Evaluative and normative terms and concepts are often said to be "essentially contestable". This notion has been used in political and legal theory and applied ethics to analyse disputes concerning the proper usage of terms like democracy, freedom, genocide, rape, coercion, and the rule of law. Many philosophers have also thought that essential contestability tells us something important about the evaluative in particular. Gallie (who coined the term), for instance, argues that the central structural features of essentially contestable concepts secure (...) their evaluativeness. I'll argue that these (widely held) central features are exemplified by many evaluative and non-evaluative terms alike, owing to more general factors (such as multidimensionality) which have nothing in particular to do with being evaluative. The role of these factors in semantic interpretation is subject to a certain kind of "metasemantic" disputes which have the features of the disputes characteristically admitted by essentially contestable concepts (whether evaluative or not) and which can be similarly substantive and worthwhile. In closing I'll discuss how my argument shows that our understanding of evaluative disagreement needs refinement. The overall upshot is that essential contestability shows nothing deep or distinctive about the evaluative in particular. (shrink)

In 1956, W.B. Gallie introduced his idea of essentially contested concepts. In my paper, I offer a novel interpretation of his theory and argue that his theory, thus interpreted, is correct. The key to my interpretation lies in a condition Gallie places on essentially contested concepts that other interpreters downplay or dismiss: that the use of an essentially contested concept must be derived “from an original exemplar whose authority is acknowledged by all the contestant users of the concept.” This reveals (...) a similarity between Gallie’s views and the semantic externalist views of Hilary Putnam, and others, about natural kind terms like “water” and “tiger.” I argue that natural kind terms and terms for essentially contested concepts are two species of a single semantic genus. In the case of natural kind terms, a term refers to a natural kind, the exemplars are instances of that kind, and the relation between the exemplars and anything to which the term applies is co-membership of the kind. In the case of terms for essentially contested concepts, a term refers to an historical tradition, the exemplar is a stage or temporal part of that tradition, and the relation between the exemplar and anything to which the term refers is being the heir of. This allows me to understand the contests that alerted Gallie to the phenomenon of essentially contested concepts as contests over the ownership of historical traditions. (shrink)

Sometimes speakers within a linguistic community use a term that they do not conceptualize as a slur, but which other members of that community do. Sometimes these speakers are ignorant or naïve, but not always. This article explores a puzzle raised when some speakers stubbornly maintain that a contested term t is not derogatory. Because the semantic content of a term depends on the language, to say that their use of t is semantically derogatory despite their claims and intentions, we (...) must individuate languages in a way that counts them as speaking our language L, assigns t a determinately derogatory content in L, and still accommodates the other features of slurs’ linguistic profile. Given the difficulty of doing this, there is some reason to give a non-semantic analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs. The author suggests that rather than dismissing the stubborn as semantically incompetent, we would do better to appeal to expected uptake as moral reasons for the stubborn to adjust their linguistic practices. (shrink)

In ordinary conversation, speakers disagree not only about worldly facts, but also about how to use language to describe the world. For example, disagreement about whether Buffalo is in the American Midwest, whether Pluto is a planet, or whether someone has been canceled, can persist even with agreement about all the relevant facts. The speakers may still engage in “metalinguistic negotiation”—disputing what to mean by “Midwest”, “planet”, or “cancel”. I first motivate an approach to metalinguistic negotiation that generalizes a Stalnakerian (...) theory of communication by including linguistic commitments in the conversational common ground. Then, I turn to cases where the very status of a disagreement as metalinguistic or factual is unclear or contested. For example, after the publication of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, some responses claimed to identify factual errors, while others took those same “errors” to be matters of interpretation. I’ll consider how to extend our theorizing about metalinguistic negotiation to this type of (even more) “meta” disagreement, using the discussion following the 1619 Project as a case study. On my view, in most such cases, there will be a metalinguistic negotiation going on. Still, I explain several ways in which, despite a dispute being metalinguistic, the factualist side can sometimes receive important vindication. I also discuss why it can make sense for speakers to contest the status of a dispute. (shrink)

