In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deeper philosophical roots of such far-right ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon, to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.

I defend a form of preventive detention through the creation of an offence of ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’. This differs from alternative proposals and actual habitual offender laws that impose extra periods of incarceration on offenders after they have completed the sentence for their most recent crime or as a result of a certain number of prior convictions. I, instead, would make ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’ an offence itself. Persons to be preventively detained would (...) be tried and convicted of this offence. My approach would then have one significant advantage: provided the elements of being a PVDO could be rendered sufficiently determinate, punishing persons under such an offence would comport with central rule of law values, most importantly legality and fair notice, as well as principles of proportionality in sentencing. (shrink)

The semantic paradoxes are often associated with self-reference or referential circularity. Yablo (Analysis 53(4):251–252, 1993), however, has shown that there are infinitary versions of the paradoxes that do not involve this form of circularity. It remains an open question what relations of reference between collections of sentences afford the structure necessary for paradoxicality. In this essay, we lay the groundwork for a general investigation into the nature of reference structures that support the semantic paradoxes and the semantic hypodoxes. We develop (...) a functionally complete infinitary propositional language endowed with a denotation assignment and extract the reference structural information in terms of graph-theoretic properties. We introduce the new concepts of dangerous and precarious reference graphs, which allows us to rigorously define the task: classify the dangerous and precarious directed graphs purely in terms of their graph-theoretic properties. Ungroundedness will be shown to fully characterize the precarious reference graphs and fully characterize the dangerous finite graphs. We prove that an undirected graph has a dangerous orientation if and only if it contains a cycle, providing some support for the traditional idea that cyclic structure is required for paradoxicality. This leaves the task of classifying danger for infinite acyclic reference graphs. We provide some compactness results, which give further necessary conditions on danger in infinite graphs, which in conjunction with a notion of self-containment allows us to prove that dangerous acyclic graphs must have infinitely many vertices with infinite out-degree. But a full characterization of danger remains an open question. In the appendices we relate our results to the results given in Cook (J Symb Log 69(3):767–774, 2004) and Yablo (2006) with respect to more restricted sentences systems, which we call $\mathcal{F}$ -systems. (shrink)

Some collective irrationalities, like epistemically and pragmatically reckless Covid skepticism, are especially dangerous. While we normally have incentives to avoid dangerous beliefs, there are cases in which the danger of a belief is valuable. This is not captured by most accounts of motivated reasoning. I argue that Covid skepticism can function as a costly signal (handicap) so as to more effectively communicate social identity and commitment.

Confusing clinical standoffs, loyalty to self-destruction and abrupt terminations are challenging and under-examined problems for the modern psychoanalytic practitioner. _The Danger of Change_ is a timely book that addresses the so-called resistant patient so many clinicians are familiar with. Robert Waska blends theory based on Melanie Klein’s classical stance with the more contemporary Freudian/Kleinian school, to demonstrate how to understand patients that are resistant to progress. Divided into four sections, this book covers: reluctant patients and the fight against change: caught (...) between the paranoid and depressive world greed and the dangers of change interruptions to the process of change: loss, envy, and the death instinct working toward change in the face of overwhelming odds Extensive and detailed clinical material is used to bring clarity to subjects including symbolism, conflict resolution, projective identification, the depressive and paranoid positions, change and trust. _The Danger of Change_ brings hope and clarity to cases involving patients who experience progress as a threat to their emotional wellbeing. It will be of great interest to all practising psychoanalysts, as well as those studying psychoanalytic theory and practice. (shrink)

The danger of being a gentleman: reflections on the ruling class in England (1932).--On the study of politics (1926).--Law and justice in Soviet Russia (1935).--The judicial function (1936).--The English constitution and French public opinion,1789-1794 (1938).--The committee system in English local government (1936).--Nationalism and the future of civilization (1932).--Mr. Justice Holmes: for his eighty-ninth birthday (1930).

