Search Results

Melancholic Freedom: Agency and the Spirit of Politics

David Kyuman Kim

Why does agency — the capacity to make choices and to act in the world — matter to us? Why is it meaningful that our intentions have effects in the world, that they reflect our sense of identity, ... More

Why does agency — the capacity to make choices and to act in the world — matter to us? Why is it meaningful that our intentions have effects in the world, that they reflect our sense of identity, that they embody what we value? What kinds of motivations are available for political agency and judgment in an age that lacks the enthusiasm associated with the great emancipatory movements for civil rights and gender equality? What are the conditions for the possibility of being an effective agent when the meaning of democracy has become less transparent? This book addresses these crucial questions by uncovering the political, moral, philosophical, and religious dimensions of human agency. The book treats agency as a form of religious experience that reflects implicit and explicit notions of the good. Of particular concern are the moral, political, and religious motivations that underpin an understanding of agency as meaningful action. Through a critical engagement with the work of theorists such as Judith Butler, Charles Taylor, and Stanley Cavell, this book argues that late modern and postmodern agency is found most effectively at work in “projects of regenerating agency” or critical and strategic responses to loss. Agency as melancholic freedom begins and endures, this text maintains, through the moral and psychic losses associated with a broad range of experiences, including the moral identities shaped by secularized modernity and the multi-fold forms of alienation experienced by those who suffer the indignities of racial, gender, class, and sexuality discrimination and oppression. This book calls for renewing the sense of urgency in our political and moral engagements by seeing agency as a vocation, where the aspiration for self-transformation and the human need for hope are fundamental concerns.Less

Oughts and Thoughts: Scepticism and the Normativity of Meaning

Anandi Hattiangadi

This book provides a response to the argument for meaning scepticism set out by Saul Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke asks what makes it the case that anybody ever means ... More

This book provides a response to the argument for meaning scepticism set out by Saul Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke asks what makes it the case that anybody ever means anything by any word, and argues that there are no facts of the matter as to what anybody ever means. Kripke's argument has inspired a lively and extended debate in the philosophy of language, as it raises some of the most fundamental issues in the field: namely, the reality, privacy, and normativity of meaning. The book argues that in order to achieve the radical conclusion that there are no facts as to what a person means by a word, the sceptic must rely on the thesis that meaning is normative, and that this thesis fails. Since any ‘sceptical solution’ to the sceptical problem is irremediably incoherent, the book concludes that there must be a fact of the matter about what we mean. In addition to providing an overview of the debate on meaning and content scepticism, this book presents a detailed discussion of the contributions made by Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Robert Brandom, Fred Dretske, John McDowell, and Crispin Wright, among others, to the controversy surrounding Kripke's argument. The issues considered include the normativity of meaning and its relation to the normativity of moral judgments, reductive and non-reductive theories of meaning, deflationism about truth and meaning, and the privacy of meaning.Less

Everyday Aesthetics

Yuriko Saito

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone ... More

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the last two centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. This book aims to correct this neglect by revealing how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and the quality of life. By analyzing a wide range of contemporary examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, and everyday objects, as well as precedents in 18th century British aesthetics, 19th century American landscape appreciation, and Japanese culture, this book illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. The issues discussed include the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, diverse modes of practicing everyday aesthetics, the environmental ramifications of our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments, green aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of objects and phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic experience of moral values. The discussion of each issue explores the complex nature of everyday aesthetics, as well as the power of the aesthetic, by illuminating its serious moral, political, existential, and environmental implications that are often unrecognized.Less

Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise

Henry E. Allison

The book examines the central tenets of Hume's epistemology and cognitive psychology. It adopts a two level approach. On the one hand, it considers Hume's thought in its own terms and historical ... More

The book examines the central tenets of Hume's epistemology and cognitive psychology. It adopts a two level approach. On the one hand, it considers Hume's thought in its own terms and historical context. So considered, Hume is viewed as a naturalist, whose project in the first three parts of the first book of the Treatise is to provide an account of the operation of the understanding in which reason is subordinated to custom and other non-rational propensities. Scepticism arises in the fourth part as a form of metascepticism, directed not against first-order beliefs, but against philosophical attempts to ground these beliefs in the ‘space of reasons’. On the other hand, it provides a critique of these tenets from a Kantian perspective. This involves a comparison of the two thinkers on a range of issues, including space and time, causation, existence, induction, and the self. In each case, the issue is seen to turn on a contrast between their underlying models of cognition. Hume is committed to the perceptual model, according to which cognition is regarded as a seeing with the ‘mind's eye’ of the relation between mental contents. By contrast, Kant appeals to a discursive model in which the fundamental cognitive act is judgment, understood as the application of concepts to sensory data. Regarded from the first point of view, Hume's account is deemed a major philosophical achievement, while seen from the second it suffers from a failure to develop an adequate account of concepts and judgments.Less

