I explore how gender can shape the pragmatics of speech. In some circumstances, when a woman deploys standard discursive conventions in order to produce a speech act with a specific performative force, her utterance can turn out, in virtue of its uptake, to have a quite different force—a less empowering force—than it would have if performed by a man. When members of a disadvantaged group face a systematic inability to produce a specific kind of speech act that they are entitled (...) to perform—and in particular when their attempts result in their actually producing a different kind of speech act that further compromises their social position and agency—then they are victims of what I call discursive injustice. I examine three examples of discursive injustice. I contrast my account with Langton and Hornsby's account of illocutionary silencing. I argue that lack of complete control over the performative force of our speech acts is universal, and not a special marker of social disadvantage. However, women and other relatively disempowered speakers are sometimes subject to a distinctive distortion of the path from speaking to uptake, which undercuts their social agency in ways that track and enhance existing social disadvantages. (shrink)

Presenting a fascinating analysis of the idea of what can't be said, this book ascertains whether the notion of there being a truth, or a state of affairs, or knowledge that can't be expressed linguistically is a coherent notion. The author distinguishes different senses in which it might be said that something can't be said. The first part looks at the question of whether ineffability is a coherent idea. Part two evaluates two families of arguments regarding whether ineffable states of (...) affairs actually exist: the argument from mysticism and the argument from epistemic boundedness. Part three looks more closely at the relation between mystic and non-mystic stances. In the fourth and final part the author distinguishes five qualitatively different types of ineffability. _Ineffability and Philosophy_ is a significant contribution to this area of research and will be essential reading for philosophers and those researching and studying the philosophy of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science by Matias SlavovKrisztián PeteMatias Slavov. Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. 216. Hardcover. ISBN 9781350087866, £95.Although the relationship between Hume and Newton is a recurring theme in the Hume literature, Matias Slavov’s book does not seek to contribute to the debate between the traditional (Hume imitated Newton’s natural philosophy) and the critical (Hume (...) intended his “science of Man” as the foundation of all other sciences) approaches regarding the nature of this relation. The book is intended to be a summary of Hume’s natural philosophy—or rather an aggregation of his comments on natural philosophical topics—pursued by exploring and analysing themes and issues that were prominent in the natural philosophy of the early modern period. In this respect it is a pioneering undertaking.Of course, Slavov does not claim in his book that Hume is a natural philosopher. “[F]irst and foremost... [h]e is not; for his main objective is to establish a new science of human nature” (1). But Slavov does claim that Hume’s natural philosophical views can be understood and valued in themselves and in the philosophical-scientific context of his time as well. The book is not a discussion of the natural philosophical dimensions of the “science of human nature,” but rather, of the natural philosophical views which are reconcilable with his main objective. In this respect, the book is not a methodological approach to Hume’s supposed natural philosophy, but a synthesis of certain elements of Hume’s philosophy that can feature in a consistent natural philosophy. Although his arguments are generally indirect and are more about what Hume seems to be committed to and what follows from his epistemological position rather than his actual positions, Slavov’s conclusions seem mostly convincing.Thus, Slavov’s point is not that the empiricist method is compatible in every detail with Newtonian mechanics, but rather that Hume seems to be committed more to a Cartesian natural philosophy. Slavov does not write about the possibility and significance of applying natural philosophical methods to moral philosophy; rather, he wants to build a complete philosophy of nature around some of Hume’s basic ideas to “fill the gap for a book on Hume’s relation to natural philosophy and philosophy of physical science” (2).The book has two “equally important aims” (ix): to shed more light onto Hume’s relationship to natural philosophy, and to demonstrate that physics and philosophy have overlapping domains. Hume was hardly concerned with physics, so Slavov’s strategy of defining natural philosophy as an overlap between physics and philosophy (chapter 1) does, to some extent, explain the lack of textual evidence in this area. The definition of natural philosophy chosen by Slavov is also intended to ensure [End Page 170] that these two goals are intertwined, since according to Slavov’s definition, natural philosophy is “a grey area between philosophy and physics” (12).Personally, I do not feel comfortable with this definition because it is not informative enough; it says that natural philosophy is more than modern physics (mathematized natural science), but it is not quite philosophy. While the first implication is very agreeable, and a number of scholars have addressed the issue, to assess the second implication, we would need to know exactly what philosophy is in this context. Perhaps the best candidate is metaphysics, even if Slavov keeps the reader somewhat in the dark on this point, despite the fact that chapter 2 is intended to establish precisely that point. Yet, the metaphysics of this period was usually (with the possible exception of Spinoza) used to support natural scientific explanations. I believe that natural philosophy is more than a “grey area” (9, 12, 22), or a contact zone; it is a complex enterprise that evolved in different forms with different emphases: Cartesian mechanics still sought to understand nature, pursuing the Aristotelian ideal of knowledge, albeit rejecting Aristotelian methods, while empiricists increasingly envisaged a more instrumentalist role for natural explanations. Newton himself was caught between the two.In this context it is intriguing whether Hume carries forward Berkeley... (shrink)