"Dangerous Emotions is a sustained philosophical, phenomenological, and personal series of reflections on the role of passions and emotions, visceral responses, and human reactions which bypass and surpass the role of reason. Lingis has a unique perspective, a position already well fortified in many texts he has published, whereby he blends elements of philosophical texts (most notably Heidegger, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, and Neitzsche) with strange and intense experiences from everyday life across different geographies and cultures. He is clearly one (...) of the most brilliant philosophers of his generation. His book explores those moments and events usually unnoticed by philosophy, which philosophy needs to address if it is to provide us with a way of understanding life and living it well."—Elizabeth Grosz, author of Fluid Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the presence and value of danger in outdoor and adventurous activities and sports in safety-conscious societies, especially in relation to the education of children and youth. Based on an original analysis of the relation between the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, we offer an account of the relation between challenge, adventure, risk and danger, and emphasise the importance of teaching risk recognition, risk assessment, risk management and risk avoidance to children and youth, without the necessity of exposing (...) them to jeopardy in dangerous situations. Our conclusion is that ‘Safe Danger’ describes what educators should seek, namely: the educational benefits of the challenges set by risk-taking and the demands of risk-facing, including those in adventurous situations, which are obtainable in the absence of significant danger, and which contribute to risk education. The educational value of adventurous and outdoor pursuits lies elsewhere than in the opportunities that they present for danger-facing, for example in their promotion of self-reliance, confidence, ability to team-work, and especially in their promotion of risk education, as an integral aspect of everyday life planning, as preparation for the day’s adventurous challenges, and as an instrument of task completion. (shrink)

Through the criminal justice system so-called dangerous offenders are, besides the offence that they are being convicted of and sentenced to, also punished for acts that they have not done but that they are believe to be likely to commit in the future. The aim of this paper is to critically discuss whether some adherents of retributivism give a plausible rationale for punishing offenders more harshly if they, all else being equal, by means of predictions are believed to be (...) more dangerous than other offenders. While consequentialism has no problem, at least in principle, with this use of predictions most retributivists have been opponents of punishing offenders on the basis of predictions. How can an offender deserve to be punished for something that he has not done? But some retributivists like Anthony Duff and Stephen Morse have argued in favor of punishing offenders who are considered to be dangerous in the future more harshly than non-dangerous offenders. After having reconstructed their arguments in detail, it will be argued that both Duff’s and Morse’s attempts to give a retributivistic justification have several shortcomings. (shrink)

This article discusses obstacles to overcoming dangerous climate change. It employs an account of dangerous climate change that takes climate change and climate change policy as dangerous if it imposes avoidable costs of poverty prolongation. It then examines plausible accounts of the collective action problems that seem to explain the lack of ambition to mitigate. After criticizing the merits of two proposals to overcome these problems, it discusses the pledge and review process. It argues that pledge and (...) review possesses the virtues of encouraging broad participation and of providing a procedural safeguard for the right of sustainable development. However, given the perceptions of the marginal short term costs of mitigation, pledge and review is unlikely, at least initially, to issue in an agreement to make deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Because there is no rival approach that seems likely to better instantiate the two virtues, pledge and review may be the best available policy for mitigation. Moreover, recent economic research suggests that the co-benefits of mitigation may be greater than previously assumed and that the costs of renewable energy may be less than previously calculated. This would radically undermine claims that the short term mitigation costs necessarily render mitigation irrational and produce collective action problems. Given the circumstances, pledge and review might be our best hope to avoid dangerous climate change. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

What grounds a judgment that a work of art is immoral? This book argues that we cannot judge artworks morally in the same way that we judge people. What>'s more, there is no direct influence from moral judgments to aesthetic judgments: it is possible for artworks to be both immoral and beautiful.

