It seems to be impossible to draw metaphysical conclusions about the world merely from our concepts or our language alone. After all, our concepts alone only concern how we aim to represent the world, not how the world in fact is. In this paper I argue that this is mistaken. We can sometimes draw substantial metaphysical conclusions simply from thinking about how we represent the world. But by themselves such conclusions can be flawed if the concepts from (...) which they are drawn are themselves flawed. I propose that we can overcome these limitations by focusing on a special class of concepts: inescapable concepts. Combining arguments about what the world is like from considerations about our concepts alone, together with an argument that the relevant concepts are inescapable, leads to a novel method for metaphysics, which is broadly neo-Kantian. (shrink)

The world has not always been there. At least not in philosophy. This two-part article examines the complex interplay of concepts among which the idea of the world appeared, and analyses the characteristics that allow it to play a central role in the space of philosophy. These are found to be fundamentally two. First, its capacity to identify with the idea of a closed, ordered totality, at the same time as it erodes the consistency of the latter and opens (...) the philosophical space onto a positive use of the idea of indetermination. And second, the way in which it operates inside several well-ordered philosophical systems as a point of confusion: as a blurred point that lacks the type of clarity and distinction normally required of philosophical concepts, and that nonetheless appears to be important enough not to be expelled from philosophy. The first part of the article, published in this issue, reconstructs some of the coordinates within which the problematic notion of the world comes to appear. The planned second part will investigate how the idea of the world comes to play a central role within contemporary philosophy by allowing for a new articulation between the idea of the universal and the idea of totality – which produces a cascade of effects, the most notable of which are a new articulation of the idea of subject, and of the relation between philosophy and praxis. (shrink)

According to Thomas Nagel, morality's authority is determined by the extent to which its way of balancing agent-neutral and agent-relative values resembles reason's. He himself would like to think that the resemblance is close enough to ensure that it will always be reasonable to act as morality demands. But his attempts to establish this never really get off the ground, in large part because he never makes it very clear how these two perspectives on value are to be characterized. My (...) goal in this paper is to show how we might flesh out Nagel's conception of these matters by construing reason as a kind of self-governance and morality as involving a certain kind of cooperation. The challenge will therefore be to determine what self-governance and cooperation require of peoplegiven the assumption that there are objective values and that they take both the agent-neutral and the agent-relative forms. What we shall find is that their requirements differ rather more than Nagel allows, but perhaps not enough to prevent morality from being in some significant sense inescapable. (shrink)

According to Thomas Nagel, morality's authority is determined by the extent to which its way of balancing agent-neutral and agent-relative values resembles reason's. He himself would like to think that the resemblance is close enough to ensure that it will always be reasonable to act as morality demands. But his attempts to establish this never really get off the ground, in large part because he never makes it very clear how these two perspectives on value are to be characterized. My (...) goal in this paper is to show how we might flesh out Nagel's conception of these matters by construing reason as a kind of self-governance and morality as involving a certain kind of cooperation. The challenge will therefore be to determine what self-governance and cooperation require of peoplegiven the assumption that there are objective values and that they take both the agent-neutral and the agent-relative forms. What we shall find is that their requirements differ rather more than Nagel allows, but perhaps not enough to prevent morality from being in some significant sense inescapable. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even holds that (...) awareness of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

