Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 45-68.

In the lecture Nietzsche: l’homme devant la mort de dieu, Gabriel Marcel highlights the extraordinary topicality of Nietzsche’s thought and figure. The French philosopher seems to say to his hearers: Nietzsche is here, among us, he does not belong to the past, but, on the contrary, he is the most contemporary of contemporaries. Nietzsche’s philosophy of the death of God is a mine of ideas and insights that need to be enhanced. There is still much about him to be discovered. (...) Nietzsche, then – and nihilism as such – is by no means outdated, precisely because, Marcel exclaims, before claiming to have left him behind, it is better to make sure we have reached him. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to reflect on the application of Semiotics to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and interface analysis. To accomplish the objective the article presents an example of semiotic analysis of a blog interface but the methodology proposed, conveniently adapted, may be applied to any kind of digital interactive environment. The analysis reconstructs the interface sense production device (including the surface of the page and the link architecture), identifies implied users and exchange scenes of the blog and concludes (...) with some reflections on interface evolution and hybridation. Finally, the article proposes future trends for a Semiotics of HCI. (shrink)

Gabriel Marcel’s writings stand in a complex relationship to Nietzsche’s thought. Paying homage to Nietzsche’s influence as one of the most eminent representatives of the existential thought, Marcel is aware that he deals with a thinker who is as distant from him as he is very close. Marcel’s references to Nietzsche’s thought are tied to Nietzsche’s expression “God is dead”, and the end of the divine is the theme that simultaneously highlights the greatness and the tragedy of Nietzsche. Marcel accepts (...) the contradictions of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought as both dangerous and fruitful. (shrink)

Our understanding of social experiences is central to our social understanding more generally. But this sphere of epistemic practice can be structurally prejudiced by unequal relations of power, so that some groups suffer a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice—hermeneutical injustice. I aim to achieve a clear conception of this epistemicethical phenomenon, so that we have a workable definition and a proper understanding of the wrong that it inflicts.

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

The concept of ‘the Canadian identity’ is a topic which has received much attention in recent decades, stimulating discussions on the topic of what makes a Canadian a Canadian? Today, being Canadian might suggest a love of hockey and poutine. However, a century ago, being “Canadian” was an emphasis on adapting or conforming to British norms. This paper will focus on one important theme in debates around ‘Canadianization’, specifically its reflection over time in the domestic structure of the early Ukrainian (...) settlers. Canadian identity studies can especially benefit from this trace of identity formation, by its application to a broader, multi-ethnical context. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 224 Seiten: 1-17.

Interpreting Bernard Williams’s ethical philosophy is not easy. His style is deceptively conversational; apparently direct, yet argumentatively inexplicit and allusive. He is moreover committed to evading ready-made philosophical “-isms.” All this reinforces the already distinct impression that the structure of his philosophy is a web of interrelated commitments where none has unique priority. Against this impression, however, I will venture that the contours of his philosophy become clearest if one considers that there is a single, unchanging root conviction from which (...) his ethical philosophy grows. Despite the perpetual motion of his philosophical thought—its erudition, originality, range, and unceasing forward momentum—still, I contend, there is something unchanging at the heart of it. I will show this by reference to three signature theses: internal reasons, the relativism of distance, and the porous borders of philosophy and history. I will argue that the root conviction of which these are the fruits is the conviction that the constraints of universal rationality seriously underdetermine how one should live. This, I believe, is the vision of the human ethical condition that constitutes the largely inexplicit yet utterly fundamental presupposition beneath Williams’s ethical philosophy taken as a whole. I label the object of this root conviction ethical freedom, and thus portray Williams as a philosopher of ethical freedom. (shrink)

