In 1931, in the remarks collected as Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes: ‘A thinker is very much like a draughtsman whose aim it is to represent all the interrelations between things.’ At a glance it is clear that this analogy might contribute significantly to a full description of the autobiographical thinker as well. And this conjunction of relations between things and the work of the draughtsman immediately and strongly suggests that the grasping of relations is in a sense visual, or (...) that networks or constellations of relations are the kinds of things brought into focus by seeing in the right way. (shrink)

This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

Peter Kivy has said that the power of purely instrumental music remains an unexplained wonder. With this larger question in mind, I will consider: the issues in musical aesthetics that led to what Kivy termed his enhanced formalism, his conception of expressive properties in music and how a distinction between having and understanding an emotion can help clarify this issues here, and, most importantly for Kivy’s larger mystery, the way that counterpoint, in an often unrecognized way, can present mimetic content (...) of a kind that can explain the sense of musical profundity that it often awakens. It may turn out that absolute music’s profundity can be explained by the resonances this kind of layered and complex music has with the living, the ordering, the making sense, of a life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 188-198 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" On Representing Jazz: An Art Form in Need of Understanding Garry L. Hagberg ALTHOUGH IT WENT ON in smaller numbers in earlier decades, the fact that there were legions of expatriate jazz musicians fleeing to a far more appreciative Europe in the 1960s and 1970s shows how important a cultural event Ken Burns's (...) documentary on the first century of jazz really is. Those expatriate players were all but forced out by a rapidly diminishing audience and a corresponding lack of appreciation for their artistic achievements and abilities. It is in any social context an achievement to gain an audience for an undervalued artform of between three and four million viewers for nineteen hours; to have done so against the backdrop of the fact—one bitter to swallow for so many American players of those years—that the country of origin for this artform was so slow to significantly value it, makes this documentary almost a form of cultural emergency-relief. But it also raises the stakes in how jazz is represented, which of its features are focused upon, and what kind of story is told about its development. In my opinion the film makes deeply serious errors in each of these ways—almost to the point of turning this seemingly magnificent gift to jazz into a Trojan horse—but here I'd like to focus on five of the features of jazz as an art that I think make jazz particularly difficult to portray in a reduced or simplified form. To put the point a bit more strongly: without an awareness of (at the least) these five features of jazz, any attempted portrayal would run the very serious danger of engendering or further nurturing the very incomprehension of the artistic or aesthetic achievements of jazz that drove all those American players to Copenhagen, Paris, London, Munich, Vienna, and Amsterdam in the first place. It is, in short, necessary to provide at least a sense of what is [End Page 188] intrinsically problematic about the artform to illuminate both its distinctive nature and the aesthetic problems—taken by its practitioners as its internally generated artistic challenges—that give this artform its dynamic energy.First, there is the fundamental question concerning the metaphysics of a jazz piece, i.e., what kind of thing it is. At a glance one can see that a familiar attempt to answer this question within the larger field of the aesthetics of music, i.e., the identification of the work with the score, will have precious little plausibility when applied to jazz. As any jazz musician or aficionado knows, jazz pieces that become "standards" are pieces that are performed countless times, in innumerably variegated ways, and what is usually of greatest interest about any given performance of a standard is not, indeed, how well or to what extent it instantiates a predetermined ideal of the piece as specified in the score, but rather how it departs from, or adds distinctive interpretive content, to the basic structure of the piece. This aesthetically significant fact is reflected in the correlated common practice of using, not scores, but rather schematic "lead sheets" that provide the very basic harmonic and melodic material of the piece. Even larger-ensemble pieces, e.g., the scores of Duke Ellington, are notated only in the sectional writing; the improvisational sections—the sections that many would say give the distinctive life to any given performance—are of course not notated. There are fully notated scores of many—to use a dangerously complicated word—classic jazz performances, but in jazz parlance these, here again with aesthetic significance, are not called scores, but rather transcriptions, and in this improvisational artform it would be cause for suspicion rather than congratulation if a player were to perform a given work exactly in accordance with the transcription repeatedly. The nature of the jazz piece, the jazz composition, is thus extraordinarily fluid and only minimally defined. And as one might expect, the degree or the extent... (shrink)