This paper argues that pluralism is a democratic practice that involves contesting both the hegemony of anti-pluralism, and being open to agonistic conflict with fellow philosophers in deciding what pluralism in philosophy is or ought to look like. By giving a historical reconstruction of the US pluralist tradition, offering a philosophical account of a "polyvocal pluralism" that is conscious of power relations, and discussing the importance of difficult conversations with fellow pluralists as a key component of a democratic solidarity, this (...) paper argues for reviving the contestatory spirit of the Pluralist tradition for continuing to advance and develop it today. (shrink)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) plays an increasingly influential role in shaping health-related human rights in Europe, despite the absence of an explicit right to health in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This article examines how the Court adjudicates morally and legally contested health issues across six domains: physician-assisted dying, abortion, vaccination, place of birth, posthumous reproduction, and climate-related health risks. Drawing on comparative doctrinal analysis, the article identifies recurring patterns in health-related cases. These include an (...) emphasis on procedural fairness, a tendency to frame harm in individualised terms, and deference to national scientific authorities. By tracing these patterns, the article clarifies how the Court navigates competing rights and interests in contested health cases. It also considers emerging challenges, such as litigation over artificial intelligence in healthcare, highlighting the ECtHR’s growing influence on the development of health law and policy through its interpretation of the ECHR. (shrink)

This article examines how the same heritage or revival site can produce both welcoming and hostile atmospheres depending on the cohort, yielding selectively permeable environments that enable some groups while constraining others. Climatic volatility further shapes these encounters, as extreme weather has been shown to increase negative valence by making movement and access more difficult, especially for marginalized populations. Drawing on built-form analysis and political history-supplemented with interview data on everyday navigation and affective experiences in cities-the paper examines three cases: (...) Cairo's Tahrir Square, revivalist university campuses and Buenos Aires women's marches. To explain why these locales produce varying atmospheres for different groups, the article draws on affordance theory-an empirically grounded account of valenced action possibilities that exist independently of any one observer yet remain harder for vulnerable populations to negotiate. These challenges often intensify around heritage and revival aesthetics, which can alienate outsiders, and are amplified by Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) elements, such as elevation changes, ornamental walls and other territorial cues. The study contributes to urban political ecology, especially scholarship on how aestheticized urban forms serve as instruments through which powerbrokers materialize dominance and produce uneven access to public venues. (shrink)

Social scientists, political scientists and philosophers debate key concepts such as democracy, power and autonomy. Contested concepts like these pose questions: Are terms such as “democracy” hopelessly ambiguous? How can two theorists defend alternative accounts of democracy without talking past each other? How can we understand debates in which theorists disagree about what democracy is? This paper first discusses the popular strategy to answer these questions by appealing to Rawls’s distinction between concepts and conceptions. According to this approach, defenders of (...) rival conceptions of, e.g. justice can disagree without talking past each other because they share the concept of justice. It is argued that this idea is attractive but limited in application and that it fails to do justice to the dynamic and normative aspects of concept formation. Reflective equilibrium is then suggested as an alternative approach. It replaces the static contrast between a conceptual ‘core’ and competing conceptions by a dynamic perspective of concept formation as a partly normative undertaking: pre-theoretic language use and commitments can provide a shared starting point for developing alternative accounts which yield different concepts of, e.g. justice. This perspective provides a new understanding of how it is possible that different theorists defend rival accounts of, e.g. justice, without talking past each other. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the harms inflicted upon transgender persons through “misgendering,” that is, such deployments of gender terms that diminish transgender persons’ selfrespect, limit the discursive resources at their disposal to define their own gender, and cause them microaggressive psychological harms. Such deployments are morally contestable, that is, they can be challenged on ethical or political grounds. Two characterizations of “woman” proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. When we consider what would happen to transgender (...) women upon the broad implementation of these characterizations within transgender women’s social context, we discover that they suffer from two defects: they either exclude at least some transgender women, or else they implicitly foster hierarchies among women, marginalizing transgender women in particular. In conclusion, I claim that the moral contestability of gender-term deployments acts as a stimulus to regularly consider the provisionality and revisability of our deployments of the term “woman.”. (shrink)

