The paper intends to show, that W. N. Hohfeld's theory of fundamental jural relations is relevant to economic theory, and that Hohfeld's system can be reconstructed by the concepts of 'liberty space' and 'ability space', understood as an agent's Spielraum for action. The first half of the paper is devoted to an exposition of Hohfeld's system and to the question of its relation to the economic analysis of property rights. The second half concerns Spielraum theory and the reformulation (...) of Hohfeldian distinctions in terms of liberty spaces and ability spaces. It is argued that the reformulation is useful, inter alia, for describing exchange of property rights by contract. El artículo intenta mostrar: que la teoría de las relaciones jurídicas fundamentales de W. N. Hohfeld es relevante para la teoría económica y que el sistema de Hohfeld puede ser reconstruido mediante los conceptos de "espacio de libertad" y "espacio de capacidad", entendidos como el Spielraum para la acción del agente. La primera mitad del artículo está dedicada a la exposición del sistema de Hohfeld y al problema de su relación con el análisis económico de los derechos reales. La segunda mitad se refiere a la teoría del Spielraum y a la reformulación de las distinciones hohfeldianas en términos de espacio de libertad y espacio de capacidad. Se argumenta que esta reformulación es útil, inter alia, para describir el cambio de los derechos reales mediante contratos. (shrink)

The philosophies of education serve as the guide of the teachers in handling the teaching-learning process. However, a belief will remain as a belief unless it is practiced. This study aimed to find the relationship between the philosophical beliefs and practices of the 30 teachers of the schools in San Roque, Mabini, Bohol - San Roque Elementary School and San Roque National High School, S.Y. 2019-2020. The study utilized a quantitative method descriptive survey research design. The research instrument used was (...) a self-constructed questionnaire in which the reliability was tested by a Cronbach’s Alpha using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software. Simple percentage and weighted mean were some of the statistical treatments used. Kendall’s tau_b, a non-parametric test, was used to determine the correlation between philosophical beliefs and their equivalent pedagogical practices. All of the statistical treatments were also run using the SPSS software. Further, the researcher assured the proper observation of the research ethics protocol. Based on the results, the philosophies of Progressivism (3.63) and Perennialism (3.31) were the most and least prevailing philosophical beliefs, respectively. On the other hand, the most and least prevailing philosophies practiced are Progressivism (3.69) and Essentialism (3.19), respectively. Moreover, research findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between the philosophical beliefs of teachers and their pedagogical practices. In conclusion, this study claims that teachers’ pedagogical practices are dependent to their philosophical beliefs; and as the teachers believed on a particular philosophy of education, they practice it accordingly to the extent of their adherence to the belief. (shrink)

Barbarism was by no means unique to the past 100 years, Jonathan Glover tells us, but ''it is still right that much of 20th-century history has been a very unpleasant surprise.'' This was the century of Passchendaele, Dresden, Nanking, Nagasaki and Rwanda; of the Final Solution, the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Year Zero and ethnic cleansing -- names that stand for killings in the six and seven figures and for suffering beyond comprehension. The technological progress that inspired the optimism (...) of the Victorians turned out also to multiply the effects of old-fashioned evil and criminal stupidity. (shrink)

Presents the fundamental ideas of Indian thinkers that have shaped the mind of Indian from 1770 to the post-modern era in the middle of 20th century in India. Lists the most Indian influential figures in the field of philosophy, political theory, activicism such as Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

This chapter explicates and critically assesses RIGHTS CORRELATIVITY. Section II addresses three core issues. The first concerns the conceptual structure of the tethered positions: does correlativity mean that the positions’ features must be symmetrical? Are correlative rights and duties the “mirror images” of one another, or not? A second issue is Existential correlativity: must the positions invariably co-obtain, or can one exist with the other(s)? Can there be a right without a correlative duty, and vice versa? A third issue concerns (...) Justificational correlativity: must all correlative relationships be explained in terms of one position grounding the other(s)? Is it always the case that A’s right is the reason for B’s duty, the basis for imposing a duty on B in the first place? Section III then demonstrates how Wesley Hohfeld’s understanding of rights correlativity motivated all of the novel features in his schema of jural relations, some of which I defend from criticisms. (shrink)