Hypothesis-driven approaches identified important characteristics that differentiate violent from non-violent radicals. However, they produced a mosaic of explanations as they investigated a restricted number of preselected variables. Here we analyzed without a priory assumption all the variables of the “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States” database by a machine learning approach. Out of the 79 variables considered, 19 proved critical, and predicted the emergence of violence with an accuracy of 86.3%. Typically, violent extremists came from criminal but not (...) radical backgrounds and were radicalized in late stages of their life. They were followers in terrorist groups, sought training, and were radicalized by social media. They belonged to low social strata and had problematic social relations. By contrast, non-violent but still criminal extremists were characterized by a family tradition of radicalism without having criminal backgrounds, belonged to higher social strata, were leaders in terrorist organizations, and backed terrorism by supporting activities. Violence was also promoted by anti-gay, Sunni Islam and Far Right, and hindered by Far Left, Anti-abortion, Animal Rights and Environment ideologies. Critical characteristics were used to elaborate a risk-matrix, which may be used to predict violence risk at individual level. (shrink)

In this paper, we reconsider the highly underrated Carnap–Sellars relationship, arguing that Sellars might be able to provide an interesting resolution to some of Carnap’s finest problems around explication by offering a grand-scale picture of science/common-sense or manifest interactions. The narrative developed here points toward the need for some stratification and re-evaluation of a field of scholarship that all too often still engages in challenging and contradictory dichotomies, undermining the genuine intentions of scholars who were collaborating with, as well as (...) living and researching in parallel with each other. We would like to explore what these figures can offer to each other, and whether, for example, a truly Sellarsian perspective could illuminate any problematic points in Carnap that have not yet been problematized by Carnapians but could still improve the original system. (shrink)

This paper discusses a crisis of accountability that arises when scientific collaborations are massively epistemically distributed. We argue that social models of epistemic collaboration, which are social analogs to what Patrick Suppes called a “model of the experiment,” must play a role in creating accountability in these contexts. We also argue that these social models must accommodate the fact that the various agents in a collaborative project often have ineliminable, messy, and conflicting interests and values; any story about accountability in (...) a massively distributed collaboration must therefore involve models of such interests and values and their methodological and epistemic effects. (shrink)

Why be a scientific realist? The predominant motivation is explanationist: we need realism to understand the successfulness of science. Why be an antirealist? The predominant motivation is skeptical: theory systematically exceeds the reach of empirical warrant. Antirealists deny that explanatory power is evidential; realists deny that the reach of empirical warrant summarily terminates at the boundary of the observable. But these counterarguments are mere protection of philosophical stances to which the adversaries independently incline.

