_The Ambiguity of Justice_ consists of a collection of essays that address difficulties and potential contradictions in thinking justice by focussing on Ricoeur's theory of justice and on the major thinkers that were influential for it.

This paper makes a comparison between enactivism and Levinas’ philosophy. Enactivism is a recent development in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that generally defines cognition in terms of a subject’s natural interactions with the physical environment. In recent years, enactivists have been focusing on social and ethical relations by introducing the concept of participatory sensemaking, according to which ethical know-how spontaneously emerges out of natural relations of participation and communication, that is, through the exchange of knowledge. This paper will (...) argue first that, although participatory sensemaking is a valuable concept in that it offers a practical and realistic way of understanding ethics, it nevertheless downplays the significance of otherness for understanding ethics. I will argue that Levinas’ work demonstrates in turn that otherness is significant for ethics in that we cannot completely anticipate others through participation or know-how. We cannot live the other’s experiences or suffering, which makes ethical relation so difficult and serious (e.g. care for a terminally ill person always falls short to a certain extent). I will argue next that enactivism and Levinas’ philosophy nevertheless do not exclude each other insofar they share a similar concept of subjectivity as a quality of naturally interacting with the external world to gain knowledge (Levinas speaks of dwelling). Finally, I will argue that enactivism’s notion of participatory sensemaking also offers something which Levinas’ insufficiently defines, namely a concept of social justice, based on equality and participation, that emerges out of natural relations. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria (GD) is marked by an incongruence between a person’s biological sex at birth, and their felt gender (or gender identity). There is continuing debate regarding the benefits and drawbacks of physiological treatment of GD in children, a pathway, beginning with endocrine treatment to suppress puberty. Currently, the main alternative to physiological treatment consists of the so-called “wait-and-see” approach, which often includes counseling or other psychotherapeutic treatment. In this paper, we argue in favor of a “third pathway” for the (...) diagnosis and treatment of GD in youths. To make our case, we draw on a recent development in bioethics: the phenomenological approach. Scholars such as Slatman and Svenaeus have argued that the extent to which the body can (or should be) manipulated or reconstructed through medical intervention is not only determined by consideration of ethical frameworks and social and legal norms. Rather, we must also take account of patients’ personal experience of their body, the personal and social values associated with it, and their understanding of its situation in their life: their narrative identities. We apply this phenomenological approach to medicine and nursing to the diagnosis and treatment of GD in youth. In particular, we discuss Zahavi and Martiny’s conception of the phenomenological interview, in order to show that narrative techniques can assist in the process of gender identification and in the treatment of youth presenting with GD. We focus on two case studies that highlight the relevance of a narrative-based interview in relations between patients, HCPs, and family, to expose the influence of social ideologies on how young people presenting with GD experience their bodies and gender. (shrink)

Both the diagnosis and medical treatment of gender dysphoria —particularly in children and adolescents—have been the subject of significant controversy in recent years. In this paper, we outline the means by which GD is diagnosed in children and adolescents, the currently available treatment options, and the bioethical issues these currently raise. In particular, we argue that the families and healthcare providers of children presenting with GD currently face two main ethical dilemmas in decision making regarding treatment: the pathway dilemma and (...) the consent dilemma. (shrink)

This book examines Paul Ricœur’s moral anthropology. It shows that his hermeneutical approach to responsibility and justice, focusing on the analysis of the singularity of lived existence, complements recent developments in moral philosophy that tend toward moral relativism and understand responsibility and justice in naturalistic terms.

In this article I will examine Ricœur’s idea of the universal in his understanding of justice. Scholars recently discussed the extent to which Ricœur understands universal moral norms and universal rules of justice in his anthropology of human action, and argue that Ricœur stresses too much the idea of universal moral norms with regard to cultural and moral diversity,. G. H. Taylor, “Reenvisioning Justice,” Lo Squarda 12 : 65-80). In this article I will take part in the debate about universalism (...) and approach Ricœur’s idea of the universal from a different angle, in placing it in light of his idea of evil. The point I will aim to make in this article is that Ricœur’s idea of the relation between justice and evil demonstrates what I understand as the ambiguity of justice, which highlights the difficulty of defining universal rules of justice. I will argue that this ambiguity is the following: justice aims at the establishment of social peace and in that sense it is the necessary remedy against human evil, but justice also implies power, and possibly violence, over others in that it relates to violent feelings of vengeance, to institutional mechanism of authority, and to a struggle of values. Yet if rules of justice relate to evil in the sense of power over others, so I argue, then it is problematic to define absolute criteria for rules of justice, i.e., for rules for social peace: because justice relates to particular values, which means that the risk of violence is inherent to institutional rules of justice, there is no ultimate universal set of such rules. This article therefore questions Ricœur’s understanding of universal rules of justice in Oneself as Another. Yet, I will also draw on a series of other texts of Ricœur on justice, and argue that Ricœur’s idea of justice allows understanding how we find common sensibilities about justice through dialogue, a sensibility for the other, and narratives as a way of critique of existing moral norms and rules of justice. (shrink)

