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Fallible A Priori Justification

Albert Casullo

in A Priori Justification

This chapter articulates the requirements of fallible a priori justification. It distinguishes two senses of fallibility: c-fallibility, justification that does not guarantee truth; and ... More

This chapter articulates the requirements of fallible a priori justification. It distinguishes two senses of fallibility: c-fallibility, justification that does not guarantee truth; and p-fallibility, justification that is defeasible. It argues that although these senses are logically independent of one another, there are some significant relations between them mediated by the concepts of self-revision, overriding defeater, and undermining defeater. It is shown that several alternative fallibilist accounts of a priori justification face difficulties that are avoided by the account defended in Chapter 2.Less

Social Justice and Public Equality

Thomas Christiano

in The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits

This chapter argues that social justice requires that equality be publicly realized. Social justice is realized in social and political institutions that attempt to establish justice. It requires ... More

This chapter argues that social justice requires that equality be publicly realized. Social justice is realized in social and political institutions that attempt to establish justice. It requires that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. In the case of justice as equality, it must not only be the case that people are treated as equals; they must be able to see that they are treated as equals. Hence, social justice requires what is called public equality. It is argued that public equality is grounded on the principle of equality defended in the last chapter and the circumstances of disagreement, diversity, fallibility, and cognitive bias that attend efforts to implement justice in any moderately complex society as well as the fundamental interests of persons in society. This grounds the idea of the egalitarian standpoint from which the justification of political institutions proceeds. That is the first stage of the argument for grounding of democracy on equality.Less

Being Human

Ingo Gildenhard

in Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches

This chapter discusses figures of thought in Cicero's speeches to do with being human and the human condition. Special attention is given to the notions that human beings are inherently fallible and ... More

This chapter discusses figures of thought in Cicero's speeches to do with being human and the human condition. Special attention is given to the notions that human beings are inherently fallible and that human life unfolds in an unpredictable environment (personified in Fortune, goddess of happenstance and caprice) and is thus subject to random, i.e. amoral disasters. Both notions found articulation in new comic scripts, before appearing in other genres of discourse, such as rhetorical handbooks and public oratory. Against this background, the chapter explores how Cicero uses them to fashion models of the human self and of the universe, not least to address the problem of social accountability.Less

 Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Moral Self

John Wall

in Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility

There can be no meaning to the notion of human moral creativity without first the ontological possibility for a poetic moral self. In the face of a range of contemporary attacks on moral selfhood, ... More

There can be no meaning to the notion of human moral creativity without first the ontological possibility for a poetic moral self. In the face of a range of contemporary attacks on moral selfhood, Paul Ricoeur’s “poetics of the will” opens the way for a new postmodern phenomenology of the moral self rooted not in the autonomous ego of modernity, but in a radical religious affirmation or wager of the human capability for making meaning of its historical and embodied world. A careful reading of Ricoeur’s extensive oeuvre over the second half of the twentieth century shows the development of a highly original moral anthropology—combining elements from Edmund Husserl, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gabriel Marcel, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and others—based on a fallible tension of finitude and freedom within the self that is nevertheless capable of giving rise to concrete historical meaning over time in the form of the self’s interpretations of symbols, traditions, and narratives. Ricoeur’s unique hermeneutical phenomenology does not, however, fully articulate the primordiality of human moral creativity itself. The decisive further step that may be taken, by more closely integrating poetics and religion, is to affirm the human self as ultimately capable, in the face of its own idolatrous fallibility, of imitating the mythical world-creative activity of the world’s own primordial Creator.Less

Sages and Politics: A Way Forward

Stephen C. Angle

in Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy

This chapter articulates a contemporary Confucian politics that allows the ideal of sagehood to inform both personal and public activities, without falling into the traps that have snared both the ... More