Given the increased use of technology in and out of schools, and that such technologies deliberately attract and arrest the attention of their users, students learning about how attention is considered philosophically becomes significant. As such, attention, as a topic of philosophical interest at secondary school level, is a worthy philosophical inquiry for contemporary students. However, given that defining attention is contested, with significantly varying perspectives, teaching these articulations simultaneously can prove difficult. I argue that using film, by capitalising on (...) student interaction and interpretations, can address this challenge. Through this pedagogical approach, students are encouraged to reflect on what they believe is important about defining attention by exploring the common features of different articulations of attention, focusing on its moral and economic components. I identify two pedagogical aims: i) engaging with film to learn about different articulations of attention, and ii) to have students explore their own definition(s) of attention. Two films, 'Ex Machina' (Garland 2014) and 'Her' (Jonze 2013), are shown to be helpful for illuminating attention and are used to demonstrate alternative perspectives on how attending is variously conceived. Highlighting the contrasts between the two films therefore becomes significant in encouraging exploratory thought and problem-solving possible contradictions in defining attention. (shrink)

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through (...) consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport. (shrink)

As hubs of global exchange, port cities are host to inconvenient and contested pasts. Many of these pasts have yet to be fully recognized. In the wake of demonstrations against racial injustices this summer, the PortCityFutures team discussed how our own research practices relate to systemic inequalities within port cities. It was concluded that we need to better understand how these contested and complex pasts, legacies of diversity and segregation, and colonial pasts impact port cities today.

Since W. B. Gallie introduced the notion of essentially contested concepts (ECCs) in 1956, social science scholars have increasingly used his framework to analyze key concepts drawing “endless disputes” from contestant users. Despite its merits, the ECC framework has been limited by a neglect of social, cultural, and political contexts, the invisibility of actors, and its ahistorical character. To understand how ECCs evolve and change over time, I use a conceptual history approach to study the concept of philanthropy, recently labeled (...) as an ECC. Using France during classical modernity as a case study, I analyze key events and actors from the concept’s inception in 1712 as a virtue of the Enlightenment to its triumph after 1789 as a secular alternative to Catholic charity, until its decline at the end of the nineteenth century as a new consensus emerged around the concept of solidarity. By introducing the notion of historically contested concepts, I make several contributions to research on ECCs, conceptual contestation, and conceptual change. (shrink)

Writing about secession is not an easy task for a political philosopher. Yet, writing about secession in India raises further practical and theoretical problems. The incredible task of professor Chandhoke’s book, Contested Secessions, is thus to provide a restatement of a liberal theory of secession, understood as a remedial right theory, which is still compatible with situations of contested secessions, such as those occurring in post-colonial societies like India. This paper focuses on two distinct yet related aspects of Chandhoke’s theory: (...) her distinctive version of remedial right theory, and her emphasis on a form of comprehensive pluralist liberalism. I argue that this approach might result in inconsistency due to the conflicting demands of these two approaches. If we take seriously Chandhoke’s political claim in favour of the legitimacy of what she calls “formal” democracy, further clarifications are needed with respect to the account of pluralism she proposes. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of Operator Contestability in AI systems: the principle that those overseeing AI systems (operators) must have the necessary control to be accountable for the decisions made by these algorithms. We argue that designers have a duty to ensure operator contestability. We demonstrate how this duty can be fulfilled by applying the'Design for Defeaters' framework, which provides strategies to embed tools within AI systems that enable operators to challenge decisions. Defeaters are designed to contest either the (...) justification for the AI’s data inputs (undercutting defeaters) or the validity of the conclusions drawn from that data (rebutting defeaters). To illustrate the necessity and application of this framework, we examine case studies such as AI-driven recruitment processes, where operators need tools and authority to uncover and address potential biases, and autonomous driving systems, where real-time decision-making is crucial. The paper argues that operator contestability requires ensuring that operators have (1) epistemic access to the relevant normative reasons and (2) the authority and cognitive capacity to act on these defeaters. By addressing these challenges, the paper emphasizes the importance of designing AI systems in a way that enables operators to effectively contest AI decisions, thereby ensuring that the appropriate individuals can take responsibility for the outcomes of human-AI interactions. (shrink)

The literature on the metaphysics of gender is partially marked by a tension between conceptions that understand gender categories as importantly at least partly self-determined identities and those that understand them as social or cultural categories imposed upon others as a tool of oppression. I argue that this tension can be mediated by understanding gender categories as essentially contested. I then draw on “radical functionalism” to argue that, while, divorced of context, competing conceptions can simultaneously explicate an essentially contested concept, (...) within context, some conceptions better meet background purposes underlying the use of the concept than others. (shrink)