Loi recently proposed a libertarian right to direct to consumer genetic testing — independent of autonomy or utility—reflecting Cohen’s work on self-ownership and Hohfeld’s model of jural relations. Cohen’s model of libertarianism dealt principally with self-ownership of the physical body. Although Loi adequately accounts for the physical properties of DNA, DNA is also an informational substrate, highly conserved within families. Information about the genome of relatives of the person undergoing testing may be extrapolated without requiring direct engagement with (...) their personal physical copy of the genome, triggering rights and interests of relatives that may differ from the rights and interests of others, that is, individual consumers, testing providers and regulators. Loi argued that regulatory interference with exercise of the right required justification, whereas prima facie exercise of the right did not. Justification of regulatory interference could include ‘conflict with other people’s rights’, ‘aggressive’ use of the genome and ‘harming others’. Harms potentially experienced by relatives as a result of the individual’s exercise of a right to test include breach of genetic privacy, violation of their right to determine when, and if, they undertake genetic testing and discrimination. Such harms may justify regulatory intervention, in the event they are recognised; motives driving ‘aggressive’ use of the genome may also be relevant. Each of the above criteria requires clarification, as potential redundancies and tensions exist between them, with different implications affecting different groups of rights holders. (shrink)

2018 marked the centenary of Wesley Hohfeld’s untimely passing. Curiously, in recent years quite a few legal historians and philosophers have identified him as a Legal Realist. This article argues that Hohfeld was no such thing, that his work need not be understood in such lights, and that he in fact made a smaller contribution to jurisprudence than is generally believed. He has nothing to do with theories of official decision-making that identify “extra-legal” factors as the real drivers of judicial (...) decision-making, and nor must his schema of jural relations advance a “Realist” political agenda. Distinguishing Hohfeld from the Realists will correct some misunderstandings about his work and demonstrate its utility in many more contexts than a Realist reading of it allows. (shrink)

In a celebrated article, published nearly a century ago, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld endeavored to elucidate the various types of jural relations. Hohfeld’s scheme has been justly regarded as a seminal contribution to analytical jurisprudence, and has stimulated lively debate since. This Essay aims to refute one of Hohfeld’s fundamental and most influential theses: the axiom of right–duty correlativity. To do so, it employs the simplest refutation strategy in first-order logic, namely providing a valid counterexample. Part I discusses earlier (...) attempts to do likewise, and explains why they failed. For the most part, previous illustrations of ostensibly standalone rights or standalone duties neglected relevant parties who could owe the correlative duties or hold the correlative rights, respectively. Part II puts forward a simple argument: There are abstract duties in private law that ban certain types of conduct without reference to specific victims. Those duties are not necessarily correlative with rights, although their breach may generate secondary duties with corresponding rights. In particular, tort law allows plaintiffs to recover for harm caused by breach of duty that occurred before they acquired legal personality. This is tantamount to recognizing duties that are not correlative with rights, and therefore invalidates the correlativity axiom. (shrink)

What is a right? What, if anything, makes rights different from other features of the normative world, such as duties, standards, rules, or principles? Do all rights serve some ultimate purpose? In addition to raising these questions, philosophers and jurists have long been aware that different senses of ‘a right’ abound. To help make sense of this diversity, and to address the above questions, they developed two types of accounts of rights: models and theories. This book explicates rights modelling and (...) theorising and scrutinises their methodological underpinnings. It then challenges this framework by showing why the theories ought to be abandoned. In addition to exploring structural concerns, the book also addresses the various ways that rights can be used. It clarifies important differences between rights exercise, enforcement, remedying, and vindication, and identifies forms of legal rights-claiming and rights-invoking outside of institutional contexts. (shrink)

The attitudes P. F. Strawson dubs reactive are felt toward another (or oneself). They are thus at least in part affective reactions to what Strawson describes as qualities of will that people manifest toward others and themselves. The reactive attitudes are also interpersonal, relating persons to persons. But how do they relate persons? On the deontic, imperative view, they relate persons in second-personal authority and accountability relations. After addressing how best to understand the reactive attitudes as sentiments, I evaluate (...) the deontic imperative view. I argue that the modality of reactive attitudes is not invariably deontic nor is their mood invariably imperative. Certain reactive attitudes are aretaic, appellative sentiments that prescribe non-jural ideals of conduct or character. Although expansive, my resulting conception of the reactive attitudes escapes the charge of failing to distinguish reactive sentiments from “disengaged aesthetic reactions” to the beautiful and ugly in human action and character. (shrink)

Based on interviews and field research, the authors explore the sets of ideas Arab tribespeople from Ras Al-Khaimah had about tribe and community; social and economic networks, and jural contracts for livelihoods and profits; their uses of their environments; the moral relations of credit, debt and labour; ruling; economic and political transformations; and ideas of regional history where conflicts were regarded as disputes over sets of ideas, and informal accounts of tribal and local histories.Their lively descriptions and explanations (...) of life before oil portrayed tribal societies whose relationships were moral rather than political and were between jurally equal persons. All lived from their own resources; 'wealth' was material self-sufficiency; 'riches' the richness of social relationships. Political arenas were decentralised and underpinned by common cultural and moral values.Published sources give a wider context to these ideas and events which show the great complexity and differing perspectives of 'life before oil' in the Gulf. (shrink)

