That inferences of the form "If M then S and possibly M, therefore possibly S" are invalid in possible worlds modal logics can be viewed as another fallacy of material implication. However, this paper argues that properly analyzing this and related inferences requires treating the possibility involved as a practical modality. Specifically, ordinary language propositions of the form "It is possible that M" must be understood to mean that there is a non-negligible probability of M being the case. (...) But this entails reexamining the very idea of logical validity. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse the contribution of a human rights perspective to emancipatory social work. Human rights practice builds on long-standing values and theoretical frameworks related to emancipatory, radical and structural social work and anti-oppressive practice. However, historical tensions within social work, notably in the United Kingdom, continue in contemporary forms, magnified by the global impact of neo-liberalism. The paper considers connections between human rights and other frameworks, including professional codes; ethical critiques drawing on feminist and indigenous perspectives; the (...) articulation of human rights with social justice; and the strength of a rights-based approach demonstrated by community campaigns and service-user movements. It also addresses discontinuities between human rights and trends in social work and the wider context, including managerialism, privatization, and the consumerization of rights; unexamined rhetoric and limited regulatory interpretations; the dangers of rights being interpreted and imposed from dominant and/or Western perspectives; and the complexities of universal versus culturally specific rights claims. Drawing on the struggles of oppressed groups, the paper argues that a more critical and informed focus on human rights can be a further potentially powerful tool contributing to resistance to oppression, collective solidarity and the promotion of emancipatory change. (shrink)

말년의 후설은 유럽이 위기에 빠졌으며 그 위기의 뿌리는 학문의 위기이자 이성의 위기라고 진단한다. 이 논문은 후설의 이러한 문제의식이 오늘날에도 여전히 유효하다는 판단으로부터 출발한다. 19세기 말엽 이후 확산된 지적 경향, 즉 절대적인 진리에 대한 거부, 혹은 반형이상학적 상대주의는 실제 현실에서 극단적인 의견의 대립을 유발하는 파생효과를 낳았다. 오늘날 공감과 연대가 다양한 사회적 갈등의 해법으로 제시되는 까닭이기도 하다. 이 논문은 포퍼의 방법론을 참조하여 후설의 현상학적 방법론이 인식론적이고 이론적인 논의를 넘어 사회적이고 실천적인 영역으로 확장될 수 있음을 보이고자 한다. 우리는 이를 현상학적 사회공학이라고 부를 수 (...) 있을 것이다. 그것은 절대적인 진리를 주장하는 낡은 형이상학으로 되돌아가자는 것이 아니라 현실의 문제를 해결하기 위한 방법론으로서 이성에 대한 신뢰를 포기하지 않는 절차적 방법론이다. (shrink)

According to a common thesis about normative reasons for action, you have a reason to perform a given action only if you can act for that reason. This thesis has long had broad appeal and i...

Despite having international and national legislative frameworks and policies that guarantee children’s rights and encourage their participation in matters affecting them, consulting children has received scant scholarly attention in the African context. Notwithstanding this state of affairs, it is important to ask whether, in keeping with growing progressive practices, having children as active researchers is a feasible goal to achieve and, if so, how might this be possible. Drawing on Swartz and Nyamnjoh’s framework of research existing along an emancipatory continuum, (...) we argue for practical, methodological interventions to bridge the researcher–researched divide. We show, using four case studies, how giving children a voice – a key feature of emancipatory research – as participants in educational research has the potential to afford them space to co-enact the research and develop their sense of agency. The four case studies were drawn from investigations of lived experiences of orphaned children and conceptions of education quality in South Africa; consulting children about sex and HIV/AIDS education in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya; a study of a community-based peer education programme in South Africa and language and mathematics skills assessments in a large-scale study. Within each case, we evaluate the extent to which the research methods used aims for and achieves children’s participation and emancipation and offer ways to overcome challenges for adopting emancipatory approaches in the schooling sector from ethical, policy and political perspectives. The article concludes with recommendations for implementing emancipatory methodologies in educational research involving children. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore Martha Nussbaum’s version of cosmopolitanism and evaluate its potential to reduce the growing global discord we currently confront. We begin the paper by elucidating the concept of cosmopolitanism in historical and contemporary terms, and then review some of the major criticisms of Nussbaum’s position. Finally, we suggest that Nussbaum’s vision of cosmopolitanism, in spite of its morally noble intentions, faces overwhelming philosophical and practical difficulties that undermine its ultimate tenability as an approach to resolving (...) international conflict. (shrink)