This book investigates the significance of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for aesthetic understanding. Focusing on the aesthetic elements of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work, the authors explore connections to contemporary currents in aesthetic thinking and the illuminating power of Wittgenstein’s philosophy when considered in connection with the interpretation of specific works of literature, music, and the arts. Taken together, the chapters presented here show what aesthetic understanding consists of and the ways we achieve it, how it might be articulated, and why it is important. (...) At a time of strong renewal of interest in Wittgenstein’s contributions to the philosophy of mind and language, this book offers insight into the connections between philosophical-psychological and linguistic issues and the understanding of the arts. (shrink)

Contrary to popular opinion, non-natural realism can explain both why normative properties supervene on descriptive properties, and why this pattern is analytic. The explanation proceeds by positing a subtle polysemy in normative predicates like “good”. Such predicates express slightly different senses when they are applied to particulars (like Florence Nightingale) and to kinds (like altruism). The former sense, “goodPAR”, can be defined in terms of the latter, “goodKIN”, as follows: x is goodPAR iff there is a kind K such that (...) x is a token of K, and K is goodKIN. Now if x and y are descriptively exactly similar, then they are tokens of exactly the same kinds, so x is a token of a goodKIN kind if and only if y is. Therefore, by the definition, x is goodPAR if and only if y is. Supervenience just falls out of the definition of “goodPAR”. (shrink)

The article defends a mild form of pessimism about moral deference, by arguing that deference is incompatible with authentic interaction, that is, acting in a way that communicates our own normative judgment. The point of such interaction is ultimately that it allows us to get to know and engage one another. This vindication of our intuitive resistance to moral deference is upheld, in a certain range of cases, against David Enoch’s recent objection to views that motivate pessimism by appealing to (...) moral autonomy or understanding. Enoch is right to point out that the value of autonomy or understanding cannot provide reason not to defer, if deferring would reduce the risk of treating others wrongly. But in the kind of case where we would want other people to act authentically towards us, even at the cost of a greater risk of wrongdoing, we should do the same towards them. (shrink)

'What is the meaning of a word?' In this thought-provoking book, Hagberg demonstrates how this question—which initiated Wittgenstein's later work in the philosophy of language—is significant for our understanding not only of linguistic meaning but of the meaning of works of art and literature as well.

Ethical notions such as good and bad, are often treated as though they were ?symmetric? in the sense of having the same moral ?weight?, one in a positive the other in a negative sense. I argue that they are in fact ?asymmetric? and that the negative members of such pairs of notions are more fundamental and definite, logically speaking, and operationally more important than the positive members. Detailed arguments are given to show this for some non?moral notions, such as life (...) and death, health and illness; some semi?moral notions such as pleasure and pain; and finally for the moral notions of happiness, benevolence, right, and good and their negative counterparts. One of the intentions of the article is to show that a systematic view of such asymmetries may have consequences for one's view of the proper or desirable structure of a general theory of ethics: norms stating prohibitions and norms stating permissions will be seen to be, in a sense defined in the text, more fundamental and important than norms stating ('positive') obligations. (shrink)

This article seeks to cause trouble for a brand of consequentialism known as ‘desertarianism’. In somewhat different ways, views of this kind evaluate outcomes more favourably, other things equal, the better the fit between the welfare different people enjoy and the welfare they each deserve. These views imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing welfare to fit desert, which seems plausible enough. Unfortunately, they also imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing desert to fit welfare: in other words, (...) by making happy people more deserving, at the cost of making unhappy people less deserving. Extant versions of desertarianism predict that such ‘deservingness transfers’ are improvements and that we ought to carry them out. Even worse, they will sometimes rank deservingness transfers higher than simply benefitting deserving people who are poorly off. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the content of the concept of adaptation, as it is seen on analogy to linguistic translation and as it is seen as itself a representation of the process of human self-definition and self-composition. Word-to-word translation is uncovered as a misleading analogy, but larger frames of translation are shown to be illuminating. Quine’s work on the indeterminacy of translation is intertwined with Charlie Kaufman’s script for his film Adaptation, and the simple notion of the matching of the adaptation (...) to the original is called into question—as is the very idea of a static original against which the verisimilitude of an adaptation would be measured. The chapter concludes with an inventory of the elements that fill the creative space that is opened between an originating text and its adaptation. (shrink)