This chapter articulates a contemporary Confucian politics that allows the ideal of sagehood to inform both personal and public activities, without falling into the traps that have snared both the theory and practice of previous Confucian politics. The chapter begins with a review of the relation between perfection and fallibility. The attitude toward perfection and ideals that is recommended leads to a second topic, which spans questions of ritual and reverence. Ritual must feature prominently in any Confucian politics. Embracing ritual and reverence entails an affirmative attitude toward spirituality, but this is a very different thing from advocating the establishment of a Confucian church or state religion. Instead, this general approach to embracing ideals undergirds the importance of what Joseph Chan has called “moderate perfectionist institutions.” These institutions must invest a plurality of voices with sovereignty if the effort to look for harmony in our world is to have any practical hope. This, then, leads to a substantial discussion of the ways in which sagely politics must be participatory. Lastly, the chapter argues that in a contemporary Confucian context, laws and rights should be seen as a system of second resort.Less

Introduction: Fault and Fallibility

Jason A. Mahn

in Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin

This chapter introduces the interconnected themes of fortunate Fall and fortunate fallibility and argues against the moralization of theological accounts of sin. While scholars such as David Kelsey ... More

This chapter introduces the interconnected themes of fortunate Fall and fortunate fallibility and argues against the moralization of theological accounts of sin. While scholars such as David Kelsey resist the “migration” of the doctrine of sin into theological hamartiology for implying that evil is necessary, the Introduction argues that attending to human fragility and tragedy does not assuage responsibility for sin. Rather, it begins to “repeat”—in Kierkegaard's nonidentical sense—the “para/orthodoxical” language of the fifth-century Easter vigil. This chapter also analyzes Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling to show the interrelation between faith and sin, as well as argues for a theological-rhetorical reading of Kierkegaard's understanding of sin.Less

Self‐Conscious Belief

Anthony O'Hear

in Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation

What does it mean to be self‐conscious? Mere consciousness involves no conception of the self. Self‐consciousness requires a conceptual scheme or symbolic system and this in itself—drawing on ... More

What does it mean to be self‐conscious? Mere consciousness involves no conception of the self. Self‐consciousness requires a conceptual scheme or symbolic system and this in itself—drawing on Wittgensteinian points about the essentially public and social nature of language—presupposes that, contrary to sceptical doubts, we are already part of a language using community. Pierce made the point that self‐consciousness only arises if one sees oneself as a fallible member of a community of speakers—that self‐consciousness requires the possibility of error. While this role for fallibility in the arising of self‐consciousness carries with it some sceptical risks, it casts doubt on any extreme form of scepticism.Less

Epictetus in His Time and Place

A. A. Long

in Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life

Discusses the life of Epictetus, and situates him in his cultural and intellectual context. He was taught Stoicism by Musonius Rufus, and the salient doctrines of traditional Stoicism are compared ... More

Discusses the life of Epictetus, and situates him in his cultural and intellectual context. He was taught Stoicism by Musonius Rufus, and the salient doctrines of traditional Stoicism are compared with Epictetus’ main themes, with a view to assess his originality. Epictetus plays down Stoic paradoxes and technicalities, focusing instead on moral progress and the fallibility of ordinary persons.Less

Conclusion

Mark Kelman

in The Heuristics Debate

The chapter reviews the similarities, both methodological and substantive, between the heuristics and biases and the fast and frugal heuristics school. But it emphasizes to a greater extent ... More

The chapter reviews the similarities, both methodological and substantive, between the heuristics and biases and the fast and frugal heuristics school. But it emphasizes to a greater extent distinctions between the schools, both in how proponents model cognition generally, and the implications of these distinct models for thinking about the general quality of human judgment, the need for expertise in making collective decisions, the utility of cost-benefit analysis, the propriety of paternalism, how best to solve information problems in markets, the desirability of using rules rather than standards, and the nature of discrimination. It argues that the better known aspect of the debate—about how well people reason—might be profitably advanced if not resolved if each side acknowledged the contributions of its opponents, but that the F&F insistence on both the prevalence and superiority of lexical decision making is both unconvincing and impossible to incorporate into existing understandings of law and policy.Less