Recent enactive accounts of cognition have begun to disentangle social and normative aspects of the human mind. In this paper, we will contribute to this debate by developing an enactive account of moral development, i.e. the learning of ethical norms, and critical engagement with these norms through social affordances, participatory sense-making, and moral concern. The difficulty in articulating such an account is in reconciling the affective embodied aspects of moral experiences with the more orthodox aspects of ethics like critical reflection. (...) In order to respond to this difficulty, we bring Ricoeur’s hermeneutics into dialogue with enactivism. Complementing the enactive tradition, we frame critical ethical learning as embodied interaction with diverse ethical dimensions allowing us to incorporate moral values in the form of critical narratives and the social imaginary. We agree with enactivist theories that participation and democratic dialogue are essential parts of critical reflection on ethical norms. Yet, we also contend that this kind of critical reflection benefits from hermeneutical interpretation, challenging larger participatory networks, such as social institutions, which nourish inequality and maintain unethical values. (shrink)

Introduction to the issue dedicated to the question of "Justice at its Margins".

Introduction (française) au numéro sur les "frontières de la justice".

This article examines Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of analytical philosophy of language. I argue that Ricoeur’s idea of responsibility is exemplary for understanding this discussion and for understanding how Ricoeur conceives of the task of phenomenological hermeneutics in relation to analytical philosophy and cognitive science. According to Ricoeur, analytical philosophy of language explains how we use ordinary language for ascribing responsibility to the actions of agents (e.g., X is responsible for giving a speech). I argue that Ricoeur shows that the task (...) of cognitive science is similar: explaining the causal relation between human action and the physical body (e.g., the debate on responsibility and neuroscience). Yet analytical philosophy of language insufficiently understands responsibility, for Ricoeur, in making an abstraction of the question of what it means to be responsible. Whereas analytical philosophy of language explains the causes of human action, so Ricoeur contends, it does not explain its motives, because these are not empirical relations that we can identify by means of common language. The task of phenomenological hermeneutics consists then, so I aim to demonstrate in line with Ricoeur, in understanding the motives of human action, which implies interpretation of text and of the self’s narrative identity: in narratives we learn the reasons for being responsible. (shrink)

This article examines Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of analytical philosophy of language. I argue that Ricoeur’s idea of responsibility is exemplary for understanding this discussion and for understanding how Ricoeur conceives of the task of phenomenological hermeneutics in relation to analytical philosophy and cognitive science. According to Ricoeur, analytical philosophy of language explains how we use ordinary language for ascribing responsibility to the actions of agents. I argue that Ricoeur shows that the task of cognitive science is similar: explaining the causal (...) relation between human action and the physical body. Yet analytical philosophy of language insufficiently understands responsibility, for Ricoeur, in making an abstraction of the question of what it means to be responsible. Whereas analytical philosophy of language explains the causes of human action, so Ricoeur contends, it does not explain its motives, because these are not empirical relations that we can identify by means of common language. The task of phenomenological hermeneutics consists then, so I aim to demonstrate in line with Ricoeur, in understanding the motives of human action, which implies interpretation of text and of the self’s narrative identity: in narratives we learn the reasons for being responsible. (shrink)

A team of renowned philosophers and a new generation of thinkers come together to offer the first book-length examination of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and animal studies.

A team of renowned philosophers and a new generation of thinkers come together to offer the first book-length examination of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and animal studies.

Ashley’s response to our recent paper argues that a fuller appreciation of the available clinical data, of the rights of children to autonomy, and of the primary purpose of gender-affirming endocrine treatment supports the rejection of both the pathway and consent dilemmas for the treatment of gender dysphoria, as raised in this journal. In this response, we highlight certain misrepresentations of our argument, and defend our conclusions against Ashley’s main objections.