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk intelligibly—while (...) staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Summary This paper reports on the perspectives of elite athletes on anti-doping work in general and on the whereabouts system in particular, and uses a figurational perspective to explore the unintended consequences of the planned introduction of the whereabouts system. A cross-sectional survey of all the athletes in the Norwegian registered testing pool was carried out in 2006, using a structured questionnaire. Overall, 70.6% of the athletes agreed that doping was a problem in elite sport in general, but paradoxically only (...) 17.5% agreed that doping was a problem in their own sport. However, more than four in ten of the athletes agreed that the whereabouts information system made a contribution to a “cleaner” sport. Some athletes thought the system was unfair. The whereabouts information system had, despite all good intentions, outcomes other than those planned and intended by the WADA. Thus, athletes’ views might fruitfully be integrated with other perspectives when anti-doping work is developed further. (shrink)

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may (...) be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 27-50. (shrink)

The current literature on the value of knowledge is marred by two unwarranted presumptions, which together distort the debate and conceal what is perhaps the most basic value of knowledge, as distinct from mere true belief. These presumptions are the Synchronic Presumption, which confines philosophical attention to the present snapshot in time; and the Analytical Presumption, which has people look for the value of knowledge in some kind of warrant. Together these presumptions conceal that the value of knowledge might inhere (...) not in a necessary condition, but simply in a property that most knowledge possesses; and, in particular, that it might inhere, as I argue it does, in a certain property of 'resilience': the tendency to survive misleading counter-evidence over time owing to the subject's being in a position to weight it against evidence already possessed. (shrink)

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be of one and the same kind? This (...) paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

We gain information from collective, often institutional bodies all the time—from the publications of committees, news teams, or research groups, from web sites such as Wikipedia, and so on—but do these bodies ever function as genuine group testifiers as opposed to mere group sources of information? In putting the question this way I invoke a distinction made, if briefly, by Edward Craig, which I believe to be of deep significance in thinking about the distinctiveness of the speech act of testimony. (...) The distinction is that between somebody’s functioning as a ‘good informant’ and their functioning merely as a ‘source of information’. The difference between these has, as he remarks, a crucial ethical aspect: What I have in mind is the special flavour of situations in which human beings treat each other as subjects with a common purpose, rather than as objects from which services, in this case true belief, can be extracted. In this paper I shall try to bring out the distinctive nature of the role of good informant in a way that helps to clarify what is at stake in asking whether there can be group testimony in the sense of genuinely collective testimony—that is to say, where the group testifier is a collective and not merely a sum of individuals testifying in one or another form of aggregated chorus. (shrink)

Autoscopic phenomena are complex experiences that include the visual illusory reduplication of one’s own body. From a phenomenological point of view, we can distinguish three conditions: autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experiences. The dysfunctional pattern involves multisensory disintegration of personal and extrapersonal space perception. The etiology, generally either neurological or psychiatric, is different. Also, the hallucination of Self and own body image is present during dreams and differs according to sleep stage. Specifically, the representation of the Self in REM dreams (...) is frequently similar to the perception of Self in wakefulness, whereas in NREM dreams, a greater polymorphism of Self and own body representation is observed. The parallels between autoscopic phenomena in pathological cases and the Self-hallucination in dreams will be discussed to further the understanding of the particular states of self awareness, especially the complex integration of different memory sources in Self and body representation. (shrink)