Hume, Mill, And more recent thinkers have argued that the teleological conception of the universe must in the end revert to naturalism. I think these arguments are poor ones. As many have believed that a naturalistic universe is one in which man's life could have no meaning, I thought it important to spell out my grounds for this assessment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 265-266 [Access article in PDF] Definition Is Limited and Values Inescapable Richard Mullen THIS IS A welcome paper that lays bare some of the presumptions of those who seek to determine the status of psychiatric disorder. At different times debate on the subject reflects stigma, prejudice, needs for coherent categorization, and occasionally just antipsychiatric resentment. As Pickering hints, much philosophical argument may (...) be selected to support a position already chosen.The article illustrates that the likeness argument is insufficient to demonstrate that mental disorders are or are not disorders in any other more profound sense. Similarly perhaps, if a debate were conducted about whether or not a bony fracture, hypertension, obesity, or bacterial infection were real illnesses, the likeness argument might be unfruitful. This is perhaps unsurprising; notions of health and illness, mental or physical, are largely abstractions. In psychiatry, so-called symptoms are themselves abstract classifications of incompletely articulated mental phenomena far more diverse than the definitions and criteria to be found in a diagnostic manual.Argument by analogy is always limited. If my car has a flat tire, the car will be dysfunctional or disordered. Its loss of performance will be the symptoms of the flat tire, which is the lesion. It is a problem quickly diagnosed and treated. If convenient, I suppose my car could have been said to be ill, but this would not lead to any particular insights into the nature of cars, mechanics, health, or anything else.A variety of concepts can be contained within terms such as illness,disease, and disorder. They include the clinicopathological approach (the disease is the organic lesion), the disease is deviance approach, disease as distress, and approaches that consider disease—particularly mental disorder—as largely socially constructed. None may resolve the questions that Pickering raises, but recognizing that our terms are not always precise or used consistently is part of formulating the problem more clearly. For the most part clinical psychiatry (and the rest of medicine) has no difficulty in properly identifying most of our patients as disordered or ill. The fact that there are some borderline instances, difficult to classify either way, does not invalidate the classification.Consideration of whether or not the features of a disorder can in themselves determine whether or not a person is disordered is timely for two reasons. As stigma about (some) psychiatric disorder lessens, and opportunities for complaint and compensation expand, an era of self-definition as mentally disordered has arrived. How are mental health practitioners to respond to someone whose mental distress appears not to be clinically significant, but who demands access to the sick role? Also of current concern for clinical psychiatry is widespread pressure to define as disordered those persons whose antisocial behavior brings them into conflict with society. Professional recognition that definitions of mental disorder are inadequate, or rather incomplete, [End Page 265] may be valid. Worryingly, there are others who are willing to define it for us.Both major international systems of classification of mental disorder offer definitions of mental disorder that turn on what is to be meant by clinical significance or clinically recognizable. In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, mental disorder implies "clinically significant impairment or distress," and criteria for specific disorders mostly including a comment about "clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (APA 2000, 8). In the International Classification of Disease, disorder is used to imply "existence of a clinically recognizable set of symptoms or behavior associated in most cases with distress and with interference with personal function" (WHO 1992, 5). It seems that no definition of mental disorder is adequate for all purposes. Seeking to improve existing definitions by further defining the terms used quickly becomes an exercise in pedantry, far removed from practical utility.Pickering mentions as an example the "symptom" of delusions. Available definitions are widely recognized as incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory (David 1999). This leads to debate about what the individual elements within the definition precisely mean. However in practice delusions are identified with remarkably high reliability (WHO 1973... (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy there is much focus on conceptual engineering: the enterprise of revising and replacing concepts. In this talk, I focus on a theoretical issue that has not yet received much attention. What principled limits are there to this sort of enterprise? Are there concepts that for principled reasons cannot or should not be revised or replaced? Examples discussed include logical concepts and normative concepts.

In his 1972 work Famine, Affluence and Morality, Peter Singer presents an argument that we of the developed world, can and ought to do more for the developing nations to alleviate their poverty. Singer believes that his argument leads to the inescapable conclusion that we should keep giving to the poor until giving more, will harm us more than it will benefit them. -/- Singer’s conclusion is reached however, using a cost benefit analysis of absolute welfare to determine cost; (...) whereas by using a capabilities/freedoms approach combined with Pareto efficiency to determine cost, we reach a much more acceptable conclusion - a Pareto efficient conception of justice. This commits us to helping/aiding the poor, but only up until a level where we lose a capability of our own, a reduction not in relative terms but rather absolute terms. -/- In this paper, I outline this different conception of justice based on a Pareto Efficient Capabilities Approach. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of health and disease have traditionally been dominated by a debate between normativists, who hold that health is an inescapably value-laded concept and naturalists, such as Christopher Boorse, who believe that it is possible to derive a purely descriptive or theoretical definition of health based upon biological function. In this paper I defend a distinctive view which traces its origins in Aristotle's naturalistic ethics. An Arisotelian would agree with Boorse that health and disease are ubiquitous features of the (...) natural world and thus not mere projections of human interests and values. She would differ from him in rejecting the idea that value is a non-natural quality. I conclude my discussion with some comments of the normative character of living systems. (shrink)