오늘날 급변하는 영화적 환경과 디지털 기술의 발달 그리고 미디어의 다양화는 영화의 제작 환경과 시스템을 빠르게 변화시키고 있다. 또한 필름 시대의 종말은 영화의 ‘죽음’과 ‘진화’ 사이의 논쟁 속에서 새로운 이미지 시대를 개시하고 있다. 이제 더 이상 영화는 전통적인 방식으로 규정될 수 없으며 영화의 위상은 이러한 미디어 환경의 변화 속에서 새롭게 제고되어야 할 것이다.BR 질 들뢰즈의 영화철학은 21세기 영화의 총체적인 변화와 위기를 매체의 본질적인 차원에서 논증할 수 있는 이론적 토대가 된다. 물론 그의 영화철학이 더 이상 현대적인 산물이 아니라는 점은 치명적인 문제가 될 (...) 수 있다. 그러나 오늘날 영화가 직면한 위기와 현상적인 문제들은 다시금 영화의 본질에 대한 의미와 중요성을 각인시키며 현대의 수많은 영화의 논쟁들은 ‘영화란 무엇인가’라는 본질적인 물음으로 향하고 있다. 그것은 영화가 디지털 방식으로 전환되고 그것이 미적 체험과 지각에 심각한 변화를 초래할지라도, 여전히 영화는 이미지, 운동과 시공간, 내러티브 속에서 존재하며 이에 대한 관객의 정신적-심리적 경험은 지속되기 때문이다. 이러한 점에서 들뢰즈 영화철학적 문제제기는 시대적인 한계를 넘어서 현재적인 관점에서 적극적으로 확장하고 재론될 필요가 있다.BR 특히 그의 영화철학은 영화의 정체성에 대한 고전적인 물음을 ‘영화가 무엇을 생산할 수 있는가’라는 창조적이고 당위적인 차원의 논의로 확장시켰다는 점에서 혁신적인 의의를 갖는다. 이러한 점에 착안해서 본 논문은 현실적인 문제 속에서 영화의 잠재적인 역량에 주목했던 들뢰즈의 영화철학을 생산적인 관점에서 해명하고자 한다. 그가 영화의 고유한 창조 행위를 인간적이고 예술적인 저항 행위라고 규정했을 때, 그것은 바로 영화가 이미지의 창조를 넘어서 관객을 새로운 사유의 지평으로 이끌고 이로써 주체적인 인간형상을 구축하는데 기여해야만 한다는 어떤 생산적인 당위성을 의미한다. 따라서 들뢰즈의 관점에서 영화의 미학적인 운동은 새로운 영화 이미지가 얼마나 관객의 창의적인 사유 능력을 이끌어낼 수 있으며, 이것이 어떻게 주체적인 자각과 성찰로 귀결될 수 있는지의 문제와 긴밀하게 연관된다. 이러한 점에서 들뢰즈의 영화철학적 기획들은 ‘이미지’, ‘사유’ ‘주체’의 차원에서 적극적으로 해명될 필요가 있으며 이는 포스트-시네마 시대에 대중문화를 선도하는 영화의 위상과 역할에 많은 시사점을 제공할 것이다. (shrink)

It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the offered (...) odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

The article suggests specific grammatical features of some languages of the leading philosophical traditions of Eurasia, which can explain some of the differences in philo­sophical thinking that exist in these traditions. In particular, the use of Genetivus Objec­tivus in Sanskrit, New European, Latin and Arabic languages is considered, its possible correlation with the socio-practice of cultures in which these languages are dominant is analyzed. As a theoretical preamble, which allows not only to raise, but also to compre­hend the designated problems, (...) the author refers to the logical-semantic theory proposed by the Russian philosopher and arabist Andrei V. Smirnov (b. 1958), which deals with subject-predicate constructions in substantive and procedural logic, the problems of cor­relation of language and thinking, as well as the commensurability of the bases rationality in different philosophical cultures. Analyzing the peculiarities of the use of the so-called object genitive case (Genetivus Objectivus) in different linguistic traditions, the author comes to the conclusion that it is the grammar of a language that often determines the pe­culiarities of a person’s thinking, which in turn are reflected in the socio-practice of a par­ticular culture. Using the example of the Sanskrit fragment “Śrībhāṣya” by the Indian me­dieval philosopher Rāmānuja (XI–XII), in which the compound word (brahmajijñāsā) is proposed to be read as a combination of two nouns in the construction of Genetivus Ob­jectivus (brahmano jijñāsā) (with reference to the grammar of Pāṇini), the author of the article shows the peculiarity of Sanskrit-speaking thinking in comparison with New Euro­pean, Arabic and Latin languages. This feature is understood in the light of the defini­tions offered by philosophical traditions to understand the nature of God or the Absolute Principle. (shrink)