The main notion of this article is that the blurring of the limits between offline and online dimensions of knowledge and experience, in addition to the manipulation of genes, neurons, atoms and bits, is dissolving the distinction between subjectivism (i.e. idealism) and materialism (i.e. objectivism and realism). As a consequence, in the moistmedia (from Ascott) ecology in which we are increasingly immersed, a radical kind of experience of matter, time, space and self is emerging. In this form of experience, the (...) blending of subjectivist and materialist approaches help in overcoming the classical Cartesian polarity: we feel part of an extended reality, and we feel this extended reality in ourselves by combining bodies, points of view and multiple senses with digital layers of everything. The article proposes these research questions: Which are the main factors that shape the change toward a moistmedia ecology resulting from the impact of the manipulation of genes, neurons, bits and atoms? Which transformation is being shaped in relation to the previous model of experience? What are the features of the new forms of materiality, sensitivity and action? How artists are putting themselves at risk in the moistmedia ecology? The hypothesis is that a hybrid kind of interval is opening between different layers of reality: analogue versus digital; nature versus culture; here versus there; past versus future; I versus others; and human versus non-human. In this recombination process, a third dimension of reality – that I call ‘radical reality’ – emerges in the moistmedia ecology. This article will analyse the radical experience (Wilson) in moistmedia environments by crossing the five dimensions (matter, space, time, identity and action) with the practices of manipulation of genes, atoms and bits using examples from art and design. This crossing shows the basic dimensions and sub-dimensions of the ‘Model of Radical Experience’ to reveal the nature of this third dimension between subjectivism and materialism, which is explored by artists who put themselves at risk in the turbulent zone between the physical and the digital. (shrink)

What is hospitality? Who is it addressed to? Hospitality aims at welcoming those who arrive; it demands giving space and time and sharing our own resources with others. In view of the current global migration crisis and in the midst of the social debates and a critique of the failure of affluent countries and Western democracies to respond in solidarity to those in need, this article attempts to re-consider the space for hospitality drawing from the ethical and the political as (...) the two fundamental pillars of social architecture. In an effort to discuss collective grassroots reactions to this general lack of hospitality, I address the Catalan social platform Volem Acollir in their request to the state to open up the borders for the reception of a larger number of migrants. Far from being an individual choice, or an optional political decision, hospitality confronts us with the moral dilemma of the human response to our cultural others. (shrink)

For many autistic performers in arts and entertainment, the stage can be an important site of self-advocacy and creative expression. Whereas everyday social interactions may be unpredictable, being onstage can allow autistic performers to work from a script and anticipate audience responses. This article explores the affordances and challenges of performance for young autistic adults in Canada through interviews with four autistic performers. While solo performance was the focus, participants discussed the creative employment of diverse media platforms, from the stage (...) to screenwriting and children’s books, and emphasized the need for autistic people to be involved in all creative realms. This research follows a Critical Disability Studies framework which challenges deficit models of autism, “supercrip” tropes, and narratives of overcoming autism. While one participant noted being uncomfortable with the sense that they were a source of inspiration for non-autistic audiences, each found it encouraging that autistic audiences relate to their work and might be motivated to participate in similar forms of self-advocacy; in particular, they noted the value of performance in building confidence. As previous CDS literature is wary of disability as spectacle, this research provides insight into how young autistic adults use their work onstage and behind the scenes to promote and perform self-advocacy. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Grounded in ideas about sense-making and whole-person care with a long intellectual heritage, the movement for Philosophical Health—with its specific conceptions of philosophical care and counselling—is a relatively recent addition to the ongoing debate about understanding better the perspectives of patients to improve health practice. This article locates the development of this movement within the context of broader discussions of person-centred care (PCC), arguing that the approach advocated by defenders of philosophical health can provide a straightforward method for implementing PCC (...) in actual cases. This claim is explained and defended with reference to the SMILE_PH method created by Luis de Miranda (Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health), an approach recently trialled convincingly with people living with traumatic spinal cord injury. (shrink)

She was to a degree the tool of her husband. However, despite the fact she was under his influence to a degree she cannot escape if the Bank took all reasonable steps to ensure that she had appreciated and understood what she was signing. It may be that Mrs Wright-Bailey did not have an adequate comprehension of the nature of the charge... [E]ven if she did not, the Bank did take all reasonable steps.

