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Basic Equality
By Paul Sagar. 2024
An innovative argument that vindicates our normative commitment to basic equality, synthesising philosophy, history, and psychologyWhat makes human beings one…
another&’s equals? That we are "basic equals" has become a bedrock assumption in Western moral and political philosophy. And yet establishing why we ought to believe this claim has proved fiendishly difficult, floundering in the face of the many inequalities that characterise the human condition. In this provocative work, Paul Sagar offers a novel approach to explaining and justifying basic equality. Rather than attempting to find an independent foundation for basic equality, he argues, we should instead come to see our commitment to this idea as the result of the practice of treating others as equals. Moreover, he continues, it is not enough to grapple with the problem through philosophy alone—by just thinking very hard, in our armchairs; we must draw insights from history and psychology as well.Sagar writes that, as things stand, there appear to be no good arguments for believing in the truth of basic equality. Indeed, for much of Western intellectual history and social practice, basic inequality has been the default position. How is it then, Sagar asks, that in Western societies, in a period of less than a century, basic equality emerged as the dominant view? Sagar approaches this not as a mere philosophical puzzle, but as a dramatic historical development. In so doing, he shows us what is at stake when human beings treat one another as equals just because they are human beings.We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures)
By Eddie Glaude Jr.. 2024
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people…
can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.“Like attending a jazz concert with all of one’s favorite musicians…James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Toni Morrison, and more…Glaude brilliantly takes us on an epic tour through their lives and work.”―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the RaceWe are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice.Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own.Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society—one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.Kant on Pleasure and Judgment: A Developmental and Interpretive Account
By Null Alexander Rueger. 2024
Were there interactions between the development of Kant's aesthetics and the development of his moral philosophy? How did Kant view…
pleasure and displeasure and what role did they play in the formation of his system of the faculties? In this book, Alexander Rueger situates Kant's account of pleasure and displeasure in its eighteenth-century context, with special attention to Leibniz, Wolff, Crusius, and Mendelssohn. He traces the development of Kant's views on pleasure from the 1770s to his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment in 1790, and shows that throughout, Kant understood pleasure as the satisfaction of faculty interests. The significance of this theory for the completion of Kant's critical system in the third Critique is discussed in detail. Rueger's study illuminates both the role of pleasure and displeasure in Kant's thought, and their important connections to the power of judgment.Science and the Public (Elements in the Philosophy of Science)
By Null Angela Potochnik. 2024
Science is a product of society: in its funding, its participation, and its application. This Element explores the relationship between…
science and the public with resources from philosophy of science. Chapter 1 defines the questions about science's relationship to the public and outlines science's obligation to the public. Chapter 2 considers the Vienna Circle as a case study in how science, philosophy, and the public can relate very differently than they do at present. Chapter 3 examines how public understanding of science can have a variety of different goals and introduces philosophical discussions of scientific understanding as a resource. Chapter 4 addresses public trust in science, including responding to science denial. Chapter 5 considers how expanded participation in science can contribute to public trust of science. Finally, Chapter 6 casts light on how science might discharge its obligations to the public.Redefreiheit in der Wissenschaft – wo sind ihre Grenzen? (#philosophieorientiert)
By Oliver Hallich. 2024
Die Debatte um Redefreiheit und ihre Grenzen wird lebhaft, teils sehr emotional geführt. Soll man gegen die Äußerungen einer gender-kritischen…
Philosophin Stellung beziehen, die man im Verdacht hat, transphob zu sein? Darf man politische Agitatoren zu einer Lehrveranstaltung einladen? Sollte man einen renommierten Professor von einer Konferenz ausladen, wenn er einen verschwörungstheoretischen Appell unterzeichnet hat? Der Autor versucht, diese Debatten von Ideologisierungen zu befreien und zu zeigen, wie sich solche Fragen nüchtern und vorurteilsfrei beantworten lassen. Dabei entwickelt er Kriterien, die es ermöglichen, im Einzelfall zu entscheiden, ob eine Einschränkung von Redehandlungen legitim ist. Er unterscheidet verschiedene Formen der Einschränkung von Redehandlungen und verschiedene Formen des Schadens, der durch eine solche Einschränkung verhindert werden soll. So können Argumente statt Ideologien vorgebracht werden, um die Grenzen der Redefreiheit in der Wissenschaft zubestimmen.Perception as Information Detection: Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Resources for Ecological Psychology Series)
By Jeffrey B. Wagman, Julia J. C. Blau. 2020
This book provides a chapter-by-chapter update to and reflection on of the landmark volume by J.J. Gibson on the Ecological…
Approach to Visual Perception (1979).Gibson’s book was presented a pioneering approach in experimental psychology; it was his most complete and mature description of the ecological approach to visual perception. Perception as Information Detection commemorates, develops, and updates each of the sixteen chapters from Gibson’s volume. The book brings together some of the foremost perceptual scientists in the field, from the United States, Europe, and Asia, to reflect on Gibson’s original chapters, expand on the key concepts discussed and relate this to their own cutting-edge research. This connects Gibson’s classic with the current state of the field, as well as providing a new generation of students with a contemporary overview of the ecological approach to visual perception.Perception as Information Detection is an important resource for perceptual scientists as well as both undergraduates and graduates studying sensation and perception, vision, cognitive science, ecological psychology, and philosophy of mind.Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)
