and integrated sociological phenomenon, which neither assumes nor creates knowledge hierarchies and neither prescribes nor privileges scientific evidence. Such a view, however, does not guarantee that scientific evidence will be applied in practice and thus poses a significant dilemma for KT regarding its status as a scientific and practice-oriented discipline, particularly within the current sociopolitical climate. Therefore, in response to the ongoing and emerging critique of KT, we argue that KT must provide scope for relevant scientific evidence to occupy an appropriate position of epistemic primacy in public discourse. Such a view is not intended to uphold the privileged status of science nor affirm the “scientific logos” per se. It is proffered as a counterbalance to powerful social, cultural, political and market forces that are able to challenge scientific evidence and promote disinformation to the detriment of democratic outcomes and the public good. (shrink)

Moral imagination, according to John Kekes, is indispensable to a fulfilling and responsible life.

I revisit my article, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” in which I argued that Bernard Williams’s thesis that immortality would necessarily be boring for any human being is false. Here I point out various ways in which Williams’s treatment of the issues has tilted and distorted the subsequent debates.

For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary.

This article explores the background to the conclusive drop in Irish fertility rates over the last two decades, from a total fertility rate of 3.55 in 1975 to 1.87 in 1995. This steep decline marks the end of Ireland's position as demographic outlier in Europe, which has proved a compelling topic of investigation for demographers. The decline also marks the end of a society which was characterized by an ideology of largely rural values which placed stringent restrictions on women in (...) order to secure a vision of society which saw the family as its cornerstone. The article analyses the collective impact of women's battles for personal autonomy which have brought about dramatic changes in public policies about contraception, abortion and divorce, changes which have consistently lagged behind these dramatic shifts in fertility. (shrink)

For many years, the downtown in Clarksdale, with a municipal population of 17,960 and located in the northern part of the Mississippi Delta, had lost its role as the centre providing a wide range of jobs and services to those living in the surrounding region. For many cities and towns in America, downtown decline has been associated with the flight to the suburbs and the growth in shopping malls serving flourishing gated communities. In Clarksdale’s case, downtown decline has been due (...) largely to the advent of big box retailing and the location of new retail and commercial developments along the state highway on the edge of town, combined with the loss of jobs and population associated with agricultural restructuring. Today, however, Clarksdale has taken up the challenge to ‘revitalize’ the downtown in the face of economic adversity. Recovery is under way, and much of this is associated with blues music and Delta culture: Clarksdale is situated at the fabled ‘crossroads’ of Highways 49 and 61 and is also the home to national icons in literature, art and other cultural pursuits. These are key elements around which the downtown revitalization effort is focused. This paper charts the process by which the Clarksdale community has embarked on the road to downtown recovery, and highlights the town’s indelible links with the blues, borne out of years of toil, hardship and social deprivation. The paper emphasizes the importance of ‘champions’ and ‘creative people’, drawing on community support, in achieving downtown revitalization. Positive results are becoming evident with new businesses and jobs, improved levels of service, refurbishment of derelict buildings, a renewed sense of place, and an uplift in community confidence. The significance of cultural tourism to downtown revitalization is highlighted, with particular emphasis on the global appeal of blues, but with its roots firmly established in Clarksdale and the Delta. (shrink)