This article critically engages with the work of Bruno Latour and, in particular, his book We Have Never Been Modern. Looking beyond the wit and brevity of Latour's writing, the article focuses on some of the non-innocent aspects of his vision of a non-modern world. Rather than completely rejecting the `Great Divides' between Nature and Culture, Westerners and non-Westerners, Latour is seen as only interested in erasing these major fault lines of modernity in order to draw them anew. Ultimately, Latour (...) is not asking his readers to doubt the superiority of Western science but only to understand this superiority differently — as contingent and uncertain rather than necessary and secure. Latour is not as alone as he would have us believe in bringing a non-modern world into focus and the article devotes the bulk of its attention to comparing Latour's thoughts with those governing the Euro-American discipline of international relations before and after the end of the Cold War. Latour's particular account of the non-modern condition, it is argued, corresponds well with the shift from realism to neo-realism within international relations and the replacement of bi-polarity by global technological competition as the dominant feature of the international system. Although Latour continues to be regularly attacked in the so-called `Science Wars' as an enemy of Western science, he actually joins forces with leading Euro-American security experts today in contending that the future of both `Science' and the `West' hinges on the careful monitoring and management of hybrid networks of humans and non-humans and not on uncompromising acts of `purification' as has been the strategy in the past. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 2, Page 208-254, Spring 2019.

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. First, I raise what (...) I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of different Indigenous groups. I then depart from Mariátegui and engage in a critical exercise to show that even he would be guilty of failing in his own solidarity demands. I follow that by drawing out some implications of the argument. I first sketch how this differentiation would play out against the political project of “Mestizaje,” a project that seems to inform some of the Latin American philosophical tradition. I then speculate about the kinds of duties that the field of Latin American philosophy might have towards the field of Indigenous Philosophy produced in Latin America. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that many sound ecological practices have a chance of success only if we follow sound aesthetic practices. If we want to produce and maintain sustainable landscapes, we must work to connect aesthetic preferences to what is ecologically sound. We must work against what I shall call “dangerous beauties.”.

Next SectionThe dominant conception of medical ethics being taught in British and American medical schools is at best pointless and at worst dangerous, or so it will be argued. Although it is laudable that medical schools have now given medical ethics a secure place in the curriculum, they go wrong in treating it like a scientific body of knowledge. Ethics is a unique subject matter precisely because of its widespread familiarity in all areas of life, and any teaching has (...) to start from this shared ethical understanding and from the familiar ethical concepts of ordinary language. Otherwise there is a real risk that spurious technocratic jargon will be deployed by teacher and student alike in the futile search for intellectual respectability, culminating in a misplaced sense of having “done” the ethics module. There are no better examples of such jargon than “consequentialism”, “deontology”, and the “Four Principles”. At best, they cannot do the work they were designed to do and, at worst, they can lead student and practitioner into ignoring their own healthy ethical intuitions and vocabulary. (shrink)

While the UK Home Office’s proposals to preventively detain people with what it has called dangerous severe personality disorder have been subjected to debate and criticism the deeply troubling jurisprudential issues in these proposals have not yet entered into public debate in a way that their seriousness deserves.1 It is good that a commentator as well known as Professor Szasz is speaking out on this issue.Professor Szasz focuses upon a crucial question by calling into question the medicalisation of terms (...) like dangerousness and mental illness.2 There is a great temptation for legislators and the public to treat these terms as if they are purely scientific terms and to think of risk assessment as a precise science. I don’t share Professor’s Szasz’s worry about how psychiatry is using these terms but I think there are some important questions about how these concepts function in the public sphere.This issue is important enough to justify the use of some rhetorical claims because such claims can serve to bring out what are neglected and important issues. In raising the following objections I am not attempting to refute the message that is in Szasz’s article or to say that he is not making an important point but rather to attempt to sharpen the issues and to suggest ways that we can respond to Professor Szasz’s challenge.Psychiatry has progressed in a number of ways since Professor Szasz wrote The Myth of Mental Illness.3 The science is much better, we have much better medications, and psychiatrists are acutely aware of the tension between treating their patient and their obligations to the public interest.So when Professor Szasz says: “Psychiatrists offer to relieve the disturbed person of the burden of coping …. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a phenomenological description of how athletes in specific risk sports explore human interaction with natural elements. Skydivers play with, and surf on, the encountering air while falling towards the ground. Kayakers play on the waves and with the stoppers and currents in the rivers. Climbers are ballerinas of the vertical, using cracks and holds in the cliffs to pull upwards against gravity forces. The theoretical background for the description is found in the (...) phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenology of Husserl focused on the theoretical intentionality of the transcendental ego. With Heidegger the human being's concrete and practical interaction with the environing world moved to the foreground. Heidegger's analyses of ?equipmentality? also throw important light on equipmentality in sports and how we deal with tools and equipment in sports. However, in Heidegger's analyses the body resides in the background both as subject and object. The importance of the active body-subject is well documented in the work of Merleau-Ponty, and also Todes. The human being is a bodily ?being-in-the-world? and the body is the active medium through which the world is grasped. The body is however also situated and aligned with the fundamental dimensions of the world, with vertical gravity and with horizontal action space. In this article I show in a concrete way how in some sports we use fundamental characteristics of the environing world in a mode of playfulness. In these sports human beings play in an extreme way with fundamental elements of nature. The article thus puts phenomenology to a test. It should be able to move from general characteristics to specific features of our bodily human involvement with the environing world. (shrink)