We hypothesise that the sarcolemma of an actively growing myofibre has different properties to the sarcolemma of a mature adult myofibre. Such fundamentally different properties have clinical consequences for the onset, and potential therapeutic targets, of various skeletal muscle diseases that first manifest either during childhood (e.g. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, DMD) or after cessation of the main growth phase (e.g. dysferlinopathies). These characteristics are also relevant to the selection of both tissue culture and in vivo models employed to study such (...) myopathies and the molecular regulation of adult myofibres. During growth, multinucleated myofibres increase enormously in size and volume with dramatic increases in length (up to ∼600 mm). This is in striking contrast with most mononucleated cells such as fibroblasts, that remain at a relatively small size (∼10–20 µm diameter). The consequences of a dynamic, expanding sarcolemma during growth, compared with that of an adult myofibre of a fixed length, are discussed with respect to various aspects of muscle biology. (shrink)

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the (...) powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed. (shrink)

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify (...) to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject. (shrink)

Background We investigated the personal philosophies of eight persons with a tetraplegic condition (four male, four female), all living in Sweden with a chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and all reporting a good life. Our purpose was to discover if there is a philosophical mindset that may play a role in living a good life with a traumatic SCI. Methods Two rounds of in-depth qualitative interviews were performed by the same interviewer, a philosophical practitioner by training (de Miranda). The (...) second round systematically covered the following elements: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose and philosophical sense. This six-step method developed by de Miranda is called SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Results All the interviewees, as a consequence of their trauma, reported having gone through a reinvention of themselves which implied questioning the meaning and purpose of their life in particular and life in general. A philosophical rather than realistic sense of the possible was abstracted toward teleological growth. All interviewees developed a sense of purpose based on self-interested altruism and solidarity with disabled peers. Conclusions To reinvent a good life with SCI, in addition to physical training and willpower, one needs to consider philosophical questions about the self and life, what Kant called the cosmic interests of reason: What may I hope? What must I do? What can I know? Our results indicate that we should, in the future, explore what the philosophical health approach may bring to rehabilitation processes in the months or years that follow the trauma. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the different styles of moral relativism. The history of moral relativist thinking features different branches to the family tree, each representing a different impetus to relativism, and so producing a different style of moral relativist thought. At the root, however, is a broadly subjectivist parent idea that morality is at least in part the upshot of a shared way of life, and shared ways of life tend to vary markedly from culture to culture. The discussions cover (...) the branches of moral historicism, moral reasons, moral truth, and moral plurality. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo principal de este escrito es proponer un papel propedéutico de las intuiciones racionales, a fin de defender una propuesta híbrida entre el acceso epistémico a priori y a posteriori. Las intuiciones racionales deben ser informadas empíricamente, y descartadas cuando hay pruebas contra ellas, cuando la evidencia empírica muestra que la intuición racional es errada, por lo que cualquier creencia guiada por ella también lo sería. Se sostiene que las intuiciones racionales cumplen un importante rol propedéutico: ayudan a (...) comprender diferentes escenarios modales a través de ejemplificaciones contrafácticas. Esto no se opone a la variación cultural de intuiciones, por ello se propone un confiabilismo intuicional variable. Esta propuesta comprende a las intuiciones como falibles y como no conductoras de verdad: no es el objetivo de las intuiciones rastrear la verdad de alguna proposición, sino ayudar a comprender los escenarios hipotéticos que pueden ser relevantes en diferentes áreas.: The main target of this paper is to propose a preparatory learning role of rational intuitions, in order to defend a hybrid proposal between a priori and a posteriori epistemic access. Rational intuitions must be informed empirically, and discarded when there is evidence against them, when empirical evidence shows that rational intuition is wrong, so any belief guided by it would also be wrong. It is argued that rational intuitions play an important propaedeutic role: they help to understand different modal scenarios through counterfactual exemplifications. This is not opposed to the cultural variation of intuitions, therefore a variable intuitional reliability is proposed. This proposal includes intuitions as fallible and as not truth conducive: it is not the goal of intuitions to trace the truth of a proposition, but to help understand the hypothetical scenarios that may be relevant in different areas. (shrink)

The poetic … would be that which you desire to learn, but from and of the other, thanks to the other and under dictation, by heart. Derrida, “Che cos’è la Poesia?” 227 I dare not pretend to be any...