Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of (...) the population of Singapore (n = 1508) were randomly allocated to two “the last human” scenarios. We found that the best predictor of such a sense of moral duty for future nature conservation is the recognition of the intrinsic values of sentient beings. Our results suggest that the concern for animal welfare may enhance rather than compete with the sense of moral duty towards nature conservation. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental (...) crises. Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

In the opening sections of his Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte argues that mutual recognition is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness. However, the argument turns on the apparently unconvincing claim that, in the context of transcendental philosophy, conceptions of the subject as an isolated individual give rise to a vicious circle the resolution of which requires the introduction of a second rational being to ‘summon’ the first. In this essay, my aim is to present a revised account (...) of the opening arguments on which they are more convincing. In particular, I argue that the problem of a circle is genuine and may be seen to result from a relation of mutual dependence between agency and cognition which ensures that for an exercise of either capacity to take place, an exercise of the other would have already had to have taken place with the result that neither can occur. Moreover, the solution is successful. The summons prevents us from being driven around the circle once more because it is a ‘synthesis’ that reconciles the constraint to which I am subject as a cognizer of independently given objects and my freedom as a self-determining subject. (shrink)

In Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi speaks about various ‘interpretations of nature’. I discuss the items that he has in mind, identify two of his major theses about them, and investigate the extent to which he treated science as resting on different ‘ultimate suppositions’ at different times in its history.I then consider what he says about how to decide between science and rival ‘interpretations of nature’, arguing that the idea of such a choice or decision is dubious, (...) and that there is no prospect, nowadays, of rejecting science ‘as a whole’. Polanyi’s better approach to the issue, I urge, is in terms of the replacement of our natural inclination through education.Polanyi’s account of free discussion rests on the two principles of fairness and tolerance. Rival interpretations of nature, though, are too different for the decision procedure that he envisages to work. And only a public committed to a scientific interpretation of nature could nowadays count as judicious.Finally, I discuss the debate between what Polanyi calls the ‘metaphysical believer’ and the ‘nihilist’, arguing that Polanyi’s recognition that universal nihilism is logically untenable implies that we do not have to resort to the ‘mental satisfactions’ to which he appealed. (shrink)

I describe a distinctive kind of fear that is generated by a vivid recognition of one’s mortal nature. I name it ‘existential shock’. This special fear does not take our future annihilation as any kind of harm, whether intrinsic or extrinsic. One puzzling feature of existential shock is that it is experienced as disclosing an important truth, yet attempts to specify this revelatory content bring us back to familiar facts about one’s inevitable death. But how can I discover (...) something that I already knew? I argue that in our everyday lives, we are in the grip of deeply entrenched patterns of thought and feeling that prevent the knowledge of our mortality from being fully assimilated. Rather, we merely ‘pay lip service’ to the facts of our mortality. I propose that existential shock involves a distinctive mode of presentation of oneself as a mortal being, in a way that cuts through subtle layers of denial that govern our lives. I develop this thesis by utilizing and synthesizing ideas from several traditions, including the work of Samuel Scheffler, Mark Johnston, Martin Heidegger, and Jay L. Garfield. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of J. G. Fichte's transcendental argument for the necessity of mutual recognition in Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte's argument purports to show that, as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness, we must take ourselves to stand in relations of mutual recognition with other agents like ourselves. After reconstructing the steps of Fichte's argument, I present what I call the ‘modal dilemma’, which highlights a serious ambiguity in Fichte's deduction. According to (...) the modal dilemma, the conclusion to Fichte's transcendental argument—that as a condition of the possibility of our self-consciousness, we must recognize and be recognized by others—expresses either metaphysical or normative necessity. However, no normative conclusion follows from Fichte's premises, and the metaphysical claim that does follow from his argument appears to be implausibly strong. Thus the argument looks like a failure on either interpretation of the conclusion's modality. In the penultimate section of the paper, I propose a new interpretation of the argument that avoids the modal dilemma and provides a normative grounding of Fichte's concept of right. (shrink)

In order to protect nonhuman animals effectively, animal law must overcome many hurdles, be it the balance of human and nonhuman interests, the use paradigm, or narrow definitions of legal personhood or basic rights. A fact often overlooked in this uphill struggle is that the laws of most states recognize that animals must be protected because and to the extent that they are sentient. The legal recognition of animal sentience seems to nullify all and any attempts to deny them (...) legal protection simply because they are not sufficiently appealing, emotionally close, or economically useful to us. However, the legal recognition of animal sentience does not overcome all our cognitive prejudices about animals. Using a comparative law method and insights from moral philosophy, this article analyzes the nature and scope of the legal recognition of animal sentience. It identifies its advantages in challenging arbitrariness and inconsistency and championing intrinsic animal protection and points to the most pressing shortcomings, including some states’ refusal to commit themselves to animal sentience and remaining prejudices in society and science. In concluding, the article offers ways to address and remedy these shortcomings and points to ways in which the concept can be used more effectively by academics and practitioners. (shrink)