I argue that capitalism presents a threat to “democratic contestation”: the egalitarian, socially distributed capacity to affect how, why, and whether power is used. Markets are not susceptible to mechanisms of accountability, nor are they bearers of intentions in the way that political power-holders are. This makes them resistant to the kind of rational, intentional oversight that constitutes one of democracy’s social virtues. I identify four social costs associated with this problem: the vulnerability of citizens to arbitrary interference, the (...) insensitivity of markets to relevant interests, failures of trust in the market system, and the inhibition of social deliberation about matters of public concern. I make general two suggestions about how we might ameliorate these problems: First, as a way of introducing some measure of intentionality to large-scale patterns of business activity, the reconceptualization of such activity as participation in larger group actions; second, the development of deliberative bodies that bring together business actors, policy experts, and diverse citizens in an effort to better characterize and transmit the public values that business should serve. (shrink)

This paper proposes an argumentation-based procedure for legal interpretation, by reinterpreting the traditional canons of textual interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes, which are then classified, formalized, and represented through argument visualization and evaluation tools. The problem of statutory interpretation is framed as one of weighing contested interpretations as pro and con arguments. The paper builds an interpretation procedure by formulating a set of argumentation schemes that can be used to comparatively evaluate the types of arguments used in cases of (...) contested statutory interpretation in law. A simplified version of the Carneades Argumentation System is applied in a case analysis showing how the procedure works. A logical model for statutory interpretation is finally presented, covering pro-tanto and all-things-considered interpretive conclusions. (shrink)

Maximum Parsimony (MP) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) are two methods for evaluating which phlogenetic tree is best supported by data on the characteristics of leaf objects (which may be species, populations, or individual organisms). MP has been criticized for assuming that evolution proceeds parsimoniously -- that if a lineage begins in state i and ends in state j, the way it got from i to j is by the smallest number of changes. MP has been criticized for needing to assume (...) some model or other of the evolutionary process even though biologists often do not know what that process really is. This paper critically evaluates both criticisms. (shrink)

This paper offers a parallel study of the Korčula Summer School and the LCY Political School in Kumrovec, aiming to understand the evolution, challenges, and decline of communist ideology in Yugoslavia, while exploring what communism even meant in this context. Covering the period from 1964 to 1990, the study examines the role of these schools in shaping the ideological foundations of Yugoslav society and the difficulties they faced in a shifting political and intellectual landscape. Through a chronological overview, the paper (...) seeks to illuminate how ideological systems evolved and what remained of “Yugoslav communism” as it waned. (shrink)

Gender/sex divide has always been the part and parcel of any discourse. The problematics of identity is built around male as superior and female as inferior beings. The changing scenario of the universe defines human beings in terms of neoliberalism, globalization, deconstruction of ideas and images, and, above all the way of interpreting everything from a post-structuralist approach has brought forth new ideas and images in the rubric of discourse analysis. Body and physical fitness have always been an issue of (...) debate and discussion since it engages an arena of women’s participation in various physical fitness activities and games. The present paper attempts to focus on the world of games and sports as a site where established values about gender have been contested, resisted, negotiated and transformed through the analysis of selected films. Popular culture has always been a powerful medium to challenge the myth that strong and powerful women are not real. The paper will attempt to take up this terrain to focus on women engaged in the world of games and sports to show the present scenario of women’s games and sports in the Indian context. Keywords: games and sports, discourse analysis, films, performativity, women. (shrink)

The starting point of this article is the undeniable experience of conscious willing despite its rejection by scientific research. The article starts a phenomenology of willing at the level of the phenomenon of willing itself, without assuming its embeddedness in a faculty of the soul, consciousness and so forth. After the introduction, a brief history of the philosophy of willing is provided, from which the paradoxical conclusion is drawn that, according to phenomenologists like Heidegger and his followers, the dominance of (...) the will is the main characteristic of the current age, whereas scientists deny the existence of a conscious will at all. Then, four structural moments of the phenomenon of willing are explored in contrast to traditional characterizations in order to rehabilitate and appreciate the phenomenon of willing in contemporary philosophy: the interconnectedness of the one who wills and that which is willed, the transcendence and demand character of that which is willed, the self-involvement of the one who wills and the ampliative nature of the act of willing. To this end, not only sources from the phenomenological tradition but also the affordance theory of the ecological psychologist James Gibson are critically discussed. (shrink)

In diverse fictions from the second century Roman Empire, two parties with competing claims to truth hold a formal contest in a public place where, after a series of abrupt reversals, the issue is finally decided by the evidence of a dead, mutilated, or resurrected body. We can ask these corpses to tell us about the ways Roman society constructed truth. Furthermore, can we learn from the abrupt reversals in these narratives anything about the way Romans experienced shifts in truth-paradigms (...) in “real life”? (This is, of course, a question of paramount importance for appreciating the religious change propelled by Christianity). (shrink)

This special issue of Acta Academica contains a collection of papers on the topic of Contested Identities, presented during the 3rd Annual Conference of the South African Society for Critical Theory, held at the University of KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa.