There has been a vast wave of work on narrative in the last decade: this work includes numerous volumes on the philosophy of narrative and its definition, on the place of narrative in literary analysis, on the sense-making power of narrative construction, on narrative in its evolutionary aspects, and on the relation between narrative and the constitution of personhood. However, one sees less work specifically on the relations between literary narrative and self-understanding. Self-knowledge and its philosophical questions have often remained (...) within their domain, while discussions of literature and fictional narratives have with equal frequency remained within theirs. The time seems right to bring these topics together, a project that the present volume undertakes. (shrink)

This exciting new edited collection bridges the gap between narrative and self-understanding. The problem of self-knowledge is of universal interest; the nature or character of its achievement has been one continuing thread in our philosophical tradition for millennia. Likewise the nature of storytelling, the assembly of individual parts of a potential story into a coherent narrative structure, has been central to the study of literature. But how do we gain knowledge from an artform that is by definition fictional, by definition (...) not a matter of ascertained fact, as this applies to the understanding of our lives? When we see ourselves in the mimetic mirror of literature, what we see may not just be a matter of identifying with a single protagonist, but also a matter of recognizing long-form structures, long-arc narrative shapes that give a place to – and thus make sense of – the individual bits of experience that we place into those structures. But of course at precisely this juncture a question arises: do we make that sense, or do we discover it? The twelve chapters brought together here lucidly and steadily reveal how the matters at hand are far more intricate and interesting than any such dichotomy could accommodate. This is a book that investigates the ways in which life and literature speak to each other. (shrink)

Based on the stratified ontology of critical realism, this paper identifies four decisive, lasting diachronic and synchronic deep structures in a traditional European seafood value chain and seafood market. Realist philosophy constitutes a platform from which to explore strategies and possible new mechanisms to overcome export barriers that Norwegian producers face, and to adjust the current causal deep structures in the value chain for salted cod between Norway and Spain. The paper is based on a thorough empirical study that investigates (...) possible strategies by which Norwegian producers can create an interaction between production knowledge and market knowledge in order to sell products at a reasonable profit. This paper is an example of how research projects can be ontologically and methodologically based on critical realism, and how critical realism can support the search for an emancipatory strategy for a resource periphery. (shrink)

Der weit gereiste Henrik Steffens schildert im vierten Band seiner zehnbändigen Autobiographie Was ich erlebte eine Begegnung mit Fichte gegen Ende des Jahres 1793.

Researchers sometimes engage in various forms of dishonesty and unethical behavior, which has led to regulatory efforts to ensure that they work according to acceptable standards. Such regulation is a difficult task, as research is a diverse and dynamic endeavor. Researchers can disagree about what counts as good and acceptable standards, and these standards are constantly developing. This paper presents and discusses recent changes in research integrity and ethics regulation in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Recognizing that research norms are developed (...) through practice and are therefore unsuited for comprehensive national regulation, the Scandinavian countries focus on empowering the research community to regulate itself instead, except for the most severe cases of misconduct. This empowerment takes the form of giving research institutions tools and investigatory powers while also holding them responsible for ensuring that both the institution and individual researchers are up to date on relevant norms. In this way, the Scandinavian governments seek to avoid some of the challenges found in more legalistic approaches, which risk lagging behind the continuous development of research norms and can be insensitive to the fact that different disciplines have different norms. While the new approach in Scandinavian has several potential benefits, it also involves potential trade-offs and limitations. The new laws can create confusion about what researchers are allowed to do. Another issue is that it only addresses the fundamental drivers of misconduct to a limited extent. (shrink)

Fora human being, intimacy is relevant for bis self-conception, bis relationships with others, with material objects and with god. Intimacy proves its glamour and its susceptibility to trouble in these four perceptional areas. The essay covers positive and negative aspects of some changes in perceptions of intimacy that result from social change and the introduction of new technologies. Theological ethics serves to limit and protect intimacy. At the same time, theological ethics has to emphasise and to substantiate the meaning of (...) christian commandment of love beyond the human close-up range. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 56 Heft: 3 Seiten: 306-330.