This paper explores how whiteness as the transcendental norm shapes the meaning structure of Black-being-in-the-world. If home is a place, a site, a dwelling of acceptance, where one is allowed to feel safe, to relax, to let one’s guard down, then being Black in white supremacist America is anathema to being at home for Black people. Indeed, to be Black is to be a stranger, something “strange,” “scary,” “dangerous,” an “outsider.” To be Black within white America belies what it (...) means to dwell, to reside, to rest. In other words, one’s sense of racialized Black embodiment remains on guard, unsettled, hyperalert. Phenomenologically, there is a profound sense of alienation, where one’s racialized body is ostracized and shunned. On this score, I examine, within the mundane context of an elevator, how the dynamics of intersubjectivity and sociality are strained through the dynamics of the white gaze. The white gaze, among other things, functions to police the meaning of the Black body and attempts to de-subjectify Black embodiment. In this way, the only real perspective is white. Black bodies are deemed devoid of a perspective on the world as there is no subjectivity, no sense of agential meaning making. One might say that Black people, on this view, constitute an essence, a typified mode of being. Unlike the existentialist thesis where existence precedes essence, Black people are locked into an objecthood, a fungible and fixed essence. This racial and racist myth is what, for Schutz, would collapse the importance that he places on intersubjectivity and sociality. Indeed, within this paper, I delineate the threatening, necro-political dimensions of whiteness that I experienced after writing the well-known article “Dear White America.” That experience cemented, for me, and for many other readers, what it means to occupy the residence of whiteness, an abode that can take one’s life in the blink of an eye. The experience of the racialized stranger means walking a tightrope, a precarious situation where one flirts with death, where one’s body is deemed hypersexual, inferior, frightening, and monstrous. Based upon this construction, the white body is deemed the site of virtue, safety, deliverer, protector of all things white and pure. Think here of “the white man’s burden” or the idea of “white manifest destiny.” Stain, blemish, taint, and defilement are indelible markers of the stranger. And based upon the logics of racial purity, one must extinguish the “vermin,” the “criminals,” the “rapists.” While I don’t explore this within the paper, Schutz scholars will immediately recognize the genocidal implications of what would have been at stake for Schutz had he not escaped Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic gaze and his Anschluss of Austria. My sense is that Schutz would have understood not just the horrors of white racism but would appreciate the necessity of theorizing the need to rethink home as existentially capacious and intersubjectively vibrant. I conclude this paper by thinking through the concept of “breakdown”, delineating its spatial, phenomenological, and subjectively embodied implications. Breakdown, as I use the term, upends forms of white racialized habituation, creating possible embodied psychic space for what I term un-suturing, which involves undoing the machinations of white safety in the face of alterity, where the stranger invokes wonder and self-critique. (shrink)