Early life adversity, such as child maltreatment or child poverty, engenders problems with emotional and behavioral regulation. In the quest to understand the neurobiological sequelae and mechanisms of risk, the amygdala has been of major focus. While the basic functions of this region make it a strong candidate for understanding the multiple mental health issues common after ELA, extant literature is marked by profound inconsistencies, with reports of larger, smaller, and no differences in regional volumes of this area. We believe (...) integrative models of stress neurodevelopment, grounded in “allostatic load,” will help resolve inconsistencies in the impact of ELA on the amygdala. In this review, we attempt to connect past research studies to new findings with animal models of cellular and neurotransmitter mediators of stress buffering to extreme fear generalization onto testable research and clinical concepts. Drawing on the greater impact of inescapability over unpredictability in animal models, we propose a mechanism by which ELA aggravates an exhaustive cycle of amygdala expansion and subsequent toxic-metabolic damage. We connect this neurobiological sequela to psychosocial mal/adaptation after ELA, bridging to behavioral studies of attachment, emotion processing, and social functioning. Lastly, we conclude this review by proposing a multitude of future directions in preclinical work and studies of humans that suffered ELA. (shrink)

Error theories about morality often take as their starting point the supposed queerness of morality, and those resisting these arguments often try to argue by analogy that morality is no more queer than other unproblematic subject matters. Here, error theory (as exemplified primarily by the work of Richard Joyce) is resisted first by arguing that it assumes a common, modern, and peculiarly social conception of morality. Then error theorists point out that the social nature of morality requires one to act (...) against one's self-interest while insisting on the categorical, inescapable, or overriding status of moral considerations: they argue that morality requires magic, then (rightly) claim that there is no such thing as magic. An alternate eudaimonist conception of morality is introduced which itself has an older provenance than the social point of view, dating to the ancient Greeks. Eudaimonism answers to the normative requirements of morality, yet does not require magic. Thus, the initial motivation for error theory is removed. (shrink)

The paper follows the discursive path of one of the dominant, and yet forgotten, terms in the history of ideas - that of?degeneration.? The richness of uses and various illuminations of the term, as well as its discursive dispersion and blurring, can be seen from the mid 19th until the first decades of the 20th century. The term was almost inescapable in studies of thinkers from various fields starting in the middle of the 19th century, it was successfully adopted (...) from French, Italian and British medical terminology into the art discourse of modern European societies. By focusing on music, the given term became permanently tied to thinking about relations of music and society in the German-speaking world. In a complex discursive development of the term, the author necessarily made certain choices, paying special attention to the Austro-Hungarian psychologists, Max Nordau who carried the concept of?degeneration? from the medical to the art sphere. The debate regarding the?degeneration of music,? was developed chronologically, starting from the Second Reich. While Wagner developed a theory of?degeneration? and its overcoming through?regeneration,? he was still considered?degenerated.? The given example reveals the complexity of the problem we face when we study the concept of?degeneration of music.? The consideration is completed with a glance at the life of?degenerated? musicians and music during the Weimar Republic, that is, their interpretation in the Third Reich. (shrink)

Boredom—that inescapable accoutrement of human existence—is more than a common affective encounter. It is an experience of key phenomenological significance. Boredom gives rise to perceptions of meaninglessness, difficulties in effective agency, lapses in attention, an altered perception of the passage of time, and to an impressively diverse array of behavioral outcomes. Above all, it shapes our world and lives. Boredom’s presence demarcates what is engaging, interesting, or meaningful from what is not; it alerts us when we find ourselves in (...) situations that either are lacking in personal significance or cannot properly engage us; and it spurs us into action and thought. Within the phenomenological tradition, the importance of boredom has been highlighted by Martin Heidegger, who in his 1929-30 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (FCM) (Heidegger 1995), makes a case for its ontological significance. Notwithstanding Heidegger’s detailed engagement with it, boredom has not received sustained attention within the phenomenological tradition, even though phenomenology is particularly well suited to explicate the phenomenon of boredom. The aim of this entry is to present three different phenomenological perspectives on boredom. In doing so, it hopes to showcase not just what boredom is, according to phenomenology, but also what a phenomenology of boredom can reveal about human existence. (shrink)