This edited collection investigates the kinds of moral reflection we can undertake within the imaginative worlds of literature. In philosophical contexts of ethical inquiry we can too easily forget that literary experience can play an important role in the cultivation of our ethical sensibilities. Because our ethical lives are conducted in the real world, fictional representations of this world can appear removed from ethical contemplation. However, as this stimulating volume shows, the dichotomy between fact and fiction cannot be so easily (...) categorised. Moral perception, moral sensitivity, and ethical understanding more broadly, may all be developed in a unique way through our imaginative life in fiction. Moral quandaries are often presented in literature in ways more linguistically precise and descriptively complete than the ones we encounter in life, whilst simultaneously offering space for contemplation. The twelve original chapters in this volume examine literary texts – including theatre and film – in this light, and taken together they show how serious reflection within fictional worlds can lead to a depth of humane insight. The topics explored include: the subtle ways that knowledge can function as a virtue; issues concerning our relations to and understanding of each other; the complex intertwining of virtues and vices in the modern world; and the importance of bringing to light and reconsidering ethical presuppositions. With an appreciation of the importance of richly contextualized particularity and the power of descriptive acuity, the volume maps out the territory that philosophical reflection and literary engagement share. (shrink)

There has been a steady stream of articles written on the relations between political thought and the interpretation of literature, but there remains a need for a book that both introduces and significantly contributes to the field – particularly one that shows in detail how we can think more freely and creatively about political possibilities by reading and reflecting on politically significant literature. This volume offers analytically acute and culturally rich ways of understanding how it is that we can productively (...) think philosophically about political literature and what kind of distinctive conceptual progress we can make by doing so. Given the extremely widespread interest in political issues, this volume will strike resonant chords far and wide, while offering something that has not been done quite in this way and for which the time certainly seems right. (shrink)

There has been a steady stream of articles written on the relations between political thought and the interpretation of literature, but there remains a need for a book that both introduces and significantly contributes to the field – particularly one that shows in detail how we can think more freely and creatively about political possibilities by reading and reflecting on politically significant literature. This volume offers analytically acute and culturally rich ways of understanding how it is that we can productively (...) think philosophically about political literature and what kind of distinctive conceptual progress we can make by doing so. Given the extremely widespread interest in political issues, this volume will strike resonant chords far and wide, while offering something that has not been done quite in this way and for which the time certainly seems right. (shrink)

The philosophy of literature, a topic on which we publish numerous articles, concerns what we at the journal take to be engaging and interestingly intricate issues; these include the ontology of fictional characters and the precise nature of our emotional responses to fiction. Philosophy as literature, although we perhaps publish fewer works of this kind, considers philosophical writing from a literary standpoint; issues here include the varying stylistics of philosophical writing over the ages and the role of figurative or metaphorical (...) language in the writing of philosophy, as well as the settled tropes those practices have collectively engendered. Philosophy and literature—perhaps our most frequently published... (shrink)

One can characterize the relation between philosophy and literature in a number of interestingly different ways: literature provides examples that put flesh on the bones of philosophical ideas; literature shows what philosophy says; literature serves philosophy by displaying the complexity of circumstance that philosophy may oversimplify; literature captures a kind of content that is not amenable to propositional encapsulation; literature offers a portal into an imaginative world and a special kind of vicarious experience within it that philosophy does not and (...) should not try to provide; literature shows what it is like to be another person in another time and place; and.. (shrink)