Fabian Freyenhagen's impressive reconstruction of Adorno's ‘practical philosophy’ provides a convincing defence of the possibility of making normative claims about the social world we live in without justifying these claims in terms of the right, the good, or human nature. More specifically, and more controversially, Freyenhagen argues that the normative resources Adorno's critique relies on are provided by a negative Aristotelianism. In this paper, I argue that this approach underestimates the extent to which Adorno follows the model of (...) immanent critique, I highlight the socio-theoretical underpinnings of what Freyenhagen calls Adorno's ‘ethics of resistance’, and I discuss the risk of overstating the danger of co-optation that collective political action faces. (shrink)

Psychologism is the view that practical reasons are psychological states. It is widely thought that psychologism is supported by the following principle governing explanation: TF. The difference between false and true beliefs on A's part cannot alter the form of the explanation which will be appropriate to A's actions. (TF) seems to imply that we always need to cite agents' beliefs when explaining their actions, no matter whether those beliefs are true or false. And this seems to vindicate psychologism. (...) I argue, however, that the standard argument for psychologism which includes (TF) as a premise in fact fails to establish its intended conclusion. As a result, the overall case for psychologism is not as strong as it may initially seem. (shrink)

Suppose that we want to frame a conception of reasons that isn't relativized to the inclinations of particular agents. That is, we want to identify particular things that count as reasons for acting simpliciter and not merely as reasons for some agents rather than others, depending on their inclinations. One way to frame such a conception is to name some features that an action can have and to say that they count as reasons for someone whether or not he is (...) inclined to care about them. The problem with the resulting conception, as we have seen, is that it entails the normative judgment that one ought to be inclined to care about the specified features, on pain of irrationality, and this normative judgment requires justification. The advantage of internalism is that it avoids these normative commitments. It says that things count as reasons for someone only if he is inclined to care about them, and so it leaves the normative question of whether to care about them entirely open. Yet if we try to leave this question open, by defining things as reasons only for those inclined to care about them, we'll end up with a definition that's relativized to the inclinations of particular agents—won't we? Not necessarily. For suppose that all reasons for acting are features of a single kind, whose influence depends on a single inclination. And suppose that the inclination on which the influence of reasons depends is, not an inclination that distinguishes some agents from others, but rather an inclination that distinguishes agents from nonagents. In that case, to say that these features count as reasons only for those who are inclined to care about them will be to say that they count as reasons only for agents—which will be to say no less than that they are reasons for acting, period, since applying only to agents is already part of the concept of reasons for acting. The restriction on the application of reasons will drop away from our definition, since it restricts their application, not to some proper subset of agents, but rather to the set of all agents, which is simply the universe of application for reasons to act. (shrink)

Hegel’s contextualization of ethics in history has often been understood as implying the possibility of “world-historical” justifications for unethical actions. Critics have seen this as a category mistake that violates the authority of the ethical sphere; defenders have argued that it represents one of Hegel’s most revolutionary insights, the idea that customary morality should not stand in the way of human liberation. In this essay, I argue that both of these reactions are based on failure to properly distinguish between (...) rational justification and contextual justification. Properly understood, Hegel’s practical philosophy is restricted to the former task; the authority to determine whether norms are binding in any given circumstance is retained by context-sensitive ethical judgment. (shrink)

The Possibility of Practical Reason explores the foundational questions of moral psychology: How can any of our behavior qualify as acting for a reason? How can any considerations qualify as reasons for us to act? David Velleman argues that both possibilities depend on there being a constitutive aim of action―something that makes for success in action as such. These twelve essays―five of which were not included in the previous edition, two of them previously unpublished―discuss topics such as freedom (...) of the will, shared intention, the relation between value and practical reasoning, the foundations of decision theory, and the motivational role of the imagination. (shrink)