Does the material basis of conscious experience extend beyond the boundaries of the brain and central nervous system? In Clark 2009 I reviewed a number of ‘enactivist’ arguments for such a view and found none of them compelling. Ward (2012) rejects my analysis on the grounds that the enactivist deploys an essentially world-involving concept of experience that transforms the argumentative landscape in a way that makes the enactivist conclusion inescapable. I present an alternative (prediction-and-generative-model-based) account that neatly accommodates all (...) the positive evidence that Ward cites on behalf of this enactivist conception, and that (I argue) makes richer and more satisfying contact with the full sweep of human experience. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction R. S. Peters and Analytic Philosophy of Education Revisiting First‐Order Ordinary Language‐Use Conclusion Notes References.

Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as Being-in-the-world suggests a natural relation to environmental philosophy. Among environmentalists, however, closer inspection must raise alarm, both since Heidegger’s approach is in some senses inescapably anthropocentric and since Dasein discovers its environment through its usability, serviceability, and accessibility. Yet Heidegger does not simply adopt a traditionally modern, instrumental view. The conditions under which the environment appears imply neither that the environment consists only of tools, nor that what is true of the parts is also true (...) of the whole, nor that an orientation to use—where appropriate—precludes any other orientation. Heidegger’s anthropocentric commitments thus do not rule out the possibility of a non-instrumental perspective on the natural world. (shrink)

...If one takes a panoramic view of Hegel’s entire philosophical endeavor, the endeavor to come to grips with and to be committed to reality in the concrete, one is struck by one inescapable idea: the Hegelian enterprise is an extraordinarily unified and grandiose attempt to elaborate one concept, which Hegel sees as the root of all intelligibility, the concept of God, whatever that term is going to turn out to mean.......The question with which we are faced...is neither whether Hegel (...) is correct in what he says nor whether his interpreters are justified in what they say of him. Rather the question is one of finding out just what Hegel does say and of determining what impact that can have on our own thinking.......Why, then, the “Concept of God”? The answer is to be found in the culmination of the entire Hegelian system, “The Philosophy of Absolute Spirit.” Only in the light of “absolute Spirit” is anything Hegel says intelligible....in Hegel’s view, “absolute Spirit” is in fact to be identified with God and that, therefore, only if Hegel’s “Concept of God” is intelligible, will anything Hegel says be intelligible.—From the Introduction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Returning to Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” offers a defense of liberal democracy that can help us come to terms with its limits, as well as the implicit tradeoffs that are an inescapable feature of politics in a liberal democracy. While critics of Berlin are right to note his neglect of Enlightenment constitutionalism, his skeptical liberalism is illuminated by comparative constitutional law, where we see how different constitutional regimes balance different values—such as democracy, liberty, and equality—in (...) different ways that are attuned to the particulars of place and history that both Berlin and critics of liberalism insist are so important. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that physicalism faces its most serious challenge when it comes to making room for the phenomenal character of psychological experience, its so-called what-it-is-like aspect. The challenge has surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades in a variety of forms. In a particularly striking one, Frank Jackson considers a situation in which Mary, a brilliant scientist who knows all the physical facts there are to know about psychological experience, has spent the whole of her life in a (...) black and white room. He asks, What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. (Jackson 1986: 130). (shrink)

As people struggle to come to terms with cultural pluralism, there is growing recognition of bicultural or multicultural persons and their potential communication patterns. Prior conceptualizations of multicultural identity focused on the idea that people can blend multiple cultures in their minds or switch between representations of cultures as ways to be good towards the Other. This approach may sound sensible, but there is the inescapable injustice embedded in any formulation of the other, and not only the Other but (...) also the other of the Other. The very openness of a genuinely multicultural identity precludes the establishment of such things as ethnic, racial or cultural ‘identities’. The fundamental propositions of this article are that multicultural identity can be seen as different ways of being in the world, which is a facet of enlightened experience by coming into being of ‘intuitive intelligence’ that ‘self/personhood/identity’ is an illusion; the acquisition of multicultural identity is a natural process of human growth, one that does involve a radical shift of personal perspectives, maturation of vision. Ultimately, I suggest a radical rethinking and reversal of the essentialist view of multicultural identity and present multicultural identity as an awareness event transcending one’s cultural identity. It is time for a paradigm shift. (shrink)