This article tries to discuss the potential dangers of proposing a world order in the form of the morally based idea of perpetual peace as it is developed by Kant and further propagated by Habermas and Derrida. Drawing on a distinction between the Kantian idea of morality (Moralität) attributed to the internality of man via its theological connection with god and an idea of ethics akin to Aristotelian and/or Hegelian notions (ethos or ethical life – Sittlichkeit), the article posits the (...) question of the role of morality in the formation of the idea of perpetual peace. While doing this, it will also discuss some of the dangers of imposing a moral law under the pretext of moral necessity onto a humanity who may not will to adhere to the same principles. Thus, even though it does not discuss human rights directly, all the argument revolves around the question of the status of universal human rights as the law of the cosmopoli- tan world and the institutions imposing that law on today’s nations. (shrink)

Journalism is viewed here as being in danger of becoming a profession, thereby changing the field into a narrow, monolithic, self?centered fellowship of true believers devoid of outward?looking and service orientations.

We often talk loosely of the “tyranny of the majority” as a threat to the workings of democracy. But, in ancient Greece, the analogy of demos and tyrant was no mere metaphor, nor a simple reflection of elite prejudice. Instead, it highlighted an important structural feature of Athenian democracy. Like the tyrant, the Athenian demos was an unaccountable political actor with the power to hold its subordinates to account. And like the tyrant, the demos could be dangerous to counsel (...) since the orator speaking before the assembled demos was accountable for the advice he gave. With Dangerous Counsel, Matthew Landauer analyzes the sometimes ferocious and unpredictable politics of accountability in ancient Greece and offers novel readings of ancient history, philosophy, rhetoric, and drama. In comparing the demos to a tyrant, thinkers such as Herodotus, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristophanes were attempting to work out a theory of the badness of unaccountable power; to understand the basic logic of accountability and why it is difficult to get right; and to explore the ways in which political discourse is profoundly shaped by institutions and power relationships. In the process they created strikingly portable theories of counsel and accountability that traveled across political regime types and remain relevant to our contemporary political dilemmas. (shrink)

(2013). DANGEROUS IDENTIFICATIONS: an exchange between jacques derrida and philippe lacoue-labarthe. Angelaki: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 91-104.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

Non-financial interests, and the conflicts of interest that may result from them, are frequently overlooked in biomedicine. This is partly due to the complex and varied nature of these interests, and the limited evidence available regarding their prevalence and impact on biomedical research and clinical practice. We suggest that there are no meaningful conceptual distinctions, and few practical differences, between financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, and accordingly, that both require careful consideration. Further, a better understanding of the complexities of (...) non-financial conflicts of interest, and their entanglement with financial conflicts of interest, may assist in the development of a more sophisticated approach to all forms of conflicts of interest. (shrink)

At the heart of the book - two views (naturalist and humanist) on the dangers of and Prospects of "scientific and technological progress," that defining the face of modern civilization. Its leaders are now the information, genetic cal and biological technology.

This paper develops a critique of Foucault's treatment of child sexual abuse in relation to his theory of the relationship between discourse and experience.

The danger of being a gentleman : reflections on the ruling class in England.-On the study of politics.-Law and justice in soviet Russia.-The judicial function.-The English constitution and French public opinion,1789-1794.-Nationalism and the future of civilization.-Mr. Justice Holmes: for his eighty-ninth birthday.

