Miranda Fricker’s book Epistemic Injustice calls attention to an important sort of moral and intellectual wrongdoing, that of failing to give others their intellectual due. When we fail to recognize others’ knowledge, or undervalue their beliefs and judgments, we fail in two important respects. First, we miss out on the opportunity to improve and refine our own sets of beliefs and judgments. Second—and more relevant to the term “injustice”—we can deny people the intellectual respect they deserve. Along with describing the (...) wrong of epistemic injustice, Fricker proposes that epistemic justice is a virtue we “can, and should, aim for in practice”. But I argue that there are two major problems. First, it is not clear that it is reasonable to imagine there is any such stable disposition—that is, any such virtue—as the sort of justice she imagines. Second, even if there could be such a virtue, her theory of epistemic justice does not provide good guidance for avoiding epistemic injustice. While it could.. (shrink)
The papers collected in this book share a common motivation: All respond to certain kinds of injustice that unfairly and unreasonably prevent the insights and intellectual abilities of vulnerable and stigmatized groups from being given their due recognition. Most people are opposed to injustice in principle, and do not want to have mistaken views about others. But research in the social sciences reveals a disturbing truth: Even people who intend to be fair-minded and unprejudiced are influenced by unconscious biases and (...) stereotypes, as well as social structures and institutions that lead to unjust judgments. We may sincerely want to be epistemically just, but we frequently fail, and simply thinking harder about it will not fix the problem. -/- This volume collects 17 new essays that draw from cutting-edge social science research, to suggest how we can better manage our own unjust reactions, as well as resist patterns of epistemic injustice that we may face. The volume concludes with an afterward by Miranda Fricker, reflecting on these new lines of research and potential future directions to explore. (shrink)
The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a radically (...) solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)
Clarifies Wittgenstein's ideas about ethics and aesthetics and illustrates how those ideas apply to art history and criticism and to an understanding of the importance of art in people's lives.
"Fear's Empire lays the foundation for a principled opposition based on America's truest and best values."--Senator Gary Hart The author of Jihad vs. McWorld analyzes how American foreign policy has gone wrongand how it could go right. In this hard-hitting but pragmatic new critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy, Benjamin R. Barber exposes in detail the folly of an agenda of preventive war, placing it in the context of two hundred years of American strategic doctrine. He shows how (...) chosen "rogue states" have been made to stand in for terrorists too difficult to locate and destroy, and how the United States continues to support dictatorship in nations it regards as friends, while still believing we can impose democracy on vanquished enemies at the barrel of a gun. Barber argues for an America that promotes cooperation, multilateralism, international law, and pooled sovereignty. For as law and citizenship alone secure liberty within nations, law and citizenship alone can secure liberty among them, freeing them from fear. (shrink)
Using a new dataset of environmental, social, and corporate governance company ratings for the European market, this article examines whether socially responsible stock selection adds or destroys value in terms of portfolio performance. From 2004 to 2012, we find the following: Negative screens excluding unrated stocks from a representative European stock universe allow investors to significantly outperform a passive investment in a diversified European stock benchmark portfolio. Additional negative screens based on environmental and social scores neither add nor destroy portfolio (...) value, when cut-off rates are not too high. In contrast, governance screens can significantly increase portfolio performance under similar conditions. Thus, investors in the European stock market can do well while doing good. Because of a loss of diversification, positive screens can cause portfolios to underperform the benchmark. This implies that investors should concentrate on eliminating the worst firms. Our results are robust along several dimensions, namely, choice of performance measure, time, test parametrisation, portfolio weighting scheme, approximation of the risk-free rate, and consideration of transaction costs. (shrink)
While psychopathy research has been growing for decades, a relatively new area of research is corporate psychopathy. Corporate psychopaths are simply psychopaths working in organizational settings. They may be attracted to the financial, power, and status gains available in senior positions and can cause considerable damage within these roles from a manipulative interpersonal style to large-scale fraud. Based upon prior studies, we analyze psychopathy research pertaining to 23 moral emotions classified according to functional quality and target. Based upon our review, (...) we suggest that psychopaths are high in moral emotions associated with other-directed negative signals, low in self-directed negative signals, and low in other-directed positive signals. We found no empirical articles related to self-directed positive signals. This understanding of the specific moral emotion deficits of corporate psychopaths provides greater theoretical understanding and practical implications of knowing which individuals not to promote, though more research is needed on moral emotions that are faked for manipulative reasons. (shrink)
