Sometimes ordinary disagreements become deep as a result of epistemic injustice. The paper explores a hitherto unnoticed connection between two phenomena that have received ample attention in recent social epistemology: deep disagreement and epistemic injustice. When epistemic injustice comes into play in a regular disagreement, this can lead to higher-order disagreement about what counts as evidence concerning the original disagreement, which deepens the disagreement. After considering a common definition of deep disagreement, it is proposed that the depth of disagreements is (...) best understood as a matter of degree. Then, a case study of real-life disagreement is introduced: the disagreement about whether racism is a significant issue in the Netherlands, illustrated by the tradition of ‘Black Pete’. It is argued that there is disagreement about what counts as evidence in the case study because of two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, there is disagreement about epistemic principles concerning whether private first-personal experience of racism is a weighty source of evidence in this domain, whether victims of racism count as important testifiers in this domain, and how to assess testimony that is not intelligible to you because it employs concepts and terminology you are unfamiliar with. By dismissing the relevant testimony and epistemic resources, the disagreement boils down to disagreement on the level of epistemic principles concerning,, and. Introducinginjustice-based deep disagreementhighlights moral and political aspects of disagreements that might seem factual. (shrink)

This careful and engaging introduction to Aristotle equips readers of ancient philosophy and classics with an intellectual map that will guide their further exploration within the terrains of Aristotelian philosophy and logic. The book does not seek to provide a verdict or to persuade the reader of the usefulness of Aristotle's ideas. Instead it offers a comprehensive introduction to key philosophical areas while situating the reader within the ongoing intellectual debates on Aristotle's significance and relevance. Crowley's book allows an overview (...) of Aristotle's contributions and includes discussions on the Organon, the epitome of his logical treatises, his works on biology, nature and causation, metaphysics, citizenship, ethics and eudaimonia. The book is a valuable tool for readers interested in becoming acquainted with the work of Aristotle but most importantly for those who are keen to understand his many interpretations. (shrink)

Social theory remains puzzled by the relation between practices and structures, or the link between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’. Grand theorists including Giddens and Bourdieu have gained distinction for their writings on these questions, trying to marry insights and concerns of a ‘micro’ sociological nature with traditional ‘macro’ structural questions including inequality, power relations, and social reproduction. These theorists arguably fail, however, in their attempts to move social theory beyond traditional dualisms. Relevant but neglected contributions from ethnomethodology are introduced and compared (...) to the work of Giddens and Bourdieu in an attempt to identify and outline an approach to practices and structures that more reliably avoids problems of dualism and reification, and at the same time offers an understanding of structures and their relations to practices that can be much more closely grounded in empirical studies. Key Words: micro-macro link • reification • ethnomethodology • Pierre Bourdieu • Jeff Coulter. (shrink)

It is not intended as some sort of revelation on my part that Greenberg's cultural theory was originally Marxist in its stresses and, indeed in its attitude to what constituted explanation in such matters. I point out the Marxist and historical mode of proceeding as emphatically as I do partly because it may make my own procedure later in this paper seem a little less arbitrary. For I shall fall to arguing in the end with these essay's Marxism and their (...) history, and I want it understood that I think that to do so is to take issue with their strengths and their main drift.But I have to admit there are difficulties here. The essays in question ["Avant-Garde and Kitsch" and "Towards a Newer Lacoön"] are quite brief. They are, I think, extremely well written: it was not for nothing the Partisan Review described Clement Greenberg, when he first contributed to the journal early in 1939, as "a young writer who works in the New York customs house"—fine, redolent avant-garde pedigree, that! The language of these articles is forceful and easy, always straightforward, blessedly free from Marxist conundrums. Yet the price paid for such lucidity, here as so often, is a degree of inexplicitness—certain amount of elegant skirting round the difficult issues, where one might otherwise be obliged to call out the ponderous armory of Marx's concepts and somewhat spoil the low of the prose from one firm statement to another. The Marxism, in other words, is quite largely implicit; it is stated on occasion, with brittle and pugnacious finality, as the essay's frame of reference, but it remains to the reader to determine just how it works in the history and theory presented—what that history and theory depend on, in the way of Marxist assumptions about class and capital or even abase and superstructure. That is what I intend to do in this paper: to interpret and extrapolate from the texts, even at the risk of making their Marxism declare itself more stridently than the "young writer" seems to have wished. And I should admit straight away that there are several point in what follows where I am genuinely uncertain as to whether I am diverging from Greenberg's argument or explaining it more fully. This does not worry me overmuch, as long as we are alerted to the special danger in this case, dealing with such transparent yet guarded prose, and as long as we can agree that the project in general—pressing home a Marxist reading of texts which situate themselves within the Marxist tradition—is a reasonable one.22. This carelessness distinguishes the present paper from two recent studies of Greenberg's early writings, Serge Guilbaut's "The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America," October 15 , and Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock's "Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed," Art History 3 I am indebted to both these essays and am sure that their strictures on the superficiality—not to say the opportunism–of Greenberg's Marxism are largely right. But I am nonetheless interested in the challenge offered to most Marxist, and non-Marxist, accounts of modern history by what I take to be a justified though extreme, pessimism as t the nature of established culture since 1870. That pessimism is characteristic, I suppose, of what Marxists call an ultraleftist point of view. I believe, as I say, that a version of some such view is correct and would therefore with to treat Greenberg's theory as if it were a decently elaborated Marxism of an ultraleftist kind, on which issues in certain mistaken views but which need not so issue and which might still provide, cleansed of those errors, a good vantage for a history of our culture.T. J. Clark, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is the author of The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. His book on impressionist painting and Paris is forthcoming. (shrink)