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu (...) sich selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)

Witnessing the fate of the various definitions of truth, Donald Davidson has recently called the very drive to define truth a “folly.” Before him, Kant and Frege had given independent arguments why a general definition of truth is impossible. After a quick summary of their arguments, I recount several reasons that Gangeśa gave for not counting truth as a genuine natural universal. I argue that in spite of defining truth as a feature of personal and ephemeral awareness episodes, the Nyāya (...) ya realists such as Gangeśa could maintain that truth is independent of recognition of truth. In the course of my argument, I also show that Roy Perrett’s alleged proof against realism does not succeed. I conclude that realism does not need nonmental atemporal truth-bearers (propositions) which are eternally wholly true (or wholly false), and that knowledge-independence from truths and things can be shown without admitting the existence of unknowable things or truths. (shrink)

Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody’s associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that (...) adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding. (shrink)

Rights of nature is an idea that has come of age. In recent years, a diverse range of countries and jurisdictions have adopted these norms, which involve granting legal rights to nature or natural objects, such as rivers, forests, or ecosystems. This book critically examines the idea of natural objects as right-holders, and analyses legal cases, policies, and philosophical issues relating to this development. -/- Drawing on contributions from a range of experts in the field, Rights of (...) class='Hi'>Nature: A Re-examination investigates the potential for this innovative idea to revolutionize the concepts of rights, standing, and recognition as traditionally understood in many legal systems. Taking as its starting point Stone’s influential 1972 article ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’, the book examines the progress rights of nature have made since that time, by identifying central themes, unifying principles, and key distinctions in how rights of nature discourse has been operationalized in the disciplines of law, philosophy, and the social sciences. These themes and principles are illustrated through a wide variety of examples, including ecosystem services, indigenous thinking, and ecological restoration, demonstrating how the relationship between humanity and the natural world may be transforming. -/- Taking a philosophical, political, and legal perspective, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental law and policy, environmental ethics, and philosophy. (shrink)

The German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, has long been recognized as an important and original figure in the history of philosophy and Western thought and as a seminal influence upon the Romantic tradition. This book focuses on Fichte's contributions in political theory as set out in his Foundations of Natural Right. The essays, which examine such issues as Fichte as a social contract theorist, his theory of gender relations and his theories on punishment and the criminal law among many other (...) topics, remedy what has been a striking lacuna in the existing scholarly literature. (shrink)

The boundary problem on defining the conceptual scope and limits of a mental disorder may be tackled at either side of the boundary. On one side, philosophers and philosophically minded clinicians tried clarifying the concept of mental disorder and its related concepts of mental illness and dysfunction in their use and definition. On the other side, Mohammed Rashed's article gives a substantive and refreshing account of this neglected side in terms of social recognition. Thereby the boundary is clarified from (...) the outside through the limits set by the epistemic status of identity claims and the diachronic and synchronic unity of the self-conceptions that make up a person's identity.Stimulated by and building... (shrink)

2014 Reprint of 1945 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The first part deals with Greek cosmology and is the longest, the most elaborate and, on the whole, the liveliest part of a book which never deviates into dullness. The dominant thought in Greek cosmology, Collingwood holds, was the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, nature being the substance of something ensouled where "soul" meant the self-moving. Part II is "The Renaissance View of Nature (...) ." Collingwood describes the rise and decline of the deists' view of Nature as a machine designed by the Great Contriver who, having turned it out, watches it go. Part III, "The Modern View of Nature," deals with very recent or contemporary philosophy and science, discerning in it a radical evolutionism first in biology and later in cosmology. Remains to this day a classic text in the history of ideas. (shrink)