This piece contextualizes a discussion by liminal feminists on the identifiers ‘women of color’ and ‘Third World women’ that emerged from some uncomfortable and constructive conversations at the 2015 FEAST conference. I focus on concerns of marginalization and gatekeeping that are far too often reiterated within the uneasy racial dynamics among feminist philosophers.

Dans cet article, j’analyse à la lumière des normes libérales de la politique délibérative le bien-fondé de l’action directe contre les institutions internationales associées au néolibéralisme et à la mondialisation du capitalisme (Banque mondiale, Organisation mondiale du commerce, etc.). Le processus délibératif de ces organismes étant illégitime du point de vue de la théorie de la politique délibérative, les activistes du mouvement altermondialiste sont en droit de contester ces organismes. De plus, une attitude de contestation peut avoir en elle-même (...) une valeur délibérative pour au moins sept raisons : (1) lancer une délibération ; (2) élargir la participation à la délibération ; (3) renforcer la représentativité ; (4) faire circuler l’information et faire connaître les arguments (publicité) ; (5) stimuler l’imagination ; (6) pousser à l’action ; (7) relancer la délibération. Finalement, les mouvements sociaux tels que le mouvement altermondialiste peuvent être vus comme des forums délibératifs. Ainsi, qui veut évaluer la légitimité de l’action directe doit prendre en considération la nature délibérative du processus par lequel les activistes choisissent les moyens les plus efficaces à utiliser pour corriger les défauts du processus délibératif officiel et pour faire avancer l’égalité, la liberté et la justice. (shrink)

Derek Walcott's colonial schoolhouse bears an interesting relationship to space and place: it is both a Caribbean site, and a site that disavows its locality by valorizing the metropolis and acting as a vital institution in the psychic colonization of the Caribbean peoples. The situation of the schoolhouse within the Caribbean landscape, and the presence of the Caribbean body, means that the pedagogical relationship works in two ways, and that the hegemonic/colonial discourses of the schoolhouse are inherently challenged within its (...) walls. While the school was used as a means of colonial subjugation, as a method of privileging the metropolitan centre, and as a way of recreating that centre within the colonies, Walcott's emphasis on place complicates and ultimately rewrites colonial discourses and practices. While the school attempts to legitimize colonial space, it in fact fosters what Walter Mignolo has termed "border thinking.". (shrink)

Cancel culture is a form of societal self-defense that becomes prominent particularly during periods of substantial moral upheaval. It can lead to the polarization of incompatible viewpoints if it is indiscriminately demonized. In this brief editorial letter, I consider framing cancel culture as an essentially contested concept (ECC), according to the theory of Walter B. Gallie, with the aim of establishing a groundwork for a more productive discourse on it. In particular, I propose that intermediate agreements and principles of reasonableness (...) can help refocus the debate on cancel culture towards democratic discourse, without blanket justification for every instance. In this context, asserting that cancel culture is an ECC does not dismiss the potential of achieving consensus on its shared core meaning or societal role. Like other similar ECCs, such as democracy or rule of law, it highlights the importance of contestations in shaping our collective understanding of the concept. (shrink)

I argue that law is not best considered an essentially contested concept. After first explaining the notion of essential contestability and disaggregating the concept of law into several related concepts, I show that the most basic and general concept of law does not fit within the criteria generally offered for essential contestation. I then buttress this claim with the additional explanation that essential contestation is itself a framework for understanding complex concepts and therefore should only be applied when (...) it is useful to gain a greater understanding of uses of the concept to which it is applied (adducing criteria for making such judgments of usefulness). With that in mind, I then show that applying the appellation of essential contestation to the concept of law does not helpfully illuminate the most general concept of law (usually of most interest to legal philosophers) and therefore it should not be used, while allowing that it might be more useful for the related concept of the rule of law. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social (...) misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