According to Transparency International, Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. In South Africa, there is an annual 'loss' of about R30 billion as a result of bribery and corruption. It would appear that it is exactly the poor and the vulnerable who suffer most under the scourge of corruption. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of corruption on victim(s) and to evaluate it in an effort to formulate solutions as to how such individuals (...) can be guided and supported in the suffering and hardship that they endure and that specifically emanate from corruption. In the research, an effort was made to move away from the trend of the fragmenting of aid and to present guidelines or suggestions that can lead to a global solution, where multi-disciplinary involvement can be facilitated. The researchers agree that the church can play a key role in this, and the solution was sought in the principles expounded in 1 Corinthians 12. The research method known as action research was investigated as a workable method to be used by the multi-disciplinary aid team in their struggle against corruption. In the final instance, the principles used by Touching Africa in their work were investigated so that these could also be used in the quest for a solution. (shrink)

Moral enhancement refers to the possibility of making individuals and societies better from a moral standpoint. A fierce debate has emerged about the ethical aspects of moral enhancement, notably because steering moral enhancement in a particular direction involves choosing amongst a wide array of competing options, and these options entail deciding which moral theory or attributes of the moral agent would benefit from enhancement. Furthermore, the ability and effectiveness of different neurotechnologies to enhance morality have not been carefully examined. (...) In this paper, we assess the practical feasibility of moral enhancement neurotechnologies. We reviewed the literature on neuroscience and cognitive science models of moral judgment and analyzed their implications for the specific target of intervention in moral enhancement. We also reviewed and compared evidence on available neurotechnologies that could serve as tools of moral enhancement. We conclude that the predictions of rationalist, emotivist, and dual process models are at odds with evidence, while different intuitionist models of moral judgment are more likely to be aligned with it. Furthermore, the project of moral enhancement is not feasible in the near future as it rests on the use of neurointerventions, which have no moral enhancement effects or, worse, negative effects. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that ideas give us the rule for organizing experience and ideals serve as archetypes or standards against which one can measure copies. Further, he states that ideas and ideals can be practical. Understanding how precisely these concepts should function presents a challenging and understudied philosophical puzzle. I offer a reconstruction of how ideas and ideals might be practical in order to uphold, to my mind, a conceptually worthy distinction. A (...) class='Hi'>practical idea, I argue, is best understood as a reference to the categorical imperative (and its various formulations), which guides conduct directly as a rule. A practical ideal, by contrast, I think is a substrate that serves two functions: one that (a) helps us gauge moral deficiencies and another that (b) reveals the potential for moral improvement. In response to well-grounded sceptical concerns, I argue that ideals are indirectly practical in that they ground the possibility to recognise moral states of affairs and be moral in the first place. (shrink)

The term ‘miracle’ generally refers to events that are not explicable by natural causes alone. Kant’s notion of miracles is usually understood along these lines. However, Kant’s occupation with miracles should be understood in a practical context. Belief in miracles plays a constitutive role in Kant’s philosophy of religion concerning the need to strengthen the will both before and after departing from original evil. I demonstrate how my argument sheds new light on Kant’s claim that theoretical reason precludes the (...) possibility of material miracles. (shrink)

The existing literature on indeterminacy in the law focuses mostly on the use of vague terms in legislation – terms the use of which makes the content of the relevant utterance to some extent indeterminate. As I aim to show, however, not only is the content of a legislative utterance often indeterminate, it is often indeterminate what the content of such an utterance is. In the first two sections of the paper, I discuss in some detail the conditions for successful (...) non-literal speech and address the question whether these conditions are satisfied in the legal context. I argue that due to the fact that legislative contexts generally contain little unequivocal information about legislative intent, interpreters are typically not warranted in taking the legislature to have intended to communicate something non-literal. In the third section, I consider what I take to be the strongest case against my argument: the wealth of actual cases in which the courts have taken the content of the law to be something other than its literal content, seemingly based on relatively straightforward inferences about the legislature’s communicative intentions. As I hope to show, however, very few of these cases are as straightforward as they appear to be. In the fourth, and final section, I argue that the argument from the first two sections has important consequences for the extent to which we should take the content of the law to be determinate. This has significant implications for the analysis of a number of important but controversial legal cases, which I discuss in some detail. (shrink)