This is the first volume to address directly the question of the speciation of modern Homo sapiens. The subject raises profound questions about the nature of the species, our defining characteristic, and the brain changes and their genetic basis that make us distinct. The British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences have brought together experts from palaeontology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory to present evidence and theories at the cutting edge of our understanding of these issues.Palaeontological and (...) genetic work suggests that the transition from a precursor hominid species to modern man took place between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. Some contributors discuss what is most characteristic of the species, focussing on language and its possible basis in brain lateralization. This work is placed in the context of speciation theory, which has remained a subject of considerable debate since the evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. The timing of specific transitions in hominid evolution is discussed, as also is the question of the neural basis of language. Other contributors address the possible genetic nature of the transition, with reference to changes on the X and Y chromosomes that may account for sex differences in lateralization and verbal ability. These differences are discussed in terms of the theory of sexual selection, and with reference to the mechanisms of speciation.These essays will be vital reading for anyone interested in the nature and origins of the species, and specifically human abilities. (shrink)

T. J. Smiley; XII.—Entailment and Deducibility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 233–254, https://doi.org/10.1093.

The celebrated western humanist tradition has its source in its early philosophical texts. In The Gift of Death, Derrida analyses the history of the emergence of ethical responsibility in the so-called Religions of the Book such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While the humanist project helped itself through its conquest of the human sphere, it has served to upset the ecological balance and jeopardize sustainability. While searching for an inclusive vision for a sustainable, ethical perspective, Dōgen’s philosophy gains relevance in (...) the contemporary context. (shrink)

This article reviews and corrects frequent misunderstandings of somaesthetics, the multidisciplinary field of study of the lived body conceived by Richard Shusterman. After responding to an article published in Contemporary Pragmatism, I extend the discussion to cover larger topics of discussion related to somaesthetics and misapprehensions by its critics, including the nature of somatic experience, the role of pleasure, and the relevance of culture. In rectifying mistakes of understanding, it is hoped the effort will foster better understanding and better critique.

Foucault’s critics have often ignored or misunderstool Foucault’s later work, The History of Sexuality and related texts. Only by careful reading of these texts is it possible to appreciate the maturity of Foucault’s social critism, to distil an implicit social theory from his writings, and to gage the true significance of his contributions. In this paper, The History of Sexuality is first placed in the context of Foucault’s earlier works, then used, along with other texts, to answer the most common (...) and famous critiques of his work. In the process, the contours and virtues of Foucault’s implicit social theory are indicated. Similarities with Nietzsche, Weber and Critical Theory are mentioned, but it is suggested that Foucault is in many ways a unique and uniquely significant thinker. Finally, it is argued that Foucault’s works should not be dismissed, as is all too common, but that his provocative reformation of social theory can and should be received and criticized as such. (shrink)

Some philosophers have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is no God. For Sartre and Nagel, for example, a God of the traditional classical theistic sort would constrain our powers of self-creative autonomy in ways that would severely detract from the meaning of our lives, possibly even evacuate our lives of all meaning. Some philosophers, by contrast, have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is a God. God and the Meanings of Life is interested (...) in exploring the truth in both these schools of thought, seeking to discover what God could and couldn't do to make life meaningful (as well as what he would and wouldn't do). Mawson espouses a version of the 'amalgam' or 'pluralism' thesis about the issue of life's meaning – in essence, that there are a number of different legitimate meanings of 'meaning' (and indeed 'life') in the question of life's meaning. According to Mawson, God, were he to exist, would help make life meaningful in some of these senses and hinder in some others. He argues that whilst there could be meaning in a Godless universe, there could be other sorts of meaning in a Godly one and that these would be deeper. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: We extend the authors’ arguments on direct perception, specificity, and foundational principles to concerns for theories of joint action. We argue for the usefulness of the affordance concept in an ecological theory of social interaction; highlighting linkages between theories of affordance-based behavior and fundamental, physical principles.