By Hugo Viciana, Antonio Gaitán, Fernando Aguiar. 2024
This volume presents new research on the use of experimental methodologies in moral and social philosophy. The contributions reflect the…
growing plurality of methodologies and strategies for implementing experimental work on morality to new domains, problems, and topics.Philosophers are exploring the ways in which empirical approaches can transform our idea of the good, our understanding of the social nature of norms and morality, and our methods of fulfilling ethical goals. The chapters in this volume extend experimental work on morality to previously underexplored areas. The contributions in Part 1 explore the methods and foundations of experimental work in areas such as folk moral judgments, metaethical beliefs, moral explanations, and reflective equilibrium. Part 2 focuses on issues in normative ethics and legal and political philosophy such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, theories of justice, and criminal responsibility. Finally, the chapters in Part 3 tackle various applied ethical issues, including feminist X-Phi, animal welfare, experimental bioethics, and self-driving cars.Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, applied ethics, experimental philosophy, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law. Chapter 1 and 15 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.Is art created with computers really art? This book answers ‘yes.’ Computers can generate visual art with unique aesthetic effects…
based on innovations in computer technology and a Postmodern naturalization of technology wherein technology becomes something we live in as well as use. The present study establishes these claims by looking at digital art’s historical emergence from the 1960s to the start of the present century. Paul Crowther, using a philosophical approach to art history, considers the first steps towards digital graphics, their development in terms of three-dimensional abstraction and figuration, and then the complexities of their interactive formats.Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: An Introduction
By Sharon Crasnow, Kristen Intemann. 2024
Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: An Introduction is structured around six questions and the answers to them that have…
been offered by feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science. By showing how these answers differ from those of traditional philosophical approaches, the book situates feminist work in relation to philosophy more generally.The questions are: Who knows? What do we have knowledge of? How do we know? What don’t we know? Why does it matter? and How can we know better? In addressing these questions, the book reviews feminist accounts of objectivity, agnotology, issues in social epistemology--including epistemic injustice--and considers how feminist epistemology and philosophy of science aim at better knowledge production. The audience for the book is upper division undergraduates, but it will be useful as a foundation for graduate students and other philosophers who are seeking a general understanding of feminist work in these areas.Key Features: Provides an overview of contemporary feminist epistemology and philosophy of science Contrasts feminist epistemology and philosophy of science with traditional philosophy in these areas Provides clear examples of the benefits of feminist approaches Includes in each chapter an initial overview and, at the end of the chapter, suggested additional readings and discussion questionsBehavior and Culture in One Dimension adopts a broad interdisciplinary approach, presenting a unified theory of sequences and their functions…
and an overview of how they underpin the evolution of complexity.Sequences of DNA guide the functioning of the living world, sequences of speech and writing choreograph the intricacies of human culture, and sequences of code oversee the operation of our literate technological civilization. These linear patterns function under their own rules, which have never been fully explored. It is time for them to get their due. This book explores the one-dimensional sequences that orchestrate the structure and behavior of our three-dimensional habitat. Using Gibsonian concepts of perception, action, and affordances, as well as the works of Howard Pattee, the book examines the role of sequences in the human behavioral and cultural world of speech, writing, and mathematics. The book offers a Darwinian framework for understanding human cultural evolution and locates the two major informational transitions in the origins of life and civilization. It will be of interest to students and researchers in ecological psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and the social and biological sciences.Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in evolutionary debunking arguments directed against certain types of belief, particularly moral…
and religious beliefs. According to those arguments, the evolutionary origins of the cognitive mechanisms that produce the targeted beliefs render these beliefs epistemically unjustified. The reason is that natural selection cares for reproduction and survival rather than truth, and false beliefs can in principle be as evolutionarily advantageous as true beliefs. The present volume brings together fourteen essays that examine evolutionary debunking arguments not only in ethics and philosophy of religion, but also in philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The essays move forward research on those arguments by shedding fresh light on old problems and proposing new lines of inquiry. The book will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in the possible skeptical implications of evolutionary theory in any of the above domains.A Philosophy of Faith: Belief, Truth and Varieties of Commitment (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)