The contributions in this book address the relation between evil, symbolism and psychoanalysisc by focusing on the two works of Riœur in which these topics play the most prominent role: The Symbolism of Evil and Freud and Philosophy. Furthermore, the bilingual book includes contributions that examine the relation between evil, symbolism and psychoanalysis in Ricœur’s work in a more general fashion, by investigating his philosophy as a whole. It brings together both French and English chapters from leading Ricœur scholars from (...) over the world. The international multilinguistic perspective reflects Ricœur’s spirit who said that when he worked on a book, all of the others were simultaneously open on his writing table. It is a groundbreaking work to those interested in Ricœur, Freud and religion. (shrink)

A recent paper by Teresa Baron and Geoffrey Dierckxsens argues that puberty blockers and hormone therapy should be disallowed before adulthood on prudential and consent-related grounds. This response contends that their argument fails because it is predicated on unsupported premises and misinterpretations of the available evidence. There is no evidence that a large proportion of pubertal and postpubertal youths later discontinue medical transition. Meaningful assent is a viable and commonly accepted alternative to meaningful consent in paediatric bioethics. And (...) finally, the primary purpose of transition-related interventions is to actualise youths’ gendered self-image, not treat an underlying mental illness. (shrink)

Are historians storytellers? Is it possible to tell true stories about the past? These are just a couple of the questions raised in this comprehensive collection of texts about philosophy, theory, and methodology of writing history. Drawing together seminal texts from philosophers and historians, this volume presents the great debate over the narrative character of history from the 1960s onwards. The History and Narrative Reader combines theory with practice to offer a unique overview of this debate and illuminates the practical (...) implications of these philosophical debates for the writing of history. The editor's introduction offers a succinct survey of the subject to support the readings, which explore the role of narrative in everything from historical understanding and human action to linguistics and the practice of history. Including the work of F. R. Ankersmit, David Carr, Hayden White, W. H. Dray, and Frederick Olafson; a detailed bibliography; and a glossary of key concepts, this collection will prove an invaluable resource for students of historical theory and methodology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Great Exhibition of 1851 is generally interpreted as a thoroughly secular event that celebrated progress in science, technology, and industry. In contrast to this perception, however, the exhibition was viewed by many contemporaries as a religious event of considerable importance. Although some religious commentators were highly critical of the exhibition and condemned the display of artifacts in the Crystal Palace as giving succor to materialism, others incorporated science and technology into their religious frameworks. Drawing on sermons, tracts, and (...) the religious periodical press, this essay pays close attention to the ways in which science and technology were endowed with providentialist significance and particularly examines the notion of human progress used by a number of Christian writers, especially Congregationalists, who set scientific and technological progress within a teleological religious perspective. This discussion sheds fresh light not only on the Great Exhibition itself but also on the deployment of natural theology in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. (shrink)

This extraordinary book offers a clear and compelling biography of Jacques Derrida along with one of Derrida's strangest and most unexpected texts. Geoffrey Bennington's account of Derrida leads the reader through the philosopher's familiar yet widely misunderstood work on language and writing to the less familiar themes of signature, sexual difference, law, and affirmation. In an unusual and unprecedented "dialogue," Derrida responds to Bennington's text by interweaving Bennington's text with surprising and disruptive "periphrases." Truly original, this dual and dueling (...) text opens new dimensions in Derrida's thought and work. "Bennington is a shrewd and well-informed commentator whose book should do something to convince the skeptics... that Jacques Derrida's work merits serious attention."—Christopher Norris, _New Statesman & Society_ "Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida have presented a fascinating example of what might be called post-structuralist autobiography."—Laurie Volpe, _French Review_ "Bennington's account of what Derrida is up to is better in almost all respects—more intelligent, more plausible, more readable, and less pretentious—than any other I have read."—Richard Rorty, _Contemporary Literature_. (shrink)

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re emphasizing (...) that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Great Exhibition of 1851 is generally interpreted as a thoroughly secular event that celebrated progress in science, technology, and industry. In contrast to this perception, however, the exhibition was viewed by many contemporaries as a religious event of considerable importance. Although some religious commentators were highly critical of the exhibition and condemned the display of artifacts in the Crystal Palace as giving succor to materialism, others incorporated science and technology into their religious frameworks. Drawing on sermons, tracts, and (...) the religious periodical press, this essay pays close attention to the ways in which science and technology were endowed with providentialist significance and particularly examines the notion of human progress used by a number of Christian writers, especially Congregationalists, who set scientific and technological progress within a teleological religious perspective. This discussion sheds fresh light not only on the Great Exhibition itself but also on the deployment of natural theology in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. (shrink)

Norms are a pervasive yet mysterious feature of social life. In Explaining Norms, four philosophers and social scientists team up to grapple with some of the many mysteries, offering a comprehensive account of norms: what they are; how and why they emerge, persist and change; and how they work.