This chapter argues that mental fictionalism can only be a successful account of our ordinary folk-psychological practices if it can in some way preserve its original function, namely its explanatory aspect. A too strong commitment to the explanatory role moves fictionalism unacceptably close to the realist or eliminativist interpretation of folk psychology. To avoid this, fictionalists must degrade or dispense with this explanatory role. This motivation behind the fictionalist movement seems to be rather similar to that of Sellars when he (...) came up with the Myth of Jones, his proto-theory of mental concepts. He was faced with the problem of preserving the explanatory status of mental concepts without turning them into proper theoretical entities. By introducing the Sellarsian proto-theory of concepts related to the mental and outlining its main points, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the two versions of mental fictionalism that are arguably the strongest: Adam Toon’s prop-oriented pretence theory and Tamás Demeter’s expressive storyism. (shrink)

Sperber and Wilson (1987) have criticised Fodor's (1983) pessimistic view about the possibility of a science of central systems. Fodor's pessimism stems from the holistic nature of central systems – people can access anything that they know when engaging in belief fixation. It is argued that Sperber and Wilsons theory of how relevance is realized during verbal comprehension fails to elucidate this crucial aspect of central processes. Their claims about how a context is selected are shown to presuppose the ability (...) to realize relevance. (shrink)

We would like to thank […] for their thoughtful engagement with our paper. In the end, we do not think that they have demonstrated substantive tensions in our view, but explaining why this is so gi...

This book offers a superbly clear analysis of the standard arguments for and against scientific realism. In surveying claims on both sides of the debate, Kukla organizes them in ways that expose unnoticed connections. He identifies broad patterns of error, reconciles seemingly incompatible positions, and discovers unoccupied positions with the potential to influence further debate. Kukla's overall assessment is that neither the realists nor the antirealists may claim a decisive victory.

The Routledge Companion to Bioethics is a comprehensive reference guide to a wide range of contemporary concerns in bioethics. The volume orients the reader in a changing landscape shaped by globalization, health disparities, and rapidly advancing technologies. Bioethics has begun a turn toward a systematic concern with social justice, population health, and public policy. While also covering more traditional topics, this volume fully captures this recent shift and foreshadows the resulting developments in bioethics. It highlights emerging issues such as climate (...) change, transgender, and medical tourism, and re-examines enduring topics, such as autonomy, end-of-life care, and resource allocation. (shrink)

Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as (...) the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more. (shrink)

I explore how we negotiate sexual encounters with one another in language and consider the pragmatic structure of such negotiations. I defend three theses: Discussions of consent have dominated the philosophical and legal discourse around sexual negotiation, and this has distorted our understanding of sexual agency and ethics. Of central importance to good-quality sexual negotiation are sexual invitations and gift offers, as well as speech designed to set up safe frameworks and exit conditions. Sexual communication that goes well does not (...) just prevent harm; it enables forms of agency, pleasure, and fulfillment that would not otherwise be possible. (shrink)

Social constructionists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Do we collectively invent the world rather than discover it? André Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues that arise out of this debate, analysing the various strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments and arguing that current philosophical objections to constructivism are inconclusive. However, Kukla offers and develops new objections to constructivism, (...) distinguishing between the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed. (shrink)

Social constructivists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Or, more provocatively, are scientific facts--is everything --constructed? Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science is a clear assessment of this critical and increasingly important debate. Andre Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues involved and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments, illustrating the divide between the sociology and the philosophy (...) of science through examples as varied as laboratory science, time, and criminality. He argues that current philosophical objections to constructivism are drastically inconclusive, while offering and developing new objections. Throughout, Kukla distinguishes between the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed. (shrink)

City Living is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. More people live in cities than ever before: more than 50% of the earth's people are urban dwellers. As downtown cores gentrify and globalize, they are becoming more diverse than ever, along lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and age. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of what seems sure to be a period of intense civil unrest. During (...) such periods, cities generally become the primary sites where tensions and resistance are concentrated, negotiated, and performed. For all of these reasons, understanding cities and contemporary city living is pressing and exciting from almost any disciplinary and political perspective. Quill R Kukla offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. The book draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of urban life. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order, but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, Kukla makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book concludes with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants. (shrink)

