How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

This essay develops a structural theory of modern violence that reconceives war as an endogenous phenomenon of differentiated social orders. It argues that every order generates internal tensions and depends on culturally framed mechanisms of reversible dissolution. Where such mechanisms are delegitimized, tensions accumulate and reappear in the irreversible form of war. Drawing on historical examples, the essay distinguishes between regenerative and destructive modes of de-differentiation and examines the loss of masculinity’s former role in organizing risk, transition, and affective surplus. (...) In the absence of viable substitutes, war functions as a substitute institution that weaponizes unbound intensity. Peace, therefore, is not a stable end state, but a cultural technique of controlled dissolution. (shrink)

This paper offers a simple response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) objection to Naturalist Moral Realism (NMR). NMR typically relies on an externalist metasemantics such as a causal theory of reference. The MTE objection is that such a theory predicts that terms like ‘good’ and ‘right’ have a different reference in certain twin communities where it’s intuitively clear that the twins are talking about the same thing when using ‘good’. I argue that Boyd’s causal regulation theory, the original target (...) of the MTE objection, was never vulnerable to this objection. The theory contains an epistemic constraint on reference which implies that either the property that causally regulates uses of ‘good’ isn’t different for the twin communities or, in scenarios where the reference is different, the communities diverge in ways where it’s not intuitively clear that ‘good’ has the same reference for them. (shrink)

In response to the problem of Hell, Buckareff and Plug (Relig Stud 41:39–54, 2005; Relig Stud 45:63–72, 2009) have recently proposed and defended an ‘escapist’ conception of Hell. In short, they propose that the problem of Hell does not arise because God places an open-door policy on Hell. In this paper, I expose a fundamental problem with this conception of Hell—namely, that if there’s an open door policy on Hell, then there should be one on Heaven too. I argue that (...) a coherent conception of Heaven cannot have such a policy. Hence, escapism is not an adequate response to the problem of Hell. (shrink)

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...) concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers’s (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager’s (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences. (shrink)

Efforts to promote equitable public policy with algorithms appear to be fundamentally constrained by the “impossibility of fairness” (an incompatibility between mathematical definitions of fairness). This technical limitation raises a central question about algorithmic fairness: How can computer scientists and policymakers support equitable policy reforms with algorithms? In this article, I argue that promoting justice with algorithms requires reforming the methodology of algorithmic fairness. First, I diagnose the problems of the current methodology for algorithmic fairness, which I call “formal algorithmic (...) fairness.” Because formal algorithmic fairness restricts analysis to isolated decision-making procedures, it leads to the impossibility of fairness and to models that exacerbate oppression despite appearing “fair.” Second, I draw on theories of substantive equality from law and philosophy to propose an alternative methodology, which I call “substantive algorithmic fairness.” Because substantive algorithmic fairness takes a more expansive scope of analysis, it enables an escape from the impossibility of fairness and provides a rigorous guide for alleviating injustice with algorithms. In sum, substantive algorithmic fairness presents a new direction for algorithmic fairness: away from formal mathematical models of “fair” decision-making and toward substantive evaluations of whether and how algorithms can promote justice in practice. (shrink)

Fictionalism is a popular approach to handling possible worlds discourse. It gives one the power of possible world semantics without being committed to undesirable consequences. The standard approach of reparsing possible world statements by attaching a fictional operator suffers from a problem that we argue is structural for all kinds of narrow fictionalism. To show this, we develop a toy theory of temporal fictionalism, showing that it is vulnerable to the same problem. We develop a solution in the form of (...) a broad account of modal fictionalism. Broad modal fictionalism is a contentious view and its usefulness needs to be clarified. Given this, towards the end of the paper we offer some motivations for why broad modal fictionalism is useful and gesture towards how modal talk arises in everyday discourse. (shrink)

Examines men's efforts to escape from the fear of death by performing acts of human wickedness through socially-sanctioned institutions.

Ante la falta o disminución de la motivación de los alumnos universitarios la enseñanza, y con ello la Universidad se ve en la tesitura de poner en práctica nuevas metodologías más activas y motivantes que permitan a los alumnos tener un rol más protagonista en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje que el que han tenido hasta ahora.En el este artículo se expone una experiencia que consiste en el diseño de un escape room on line enmarcado en el Máster (...) en Educación Especial. Se plantea como objetivo motivar a los alumnos y facilitar el aprendizaje de la asignatura. (shrink)