One of the issues that caught my attention in the discussion on Religion and Human Rights, which is also an issue that has recently started to be hotly discussed in Indonesia, is the issue of LGBTQ+ minority rights (gay rights). This issue becomes interesting, the issue of gay rights, especially when this issue deals with the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). As we saw in the discussion of human rights at International, tensions between gay rights and FoRB in several (...) countries have their own characteristics. For example, in Indonesia, recently, the movement for defenders of the FoRB has begun to bloom, and, I observe, there is a tendency to include minority groups such as indigenous people, including LGBTQ+ people (gay rights), into their circle of struggle. The question is, how do religious freedom rights (FoRB) deal with gay rights? Or conversely, how do gay rights deal with religious freedom? In that context, this book becomes relevant to discuss. This book provides each author’s many different moral arguments and philosophical commitments. (shrink)

An evaluation of the 2008 Loebner contest.

In this article, I distinguish two models of personal integrity. The first, wholeheartedness, regards harmonious unity of the self as psychologically healthy and volitional consistency as ethically ideal. I argue that it does so at the substantial cost of framing ambivalence and conflict as defects of character and action. To avoid these consequences, I propose an alternate ideal of humility that construes the self as multiple and precarious and celebrates experiences of loss and transformation through which learning, growth, innovation, and (...) dynamic relationship become possible. This ideal not only sustains prospects for integrity but is more suitable than wholeheartedness for recognizing practices of contestation, such as those involving potentially destabilizing encounters with difference that is common within pluralistic societies, as vital for rich, well-lived lives. (shrink)

This paper explores the anxiety about an impending crisis of Indian national identity expressed in the contest over the phrase ‘the idea of India’ in public and political spheres in 21st century Indian politics. The paper limits itself to exploring the sense of the crisis and the anxiety surrounding it as expressed by public intellectuals and political formations, in the use of the phrase idea of India. Within this limit, the paper is further focused on exploring the cultural and representational (...) dimension of Indian national identity and its sense of unity. The introduction plots contemporary political developments and anxieties that have animated the contest over the idea of India, followed by a section that maps conceptual issues by understanding the different uses this phrase has been put to in the last two decades. The next section summarizes the major paradigms of Indian identity and unity that have emerged in Indian politics in the last hundred years and have been influential. The final section explores the uses of the idea of India in contemporary Indian politics by focusing on the recent public articulations of the phrase by a leading politician Rahul Gandhi. (shrink)

WHAT THIS PAPER ARGUES. The Molecular Zero-Day used Rose and Novas's biological citizenship to explain why ACT UP succeeded where eight other historical cases in this corpus's record did not, without citing the ethnographic study that gave the concept its empirical substance and, on the field's own account, its originating case. Adriana Petryna's Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (2002) documents what happened when a population exposed to a discrete, dated, catastrophic event — the April 1986 reactor explosion — sought (...) recognition and compensation from a collapsing state, and found that citizenship claims had to be routed through proof of biological damage, adjudicated by medical commissions attempting dose reconstruction: the scientific reconstruction, often decades after exposure, of an individual radiation dose sufficiently precise to support or deny a specific person's claim. This paper's first contribution names a category this corpus's existing MSA/BZM framework has treated as if it did not exist. Mortality Symmetry Axiom names diffuse, opaque causation; the Biological Zero-Day Mechanism names discrete, dated, individually attributable causation. Petryna's Chernobyl case sits in neither category: the originating event is discrete and known, but the individual-level biological linkage between that event and any specific person's specific illness remains genuinely, persistently scientifically contestable, given radiation's stochastic and probabilistic effects on any single body. This paper calls this contested attribution and argues it is the modal case for real longevity-adjacent interventions — whether a specific death resulted from insufficient or delayed access to a specific intervention is rarely as clean as BZM's formalism assumes, and Petryna's ethnography documents in exhaustive, human detail what political life looks like in the zone BZM's formal apparatus was not built to describe: a bureaucratic and scientific battleground substantially resembling the corpus's Attribution stage stalled indefinitely rather than converting cleanly to Legitimation. The paper's second contribution extends The Fourth Fictitious Commodity's account of why A5-driven mobilization underperforms Polanyi's class-based double movement, adding a mechanism Petryna's ethnography supplies and Polanyi's could not: biological citizenship, on Petryna's account, is not simply an empowering new form of political agency but frequently a symptom of state retreat — a narrow, medicalized, individually-adjudicated claims channel that emerges precisely when broader social-contract and welfare obligations have already substantially failed. If this corpus's own G→A→L→C sequence increasingly channels through biological-citizenship-style claims, this may indicate not a promising path to correction but evidence that the generalized governance capacity capable of correction has already retreated — a diagnostic this paper states plainly rather than resolves. (shrink)