This article deals with the grounds for accepting or rejecting the insights of mystics. We examine the social-epistemological question of what the non-mystic should make of the mystic's claim, and what she might be able to make of it, given various possible states of the evidence available to her.For clarity, let's reserve the term “mystic” for one who claims to have had an ineffable insight. As such, there are two parts to the mystic's claim: first, a substantive insight into the (...) way the world works; second, a meta-insight that the substantive insight is ineffable. The two parts to the claim are independent: it is possible to accept that the mystic has been struck by an ineffable idea, but refuse to lend credence to the idea itself. Similarly, it is possible to accept the mystic's claim that she has had a veridical insight, whilst denying her claim that it is ineffable, or that she can know that it's ineffable. Thus, we could inquire into the grounds for accepting either part of the mystic's conjunctive claim. In this article, we deal only with the grounds for rejecting or accepting the substantive insight of a mystic, granting the meta-insight that the insight is ineffable. (shrink)

I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as a medical condition, and it needs to be operationalized in a way that lets us identify sufferers, measure progress, and so forth. I will argue that each time we do this, we engage in (...) epistemic risk balancing that inevitably draws upon values and interests, often including social and ideological values. My main interest here is in the conceptualization of infertility as a disease. Infertility is a rich test case for exploring the interplay between interests and epistemic risk management. There is no uncontested or standardized definition of infertility. The various definitions of it are internally ambiguous and tension-ridden, and in spectacular contradiction with one another. Many interest groups who are invested in framing infertility as a pressing problem deserving of social and medical redress are quick to insist that it is a legitimate ‘disease,’ but they cannot agree on which disease it is, what its symptoms or diagnostic markers are, or even what its basic ontology is. I suggest that there are political explanations for this epistemic mess. Indeed, I contend that there are good scientific and ethical reasons to reduce away the category of ‘infertility,’ especially understood as a scientific or medical category; I argue that we should excise the concept from our research and clinical practices. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to give an account of the pragmatic and social function of slurs, taken as speech acts. I develop a theory of the distinctive illocutionary force and pragmatic structure of slurs. I argue that slurs help to produce subjects who occupy social identities carved out by pernicious ideologies, and that they do this whether or not anyone involved intends for the slur to work that way or has any particular feelings or conscious thoughts associated with (...) using or being targeted by the slur. I offer an Althusser‐inspired account of what an ideology is, as well as of the mechanisms by which slurs can serve to cue and strengthen ideologies. A slur, I argue, is a kind of interpellation, which reduces its target to a generic identity and derogates and subordinates its target. I explore how slurs and ideologies work in tandem to constitute and fortify one another. I end by applying my account to see how well it fits and helps illuminate three quite different, especially complex slurs. (shrink)

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological (...) sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge. (shrink)

Mass Hysteria examines the medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy, new motherhood, and infant feeding. Late eighteenth century transformations in these practices reshaped mothers' bodies, and contemporary norms and routines of prenatal care and early motherhood have inherited the legacy of that era. As a result, mothers are socially positioned in ways that can make it difficult for them to establish and maintain healthy and safe boundaries and appropriate divisions between public and private space.

Ghostwriting scandals are pervasive in industry-funded biomedical research, and most responses to them have presumed that they represent a sharp transgression of the norms of scientific authorship. I argue that in fact, ghostwriting represents a continuous extension of current socially accepted authorship practices. I claim that the radically collaborative, decentralized, interdisciplinary research that forms the gold standard in medicine is in an important sense unauthored, and that this poses a serious problem in applied social epistemology. It is no easy matter (...) to find procedural or architectural solutions that can secure epistemic trust and accountability for collaborative publishing in biomedicine. (shrink)