How do we think about animals? How do we decide what they deserve and how we ought to treat them? Subhuman takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions, drawing from research in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, law, history, sociology, economics, and anthropology. Subhuman argues that our attitudes to nonhuman animals, both positive and negative, largely arise from our need to compare ourselves to them.

Can the issue of how important it is whether or not there is a God be decided prior to deciding whether or not there is a God? In this paper, I explore some difficulties that stand in the way of answering this question in the affirmative and some of the implications of these difficulties for that part of the Philosophy of Religion which concerns itself with assessing arguments for and against the existence of God, the implications for how its importance (...) may best be defended within secular academe. (shrink)

Consistent application of dialectical materialism leads Marxism-Leninism to the assertion that matter is infinite in its properties. However, the history of physics shows that the various levels of matter possess geometric dimensions that originate at the lowest level and continue through the others. The search for absolute natural constants -- which Planck called the most pleasant task of physics -- shows the conviction of the physicists that there is a limit to the parameters, a limit beyond which matter is no (...) longer divisible. (shrink)

Dada continues to attract a small following among scholars, but has perhaps not yet been recognized as providing invaluable insight into the underlying functions and potentials of culture generally. This article explores the nature and theoretical import of Dada, and two radically different visions of culture as they might try to accommodate and explain Dada. Models of culture taken from Bourdieu and Nietzsche are brought to bear, first on Dada, and then on each other, with the aim of developing a (...) theoretically informed understanding of Dada, and also demonstrating the practical, political and philosophical difficulties involved in choosing between a conflict model of culture and an `existential' model. Ultimately, both models are found to be helpful but insufficient at providing an adequate account of Dada, and it is suggested that present models of cultural analysis can benefit by revisiting both Dada and Nietzsche, trying to incorporate their insights and critically evaluate their visions of culture. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Satoshi Higuchi, Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture: Projects in Japan (New York, NY; Oxford, England: Routledge, 2021), 138 pages./ Satoshi Higuchi’s Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture is a succinct and innovative work in aesthetics and philosophy of education, despite what the title may otherwise imply. Indeed, the title may be the only shortcoming in this work, for it does not convey the scope of the concepts covered. It may be better titled Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of (...) Education, but even this does not express the important and fascinating discussions on the aesthetics of sports contained herein; and “education” is perhaps too narrow to encompass the range of application of the ideas (especially in the final part of the book). However, when the reader looks past the title, they will find a nicely organized work introducing readers to the topic of the aesthetics of sport, its application for improving pedagogy, and several avenues for further development in these areas. Higuchi’s previous work is a tireless series of granting legitimacy to the study of sports. Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture is another important step in this project. Readers need not be familiar with Richard Shusterman’s multidisciplinary project of somaesthetics for, when it is necessary, Higuchi provides the relevant details. Readers who are familiar with somaesthetics will very quickly see how the ideas here complement it well. (shrink)

Intersectional scholarship has become increasingly important, largely because it is more nuanced than scholarship emphasizing only class, race, or gender. Much intersectional scholarship is limiting, however, in curtailing our conceptualizations of how many intersecting identities might be relevant for explaining crime. The older literature on deviant subcultures, including gang studies, actually addressed issues of intersectionality, and in a less restrictive manner, also acknowledging the importance of youth and neighborhood ecology. Drawing on early and more recent subcultural scholarship, the theoretical importance (...) of Weberian and ethnomethodological themes is illustrated, suggesting the value of closely empirical research sensitive to theoretical issues including how social categories are used in explaining crime and how patterns of offending are carried by individuals subject to categorization. (shrink)

Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)

This article discusses two central methodological postulates (adequacy and subjective meaning) pertaining to the social sciences brought forward by Alfred Schütz, and as presented by Lester Embree’s ‘Economics in the Context of Alfred Schütz’s Theory of Science’. The relationship between the postulates and the actual practice of economics is discussed. The author shows how Schütz’s writings describe a spectrum of methods that ranges from low abstraction and an attempt to understand individual plans and purposes on the one hand to highly (...) abstract and aggregate modeling on the other. It is argued that the distribution of economic contributions is heavily skewed toward the latter. The second part of the article presents recent work by economists who have resisted this trend, and who have begun to expand our understanding of economic processes by taking seriously the notion of economics as a social science. (shrink)

Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)