The aim of The Legal Foundations of Micro-Institutional Performance is to introduce the reader to a different way of thinking about economics that will allow them to both understand and apply legal concepts to economic analysis. To this end, it adopts and further develops Wesley Hohfeld's legal framework of jural (legal) relations as a tool of analysis. This analytical tool, as built into the Legal-Economic Performance framework, provides specific direction in identifying and describing interdependence among economic agents (including (...) rights, duties, liberties and exposure to various acts). The framework adopted and developed in this book relies on the concept of interdependence--that all economic agents are tied together in a legal system given the inherent interdependent nature of transactions in a complex modern global economy. The authors start by developing this framework and then apply it to a variety of settings and empirical examples. Using this new method, economists will be able to reshape their analysis to account for how legal systems and specific legal rules impact economic performance and outcomes. This approach will be of great interest to graduate and advanced undergraduate social science scholars, faculty interested in the intersections of law and economics and the application of legal concepts to impact analysis, and practitioners in the fields of policy, law and economics. (shrink)

The present paper is a continuation of the previous publication by the author in this journal devoted to the cultural-symbolic world picture of the Latin Christian Middle Ages. Unlike the previous one, this second text reproduces the historical “picture” of the era with an emphasis not on the ontological, but on its proper cultural expression. The author as a philosopher is not so much focused on the “fact” (this is the business of historians) as on the “meaning”, taking care of (...) the meaningful modeling of the age as a cultural phenomenon. The first part of the study is presented, devoted to the medieval culture of governance as a symbolic culture of powerful social relations.In the Preamble, considering the “fabric-textual” mythologem of “human–text–world”, the conceptual background of the study is outlined, the author’s latest revision of the general formula of the medieval cultural-symbolic picture of the world as a picture of the history of personal salvation culture is proposed, the study subject is specified, and the circle of “guides”-predecessors is defined.In § 1, the role and significance of the “vertical salvation” and its sacred nature for the Christian consciousness are considered. The creation fundamentals for transformation of the vertical into a symbolic hierarchy of medieval society are determined. With respect to a few of key philosophical and by itself jural monuments of the era, the concept of the Middle Ages as an age of absolutization of the pure Idea, therefore, of the absolutization of personal existence, is illustrated.§ 2 examines the questions of hierarchy, power, and freedom in view of their levels and options of realization in medieval society. The problems of social personalization of the “upper” and the “lower” inhabitants of the symbolic hierarchical ladder, the relationship between the hierarchical rungs, the logic of their “filling” and the per-level freedom of a medieval person on the scale of “domination–submission” have been solved. The “epochal” status of a Christian as a spiritually free person has been captured. (shrink)

In Rabinowicz (2008), I considered how value relations can best be analysed in terms of fitting pro-attitudes. In the formal model of that paper, fitting pro-attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of ‘better’, ‘worse’, ‘equally as good as’ and ‘incomparable in value’. Unfortunately, the (...) approach is vulnerable to a number of objections. I believe these objections can be avoided if one re-interprets the underlying notion of preference: instead of treating preference as a ‘dyadic’ attitude directed towards a pair of items, we can think of it as a difference of degree between ‘monadic’ attitudes of favouring. Each such monadic attitude has just one item as its object. Given this re-interpretation, permissible preferences can be modelled by the class of permissible assignments of degrees of favouring to items in the domain. From this construction, we can then recover the old modelling in terms of the class of permissible preference orderings, but the previous objections to that model no longer apply. (shrink)

The analysis of approaches to understanding of jural facts is accomplished in the article. The definition of right depriving jural facts in civil law is brought. It’s researched the classical for Roman-Germany legal system reasons for deprivation of right of property and the concrete actions or events that deprive such a right are analyzed. All examined facts of property rights deprivation could be classified and arranged into four basic groups: cessation of the property existance (destruction of property), cessation (...) of the owner existance (death of a natural person, liquidation of the legal entity), transaction on alienation (alienation of the property by the owner, requisition), administrative act (abandonement of the property by the owner, foreclosure on the property for the owner obligations, seizure). Such deprivation of property rights as termination of the right to property, which can not belong to the person, and the compulsory acquisition may occur through jural facts like seizure or administrative act. In the case of requisition termination of right takes place directly at the moment the relevant administrative act comes into force. In other words only destruction of property, death of a natural person or legal entity liquidation can be regarded totally as depriving jural facts. All jural facts of right of property deprivation can be grouped but can not be reduced to basic groups. The law model must determine the circumstances under which the model will lead to the desired legal result, otherwise the legal facts were too extensive and could take place even in undesirable cases. In this context these circumstances are conditions of jural fact o occurence. That is why, for example, "termination of the right to property, which can not belong to the person" is only a general name of right-depriving jural fact or even a specific mechanism of depriving the right itself, and therefore includes in its content as well as the actual jural fact and conditions of its occurence. In conclusion all the right-depriving jural facts are divided into unconditional, those which occurence is not associated with additional conditions established by rule of law (death of natural person, destruction of property) and conditional, the result of which is achieved only under certain circumstances (conditions). (shrink)