This paper examines the challenges behavioural public policy faces in reconciling its interventions with liberal principles, as illustrated by Adam Oliver’s concept of “budging.” While “nudging,” a prominent application, aims to steer individuals towards better choices using subtle “choice architecture” tweaks, it has been criticized for its paternalism and potential for manipulation. As a purportedly non-paternalistic alternative, Adam Oliver proposed “budging,” which shifts the focus from the individual to regulating third parties (especially market actors) that exploit known cognitive biases for (...) profit. Oliver argues budging aligns with John Stuart Mill’s harm principle by preventing harm caused by others, specifically “behavioural externalities,” without dictating personal choices. This paper critically evaluates budging’s claim to non-paternalistic legitimacy within a Millian liberal framework, incorporating insights from Feinberg and Raz. It argues that budging often fails to escape paternalism, frequently becoming a form of ‘crypto-paternalism’: interventions justified with the non-paternalistic rationale of preventing third-party harm that nevertheless have the primary effect of steering an individual’s self-regarding choices. The core issue lies in the entanglement of regulating third-party exploitation (externalities) and influencing individual choices potentially affected by biases (internalities). Regulating exploitative practices inevitably steers individuals away from choices deemed suboptimal, which can be interpreted both paternalistically and non-paternalistically. The paper explores challenges related to defining exploitation versus legitimate catering, the difficulty in isolating non-paternalistic justifications, and the potential overlap with existing regulations. Ultimately, it concludes that while budging offers valuable insights, it struggles to cleanly separate itself from paternalism and requires further refinement to be fully compatible with robust liberal principles. (shrink)

This project examines escapism as a cognitive and philosophical response to trauma, through an interdisciplinary analysis of Jack Finney’s The Third Level and the clinical features of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Drawing from philosophical theories the project explores how altered perceptions of reality emerge as structured responses to psychological fragmentation. Cognitive trauma studies, particularly the work of van der Kolk (2014), provide the clinical grounding for dissociation as a neuropsychological mechanism of self-preservation. Through the integration of literary analysis, philosophical reasoning, (...) and psychological theory, escapism is reframed not as passive withdrawal, but as a logical, symbolic, and sometimes therapeutic adaptation to existential rupture. (shrink)

Nowadays, binge-watching (i.e., watching multiple episodes of a TV series in one session) has become a widespread practice of media consumption, raising concerns about its negative outcomes. Nevertheless, previous research has overlooked the underlying psychological mechanisms leading to binge-watching. In the present work, we investigated some of the psychological variables that could favor binge-watching tendencies in a sample of TV series viewers (N = 196). To this aim, psychological determinants of problematic digital technologies usage (i.e., feelings of loneliness), as well (...) as some of the mechanisms related to the enjoyment of media contents (i.e., escapism and the identification with media characters), were considered as predictors of the tendency to binge-watch. Results indicated that higher feelings of loneliness were associated with higher levels of problematic digital technologies usage. Additionally, direct and indirect effects showed that only escapism – out of the four dimensions measuring the problematic use of Internet-related technologies – predicted participants’ stronger identification with media characters, which in turn promoted greater binge-watching tendencies. Overall, we suggest that binge-watching could be interpreted as a coping strategy for media escapists, who enjoy TV series as a privileged online space in which the need to escape finds its fulfillment, allowing them to manage loneliness by identifying with a fictitious character. (shrink)

First published in 1935, On Escape represents Emmanuel Levinas’s first attempt to break with the ontological obsession of the Western tradition. In it, Levinas not only affirms the necessity of an escape from being, but also gives a meaning and a direction to it. Beginning with an analysis of need not as lack or some external limit to a self-sufficient being, but as a positive relation to our being, Levinas moves through a series of brilliant phenomenological analyses of (...) such phenomena as pleasure, shame, and nausea in order to show a fundamental insufficiency in the human condition. In his critical introduction and annotation, Jacques Rolland places On Escape in its historical and intellectual context, and also within the context of Levinas’s entire oeuvre, explaining Levinas’s complicated relation to Heidegger, and underscoring the way Levinas’s analysis of “being riveted,” of the need for escape, is a meditation on the body. (shrink)

In the last decades, a broad privatisation movement has swept many nations, leading to formerly public services being outsourced to a variety of private parties. While lawyers, economists and socia...

Global meta-philosophical skepticism (i.e. completely unrestricted skepticism about philosophy) based upon disagreement faces the problem of self-defeat since it undercuts its motivating conciliatory principle. However, the skeptic may easily escape this threat by adopting a more modest kind of skepticism, that will be called “extensive meta-philosophical skepticism”, i.e., the view that most of our philosophical beliefs are unjustified, except our beliefs in epistemically fundamental principles. As I will argue in this paper, this kind of skepticism is well-motivated, does not (...) undercut the conciliatory principle, but still poses a radical challenge to philosophy as a cognitive discipline. Moreover, I will argue that non-global skepticism that is still extensive undermines itself as well. The deeper reason for this is that this more modest kind of skepticism can only be motivated by the assumption that disagreement with philosophical peers is abundant and that we can identify peers only by relying on track-record arguments. But then one can argue for extensive meta-philosophical skepticism only if one presupposes that those philosophical beliefs that form the basis of track-record evaluations are justified. Here, the threat of self-defeat looms again. I will proceed by first defending the premises of this new anti-skeptical argument against standard objections from the literature. Second, I will show in more detail where the epistemic inconsistency arises in the argument for extensive meta-philosophical skepticism. I conclude with an assessment of the scope and the limits of my argument. (shrink)