Some opponents of the incommensurability thesis, such as Davidson and Rorty, have argued that the very idea of incommensurability is incoherent and that the existence of alternative and incommensurable conceptual schemes is a conceptual impossibility. If true, this refutes Kuhnian relativism and Kantian scepticism in one fell swoop. For Kuhnian relativism depends on the possibility of alternative, humanly accessible conceptual schemes that are incommensurable with one another, and the Kantian notion of a realm of unknowable things-in-themselves gives rise to the (...) possibility of humanly inaccessible schemes that are incommensurable with even our best current or future science. In what follows we argue that the possibility of incommensurability of either the Kuhnian or the Kantian variety is inescapable and that this conclusion is forced upon us by a simple consideration of what is involved in acquiring a concept. It turns out that the threats from relativism and scepticism are real, and that anyone, including Davidson himself, who has ever defended an account of concept acquisition is committed to one or the other of these two possibilities.1. (shrink)

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics are related facets of cutting edge therapeutic research in a field that relates pharmacological properties to the genetic characteristics of human beings. An optimistic interpretation suggests that “One-Size-Fits-All” therapeutics, whose effects can only be predicted in probabilistic terms, will give way eventually to individual tailor-made therapies with entirely predictable properties in each patient. Yet the concept of anticipating individual pharmacotherapeutic response appears to disregard some of the fundamental limitations of causal understanding in the biological world of structure–action (...) relationships. It is not simply a problem of confronting complexity – which might be overcome in time with advances in biotechnology and computing power – but the inescapable paradox of the genetic characteristics of individuals within the human species. The aleatory process of evolution ensures that with the exception of monozygotic twins, every human being is genetically unique. At the same time there appears to be more in common than divides. Pharmacogenomics provides a climate in which to explore and better understand the variable causal relationships between genetic element, protein and therapeutic or toxic actions, but can only do so in abstraction. Thus␣predictive power may be enhanced but is ultimately constrained by insuperable probabilistic considerations. (shrink)

This work deals with concepts of time in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and in the Koran, placing them in relation to Hellenistic conceptions of time in Late Antique poetry. The analysis shows that just as in the much earlier field of Greek poetry, so too in Old Arabic verse time is seen as an inescapable power. The Arabic concept for endless time, dahr, is revealed to be the Arabic equivalent of the Greek concept aión. In the Koran the power (...) of time is denied completely and replaced by the absolute power of God, which is described with the help of Hellenistic conceptions of time. The research suggests the existence of an Arabic Hellenism, in the context of which Islam came into being. (shrink)

Although there is increased recognition of the inevitable--and perhaps sometimes beneficial-- role of values in scientific inquiry, there are also growing concerns about the potential for commercial values to lead to bias. This is particularly evident in biomedical research. There is a concern that conflicts of interest created by commercialization may lead to biased reasoning or methodological choices in testing drugs and medical interventions. In addition, such interests may lead research in directions that are unresponsive to pressing social needs, when (...) it is profitable to do so. Feminist philosophy of science seems particularly well situated to provide resources to help address such concerns because this literature has both 1) theorized about how to minimize biases in science, e.g., sexist or androcentric biases, and 2) generated accounts of objectivity that do not require individual scientists to be value-neutral or disinterested. Two such accounts are assessed in relation to concerns about commercial bias: those offered by feminist empiricism and standpoint feminism. We argue that standpoint feminism is more promising because it has resources to address, not just the epistemological, but also the inescapably ethical dimensions of commercial bias. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether the concept of evil is philosophically adequate. It sets out a secular conception of evil that is sufficiently clear to be used in philosophical theorising. Evil, so conceived, is not merely a fiction or an illusion, but is a moral property possessed by some actions and some persons in the real world. While several philosophers have claimed that it is inescapably dangerous to use the concept of evil, the reality is that the concept (...) of evil, when used carefully, is not prohibitively dangerous. Evil actions are not merely the opposite of good actions. Rather evil actions are are a small subset of extreme moral wrongs. (shrink)