The conflicting findings from the few studies conducted with regard to gender differences in the recognition of vocal expressions of emotion have left the exact nature of these differences unclear. Several investigators have argued that a comprehensive understanding of gender differences in vocal emotion recognition can only be achieved by replicating these studies while accounting for influential factors such as stimulus type, gender-balanced samples, number of encoders, decoders and emotional categories. This study aimed to account for these (...) factors by investigating whether emotion recognition from vocal expressions differs as a function of both listeners’ and speakers’ gender. A total of N = 290 participants were randomly and equally allocated to two groups. One group listened to words and pseudo-words, while the other group listened to sentences and affect bursts. Participants were asked to categorize the stimuli with respect to the expressed emotions in a fixed-choice response format. Overall, females were more accurate than males when decoding vocal emotions, however, when testing for specific emotions these differences were small in magnitude. Speakers’ gender had a significant impact on how listeners’ judged emotions from the voice. The group listening to words and pseudo-words had higher identification rates for emotions spoken by male than by female actors, whereas in the group listening to sentences and affect bursts the identification rates were higher when emotions were uttered by female than male actors. The mixed pattern for emotion-specific effects, however, indicates that, in the vocal channel, the reliability of emotion judgments is not systematically influenced by speakers’ gender and the related stereotypes of emotional expressivity. Together, these results extend previous findings by showing effects of listeners’ and speakers’ gender on the recognition of vocal emotions. They stress the importance of distinguishing these factors to explain recognition ability in the processing of emotional prosody. (shrink)

Three distinct objects of attention - nature, culture, and God - call for the recognition of three distinct modes of truth. A single code of rational discourse - the preferred one today is that of the empirio-mathematical study of nature - is not enough to preserve the diversity of meanings called for by the investigation of culture and religion. In particular, the human subject stands in relation to the three objects of enquiry respectively as “door-keeper,” “participant,” and (...) “respondent.” Recognition of the analogous unity of rational discourse is prelude to releasing the spheres of culture and religion from subjection to the epistemology that functions in the natural sciences and frees them for investigation on their own terms. (shrink)

2014 Reprint of 1945 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The first part deals with Greek cosmology and is the longest, the most elaborate and, on the whole, the liveliest part of a book which never deviates into dullness. The dominant thought in Greek cosmology, Collingwood holds, was the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, nature being the substance of something ensouled where "soul" meant the self-moving. Part II is "The Renaissance View of Nature." (...) Collingwood describes the rise and decline of the deists' view of Nature as a machine designed by the Great Contriver who, having turned it out, watches it go. Part III, "The Modern View of Nature," deals with very recent or contemporary philosophy and science, discerning in it a radical evolutionism first in biology and later in cosmology. Remains to this day a classic text in the history of ideas. (shrink)

A royal lecture of Mencius in the period of King Yeongjo shows the unique characteristics of the Joseon Confucian classics. While the founder of the Chinese Ming dynasty deleted the phrase of Mencius which did not conform the absolute monarch, King Yeongjo had the same mind set as the founder of the Chinese Ming dynasty and did not’s do this. It led the attendees in a royal lecture to have a discussion freely with King Yeongjo. It reveals what Mencius’s intention (...) is. King Yeongjo tries to evaluate Mencius as a servant without hiding his true feelings. this shows that he tries to figure out Mencius as the composition of the monarch and his subordinates, and to emphasize the virtue of loyalty by limiting Mencius to his subordinate status. On the other hand, the subordinates who attended a royal lecture try to realize the royal leaderships of King Yeongjo by interpreting Mencius' interests and moral nature as the composition of Zhu Xi's desires and moral principles. For this reason, Joseon scholars also insisted that King Yeongjo became a moral ruler through studying to keep consciousness awake. This can be said to be an intrinsic characteristic of the Joseon Confucian classics culture to interpret servants as equivalent to the monarch. (shrink)

Visual self-recognition is often controversially cited as an indicator of self-awareness and assessed with the mirror-mark test. Great apes and humans, unlike small apes and monkeys, have repeatedly passed mirror tests, suggesting that the underlying brain processes are homologous and evolved 14-18 million years ago. However, neuroscientific, developmental, and clinical dissociations show that the medium used for self-recognition (mirror vs photograph vs video) significantly alters behavioral and brain responses, likely due to perceptual differences among the different media and (...) prior experience. On the basis of this evidence and evolutionary considerations, we argue that the visual self-recognition skills evident in humans and great apes are a byproduct of a general capacity to collate representations, and need not index other aspects of self-awareness. (shrink)