This book is written for those coming to philosophy for the first time. It explains the nature of philosophical inquiry and discusses traditional philosophical questions about the existence of God, miracles, creationism, the truth of the Bible, science, and the problem of evil. The argument of the book suggests that the attempt to find historical and scientific proof for religious beliefs is bound to fail and so is the attempt to disprove religion by scientific and historical evidence. The view that (...) religion is best understood as a way of life and not in competition with science at all is illustated by examples from literature and the visual arts. (shrink)
This paper discusses some formal properties of trivalent approaches to presupposition projection, and in particular of the middle Kleene system of Peters (1977) and Krahmer (1998). After exploring the relationship between trivalent truth-functional accounts and dynamic accounts in the tradition of Heim (1983), I show how the middle Kleene trivalent account can be formulated in a way which shows that it meets the explanatory challenge of Schlenker (2006, 2008a,b), and provide some results relating to the application of the middle Kleene (...) approach to generalised quantifiers. (shrink)
Benjamin Barber is one of America's preeminent political theorists. He has been a significant voice in the continuing debate about the nature and role of democracy in the contemporary world. A Passion for Democracy collects twenty of his most important writings on American democracy. Together they refine his distinctive position in democratic theory. Barber's conception of "strong democracy" contrasts with traditional concepts of "liberal democracy," especially in its emphasis on citizen participation in central issues of public debate. These essays (...) critique the "thin representation" of liberal democracy and buttress the arguments presented in Barber's twelve books, most recently in his well-received Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Re-shaping the World. In these pieces, Barber argues for participatory democracy without dependence on abstract metaphysical foundations, and he stresses the relationship among democracy and civil society, civic education, and culture. A Passion for Democracy is divided into four sections. In the first, "American Theory: Democracy, Liberalism, and Rights," Barber addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second section, "American Practice: Leadership, Citizenship, and Censorship" provide a "strong democracy" critique of American democratic practice. "Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship" applies Barber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay "America Skips School." The final section, "Democracy and Technology: Endless Frontier or End of Democracy?" provides glimpses into a future that technology alone cannot secure for democracy. In his preface, Barber writes: "In these essays... I have been hard on my country. Like most ardent democrats, I want more for it than it has achieved, despite the fact that it has achieved more than most people have dared to want." This wide-ranging collection displays not only his passion for democracy, but also his unique perspective on issues of abiding importance for the democratic process. (shrink)
ABSTRACTSome liberal-cosmopolitan theorists have sought to justify preventive war by proposing new institutions meant to ensure the accurate evaluation of non-imminent threats, and also make any wa...
recruits or the area of its influence, which has been attained by Modern Socialism, and at the same time been so little understood and so misunderstood, not only by the hostile and the indifferent, but by the friendly, and even by the great mass of its adherents themselves. This unfortunate and highly dangerous state of things is due partly to the fact that the human relationships which this movement – if anything so chaotic can be called a movement – aims (...) to transform, involve no special class or classes, but literally all mankind; partly to the fact that these relationships are infinitely more varied and complex in their nature than those with which any special reform has ever been called upon to deal; and partly to the fact that the great moulding forces of society, the channels of information and enlightenment, are well-nigh exclusively under the control of those whose immediate pecuniary interests are antagonistic to the bottom claim of Socialism that labor should be put in possession of its own. (shrink)
Terrorisme valt buiten alle democratische kaders en daarom hebben democratische landen er geen adequate antwoorden op. Het enige antwoord op de krachten, die chaos en angst zaaien is een wereldwijde open samenleving, met politieke vrijheid en ruimte voor religies.