The neural basis of human memory is incredibly complex. We argue that the diversity of neural systems underlying various forms of memory suggests that any discussion of enhancing ‘memory’ per se is too broad, thus obfuscating the biopolitical debate about human enhancement. Memory can be differentiated into at least four major systems with largely dissociable neural substrates. We outline each system, and discuss both the practical and the ethical implications of these diverse neural substrates. In practice, distinct neural bases (...) imply the possibility, and likely the necessity, of specific approaches for the safe and effective enhancement of various memory systems. In the debate over the ethical and social implications of enhancement technologies, this fine-grained perspective clarifies—and may partially mitigate—certain common concerns in enhancement debates, including issues related to safety, fairness, coercion, and authenticity. While many researchers certainly appreciate the neurobiological complexity of memory, the political debate tends to revolve around a monolithic one-size-fits-all conception. The overall project—exploring how human enhancement technologies affect society – stands to benefit from a deeper appreciation of memory’s neurobiological diversity. (shrink)

Foucault and Sellars are representatives of conflicting philosophical traditions: whereas Foucault famously insisted that “power is everywhere,” Sellars proposed the well-known scientia mensura dictum. The tension between the two perspectives seems to be so strong that each of them ends up reducing the other to an epiphenomenal illusion. In this article, I shall attempt to show that the works of Sellars and Foucault are not necessarily irreconcilable. The common ground for this dialogue is what I shall define as a historico- (...) class='Hi'>practical conception of science. I will build this concept by tracing a connection between the Foucauldian notion of “conditions of possibility” of science and Sellars’s thesis about the “indispensability” of the manifest image. Finally, I will argue that this conception of science problematizes the clash between the scientific and manifest images of the world, paving the way for a different relationship between naturalism and critical theory. (shrink)

The concept of deep disagreement is useful for highlighting skills and resources required for reasons-giving to be effective in restoring cooperative or joint action. It marks a limit. When it is instead understood as a challenge to be overcome by using reasons, it leads to significant practical, theoretical, and moral distortions.

In this article I aim to shed light on the question of whether aesthetic experience can constitute practical knowledge and, if so, how it achieves this. I will compare the approaches of Nelson Goodman and Edmund Husserl. Both authors treat the question of which benefits aesthetic experience can bring to certain basic skills. Though one could argue together with Goodman that repeated aesthetic experience allows for a trained and discriminating approach to artworks, Husserl argues that by viewing aesthetic objects (...) we can learn to perceive in a more undiluted fashion and to qualify our own perceptions against the backdrop of the conceptual framework that shapes our everyday experience. As a consequence, aesthetic experience is not to be regarded as something that only contributes to a normatively loaded involvement in the distinct field of the ‘aesthetic’. Reading Goodman with Husserl and vice versa, I will argue in support of a practical aesthetic knowledge account that mediates cognitivist-constructivist and phenomenological concerns and can thus overcome some of their respective shortcomings. The account I present is useful for understanding the practical value of aesthetic experience in and beyond the confined field of the arts. (shrink)

No other cluster of medical issues affects the genders as differently as those related to procreationcontraception, sterilization, abortion, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and genetic screening. Rosemarie Tong s approach to feminist bioethics serves as a catalyst to bring together different feminist voices in hope of actually doing something to make gender equity a present reality rather than a mere future possibility.".

A fallibilist theory of knowledge is employed to make sense of the idea that agents know what they are doing 'without observation' (as on Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge).

Knowing how to be good, or knowing how to go about trying to be good, is of immense theoretical and practical importance. And what goes for trying to be good oneself, goes also for trying to provide others with ways of being good, and for trying to make them good whether they like it or not. This is what is meant by 'moral enhancement'. John Harris explores the many proposed methodologies or technologies for moral enhancement: traditional ones like good (...) parenting and education; newer ones like chemical or biological intervention; modifying the environment to make bad outcomes of all sorts less likely; experimentation with political and social systems. The issue of whether and to what extent moral enhancement is possible is the subject of this book. (shrink)