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological (...) sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's iconic exposé of the ‘myth of the given’ taught us that experience must present the world to us as normatively laden, in the sense that the contents of experience must license inferences, rule out and justify various beliefs, and rationalize actions. Somehow our beliefs must be governed by the objects as they present themselves to us. Often this requirement is cashed out using language that attributes agent-like properties to objects: we are described as ‘accountable to’ objects, while objects (...) ‘hold us’ to standards, and so forth. But such language is either deeply anti-naturalistic or trades on a set of metaphors in need of a literal translation. We offer an explanation of how the material features of the world, as received in experience, can rationally constrain our beliefs and practices—one that makes no recourse to this imagery. In particular, we examine the structure of ostensive practices (that is, practices of directing one another's attention to objects and features of the world) and the distinctive role they play in making us jointly beholden to how things actually are. (shrink)

The instrumentalist argument from the underdetermination of theories by data runs as follows: (1) every theory has empirically equivalent rivals; (2) the only warrant for believing one theory over another is its possession of a greater measure of empirical virtue; (3) therefore belief in any theory is arbitrary. In this paper, I examine the status of the first premise. Several arguments against the universal availability of empirically equivalent theoretical rivals are criticized, and four algorithms for producing empirically equivalent rivals are (...) defended. I conclude that the case for the first premise of the argument from underdetermination is very strong. The disposition of the argument itself depends on the fate of the second premise. (shrink)

As a culture, we have a tendency to measure motherhood in terms of a set of signal moments that have become the focus of special social attention and anxiety; we interpret these as emblematic summations of women's mothering abilities. Women's performances during these moments can seem to exhaust the story of mothering, and mothers often internalize these measures and evaluate their own mothering in terms of them. "Good" mothers are those who pass a series of tests—they bond properly during their (...) routine ultrasound screening, they do not let a sip of alcohol cross their lips during pregnancy, they give birth vaginally without pain medication, they do not offer their child an artificial nipple during the first six months, they feed their children maximally nutritious meals with every bite, and so on. This reductive understanding of mothering has had counterproductive effects upon health care practice and policy, encouraging measures that penalize mothers who do not live up to cultural norms during signal moments, while failing to promote extended narratives of healthy mothering. (shrink)

In Games: Agency as Art, Thi Nguyen has given us a deep and compelling picture of agency as much more layered, volatile, environment-dependent and discontinuous than it appears in most philosophical accounts. Games ‘inscribe … forms of agency into artifactual vessels’.1 1 When we play a game, we take up a form of agency, including a set of motivations, values and goals, which has been artificially provided by the game. Our purpose in playing, in the kinds of gameplay that interest (...) Nguyen, is to have the aesthetic experience of first-personally exercising the kind of agency sculpted by the game. As we move in and out of gameplay, we take up and drop values, motives, and goals that are provided to us by the game. Games can expand our autonomy and the richness of life by allowing us to practice different forms of agency, taking on different ends for the aesthetic experience of striving to meet them. While I am on board with these central moves of Nguyen’s book, in this essay I will argue that the situation is substantially messier than Nguyen portrays it as being. Game play, I will claim, is inextricably embedded and entangled in its larger social, material and cultural context. Conversely, I will argue, everyday life is routinely sculpted in ways Nguyen claims are distinctive of games. (shrink)

I argue that the concept of disease serves such radically different strategic purposes for different kinds of stakeholders that coming up with a unified philosophical definition of disease is hopeless. Instead, I defend a radically pluralist, pragmatist account of when it is appropriate to mobilize the concept of disease. I argue that it is appropriate to categorize a condition as a disease when it serves legitimate strategic goals to at least partially medicalize that condition, and when the condition is pathological (...) from inside the epistemology and metaphysics of medicine. While some conditions, like pancreatic cancer, are legitimate diseases from all stakeholders’ points of view and in any context, and while other conditions, like homosexuality, are not diseases from any legitimate point of view, there is a range of interesting, messy cases—including Deafness, autism, pre-hypertension, infertility, and ADHD, for example—whose disease status is irreducibly context-dependent and under contest. (shrink)