Ethics and Qualities of Life

Joel J. Kupperman

This book looks at what enters into ethical judgment and choice. Interpretation of a case and of what the options are is always a factor, as is a sense of the possible values at stake. Intuitions ... More

This book looks at what enters into ethical judgment and choice. Interpretation of a case and of what the options are is always a factor, as is a sense of the possible values at stake. Intuitions also enter in, but often are unreliable. For a long time it seemed only fair that oldest sons inherited, and it struck few people as unfair that women were not allowed to attend universities. A moral judgment is putatively part of a moral order in a society that any reasonable person would accept. But what counts as “reasonable” is generally contestable. The unreliability of intuitions leads naturally to ethical theory. Kantian, contractualist, and consequentialist theories all have some important truth in them, but not the whole truth. Contractualism lacks the resources required for a fully determinate account of what counts as “reasonable.” Broad general rules are important to Kant and are at the center of everyday morality. But can Kantian ethics explain why they have to have this central role? Our evolving social contract now contains elements (e.g., the rejection of racism and sexism) that once would have seemed counter-intuitive to most people. But could consequentialists have predicted with entire confidence the consequences of social changes that we now think were desirable? The last part of this book contains a double argument. One is that ethical theory is employed by humans in a state of semi-ignorance of relevant factors, grasping at likely truths and evolved intuitions. The other is that consequentialist considerations have a major role at the fundamental level, but much more in justification or criticism than in ethical discovery.Less

Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy

José L. Zalabardo (ed.)

This book collects nine previously unpublished works on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing mainly on his early work. They cover a wide range of aspects of Wittgenstein's early ... More

This book collects nine previously unpublished works on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing mainly on his early work. They cover a wide range of aspects of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but they can be broadly clustered as focusing on three areas: the relationship between Wittgenstein's account of representation and Russell's theories of judgment, the role of objects in the tractarian system and Wittgenstein's philosophical method.Less

Methods in Medical Ethics: Critical Perspectives

Over the last several decades, advocates have championed a bewildering variety of methods for understanding and resolving difficult ethical problems in medicine, including principlism, wide ... More

Over the last several decades, advocates have championed a bewildering variety of methods for understanding and resolving difficult ethical problems in medicine, including principlism, wide reflective equilibrium, casuistry, feminism, virtue theory, narrative, and others. Much of this advocacy overlooks the limits of the favored method, and neglects the strengths found in the alternatives. In systematically uncovering and evaluating both the strengths and limits of a variety of ethical tools, Methods in Medical Ethics: Critical Perspectives develops a comprehensive appreciation of the roles that various methods can each play in deepening our understanding of ethical problems in medicine, and in supporting well-grounded judgments about what to do. Each method discussed is critically evaluated to identify both limits and advantages, which are then illustrated through discussion of specific cases or controversies. This review not only demonstrates that there is no single method adequate to the task. More importantly, it develops an informed eclecticism that knows how to pick the right tool for the right job.Less

Implications of the Philosophy of Kant: Kantadarsaner Tatparyya

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Mohanty, and Tara Chatterjea

Immanuel Kant's three Critiques-critique of pure reason, critique of practical reason, and critique of judgment-have been the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Delving into concepts like free will, ... More

Immanuel Kant's three Critiques-critique of pure reason, critique of practical reason, and critique of judgment-have been the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Delving into concepts like free will, knowledge of the self, and the role of imagination in knowledge, Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya integrates the three critiques, shows their interconnections and presents their essential theses. He extends the meaning of concepts like knowing and experience from the Nyāya and the Advaita schools to evaluate judgments and certainties, thereby extending the domain of Kantian insight. Hailed as one of the most original and creative Indian academic philosophers of the twentieth century, Bhattacharyya explains, amplifies, and transcreates, moving beyond Kant's original text, without distorting his essential tenets.Less

Moral Sentimentalism

Michael Slote

There has been a great deal of interest in moral sentimentalism in recent years, but most of that interest has been exclusively either in metaethical questions about the meaning of moral terms or in ... More

There has been a great deal of interest in moral sentimentalism in recent years, but most of that interest has been exclusively either in metaethical questions about the meaning of moral terms or in normative issues about benevolence, caring, and compassion and their place in the moral life. This book seeks to deal with both sorts of issues and to do so primarily in terms of the notion of empathy. Hume tried to do something like this more than two centuries ago, though he didn't have the word empathy and used the term sympathy instead. But Hume misconstrued the phenomenology of moral approval and disapproval, and the nascent theories of moral meaning he grounded in approval and disapproval allow for (much) less objectivity than moral judgments seem to possess. The present book uses a semi‐Kripkean reference‐fixing view of terms like right and wrong to show how moral claims can be objectively valid a priori and yet at the same time action‐guiding and motivating — something that Kantian ethics seeks to provide, but sentimentalism turns out to be more capable of giving us. In addition to dealing with semantic issues, this book shows how sentimentalist forms of moral education and moral learning are possible; and in its later chapters, it also focuses on normative issues of public morality: discussing respect, autonomy, justice, and objectivity itself in strictly sentimentalist care‐ethical terms and demonstrating that such an approach can be thoroughly feminist in its implications and goals. Rationalism now dominates the scene in moral philosophy, but there are signs of change, and this book works to encourage those possibilities.Less