This book explores how some word meanings are paradigmatically related to each other, for example, as opposites or synonyms, and how they relate to the mental organization of our vocabularies. Traditional approaches claim that such relationships are part of our lexical knowledge (our "dictionary" of mentally stored words) but Lynne Murphy argues that lexical relationships actually constitute our "metalinguistic" knowledge. The book draws on a century of previous research, including word association experiments, child language, and the use of synonyms and (...) antonyms in text. (shrink)

Agents are often assumed to have degrees of belief (“credences”) and also binary beliefs (“beliefs simpliciter”). How are these related to each other? A much-discussed answer asserts that it is rational to believe a proposition if and only if one has a high enough degree of belief in it. But this answer runs into the “lottery paradox”: the set of believed propositions may violate the key rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure. In earlier work, we showed that this problem (...) generalizes: there exists no local function from degrees of belief to binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions of rationality and non-triviality. “Locality” means that the binary belief in each proposition depends only on the degree of belief in that proposition, not on the degrees of belief in others. One might think that the impossibility can be avoided by dropping the assumption that binary beliefs are a function of degrees of belief. We prove that, even if we drop the “functionality” restriction, there still exists no local relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions. Thus functionality is not the source of the impossibility; its source is the condition of locality. If there is any non-trivial relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs at all, it must be a “holistic” one. We explore several concrete forms this “holistic” relation could take. (shrink)

‘Relational value’ (RV) has intuitive credibility due to the shortcomings of existing axiological categories regarding recognizing the ethical relevance of people’s relations to nature. But RV is justified by arguments and analogies that do not hold up to closer scrutiny, which strengthens the assumption that RV is redundant. While RV may provide reasons for ethically considering some relations, much work remains to show that RV is a concept that does something existing axiological concepts cannot, beyond empirically describing (...) class='Hi'>relations people have to environmental areas and places. (shrink)

This paper asks whether phenomenal intentionality (intentionality that arises from phenomenal consciousness alone) has a relational structure of the sort envisaged in Russell’s theory of acquaintance. I put forward three arguments in favor of a relation view: one phenomenological, one linguistic, and one based on the view’s ability to account for the truth conditions of phenomenally intentional states. I then consider several objections to the relation view. The chief objection to the relation view takes the form of a dilemma between (...) Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of the properties constitutive of the contents of phenomenally intentional states on this view: the Aristotelian view seems unable to account for all the apparent contents of phenomenally intentional states, but the Platonic view seems to be ontologically unacceptable. I also consider other objections from physicalism, phenomenology, and epistemology. (shrink)

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature can (...) open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the role of dispositional properties in the most frequently discussed interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. After offering some motivation for this project, I briefly characterize the distinction between non-dispositional and dispositional properties in the context of quantum mechanics by suggesting a necessary condition for dispositionality – namely contextuality – and, consequently, a sufficient condition for non-dispositionality, namely non-contextuality. Having made sure that the distinction is conceptually sound, I then analyze the plausibility of the widespread, monistic (...) ontological thesis about the reducibility of dispositional properties to categorical properties in the context of the philosophy of quantum mechanics. I conclude that with the exception of Bohmian mechanics, the other “minimally realist” views of quantum mechanics require essential dispositions, i.e., dispositions of a non-reducible kind. Interestingly, seen behind the lenses of dispositionalism, Bohr’s and Bohm’s interpretations of quantum mechanics are much closer than it is usually recognized, a fact that could teach us something about the way the quantum world is. (shrink)

The orthodox monadic determination thesis holds that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. Against this orthodoxy, I argue that it is possible to represent colour relations without representing any colours. I present a model of iconic perceptual content that allows for such primitive relational colour representation, and provide four empirical arguments in its support. I close by surveying alternative views of the relationship between monadic and relational colour representation.