Disruptions

in Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation

This chapter studies the disruption of the prevailing impression that print was a transparent vehicle for ideas. It shows how print sometimes presents an appearance of stability and reliability that ... More

This chapter studies the disruption of the prevailing impression that print was a transparent vehicle for ideas. It shows how print sometimes presents an appearance of stability and reliability that makes it seem like a transparent medium for conveying ideas. On this appearance, print lends an inherent authority to the content it mediates. This aura of reliability may be more the result of long cultural work than it is a property inherent to the medium. Sophisticated readers have always understood print's fallibility both in the sense that it conveys false as well as true information and in the sense that printed texts are often strewn with errors. Nonetheless, the notion that print was a transparent, reliable vehicle for conveying ideas was sufficiently widespread during the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries that it inspired satirical or ironic commentaries, which themselves appeared in printed texts and images. Several writers, printers, and artists thus used print to draw attention to its own materiality and fallibility.Less

Farewell to ‘Legal Positivism’: The Separation Thesis Unravelling

Klaus Füβer

in The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism

H. L. A Hart complained about the ambiguity of legal positivism, and proposed a definition that refers to particular explications of the concept of law, to certain theories of legal interpretation, ... More

H. L. A Hart complained about the ambiguity of legal positivism, and proposed a definition that refers to particular explications of the concept of law, to certain theories of legal interpretation, to particular views on the moral problem of a duty to obey the law, and to a sceptical position with regard to the meta-ethical issue of the possibility of moral knowledge. It is said to be restricted to the Thesis of Separation — the contention that there is no necessary connection between law and morals. In this chapter, the Separation Thesis is discussed even further, and has three shortcomings identified: first, that it has been vacillating between object-level contentions about moral qualities of the law; that the precise logical relation between both levels has never been properly accounted for; and that the question of necessary relations between morality and law hinges crucially on the presupposition that the very concept of law itself does not unravel into different sets of convenient stipulations from different epistemological angles, each of which renders the question of such necessary relations trivial. The Separation Thesis is also identified as having two versions: the Fallibility Law and the Neutrality Law.Less

Knowledge

Paul Thagard

in Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty

For the semantic pointer theory of mind, the bearers of knowledge are not abstract propositions but rather patterns of neural firing that constitute mental representations, including concepts, ... More

For the semantic pointer theory of mind, the bearers of knowledge are not abstract propositions but rather patterns of neural firing that constitute mental representations, including concepts, beliefs, nonverbal rules, images, and emotions. This neurocognitive perspective suggests new answers for questions about the generation of candidates for knowledge and their relations to the world via sensory-motor interactions. Semantic pointers support knowledge that beliefs are true or false, how to do things using multimodal rules, and of things via sensory-motor experience. The Semantic Pointer Architecture meshes well with coherence-based justification that abandons foundational certainty for fallible attempts to fit diverse elements of knowledge into the best overall explanation. Knowledge has important social dimensions.Less

Perceptual Knowledge and Recognitional Abilities

Alan Millar

in Knowing by Perceiving

Recognizing a thing as being some way from its appearance to some sense-modality is knowing that it is that way from that appearance. It is the exercise of a general ability to tell of things that ... More

Recognizing a thing as being some way from its appearance to some sense-modality is knowing that it is that way from that appearance. It is the exercise of a general ability to tell of things that are the way in question that they are that way from the way they appear. The ability is exercised only if the subject succeeds in that respect. Our fallibility in relation to those abilities consists in our not always exercising them whenever we make a judgement directed at recognition. For things to be recognized as being of some kind from their appearance, the environment has to be favourable to the exercise of the relevant ability. It will be so only if the appearance of things of the kind is distinctive of being of the kind. The view does not depend on the assumption that experiences have representational content in any rich sense.Less