This chapter explores the significance that Wittgenstein’s work in the philosophy of mind holds for self-understanding, looking into issues of the dualist-introspectionist model of the mind, its antithesis in behaviorism, and the role of language as what Wittgenstein called “the vehicle of thought”, where these considerations are all brought together as a way of investigating how we think of the contents of consciousness. It then takes these Wittgensteinian reflections into a discussion of the way in which Henry James illuminates both (...) the contents and the nature of consciousness in The Golden Bowl. The self-understanding that Maggie Verver achieves is here seen not as a result of inner reflection on private pure or pre-linguistic thought within a metaphysically-sealed mental interior, but rather as the result of becoming ever more aware of the network of relations through which she moves and ever more aware of the power of the words and the subtly-developing narrative that gives shape to who she is and that determines what she will become. (shrink)

Of the famous passage from Augustine’s Confessions1 that opens Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes, These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in language name objects — sentences are combinations of such names. — In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. (...) (PI, 2009, §1) -/- This remark has frequently been taken to simply identify as Wittgenstein’s point of departure the ‘naming theory’ of language. But as usual, closer attentiveness to Wittgenstein’s words extracts a good deal more content. Augustine’s words impart a picture not only of human language, but indeed a picture of the essence of language. So to begin, let us look briefly at the concepts of (1) picture and (2) essence as they are used here. (shrink)

On the traditional approach to metaethics, theories are expected to be faithful to ordinary normative discourse – or at worst (if we think the ordinary discourse is metaphysically unsound) to deviate from it as little as possible. -/- This paper develops an alternative, “conceptual engineering” approach to metaethical enquiry, which is not in this way restricted by our present discourse. On this approach, we will seek to understand the psychology, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology, not just of our present concepts, but (...) also of other possible normative concepts. The ultimate point of the enquiry is to choose between the available alternatives: to decide what kinds of normative concepts to use, going forward. -/- The paper aims to make this suggestion precise, in a way that a) answers worries about circularity, b) answers worries about “changing the subject”, c) retains metaethics as a truth-seeking enquiry, and d) leads to an independently plausible methodology. (shrink)

From a tradition of discourse ethics, human dignity can be defined as “being an equal member in the realm of subjects and authorities of justification.” Additionally, “to act with dignity means being able to justify oneself to others; to be treated in accordance with this dignity means being respected as such an equal member.” Conversely, “to treat others in ways that violate their dignity means regarding them as lacking any justification authority”. The guidelines found in Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” are (...) essential to guarantee this notion of human dignity. Based on aspects of Habermas’s, as well as Rainer Forst’s theory of justice, this study analyzes efforts made by the late speaker of Deutsche Bank, Dr. Alfred Herrhausen, and the former CEO of Alcoa and United States Secretary of the Treasury, Paul H. O’Neill, to challenge the way debt crises in the developing world were handled. Both leaders understood indebted countries, the livelihoods and dignity of its citizens, not as an external entity but as an integral part of their agendas. The two agents included underrepresented groups in their considerations and discussions through a proxy or surrogate participation, giving them a greater voice and acknowledging their dignity. (shrink)

Executive compensation has long been a prominent topic in the management literature. A main question that is also given substantial attention in the business ethics literature—even more so in the wake of the recent financial crisis—is whether increasing levels of executive compensation can be justified from an ethical point of view. Also, the relationship of executive compensation to instances of unethical behavior or outcomes has received considerable attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the social, ecological, and existential (...) costs of economic incentives, by discussing how relying on increasing levels of executive compensation may have an adverse effect on managerial performance in a broad sense. Specifically, we argue that one-dimensional economic incentives may destroy existential, social, and systemic values that influence the manager’s commitment to ensure responsible business conduct, and have negative spillover effects that may reduce the manager’s performance. There are well-documented findings that demonstrate that reliance on sources of extrinsic motivation (such as economic incentives) may displace intrinsic motivation. Our perspective is a holistic one, in the sense that we will explore the influence of sources of extrinsic motivation on the manager’s intrinsic commitment to different types of values. We will in particular investigate how it may influence the manager’s ethical reflection and behavior or lack thereof. (shrink)