Subjectivity and Project. Patočka's critique of Heidegger's concept "project of possibilities" The purpose of this article is to lay out the way the main aspects of Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger's fundamental ontology. More precisely, I intend to restate the central arguments Patočka raised against Heidegger's characterization of "understanding" as a "project". In the first part, I will single out Patočka's project of an "asubjective phenomenology" by distinguishing it from another asubjective project and from the subjective phenomenology. In the second (...) part, I will examine some central theses Heidegger puts forth in §31 of Being and Time in order to show the inescapable difficulties they bring about. In the final part, I will describe the tenets around which Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger revolves. I will explore the two directions of this critique that correspond to the double orientation of asubjective phenomenology: a) on the one hand, the priority of the phenomenal field with regard to any subjective sense-bestowal; b) the importance of the phenomenon of corporeity for an accurate apprehension of subjectivity. (shrink)

In Levinas’s early works, the ‘body as subjectivity’ is the focus of research bearing significant implications for his later philosophy of the body. How this is achieved becomes the thrust of this article. We analyze how the existent, through hypostasis, emerges hic et nunc, and explores further its effort to exist is effected in its relation to existence. In delineating this, we argue that the existent does not emerge from the il y a as an idealistic subject, but rather is (...) born as a natural subject. This is arguably the most remarkable aspect of Levinas’s analysis of the dawn of the bodily subject. However, the subjectivity of the subject is to be found in the inescapable self-possession of its embodiment. The body, in turn, is a conditional possibility for being a corporeal subject. We argue that the subject as a being in the flesh is the meaning of the embodied human subject, and it bears fertile implications for the ethical signification of the body. In re-conceiving the meaning of the ‘body as subjectivity’ to ‘ethical signification of the body’ against the odds of the traditional dichotomies, we argue that Levinas tries to overcome the bio-political understanding of racist conception of the body subject. Given this ethical meaning beyond materiality we reconsider how the embodied subject is a radical passivity as a ‘here I am’. In suggesting the implication of this claim with Levinas we find how the ethical subjectivity is beyond dualistic assertions and racist conceptions. (shrink)

Accepted standards of parental decisional autonomy and child best interests do not address adequately the complex moral problems involved in the care of critically ill children. A growing body of moral discourse is calling for the recognition of `tragedy' in selected human problems. A tragic dilemma is an irresolvable dilemma with forced terrible alternatives, where even the virtuous agent inescapably emerges with `dirty hands'. The shift in moral framework described here recognizes that the form of conduct called for by tragic (...) dilemmas is the practice of phronesis. The phronetic agent has acquired a capacity to discern good agency in tragic circumstances. This discernment is practiced through the artful creation of moral narratives: stories that convey that which is morally meaningful in a particular situation; that is, stories that are `meaning making'. The phronetic agent addresses tragic dilemmas involving children as a narrator of contextualized temporal embodied human (counter)stories. (shrink)

Popper's three?world doctrine differs significantly from an earlier position which insisted on a dualism of facts and norms. This dualism, combined with a hostility to that version of psychologism which holds that logical principles are descriptive psychological laws, initially led him to espouse the view that we are free to reject rules of inference as norms shaping our reasoning. However, in some formulations of his recently developed pluralistic epistemology, Popper appears to deny this freedom to the individual. Feyerabend has condemned (...) him for this. My critique conflicts with Feyerabend's, in that I develop an alternative view of the relationship between logic and psychology which retains the compulsive aspect of the third realm, but rejects that version of anti?psychologism which holds that truths of logic do not have normative implications for people's psychological states. More specifically, it is argued that it is logically possible, though logically impermissible, for people to be irrational: the categories of logic are inescapably evaluative and critical. (shrink)

Do human beings have a special and distinguished place in reality? In Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality Thomas Hofweber contends that they do. We are special since there is an intimate connection between our human minds and reality itself. This book defends a form of idealism which holds that our human minds constrain, but do not construct, reality as the totality of facts. Reality as the totality of facts is thus not independent of our minds, and our (...) minds play a metaphysically special role in all of reality. But reality as the totality of things is taken to be completely independent of us. Hofweber's proposed form of conceptual idealism is formulated via the notion of a harmony between our minds and reality. This harmony is defended through considerations in the philosophy of language. How can one possibly defend a metaphysical thesis like idealism from considerations about our own representation? A key step in the book's argument is to consider a special class of concepts--inescapable concepts--which we cannot rationally replace with different ones. This leads to a new approach for making progress in metaphysics--immanent metaphysics--which is broadly neo-Kantian in spirit. (shrink)