De eigentijdse geschiedenis zwenkt naar twee kanten: het oprukken van McWorld, de triomf van commercie en marktbeheersing en de door haar gedreven stamvorming, die bestaande multi-ethnische eenheden dreigt te verpulveren. Jihad en McWorld hebben vele trekken gemeenschappelijk zoals afkeer van democratie en echte cultuur. Tussen consument en burger gaapt een diepe kloof. Alleen een verantwoordelijke samenleving kan als een buffer tussen overheid en privé-sector dienen en een halt toeroepen aan de overwoekering van McWorld. Van de jihad, die een bloedige politiek (...) van identiteit bedrijft, is geen enkel heil te verwachten. (shrink)
The notions of finite and infinite second-order characterizability of cardinal and ordinal numbers are developed. Several known results for the case of finite characterizability are extended to infinite characterizability, and investigations of the second-order theory of ordinals lead to some observations about the Fraenkel-Carnap question for well-orders and about the relationship between ordinal characterizability and ordinal arithmetic. The broader significance of cardinal characterizability and the relationships between different notions of characterizability are also discussed.
The notions of finite and infinite second-order characterizability of cardinal and ordinal numbers are developed. Several known results for the case of finite characterizability are extended to infinite characterizability, and investigations of the second-order theory of ordinals lead to some observations about the Fraenkel-Carnap question for well-orders and about the relationship between ordinal characterizability and ordinal arithmetic. The broader significance of cardinal characterizability and the relationships between different notions of characterizability are also discussed.
American physicians are increasingly concerned that they are losing professional control. Other analysts of medical power argue that physicians have too much power. This essay argues that current analyses are grounded in a structuralist reading of power. Deploying Michel Foucault's "care of the self" and rhetorician Raymie McKerrow's "critical rhetoric," this essay claims that medical power is better understood as a way that medical actors take on power through rhetoric rather than a force that has power over medical actors. Through (...) a close reading of an essay by Senator Bill Frist, this paper argues that physicians experience a process of "subjection" wherein they are both agents of and objects of medical power as it is combined with state and corporate power in the American "war on terror." This alternative mode of analyzing medical power has implications for our collective understanding of its operations and the means by which we propose alternative enactments of medical power. (shrink)
Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other than an Anarchist, I am sure I should have no difficulty in disputing the argument. And does not this very fact, after all, furnish in itself the best of all reasons why I should be an Anarchist – namely, the impossibility (...) of discovering any good reason for being anything else? To show the invalidity of the claims of State Socialism, Nationalism, Communism, Single taxism, the prevailing capitalism, and all the numerous forms of Archism existing or proposed, is at the same blow to show the validity of the claims of Anarchism. Archism once denied, only Anarchism can be affirmed. That is a matter of logic. (shrink)
This essay analyzes Senator Bill Frist's 2001 address to the American Society of Thoracic Surgeons. The author argues that the address represents an attempt to reframe physicians' political identity to authorize more active participation by them. Frist authorizes and demands such participation through the construction of a medical jeremiad. He argues that American physicians must have greater involvement to preserve the health of the body politic and to reassert physician control over the biomedical system. Although Frist's arguments are built on (...) an apparently democratic form of address, his jeremiad illustrates aristocratic possibilities in medico-political rhetoric. (shrink)
A new conceptual framework, “energy justice,” provides a more comprehensive and, potentially, better way to assess and resolve energy-related dilemmas. This new framework of energy justice builds on four fundamental assumptions and consists of two key principles: a prohibitive principle which states that “energy systems must be designed and constructed in such a way that they do not unduly interfere with the ability of people to acquire those basic goods to which they are justly entitled,” and an affirmative principle which (...) states that “if any of the basic goods to which people are justly entitled can only be secured by means of energy services, then in that case there is also a derivative entitlement to the energy services.” These two principles are premised on the notion that energy serves as a material prerequisite for many of the basic goods to which people are entitled. They also recognize that the externalities associated with energy systems often interfere with the enjoyment of such fundamental goods as security and welfare. They acknowledge that the structuring of energy systems has profound ramifications for human societies, providing historically unprecedented benefits for some, and taking from others the possibility of living a life of basic human dignity. (shrink)