By Finlay Malcolm, Michael Scott. 2023
Faith occupies an important place in human lives. It can be directed towards God, friends, political systems and sports teams,…
and is said to help people through crises and to motivate people to achieve life goals. But what is faith? Philosophers and theologians have, for centuries, been concerned with questions about the rationality of faith, but more recently, have focussed on what kind of psychological attitude faith is. The authors of this book bring together, for the first time, the different elements of this recent debate, staking out the different positions and arguments, and defending a novel ‘true grit’ theory of faith, from which the rationality and language of faith are addressed from a fresh perspective. The book engages with a range of questions about the nature of faith, including: Does faith require belief? Is faith motivational? What is the relationship between faith, trust and hope? Do expressions of faith aim at the truth? And, in what sense is faith resilient? The authors defend a distinctive conception of faith involving resistance to psychological, practical and epistemic challenges, from which a novel account of the psychology and epistemology of faith is developed. The treatment of the topic draws extensively on the philosophy of mind, language and religion, and provides a map of this exciting field of study for newcomers to the philosophy of faith. A Philosophy of Faith will appeal to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and epistemology who are interested in the topic of faith.Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)
By James Jakób Liszka. 2022
This book presents a comprehensive and systematic picture of Charles Peirce’s ethics and aesthetics, arguing that Peirce established a normative…
framework for the study of right conduct and good ends. It also connects Peirce’s normative thought to contemporary debates in ethical theory.Peirce sought to articulate the relation among logic as right thinking, ethics as good conduct and, in an unorthodox sense of aesthetics, the pursuit of ends that are fine and worthy. Each plays an important role in ethical life. Once aesthetics has determined what makes an end worthy and admirable, and ethics determines which are good and right to pursue, logical and scientific reasoning is employed to figure the most likely means to attain those ends. Ethics does the additional duty of ensuring that the means conform to ideals of conduct. In the process, Peirce develops an interesting theory of moral motivation, an account of moral reasoning, moral truth, and a picture of what constitutes a moral community.Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences will be of interest to scholars and students working on Peirce, American philosophy, and metaethics.The Revival of Beauty: Aesthetics, Experience, and Philosophy (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)
By Catherine Wesselinoff. 2024
This book provides original descriptive accounts of two schools of thought in the philosophy of beauty: the 20th-century “Anti-Aesthetic” movement…
and the 21st-century “Beauty Revival” movement. It also includes a positive defence of beauty as a lived experience extrapolated from Beauty-Revival position.Beauty was traditionally understood in the broadest sense as a notion that engages our sense perception and embraces everything evoked by that perception, including mental products and affective states. This book constructs and places in parallel with one another the Anti-Aesthetic and Beauty-Revival movements. In the author’s view, Anti-Aestheticism is devoted to a decisive negation of beauty—denying its importance as a philosophical notion and its significance as a lived experience. It suggests that beauty is a merely sensual experience, which can be used, at best, as a distraction from justice and, at worst, as an instrument of evil. Alternatively, the Beauty-Revival movement advances arguments for beauty as an experience that extends primarily to sensual experience, but which also calls forth mental products and cognitive and affective states evoked by that experience. After reconstructing these two positions, the author elaborates on the notion of beauty as a lived experience through three key moments which occur in the process of our experiencing beautiful objects. These moments are (a) the conditions that constitute an experience of beauty, (b) the attitudinal features most likely to lead to the experience of beauty, and (c) the results of the experience of beauty.The Revival of Beauty will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, history of philosophy, and art history.Hegel and the Frankfurt School (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy)
By Paul Giladi. 2021
This collection of original essays discusses the relationship between Hegel and the Frankfurt School Critical Theory tradition. The book’s aim…
is to take stock of this fascinating, complex, and complicated relationship. The volume is divided into five parts: Part I focuses on dialectics and antagonisms. Part II is concerned with ethical life and intersubjectivity. Part III is devoted to the logico-metaphysical discourse surrounding emancipation. Part IV analyses social freedom in relation to emancipation. Part V discusses classical and contemporary political philosophy in relation to Hegel and the Frankfurt School, as well as radical-democratic models and the outline and functions of economic institutions.The Theory and Practice of Recognition (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
By Onni Hirvonen, Heikki J. Koskinen. 2023
This volume presents new essays on the theory and practice of recognition. In order to retain its overall plausibility as…