This essay argues that the practical reason approach to the study of social conventions (and social normativity more generally) fails to adequately account for the fluency of social action in environments that we experience as familiar. The practical reason approach, articulated most recently in Andrei Marmor’s Social Conventions: From Language to Law (2009) does help us, though not wholly adequately, to understand how we tend to react to, and experience, unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors, that is, those situations (...) in which a certain practice becomes problematic or is problematized, or where we are obliged to, or moved to, justify or deliberate. The reason why the practical reason approach is not wholly adequate when it comes to understanding unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors is that it tends to subsume the unfamiliar under the familiar, that is, it tends to negatively evaluate anything that is deemed to be not in accordance with the rules and reasons already familiar to the observer. This excludes the possibility of the observer having to transform himself or herself, and thus change what is familiar to him or her. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a conceptualization of leadership as contemplative. Drawing on MacIntyre’s perspective on virtue ethics and Levinas’ and Gilligan’s work on the ethics of responsibility and care, we propose contemplative leadership as virtuous activity; reflexive, engaged, relational, and embodied practice that requires knowledge from within context and practical wisdom. More than simply offering another way to conceptualize the ethics of leadership, this research contributes to understanding the ethics of leadership in practice. Empirically, we analyze the narratives (...) of those in positions of formal authority and other organizational members in churches. We illustrate contemplative leadership as driven by a good purpose, derived from the unique organizational and broader societal context in which leadership occurs, and grounded in an ethical concern for the other. Contemplative leadership accounts for the complexity of experience and is discerned in mundane and everyday practices. We conclude with the implications for leadership theory, practice, and education. (shrink)

Most authors who work with moral status automatically dismiss the possibility that plants are the kinds of entities that have moral status. This dismissal coheres with our intuitions about common-sense morality: if plants do not have moral status then we do not have any direct moral obligations to plant life. An implication of such a view is that any suggestion otherwise commits one to be in favour of an absurd conclusion. However, given the recent literature and empirical evidence on (...) plant minds, there are reasons to accept a different perspective that finds the absurd conclusion plausible. (shrink)

Howell Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 348–358 and Mizrahi and Morrow Ratio, 28, 1–13 offer a group of reductio arguments to rebut the CP thesis, i.e., the hypothesis that ideal conceivability entails possibility. Each of them has a conceivability premise: it is ideally conceivable that CP is false. According to the same CP, one can infer that CP’s being false is possible, from which it follows that CP is false. In other words, CP is shown to be self-defeating and therefore (...) false if any of these reductio arguments is proved sound. In this paper, I aim to disprove these arguments. I first show that neither Howell nor Mizrahi & Morrow provide adequate justification for their conceivability premises. I go on to argue that these reductio arguments face a dilemma: either their conceivability premises cannot be adequately justified, or they are redundant. Finally, I argue that, although this dilemma resists the reductio arguments against CP, on the other hand, it also reveals that CP lacks epistemic fruitfulness: it is of no practical use in the realm of apriority as well as necessity. (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that (...) he grants—and in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

It has been argued that evolutionary considerations favour utilitarianism by selectively debunking its competitors. However, evolutionary considerations also seem to undermine the practical significance of utilitarianism, since commonsense beliefs about well-being seem like prime candidates for evolutionary debunking. We argue that the practical significance of utilitarianism is not undermined in this way if we understand the requirements of practical rationality as sensitive to normative uncertainty. We consider the view that rational decision-making under normative uncertainty requires maximizing expected (...) choice-worthiness, as well as the possibility that different theories’ choice-worthiness rankings are not all interval-scale measurable or intertheoretically comparable. Finally, we suggest how evolutionary considerations may increase the practical significance of utilitarianism even if belief in utilitarianism is debunked by evolutionary considerations, so long as belief in competing theories is undermined to an even greater extent. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In spite of the supposed lack of attention paid to it by Husserl in his early works on time, the future is an important topic for phenomenology that gains increasing relevance in his late works. Regarding the experience of the future, phenomenology can approach the subjective possibility of anticipating what is not yet given, both actively and passively. A new perspective on the subject’s relation to the future arises thanks to the consideration of practical phenomena. What is (...) at stake here is the possibility of doing something with what is not yet given. In this sense, our principal concern is to contextualize Husserĺs reference to the relationship between willing and future in the framework of his more general analysis of the future; at the same time, we seek to answer a question that arises in the analysis of time: the problem of novelty, and the possibility of creativity. (shrink)

I offer a reading of the role of freedom in Descartes’ Meditations and other writings that sees freedom’s role in “assenting to ideas” as a matter of psychological possibility, and its role in acti...

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of sublimity (...) help a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)