Plato’s Protagoras contains, among other things, three short but puzzling remarks on the media of philosophy. First, at 328e5–329b1, Plato makes Socrates worry that long speeches, just like books, are deceptive, because they operate in a discursive mode void of questions and answers. Second, at 347c3–348a2, Socrates argues that discussion of poetry is a presumptuous affair, because, the poems’ message, just like the message of any written text, cannot be properly examined if the author is not present. Third, at 360e6–361d6, (...) it becomes clear that even if the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras was conducted by means of short questions and answers, this spoken mode of discourse is problematic too, because it ended up distracting the inquiry from its proper course. As this paper 2 sets out to argue, Plato does not only make Socrates articulate these worries to exhibit the hazards of discursive commodifi cation. In line with Socrates’ warning to the young Hippocrates of the dangers of sophistic rhetoric, and the sophists’ practice of trading in teachings, they are also meant to problematize the thin line between philosophical and sophistical practice. By examining these worries in the light of how the three relevant modes of discourse are exemplifi ed in the dialogue, this paper aims to isolate and clarify the reasons behind them in terms of deceit, presumptuousness and distraction; and to argue that these reasons cast doubts on the common assumption that the dialogue’s primary aim is to show how sophistical rhetoric must succumb to Socratic dialectic. (shrink)

The thesis of incommensurability concerns the interrelation between subjective culture and objective culture through which the constitutive agency of chaos (incommensurability) emerges. The objectivations/products, the constituents of objective culture, carry their own Being, and this Being transcends the original subjective expressivities/intentions. The constitutive agency of this incommensurable interrelation becomes apparent in an age of globalization where its effects become global, bringing about dangerous socio-political volatilities. To illustrate, global warming has been neither the expressive intention of subjective culture nor a (...) constituent of energy per se as an objectivated product in the context of objective culture. It emerges in the interrelation, an unforeseen incommensurability, a chaos in the culture of energy that threatens the globe/world in various ways. Incommensurability, the cultural form of chaos, is recognized as dramatically foiling human instrumental rationality, spoiling its hubris or belief in its own progress. The doctrine of incommensurability shows that we can not know what we are doing while we are doing it, for the empirical manifestations of chaos are only knowable after the fact and its effects are unpredictable. This book of essays is divided into two parts: the first dealing with contemporary themes in subjective culture and the second with those in objective culture. A few of the pressing topics treated in this volume are: abstracted information of a computer-based society versus locally-based, grounded knowledge, abstracted neo-liberal economics versus place-grounded economics, the geo-politics of peak oil, and the intensification of natural disasters as a consequence of global warming reveal the tenuous character of the contemporary world. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs offering hazard pay ethically permissible when the pay premium is the only reason that a dangerous job is accepted? Robert C. Hughes argues that it is not. Central to his argument is the claim that in such cases, workers intend the foreseeable risks of harm as a means to the pay premium. Herein I question the plausibility of this claim and then develop a conception of the concept of means sufficient to make it plausible. By so doing, I (...) provide support for Hughes’s stringent position. (shrink)

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Responding to the climate crisis requires social and economic innovation—because climate change is a symptom of patriarchal capitalist systems that are concentrating—rather than distributing—wealth and power. Despite the need for social and economic innovation, technological innovation continues to be prioritized in climate policy and climate investments. This paper reviews the dangers of technological optimism in climate policy by exploring its links to patriarchal systems and masculinity. The disproportionate focus on science and technology emerges from and reinforces “climate isolationism,” a term (...) that I use to refer to the common framing of climate change as an isolated discrete, scientific problem in need of technological solutions. This framing stems from assumptions of patriarchal white-male conceptions of privilege and power that evolve from a colonizing and controlling mindset. Masculine technological optimism is dangerous because it is exclusive, it minimizes the need for social change and social innovation, and it is ineffective in catalyzing inclusive societal transformation. This paper argues that embracing feminist, antiracist values is necessary for transformative climate policies, economic justice, and climate justice. (shrink)

A brief overview of Classical Athenian views of persuasion.

Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex markets in (...) India.Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger hold firmly entrenched places within the canon of modern philosophy. And rightly so: both are penetrating critics of liberal modernity. Yet we need to ask ourselves whether, as academics teaching these thinkers, we are doing full justice to the more disturbing aspects of their thought. They don’t simply interrogate the axioms of modern life as a subject for intellectual reflection; they have a praxis-oriented project to demolish the post-1789 moral-political dispensation that we tend to take (...) for granted and replace it with a new radically illiberal and anti-egalitarian dispensation. The task of reconsidering the perils of going too easy on these thinkers, or giving them the benefit of the doubt, is made more urgent by the apparent return of fascist or ‘fascoid’ modes of politics, and in particular, the emergence of a far-right intelligentsia all too keen to appropriate these thinkers for far-right purposes. (shrink)

"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science.... Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist.