Two kinds of theoretical framework for syntax are encountered in current linguistics. One emerged from the mathematization of proof theory, and is referred to here as generative-enumerative syntax (GES). A less explored alternative stems from the semantic side of logic, and is here called model-theoretic syntax (MTS). I sketch the outlines of each, and give a capsule summary of some mathematical results pertaining to the latter. I then briefly survey some diverse types of evidence suggesting that in some ways MTS (...) seems better suited to theorizing about the relevant linguistic phenomena. (shrink)

Notice that this paper has not claimed that all natural languages are CFL's. What it has shown is that every published argument purporting to demonstrate the non-context-freeness of some natural language is invalid, either formally or empirically or both.18 Whether non-context-free characteristics can be found in the stringset of some natural language remains an open question, just as it was a quarter century ago.Whether the question is ultimately answered in the negative or the affirmative, there will be interesting further questions (...) to ask. If it turns out that natural languages are indeed always CFL's, it will be reasonable to ask whether this helps to explain why speakers apparently recognize so quickly whether a presented utterance corresponds to a grammatical sentence or not, and to associate structural and semantic details with it. It might also be reasonable to speculate about the explanation for the universally context-free character of the languages used by humans, and to wonder whether evolutionary biological factors are implicated in some way (Sampson (1979) could be read in this light). And naturally, it will be reasonable to pursue the program put forward by Gazdar (1981, in press) to see to what extent CFL-inducing grammatical devices can be exploited to yield insightful descriptions of natural languages that capture generalizations in revealing ways.If a human language that is not a CFL is proved to exist, on the other hand, a different question will be raised: give the non-context-free character of human languages in general, why has this property been so hard to demonstrate that it has taken over twenty-five years to bring it to light since the issue was first explicitly posed? If human languages do not have to be CFL's, why do so many (most?) of them come so close to having the property of context-freeness? And, since the CFL's certainly constitute a very broad class of mathematically natural and computationally tractable languages, what property of human beings or their communicative or cognitive needs is it that has caused some linguistic communities to reach beyond the boundaries of this class in the course of evolving a linguistic system?Either way, we shall be interested to see our initial question resolved, and further questions raised. One cautionary word should be said, however, about the implications (or lack of them) that the answer will have for grammatical studies. Chomsky has repeatedly stated that he does not see weak generative capacity as a theme of central importance in the theory of grammar, and we agree. It is very far from being the case that the recent resurgence of interest in exploring the potential of CF-PSG or equivalent systems will, or should, be halted dead in its tracks by the discovery (if it is ever forthcoming) that some natural language is not a CFL. In the area of parsing, for instance, it seems possible that natural languages are not only parsed on the basis of constituent structure such as a CF-PSG would assign, but are parsed as if they were finite state languages (see Langendoen (1975) and Church (1980) for discussion along these lines). That is, precisely those construction-types that figure in the various proofs that English is not an FSL appear to cause massive difficulty in the human processing system; the sentences crucial to the proofs are for the most part unprocessable unless they are extremely short (yet the arguments for English not being and FSL only go through if length is not an issue). This means that in practice properties of finite state grammars are still of great potential importance to linguistic theory despite the fact that they do not provide the framework for defining the total class of grammatical sentences. The same would almost certannly be true of CF-PSG's if they were shown to be inadequate in a similar sense. It is highly unlikely that the advances made so far in far in phrase structure description could be nullified by a discovery about weak generative capacity. Moreover, there are known to be numerous ways in which the power of CF-PSG's can be marginally enhanced to permit, for example, xx languages to be generated without allowing anything like the full class of recursively enumerable or even context-sensitive languages (see Hopcroft and Ullmann (1979), Chapter 14) for an introduction to this topic, noting especially Figure 14.7 on p. 393. The obvious thing to do if natural languages were ever shown not to be CFL's in the general case would be to start exploring such minimal enhancements of expressive power to determine exactly what natural languages call for in this regard and how it could be effectively but parsimoniously provided in a way that closely modelled human linguistic capacities.In the meantime, it seems reasonable to assume that the natural languages are a proper subset of the infinite-cardinality CFL's until such time as they are validly shown not to be. (shrink)