Contemporaryphilosophyseems a great swirling almost chaos. Every situation must seem so at the time, probably because philosophy itself resists structura tion and because personal and political factors within as well as without the discipline must fade in order for the genuinely philosophical merits of performances to be assessed. Nevertheless, some remarks can still be made to situate the present volume. For example, at least half of philosophy on planet Earth is today pursued in North America (which is not to say (...) that this portion is any less internally incoherent than the whole of which it thus becomes the largest part) and the present volume is North American. (Incidentally, the recognition of culturally geographic traditions and tendencies nowise implies that striving for cross-culturalif not trans-cultural philosophical validity has failed or ceased. Rather, it merely recognizes a significant aspect relevant from the historical point of view.) Episte- Aesthetics Ethics Etc. mology Analytic Philosophy Marxism Existentialism Etc. Figure 1. There are two main ways in which philosophical developments are classified. One is in terms of tendencies, movements, and schools of thought and the other is in terms of traditional sub-disciplines. When there is little contention among schools, the predominant way is in terms of sub-disciplines, such as aesthetics, ethics, politics, etc. Today this mode of classification can be seen to intersect with that in terms of movements and tendencies, both of which are represented in the above chart. (shrink)

If mourning is a proof of value, how could it be appropriate to move on when one has truly loved and valued someone? Assuming that it is appropriate to value others extremely highly – perhaps even infinitely – how could it ever make sense for one’s grief to abate? Do loss and proper mourning thus present us with a choice between living well and loving well? This paper aims to vindicate the pressing nature of these questions while arguing that (...) we do not need to choose between living well and loving well. It discusses how these questions become pressing, some empirical research seeming to imply that humans do not tend to love well at all, and finally, offers an explanation of why ceasing to mourn need not be a failure of love. In particular, we offer an account of how ceasing to mourn can be a fitting response to the object of love, as well as compatible with living well. (shrink)

Co-authorship of papers is very common in most areas of science, and it has increased as the complexity of research has strengthened the need for scientific collaboration. But the fact that papers have more than an author tends to complicate the attribution of merit to individual scientists. I argue that collaboration does not necessarily entail co-authorship, but that in many cases the latter is an option that individual authors might not choose, at least in principle: each author might publish in (...) a separate way her own contribution to the collaborative project in which she has taken part, or papers could explicitly state what the contribution of each individual author has been. I ask, hence, why it is that scientists prefer to ‘pool’ their contributions instead of keeping them separate, if what they pursue in their professional careers is individual recognition. My answer is based on the view of the scientific paper as a piece of argumentation, following an inferentialist approach to scientific knowledge. A few empirical predictions from the model presented here are suggested in the conclusions. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biologists categorize many different kinds of things, from ontogenetic stages to modules of gene activity. The process of categorization—the establishment of “kinds”—is an implicit part of describing the natural world in consistent, useful ways, and has an essentially practical rather than philosophical basis. Kinds commonly serve one of three purposes: they may function (1) as practical tools for communication; (2) to support prediction and generalization; or (3) as a basis for theoretical discussions. Beyond the minimal requirement that classifications (...) reflect biological reality, what sorts of kinds or classification will be useful in advancing a research program depends on the epistemological context. Thus, the important meaning of “natural” in “natural kinds” is not “natural with respect to nature,” but “natural with respect to the question.” This conclusion arises from the recognition that the proper role of concepts (e.g. natural kind, module, homology, model) is not to answer biological questions, but rather to help frame them. From a scientist’s perspective, arguing about the wording (or existence) of a single definition of “natural” or “kind” is beside the point: we get more work done by letting the question at hand determine what kinds of kinds are natural, on the basis of their ability to help answer it. We should be content to let “natural kinds” remain vague, multivalent, and–therefore broadly useful. For a philosopher like Hacking, the diverse, disparate, and ultimately incommensurable uses of the term “natural kind” have diluted its value so far that it loses all meaning. For practicing scientists, however, defining useful kinds in the context of particular questions and systems remains a productive epistemological strategy. (shrink)

This paper analyses the model of interaction at the heart of Axel Honneth's social philosophy. It argues that interaction in his mature ethics of recognition has been reduced to intercourse between human persons and that the role of nature is now missing from it. The ethics of recognition takes into account neither the material dimensions of individual and social action, nor the normative meaning of non-human persons and natural environments. The loss of nature in the mature (...) ethics of recognition is made visible through a comparison with Honneth's initial formulation of his project. As an anthropology of intersubjectivity combining the teaching of the German philosophical anthropologists and G.H. Mead, his first model sought to ground social theory in the natural preconditions of human action. The last part of the article argues that a return to Mead's theory of practical intersubjectivity informed by Merleau-Ponty's germane theory of intercorporeity provides essential conceptual tools to enable the integration of the natural and the material within the theory of recognition. (shrink)

Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with (...) new analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Recognition of legal personhood in contemporary international and domestic law is a matter of signs. Those signs identify the existence of the legal person: human animals, corporations and states. They also identify facets of that personhood that situate the signified entities within webs of rights and responsibilities. Entities that are not legal persons lack agency and are thus invisible. They may be acted on but, absent the personhood that is communicated through a range of indicia and shapes both legal (...) and popular understanding of powers and obligations, they lack standing in judicial fora. They are signified as entities that are the subjects of action by legal persons, for example exploitation through rights regarding natural resources or commodification of ‘wild’, companion and other non-human animals. They are also signified as members of a diverse class of non-persons such as ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’. This article explores the consequences of law’s signification of personhood and the natural world before asking whether we both should and could recognise domains such as specific rivers, forests or even Antarctica as a type of legal person. Recognition might acknowledge the salience of nature in the ontologies of colonised First Peoples. It might also underpin a global response to climate change as the existential crisis of the Anthropocene. In understanding law as a matter of signifiers and syntaxes the article cautions that ostensible recognition of some domains as persons has been aspirational rather than substantive, with observers misreading the sign as necessarily transforming power relationships. The article also cautions that personhood for nature or particular domains may be contrary to the self-determination of colonised First Peoples. (shrink)

Co-authorship of papers is very common in most areas of science, and it has increased as the complexity of research has strengthened the need for scientific collaboration. But the fact that papers have more than an author tends to complicate the attribution of merit to individual scientists. I argue that collaboration does not necessarily entail co-authorship, but that in many cases the latter is an option that individual authors might not choose, at least in principle: each author might publish in (...) a separate way her own contribution to the collaborative project in which she has taken part, or papers could explicitly state what the contribution of each individual author has been. I ask, hence, why it is that scientists prefer to ‘pool’ their contributions instead of keeping them separate, if what they pursue in their professional careers (besides epistemic goals) is individual recognition. My answer is based on the view of the scientific paper as a piece of argumentation, following an inferentialist approach to scientific knowledge. A few empirical predictions from the model presented here are suggested in the conclusions. (shrink)

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” (...) as a bridgeconcept that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

This paper pays special attention to T.H. Green's account of rights as developed in the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. Green's theory can be viewed as having at least two main levels. The first level is his general account of rights, emphasizing the notions of social recognition, of a power or capacity that each right-holder has, and of the common good subserved by proper rights. The second level is that of universal rights; here special attention will be (...) paid to Green's critique of seventeenth-century natural rights and to the theory of human rights that Green evolved to replace and improve upon the old natural rights tradition. In its account of contemporary human rights theory, the paperwill emphasize the special role that social recognition plays in both the moral project of justifying human rights and in the institutionalization that is a necessary feature of any fully constituted human right, functioning at full capacity. (shrink)

Global warming has aroused profound concerns about the future of humanity and the planet as a whole. Indeed, Bill McKibben has argued that anthropogenic climate change is tantamount to the very end of nature and articulates a sense of deep anxiety that many people share. I argue that this feeling of anxiety cannot be fully accounted for either by appeal to the consequences of global warming or the associated injustices. I locate its source with our recognition that human (...) beings are now responsible for some of the basic conditions supporting all life on Earth. I argue that if we are to assume such an awesome responsibility (and we must), it's good that we do so anxiously. While some have criticized the "I have a nightmare" global warming rhetoric of environmentalists, I identify a particular feature of our nightmare and claim that in it we can find a source for hope. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s system includes no ontology of nature, either in any traditional sense, or in any specifically Hegelian sense, of “ontology.” What Hegel provides instead is a philosophy of nature in which specifically natural activities generate specifically natural differences and identities out of themselves. I make my case first by considering the meaning of “ontology” Hegel inherited from Wolff and Kant. I show that Hegel rejected this sense of ontology for his own philosophy, (...) in part because of his recognition of the success of the Kantian critical project in making traditional ontology impossible. I then argue that although Hegel sometimes characterizes his own Objective Logic in ontological terms, he also restricts that characterization in a way that makes it inapplicable to his treatment of apparently natural categories in the Logic itself, and to his Philosophy of Nature. Against this anti-ontological background I examine a small portion of Hegel’s concrete treatment of natural phenomena and kinds: his discussion of the nervous system in higher-order animals. Through its self-formation and the contribution of its nervous-system activity to its overall life, the animal does not implement differences, identities, or logical structures borrowed from elsewhere, but itself produces the differences and identities through which it is constituted. The self-determination Hegel articulates in his study of the nervous system gives us a good example of his typically “on-the-ground” approach, which is strikingly different from the “top-down” approach more common in the ontological tradition. (shrink)