The role tradition played in preindustrial societies has been supplanted by the decisions of countless specialists organized by means of an intellectual and professional division of labor shaping a knowledge infrastructure that sustains these decisions. Three limitations of this knowledge system are discussed: (a) on the macrolevel, it imposes an end-of-pipe approach for dealing with the undesired consequences of decision making, rarely getting to the root of any problem; (b) on the microlevel, individual practitioners of a specialty are trapped in (...) a triple abstraction, leading to a poor ratio of desired to undesired effects of their decision making; and (c) on the intermediate level, it bars the road to genuine solutions to many difficulties faced by contemporary civilization. In this first of four articles, the beginning of a response is developed for the profession of engineering, which will be paradigmatic for other professions, the social sciences, and the university as a whole. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature in social choice theory studying the consequences of weakening the assumptions of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. Much of this literature suggests that there is no escape from Arrow-style impossibility theorems, while remaining in an ordinal preference setting, unless one drastically violates the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA). In this paper, we present a more positive outlook. We propose a model of comparing candidates in elections, which we call the Advantage-Standard (AS) model. The requirement that a (...) collective choice rule (CCR) be representable by the AS model captures a key insight of IIA but is weaker than IIA; yet it is stronger than what is known in the literature as weak IIA (two profiles alike on x, y cannot have opposite strict social preferences on x and y). In addition to motivating violations of IIA, the AS model makes intelligible violations of another Arrovian assumption: the negative transitivity of the strict social preference relation P. While previous literature shows that only weakening IIA to weak IIA or only weakening negative transitivity of P to acyclicity still leads to impossibility theorems, we show that jointly weakening IIA to AS representability and weakening negative transitivity of P leads to no such impossibility theorems. Indeed, we show that several appealing CCRs are AS representable, including even transitive CCRs. (shrink)

This article provides the existential and phenomenological conditions for addiction by applying the concepts of lack, escape and ‘hypervirtuality’ in new ways to the subject matter. There are five sections. The first is a brief review of some of the most relevant literature. The second lists the main general characteristics of addiction, gleaned from the literature, as well as discussing a possible general definition, namely wants that have become (damaging) needs. The third provides the existential conditions required for addiction (...) to be understood as a human phenomenon to which we are all susceptible, albeit to greatly differing degrees and objects. Here I stress the ideas of transcendence, desire, lack and escape one finds in the early writings of Sartre and Levinas. The fourth fills this idea out with a key phenomenological notion of hypervirtuality, inspired by Husserl. This latter, fifthly and finally, explains the rising power of new technologies and how many are increasing and providing new opportunities for addictive behaviour. (shrink)

The Escape of the Mind is part of a current movement in psychology and philosophy of mind that calls into question what is perhaps our most basic, most cherished, and universally accepted belief--that our minds are inside of our bodies. Howard Rachlin adopts the counterintuitive position that our minds, conscious and unconscious, lie not where our firmest introspections tell us they are, but in how we actually behave over the long run. Perhaps paradoxically, the book argues that our introspections, (...) no matter how positive we are about them, tell us absolutely nothing about our minds. The name of the present version of this approach to the mind is "teleological behaviorism."The approaches of teleological behaviorism will be useful in the science of individual behavior for developing methods of self-control and in the science of social behavior for developing social cooperation. Without in any way denigrating the many contributions of neuroscience to human welfare, The Escape of the Mind argues that neuroscience, like introspection, is not a royal road to the understanding of the mind. Where then should we look to explain a present act that is clearly caused by the mind? Teleological behaviorism says to look not in the spatial recesses of the nervous system but in the temporal recesses of past and future overt behavior. But scientific usefulness is not the only reason for adopting teleological behaviorism. The final two chapters on IBM's computer, Watson, and on shaping a coherent self, provide a framework for a secular morality based on teleological behaviorism. (shrink)

This third part continues the exploration of how we can overcome the limitations of the present knowledge system. In preparation, two aspects of current engineering theory and practice are examined because they are paradigmatic: the concept that engineering is essentially problem-solving, which goes against our understanding of human skill acquisition, and the existence of parallel modes of knowing technology derived from professional education and practice and from living in a society permeated by technology. The former suspends practitioners in the previously (...) examined triple abstraction as a primary microlevel characteristic of the current knowledge system and is thus separated from experience and culture. The second mode of knowing derives from daily life experience, symbolically represented by the organization of the brain-mind, which also functions as a mental map for skillfully coping with the world according to a culture. The practitioner primarily derives analytical exemplars from the former knowing and design exemplars from the latter. It is shown how this affects the building of cities and the design of production systems. Umbrella concepts and round tables are introduced as further steps toward transforming university departments, and (as we will see in Part 4) the operation of the university. (shrink)