In recent years the term ‘recognition’ has been used in ever more variegated theoretical contexts. This article contributes to the discussion of how the concept(s) expressed by this term in different debates should be explicated and understood. For the most part it takes the concept itself as its topic rather than making theoretical use of it. Drawing on important work by Ikäheimo and Laitinen and taking Honneth’s tripartite distinction of recognition into love, respect, and esteem as a starting point it (...) introduces the conceptual distinction between recognitive attitudes, recognitive relations, and recognitive acts, discusses Brandom’s attempt at explaining self-consciousness in terms of reflexive recognition mediated by intersubjective recognitive relations and suggests some critical points on how Butler puts the concept of recognition to work in her conception of ethics. (shrink)

This article concerns the problem of eternal hell in Islam as an aporetic problem of evil with a focus on Aijaz's description of the Islamic soteriology. I contest his description of Islamic culpability and his claim that all non-Muslims are regarded as kâfir and consigned to eternal hell. First, I aim to illustrate the pitfalls in his line of argumentation such as crude generalizations and selective reading of the Islamic sources, which seem to render his argument a strawman fallacy. I (...) offer a more accurate analysis of the Islamic view, by arguing that only a limited group of people who fight against truth through evil actions are considered as kâfir. Second, building on my analysis of the notion of kâfir, I address the question whether God's perfect love and wisdom are compatible with limited salvific exclusivism. Thus, I aim to elaborate on the rationale behind the prescription of eternal punishment for the kâfir in the Quran in the rest of the article, by arguing that the kâfir is incapable of genuine repentance due to his character formed by his free choices. This, in turn, makes it impossible to achieve retributive justice through a finite punishment concerning the kâfir's evil actions. (shrink)

When the benefits of surgery do not outweigh the harms or where they do not clearly do so, surgical interventions become morally contested. Cutting to the Core examines a number of such surgeries, including infant male circumcision and cutting the genitals of female children, the separation of conjoined twins, surgical sex assignment of intersex children and the surgical re-assignment of transsexuals, limb and face transplantation, cosmetic surgery, and placebo surgery.

This present study aims at exploring the meaning of the building of Santa Maria de Fatima Catholic Church (abbreviated as: SMFCC) or Toasebio Parish located in District Glodok, Jakarta, Indonesia. The author exposes in advance the meaning of the physical elements of the building SMFCC as understood by history writers and building experts. These meanings are not inseparable from the elements of human activities in the building. Through qualitative methods and literature review, the author describes in the Results section, how (...) those meanings can be further interpreted through the existing studies and expressions of the SMFCC Parish Head. It is found that these meanings are contested − from the direction of religious faith and of culture − but complete our understandings of the church which is well-known as an Indonesian cultural heritage and dominated by Chinese and pastors from Europe. (shrink)

In light of the pragmatic aspirations of ordinary language philosophy, this essay critically examines the competing grammatical strictures that are often set forth within the theoretical discourse of 'power'. It repudiates both categorically appraisive employments of 'power' and the antithetical urge to fully operationalize the concept. It offers an attenuated defense of the thesis that 'power' is an essentially contestable concept, but rejects the notion that this linguistic fact stems from conflict between antipodal ideological paradigms. Careful attention to the ordinary (...) pragmatics of power-language evinces the prospects for integrating various context-specific aspects of power and mediating between traditionally divergent theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that existing AI systems can be deemed agents comparably to human beings or other organisms. I especially focus on the criteria of interactivity, autonomy, and adaptivity, provided by the seminal work of Luciano Floridi and José Sanders to determine whether an artificial system can be considered an agent. I argue that the tentacles of octopuses also fit those criteria. However, I argue that octopuses’ tentacles cannot be attributed agency because their behavior can (...) be meaningfully interpreted only in reference to the octopus’ organism as an entire system. I argue that attributing agency to AI systems faces similar difficulties, and propose an alternative characterization of these systems as responsive and contested scaffolds. (shrink)