a critical social theory, contemporary recognition theory needs to be able to successfully combine theory with real-life perspectives, in both contemporary and historical contexts.Contemporary recognition theory has developed into an established and active multidisciplinary research programme. The chapters in this volume have two main purposes. First, they engage in theoretical development of the contemporary theories of recognition. They explore the conceptual histories and the environments of recognition, as well as the connection between recognition and authenticity, emancipation, and social ontology. Second, they connect the theoretical insights of contemporary recognition with analyses of contemporary and historical social practices. These contributions explore themes such as populism and polarization, models of harmful invisibilization and social ignorance, the problem of evil and suffering, and social justice phenomena such as the #MeToo movement.The Theory and Practice of Recognition will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, social ontology, political theory, and sociology.Philosophy of Improvisation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Theory and Practice (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)
By Susanne Ravn; Simon Høffding; James McGuirk. 2021
This volume brings together philosophical and interdisciplinary perspectives on improvisation. The contributions connect the theoretical dimensions of improvisation with different…
viewpoints on its practice in the arts and the classroom. The chapters address the phenomenon of improvisation in two related ways. On the one hand, they attend to the lived practices of improvisation both within and without the arts in order to explain the phenomenon. They also extend the scope of improvisational practices to include the role of improvisation in habit and in planned action, at both individual and collective levels. Drawing on recent work done in the philosophy of mind, they address questions such as whether improvisation is a single unified phenomenon or whether it entails different senses that can be discerned theoretically and practically. Finally, they ask after the special kind of improvisational expertise which characterizes musicians, dancers, and other practitioners, an expertise marked by the artist’s ability to participate competently in complex situations while deliberately relinquishing control. Philosophy of Improvisation will appeal to anyone with a strong interest in improvisation, to researchers working in philosophy, aesthetics, and pedagogy as well as practitioners involved in different kinds of music, dance, and theater performances.This book explores the meaning of the interpretive turn in the philosophy of the human sciences for a variety of…
contemporary philosophical debates.While hermeneutics seems to be firmly established as a tradition and methodology in the human sciences, interpretive philosophy seems to be under increasing pressure in recent philosophical trends such as the "posthuman turn," the "nonhuman turn," and the "speculative turn." Responding to this predicament, this book shows how hermeneutics is gaining new force and fresh applications today by bringing together a group of leading interpretive philosophers to address such timely topics as the entanglement of social science, culture, and politics in liberal capitalist societies, the extremism with which some identities are held within those societies, the possibility of genuine, non-relativist dialogue in a "post-truth" era, the nature of the strong moral judgments people tend to make in that era, the significance of interpretation for understanding nonhuman life forms, and the inherently hermeneutic dimension of such practices as work and productive action, testimony and witnessing, and measurement in scientific practice.Updating the Interpretive Turn will be of interest to researchers working in critical social science, social philosophy, ethical theory, environmental philosophy, philosophy of work, philosophy of testimony, philosophy of measurement, and philosophical hermeneutics itself.Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion (Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Problems)
By Bertha Alvarez Manninen. 2022
What happens when two intelligent and highly informed fictional college students, one strongly pro-choice and the other vigorously pro-life, are…
asked to put together a presentation on abortion? Their conversations over five days – friendly but lively, charitable but clear – are captured in this book. Through these dialogues, students and other interested readers are introduced to the difficult moral issues of abortion. In Chapter 1, readers learn about Roe v. Wade and other relevant legal cases. Chapter 2 covers basic, philosophical issues such as: What is a person? Are fetuses persons? Is fetal potential morally relevant? How shall we define the moral community? Chapter 3 introduces students to Don Marquis’s "Why Abortion is Immoral" and also the metaphysical issues of personal identity and its relevance to abortion. Chapter 4 covers Judith Jarvis Thomson’s "A Defense of Abortion", including objections and responses to the argument from bodily autonomy. Finally, Chapter 5 looks at abortion in hard cases, such as in cases of rape, fetal disability, non-viable pregnancies, and sex-selection; the chapter also includes a conversation on fathers and abortion. With a Foreword by Laurie Shrage, topics headings in the margins, and an annotated bibliography, Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion is an easy-to-use volume and valuable resource for anyone interested in a fair and clear-headed approach to one of the most contentious moral issues of our time.The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic
By Stephen M. Krason. 2012
In this stimulating volume, Stephen M. Krason considers whether the Founding Fathers' vision of the American democratic republic has been…
transformed and if so, in what ways. He looks to the basic principles of the Founding Fathers, then discusses the changes that resulted from evolving contemporary expectations about government. Referencing philosophical principles and the work of great Western thinkers, Krason then explores a variety of proposals that could forge a foundation for restoration.Acknowledging that any attempt to revive the Founders' views on a democratic republic must start in the public sphere, Krason focuses on concerned citizens who are aware of the extent to which our current political structures deviate from the Founders' vision and want to take action. Ultimately, a democratic republic can exist, be sustained, and flourish only when there is a deep commitment to it in the minds and norms of its people.Written by a foremost authority in the field of US Constitutional law, this book will appeal to those interested in American history, society, and politics.