During the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, USA/Turtle Island, a group of military veterans knelt in front of Oceti Sakowin Elders asking forgiveness for centuries of settler colonial military ventures in Oceti Sakowin Territory. Leonard Crow Dog forgave them and immediately demanded respect for Native Nations throughout the U.S. Lacking such respect, he said, Native people will cease paying taxes. Crow Dog’s post-forgiveness remarks speak to the political context of the military veterans’ request: They seek collective forgiveness amidst ongoing (...) occupation and harms committed by the collective they represent. In this chapter, I examine this case study and argue that ongoing harm undermines requests for forgiveness on behalf of collectives. I look to the work of Glen Coultard, Waziyatawin, and Leanne Simpson to consider what a responsible request for collective forgiveness would entail. (shrink)

This book offers a new approach to a fundamental question: What is justice? In building his theory, Cupit maintains that injustice should be understood as a form of unfitting treatment--typically the treatment of people as less than they are. Justice is therefore closely related to unjustified contempt and disrespect, and ultimately to desert.

Words like you, here, and tomorrow are different from other expressions in two ways. First, and by definition, they have different kinds of meanings, which are context-dependent in ways that the meanings of names and descriptions are not. Second, their meanings play a different kind of role in the interpretations of the utterances that contain them. For example, the meaning of you can be paraphrased by a description like "the addressee of the utterance." But an utterance of (1) doesn't say (...) the same thing as an utterance of (2). (shrink)

I assess a number of connected ideas about temporal experience that are introspectively plausible, but which I believe can be argued to be incorrect. These include the idea that temporal experiences are extended experiential processes, that they have an internal structure that in some way mirrors the structure of the apparent events they present, and the idea that time in experience is in some way represented by time itself. I explain how these ideas can be developed into more sharply defined (...) views, and then argue that these views are inconsistent with certain empirical facts about how time is represented in the brain. These facts instead support a kind of atomic view, on which temporal experiences are temporally unstructured atoms. (shrink)

Philosophy, Music and Emotion explores two contentious issues in contemporary philosophy: the nature of music´s power to express emotion, and the nature of emotion itself. It shows how closely the two are related and provides a radically new account of what it means to say that music "expresses emotion." Geoffrey Madell maintains that most current accounts of musical expressiveness are fundamentally misguided. He attributes this fact to the influence of a famous argument of the nineteenth-century critic Hanslick, and also (...) to the dominant "cognitivist" approach to the nature of emotion, which sees the essence of emotion to be the entertaining of evaluative judgments and beliefs. This book argues that the cognitivist account of the nature of emotion is false and should be replaced with a conception of emotions as states of feeling. Central to this bold analysis is a new account of two closely connected mental states, desire and pleasure, and their role in human motivation. (shrink)

Societies function on the basis of rules. These rules, rather like the rules of the road, coordinate the activities of individuals who have a variety of goals and purposes. Whether the rules work well or ill, and how they can be made to work better, is a matter of major concern. Appropriately interpreted, the working of social rules is also the central subject matter of modern political economy. This book is about rules - what they are, how they work, and (...) how they can be properly analysed. The authors' objective is to understand the workings of alternative political institutions so that choices among such institutions can be more fully informed. Thus, broadly defined, the methodology of constitutional political economy is the subject matter of The Reason of Rules. The authors have examined how rules for political order work, how such rules might be chosen, and how normative criteria for such choices might be established. (shrink)

Chomsky’s highly influential Syntactic Structures ( SS ) has been much praised its originality, explicitness, and relevance for subsequent cognitive science. Such claims are greatly overstated. SS contains no proof that English is beyond the power of finite state description (it is not clear that Chomsky ever gave a sound mathematical argument for that claim). The approach advocated by SS springs directly out of the work of the mathematical logician Emil Post on formalizing proof, but few linguists are aware of (...) this, because Post’s papers are not cited. Chomsky’s extensions to Post’s systems are not clearly defined, and the arguments for their necessity are weak. Linguists have also overlooked Post’s proofs of the first two theorems about effects of rule format restrictions on generative capacity, published more than ten years before SS was published. (shrink)