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

“Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth. Given this wide usage of the term “realization”, it would be (...) right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles. (shrink)

_Relating Narratives_ is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, _Relating Narratives_ is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature can (...) open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, (...) once we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities may be termed “intentional relations.” We present a four-level framework of social understanding that organizes the ways in which social organisms represent the intentional relations of themselves and other agents. We presuppose that the information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents’ intentional (...) relations (or third person information). However, through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals exist at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Of nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations with mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals are hypothesized to result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations. (shrink)

Abstract: The paper provides a general account of value relations. It takes its departure in a special type of value relation, parity, which according to Ruth Chang is a form of evaluative comparability that differs from the three standard forms of comparability: betterness, worseness and equal goodness. Recently, Joshua Gert has suggested that the notion of parity can be accounted for if value comparisons are interpreted as normative assessments of preference. While Gert's basic idea is attractive, the way he (...) develops it is flawed: His modeling of values by intervals of permissible preference strengths is inadequate. Instead, I provide an alternative modeling in terms of intersections of rationally permissible preference orderings. This yields a general taxonomy of all binary value relations. The paper concludes with some implications of this approach for rational choice. (shrink)

In this challenging book, Ted Benton takes recent debates about the moral status of animals as a basis for reviewing the discourse of “human rights.” Liberal-individualist views of human rights and advocates of animal rights tend to think of individuals, whether human or animals, in isolation from their social position. This makes them vulnerable to criticisms from the left which emphasize the importance of social relationships to individual well-being. Benton’s argument supports the important assumption, underpinning the cause for human rights, (...) that humans and other species of animal have much in common, both in the conditions for their well-being and their vulnerability to harm. Both liberal rights theory and its socialist critique fail adequately to theorize these aspects of human vulnerability. Nevertheless, it is argued that, enriched by feminist and ecological insights, a socialist view of rights has much to offer. Lucid and wide-ranging in its argument, Natural Relations enables the outline of an ecological socialist view of rights and justice to begin to take shape. (shrink)

‘What is characteristic of every mental activity’, according to Brentano, is ‘the reference to something as an object. In this respect every mental activity seems to be something relational.’ But what sort of a relation, if any, is our cognitive access to the world? This question – which we shall call Brentano’s question – throws a new light on many of the traditional problems of epistemology. The paper defends a view of perceptual acts as real relations of a subject (...) to an object. To make this view coherent, a theory of different types of relations is developed, resting on ideas on formal ontology put forward by Husserl in his Logical Investigations and on the theory of relations sketched in Smith's "Acta cum fundamentis in re". The theory is applied to the notion of a Cambridge change, which proves to have an unforeseen relevance to our understanding of perception. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. In this article, we develop relational sufficientarianism – a view of justice according to which people must relate as sufficients. We distinguish between three versions of this ideal, one that is incompatible with relational egalitarianism and two that are not. Building on this, we argue that relational theorists have good reason to support a pluralist view that is both egalitarian and sufficientarian.

Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justice-democracy dilemma: Understanding social (...) relations in such a way that renders relational egalitarianism plausible as an answer to what makes democracy valuable comes at the price of understanding social relations in a way that makes it less plausible as a theory of justice, and vice versa. We also argue that there is no easy way out of the dilemma and that relational egalitarians, who want relational equality to provide both accounts mentioned, may simply have to set their ambitions lower on behalf of relational equality. (shrink)

In this article, I question the plausibility of Metz’s African moral theory from an oft-neglected moral topic of partiality. Metz defends an Afro-communitarian moral theory that posits that the rightness of actions is entirely definable by relationships of identity and solidarity (or, friendship). I offer two objections to this relational moral theory. First, I argue that justifying partiality strictly by invoking relationships (of friendship) ultimately fails to properly value the individual for her own sake – this is called the ‘focus (...) problem’ in the literature. Second, I argue that a relationship-based theory cannot accommodate the agent-related partiality since it posits some relationship to be morally fundamental. My critique ultimately reveals the inadequacy of a relationship-based moral theory insofar as it overlooks some crucial moral considerations grounded on the individual herself in her own right. (shrink)

It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience , according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for in Lewis's (...) Humean mosaic. But that suggests a simple solution: Why couldn't Lewis simply add these new relations to the supervenience basis? The aim of this article is to use Humean supervenience as a foil to spell out a feature of entanglement of general metaphysical interest: The way in which the metaphysical lessons drawn for two-party systems ramify when systems of many parties are considered. The main conclusion is that the proposed simple fix in fact results in a supervenience thesis different in kind from Lewis's, by making the relations in the supervenience basis global in a certain sense. (shrink)