Backsliding: Understanding Weakness of Will

Alfred R. Mele

People backslide. They freely do things they believe it would be best on the whole not to do – and best from their own point of view, not just the perspective of their peers or their parents. The aim ... More

People backslide. They freely do things they believe it would be best on the whole not to do – and best from their own point of view, not just the perspective of their peers or their parents. The aim of this book is to explain why that happens. The first main item of business is to clarify the nature of backsliding – of actions that display some weakness of will. To this end, Mele uses traditional philosophical techniques dating back to Plato and Aristotle (whose work on weakness of will or “akrasia” he discusses) and some new studies in the emerging field of experimental philosophy. He then attacks the thesis that backsliding is an illusion because people never freely act contrary to what they judge best. Mele argues that it is extremely plausible that if people ever act freely, they sometimes backslide. The biggest challenge posed by backsliding is to explain why it happens. At the book’s heart is the development of a theoretical and empirical framework that sheds light both on backsliding and on exercises of self-control that prevent it. Here, Mele draws on work in social and developmental psychology and in psychiatry to motivate a view of human behavior in which both backsliding and overcoming the temptation to backslide are explicable. He argues that backsliding is no illusion and our theories about the springs of action, the power of evaluative judgments, human agency, human rationality, practical reasoning, and motivation should accommodate backsliding.Less

Liberating Judgment: Fanatics, Skeptics, and John Locke's Politics of Probability

Douglas John Casson

Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe, this book offers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and ... More

Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe, this book offers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and self-government. The book argues that the work of John Locke instills a civic judgment that avoids the excesses of corrosive skepticism and dogmatic fanaticism, which lead to either political acquiescence or irresolvable conflict. Locke changes the way political power is assessed by replacing deteriorating vocabularies of legitimacy with a new language of justification informed by a conception of probability. For Locke, the coherence and viability of liberal self-government rests not on unassailable principles or institutions, but on the capacity of citizens to embrace probable judgment. The book explores the breakdown of the medieval understanding of knowledge and opinion, and considers how Montaigne's skepticism and Descartes' rationalism—interconnected responses to the crisis—involved a pragmatic submission to absolute rule. Locke endorses this response early on, but moves away from it when he encounters a notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. In his mature writings, Locke instructs his readers to govern their faculties and intellectual yearnings in accordance with this new standard as well as a vocabulary of justification that might cultivate a self-government of free and equal individuals. The success of Locke's arguments depends upon citizens' willingness to take up the labor of judgment in situations where absolute certainty cannot be achieved.Less

Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgement

Shaun Nichols

This volume develops a new account of the nature of moral judgment. Evidence from developmental psychology and psychopathologies suggests that emotions play a crucial role in normal moral judgment. ... More

This volume develops a new account of the nature of moral judgment. Evidence from developmental psychology and psychopathologies suggests that emotions play a crucial role in normal moral judgment. This indicates that philosophical accounts of moral judgment that eschew the emotions are mistaken. However, the volume also argues that prevailing philosophical accounts that embrace a role for the emotions are also mistaken. The empirical work points to a quite different account of moral judgment than philosophers have considered, an account in which normative rules and emotions make independent contributions to moral judgment. Further, the volume argues that the emotions play an important role in the normative rules that get fixed in the culture. The history of norms indicates that norms that resonate with our emotions are more likely to survive.Less

Neuroeconomics: A guide to the new science of making choices

Peter Politser

As technology has opened new windows into the brain, it has revealed a great deal about what happens there when people make decisions about money. These revelations have given rise to a new field, ... More

As technology has opened new windows into the brain, it has revealed a great deal about what happens there when people make decisions about money. These revelations have given rise to a new field, called neuroeconomics. The field promises to answer both economic and emotional questions about behavior surrounding situations involving money — such as why people save, buy stocks, steal, and overspend. Interest in neuroeconomics has spread outward to many different fields — marketing, management, education, psychology, political science, and law — but it has also pulled the focus of many of these fields inward, toward a common neurobiology that unites them. As a result, we have begun to learn that some fields' concerns are not as different as they have appeared to be. For example, the monetary concerns of economics and the emotional concerns of the mental health fields, on the surface, look very different. But when it comes to distinguishing the two, many neural circuits do not have a clue. Many of the fear circuits do not know if we are worried about stocks or terrorists. And most of the reward circuits do not know if we are picking up a paycheck or checking out an attractive face. This book provides a framework for evaluating certain aspects of good — or poor — judgment, providing a model for making sense of our evaluations, and showing how neuroeconomic methods will ultimately help us to recognize inconsistency in values, measure response to monetary risk and reward, discover more specific elements of response, and inject more sense into different concepts of good sense.Less