Looking back, the moral panic that precipitated the decimation of horror comics in the 1950s seems quaint, yet concerns about the psychological impact of violent media on consumers have never disappeared. In this article, I outline a particular type of psychological impact we ought to take seriously when evaluating the moral status of entertainment. I then consider (a) ways in which comics seem immune from claims that they create this kind of impact for their readers, as well as (b) ways (...) in which we might think that comics generate special instances of moral danger for readers. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to inform or alert readers to the extensive use and ready availability of genetic information that poses varying degrees of social and legal danger. The eugenics movement of the 1920s and the general acceptance of genetic essentialism provide context for considering contemporary examples of the problem. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes an argumentative approach, supporting proposals with ideas from historical and current research literature. Findings The limits of data protection, extensive use of direct-to-consumer genetic (...) testing and use of genetic information in white nationalist circles portend a resurgence of eugenic beliefs from a century ago. Social implications Research-based recommendations may help to avoid extreme consequences by encouraging people to make informed decisions about the use of genetic information. Originality/value The paper counterposes contemporary understanding of genetic testing and data accessibility with the much older ideology of eugenics, leading to concerns about how white nationalists might further their aims with 21st century technology. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on Dixon et al.'s discussion on the dangers of employing prejudice-reduction interventions that seek to promote intergroup harmony in historically unequal societies. Specifically, it illustrates these dangers by discussing my work in Israel on the processes and practices through which reconciliation-aimed encounters between Jews and Arabs mitigate sociopolitical change.

From the perspective of at least some of our valuing practices, the advance of the sciences can seem to constitute a threat. The question I take up in this dissertation is whether or not naturalism--understood as the picture of the world and of ourselves bequeathed to us by the sciences--should be understood as a threat to our moral practices, to moral living. On the account I defend, the knowledge we gain from empirical inquiry need not undermine moral living in toto, (...) although a naturalistic mindset does raise some possibly dangerous questions for particular inherited moral norms and ideals. In defense of my claim that the examined life need not destroy the moral life, I develop a social view of morality. On this view, both moral authority and moral justification are viewed as fundamentally social phenomena, and morality itself as a tool for social living. With a case study on the development of the ethics of care, I illustrate ways in which a concern for empirically truthful representations of humanity can also dovetail with liberatory political concerns. That is, I defend not only the claim that moral living can survive critical scrutiny, but also the claim that it can be enriched by this scrutiny--that the truth can be transformative. Expansive moral ideals, such as those humanist views that see progress in the expansion of our moral vocabularies and institutions, are compatible with a naturalistic outlook, I argue. However, a strong defense of humanist views, according to which such ideals flow unproblematically from the nature of reason or from the history of ethical practice, does not seem possible. A weak defense of humanism, which connects the ideals of humanists to more widely held values, seems more promising. In working socially and politically for their cause, I contend that humanists in some sense have the truth on their side: sexist, racist, classist, or otherwise inegalitarian views regularly trade in falsehoods and obfuscation. Empirically truthful accounts of particular inherited norms and ideals thus continue to be dangerous, at least for those invested in the continued existence of the corresponding institutions. (shrink)

This article aims to illustrate how racism could be addressed. Three pedagogies - a dangerous pedagogy as courageous dialogue, a pedagogy of discomfort and a critical pedagogy - are presented as examples to reframe the issue of racism. The contribution of James Cone is applied as a broad descriptive theoretical framework. Cone's views in this article resonate with the history of contemporary racism in South Africa and will therefore be juxtaposed by the contribution of South African theologians. A fourth (...) pedagogy, namely, a pedagogy of freedom and healing, is introduced to address gaps in the first three pedagogies. The objective is to realise freedom or healing between people of different races. (shrink)