Mothers serve as an important layer of the health-care system, with special responsi-bilities to care for the health of families and nations. In our social discourse, we tend to treat maternal “choices” as though they were morally and causally Self-contained units of influence with primary control over children's health. In this essay, I use infant feeding as a lens for examining the ethical contours of mothers’ caretaking practices and responsibilities, as they are situated within cultural meanings and institutional pressures. I (...) give a close critical reading of the content and strategy of the new breastfeeding advocacy campaign sponsored by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I argue that the campaign is unlikely to substantially increase breastfeeding rates, unresponsive and even hostile to many women's actual concerns about breastfeeding, and well positioned to produce shame and compromise agency among the women it targets. (shrink)

: The standard bioethics account is that respecting patient autonomy means ensuring patients make their own decisions. In fact, respecting patient autonomy often has more to do with the overall shape and meaning of patients' health care regimes, and sometimes, at least, patients will very reasonably defer to medical authority.

Both sides in the debate about scientific realism have argued that their view provides a better account of actual scientific practice. For example, it has been claimed that the practice of theory conjunction presupposes realism, and that scientists' use of multiple and incompatible models presupposes some form of instrumentalism. Assuming that the practices of science are rational, these conclusions cannot both be right. I argue that neither of them is right, and that, in fact, all scientific practices are compatible with (...) both realism and instrumentalism. I also repudiate van Fraassen's argument to the effect that the instrumentalist account of scientific practice is logically weaker, hence better, than the realist account. In the end, there are no scientific practice arguments on the table that support either side of the debate. It is also noted that the deficiencies of van Fraassen's argument are recapitulated in Putnam's miracle argument for realism. My pessimistic assessment of the state of the debate is reminiscent of Arthur Fine's. However, Fine's argument for the ‘natural ontological attitude’ once again repeats the problems of van Fraassen's and Putnam's arguments. (shrink)

Epistemologists generally think that genuine warrant that is available to anyone must be available to everyone who is exposed to the relevant causal inputs and is able and willing to properly exercise her rationality. The motivating idea behind this requirement is roughly that an objective view is one that is not bound to a particular perspective. In this paper I ask whether the aperspectivality of our warrants is a precondition for securing the objectivity of our claims. I draw upon a (...) Sellarsian account of perception in order to argue that it is not; rather, inquirers can have contingent properties and perspectives that give them access to forms of rational warrant and objective knowledge that others do not have. The universal accessibility of reasons, on my account, is not a precondition for the legitimacy of any actual warrant, but rather a regulative ideal governing inquiry and communication. (shrink)

The standard bioethics account is that respecting patient autonomy means ensuring that patients make their own decisions, and that requires that they give informed consent. In fact, respecting autonomy often has more to do with the overall shape and meaning of their health care regimes. Ideally, patients will sometimes take control of their health care but sometimes defer to medical authority. The physician's task is, in part, to inculcate patients into the appropriate good health care regimes.

Philosophers have often posited a foundational calling voice, such that hearing its call constitutes subjects as responsive and responsible negotiators of normative claims. I give the name ldquo;transcendental conscience to that which speaks in this founding, constitutive voice. The role of transcendental conscience is not – or not merely – to normatively bind the subject, but to constitute the possibility of the subject's being bound by any particular, contentful normative claims in the first place. I explore the ontological and temporal (...) status of transcendental conscience, using Heidegger's account of conscience in Being and Time as my textual touchstone. I ask what performative structure the call of conscience might have that would enable it to constitute normative responsiveness, and I raise some temporal conundrums surrounding this structure. I argue that it is incoherent to attempt to give a literal, chronological account of the origin of normative grip and response. I suggest that we can best understand the founding calls of conscience, not as literal events occurring in regular time, but as events that can only show up retrospectively, as occurring in an ever-receding, unlocalizable past, and that these calls can only be figured mythically and metaphorically. Appropriating a Derridean term, I claim that the voice of transcendental conscience must be that of a lsquo;ghost, whose call binds us by haunting us – a haunting that is no less transcendentally necessary for its inability to be translated into a literal historical event. (shrink)