Drawing on sedimentation field dynamics, this paper advances the relationship between the individual and society from descriptive accounts of socialization or agency to the level of dynamic equations. The central claim is that individual fields and the social field are engaged in a continuous contest under tension — the social field exerts assimilation pressure (AssimPress ∝ Cpl · K_{F_S} · FamOverlap) that tends to absorb individual fields, while individual fields resist absorption through differential-generative pressure (P_Δ). The paper derives the complete (...) dynamic equation for coupling tension (CplTension = P_Δ − AssimPress), identifies three states (assimilation dominance, tension equilibrium, differentiation dominance), and establishes three theorems: (1) Tension Equilibrium Instability — trending increase in K_{F_S} systematically drifts the equilibrium point toward assimilation dominance; (2) Forced Assimilation Rejection — assimilation pressure exceeding the tolerance threshold triggers a rejection mechanism that reduces actual assimilation effect; (3) Innovation Concentrated in the Tension-Equilibrium Band — genuine structural social innovation systematically originates from individual fields in the equilibrium state that remain coupled while retaining differential-generative margin. A corollary establishes the Innovation Equilibrium Band Compression Effect: the tension-equilibrium band systematically narrows in mature social fields, providing a unified dynamic source for bureaucratization, ideological homogenization, and algorithmic domestication. (shrink)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the central figures of New Atheism, recently surprised many by switching to Christianity. The reasoning prompting her change is not theological but civilizational. As a defender of individualism and free speech, she now claims that safeguarding those values requires adhering to the Judeo-Christian tradition that spawned them. Although I find many elements of Hirsi Ali’s current position sensible, I argue that her justification of religion rests on an overblown inference, since we can and should harness (...) the best parts of the Judeo-Christian tradition while leaving out the worst. Conservative thinkers may deem such alterations incautious, but the truth is that most people already adhere selectively to the Bible’s ideas. What remains, in my estimate, is to come to terms with this in our official self-conceptions. (shrink)

This paper explores two Cartesian-based resolutions which embody a very fruitful problem for Cartesianism: the communication between body and soul. Keeping with the principles defended by the interlocutor, Elisabeth of Bohemia develops her philosophical position in the epistles exchanged with Descartes and argues that the soul should be conceived materially. Conversely, this communication between soul and body is argued differently from the perspective of Leibniz, who pursues a spiritualistic solution to the problem by making the body aggregated with inferior substances (...) instead of making the soul material. (shrink)

This article considers Avicenna’s insistence on the disunity between the souls of humans, animals, and plants and the mixed elemental bodies in which they inhere. In particular, it looks at (1) why Avicenna rejects their unity and (2) why this rejection, pace some contemporary scholars, is compatible with the status of these souls as substances. I show that both points derive from the causal role that these souls and the elements play in the coming to be and passing away of (...) mixed elemental bodies. (shrink)

Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx are generally considered the founding fathers of sociology and have had great influence in related fields such as anthropology, political science, and philosophy. Durkheim’s work has been influential in certain areas of the social sciences and humanities, yet beyond this recognition his reception is more checkered. In many fields Durkheim remains a marginal figure, if not one that is actively derided. This contribution explores this legacy and what it reveals about the social sciences (...) and humanities. It first discusses the most prominent tropes, or recurring themes, related to Durkheim’s work that have negatively influenced its reception. It then focuses on examples of particularly harsh treatment of Durkheim by prominent philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists, including John Searle, Charles Tilly, Theodor Adorno, Zygmunt Bauman, and Jacques Derrida. Each author’s assessment does two things. First, it plays into the various aforementioned tropes. Second, it uses Durkheim as a negative foil to promote a preferred research paradigm. These responses reveal less about Durkheim than they do about the social sciences and humanities themselves, including which research paradigms are dominant and what their biases are. The essay thus seeks to explore the interpretative and conceptual obstacles that have hindered Durkheim reception. The essay will defend Durkheim’s legacy, demonstrate the ways he remains relevant, and argue for a reevaluation by scholars in relevant fields. (shrink)

In virtue of what are later and an earlier group members of one and the numerically same tradition? Gallie was one of the few philosophers to have engaged with issues surrounding this question. My article is not a faithful exegesis of Gallie but develops a terminology in which to discuss issues surrounding the numerical identity of a tradition over time, based on some of his insights.