Modern society is characterized as post-normal. The attribute seems to relate to many aspects of social life: politics, religion, communication and finally to knowledge and science. Although the idea of post-normal science is not novel, S. Funtowicz and J. R. Ravetz proposed it almost 30 years ago, now it is reaching the peak of its popularity. Since post-normal science is the scientific model on how to deal with policy driven issues, e.g. global warming, it tries to bring together the world (...) of academia and the realities of public policies. Consequently, the problem occurs of how to combine democratic mechanisms of negotiating consensus with the credibility of scientific cognition. Funtowicz and Ravetz try to overtake these conflicts by reformulating the aim of knowledge from the truth to the quality of the epistemic process. They suggest expanding the research community to extended peer communities. However, the attitude of Funtowicz and Ravetz can be compared to players who join an ongoing game and are convinced they established the rules of the game. As it stands, the socially relevant issues, are by no means determined only by scientists and the democratization of the cognitive process is also regulated by political rules of the game. (shrink)

Williams’s attack on the ‘morality system’ in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was preceded by his famous but misunderstood essay ‘Moral Luck’. This essay pursues two principal aims. First and foremost, I take a fresh look at Williams’s argument in ‘Moral Luck’, to assess its defensibility. Second, I investigate how Williams’s treatment of moral luck shapes and informs the wider assault on the ‘morality system’ which reached its fullest expression in the later work. We can learn something about both (...) of Williams’s projects—his defence of moral luck, and his attack on the morality system—by seeing how each of these projects contributes to the other. Drawing on Williams’s discussion of Gauguin’s desertion of his family for a life of artistic endeavour in Tahiti, six interpretations of Williams’s argument are suggested. While some of these are better than others, none is completely satisfying or convincing. It is suggested, in conclusion, that the attack on anti-luckism does not make an indispensable contribution to Williams’s attack on the morality system. (shrink)

This fourth part outlines a strategy for overcoming the limitations of the knowledge system for engineering by combining intellectual maps, preventive approaches, umbrella concepts, and round tables as described in the earlier parts. A discussion of the issues faced by modern medicine illustrates the paradigmatic nature of the diagnosis and prescription made for engineering. The social sciences face mirror-image problems. One response has been the rise of new disciplines such as communications, environmental studies, urban affairs, criminology, and policy studies. To (...) avoid the limitations of discipline-based knowing and doing, a similar strategy for their transformation will have to be implemented. Considerable synergies would result if parallel efforts to transform the present knowledge system were carried out throughout the university. Some suggestions are made as to how this can be supported by organizational and institutional changes. Finally, it is suggested that such a transformation of the university could make a critical and decisive contribution to overcoming the current economic, social, and environmental crises. (shrink)

This second part continues the search for ways of overcoming the three limitations of the current intellectual and professional division of labor and its knowledge infrastructure, which were shown to be at the root of the present economic, social and environmental crises. A complementary knowledge strategy is proposed to counterbalance the trade of breadth for depth, based on the creation of intellectual maps. One such map is described for engineering, showing how through the process of industrialization people change technology and (...) how through its influence on human life and society, technology changes people. Because industrialization cannot destroy the matter and energy it requires, it also transforms its relations with the biosphere. Once the connections between technology and everything else are mapped, specialists can inquire into the consequences of their design and decision making that fall beyond their domains of expertise, to introduce a preventive orientation into their work to achieve a better ratio of desired to undesired effects. This is shown for materials and production, energy, work, and cities. In subsequent parts, it will become apparent that this example is paradigmatic for other professions, the social sciences, and the university. (shrink)

Ante la falta o disminución de la motivación de los alumnos universitarios la enseñanza, y con ello la Universidad se ve en la tesitura de poner en práctica nuevas metodologías más activas y motivantes que permitan a los alumnos tener un rol más protagonista en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje que el que han tenido hasta ahora.En el este artículo se expone una experiencia que consiste en el diseño de un escape room on line enmarcado en el Máster (...) en Educación Especial. Se plantea como objetivo motivar a los alumnos y facilitar el aprendizaje de la asignatura. (shrink)

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that given God’s just and loving character it would be most rational for God to maintain an open door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with God. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. The (...) first is an argument from religious luck offered by Rusty Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labeled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)

Problems for 'precise replacements' as a way out of sorites paradoxes.

The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm's work provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nasism in Escape from Freedom (1941), in particular, outlines a compelling theory of irrationality, and his later writings on (...) nationalism provide an existential psychoanalysis that can be useful for contemporary social theory and sociology of emotions. Escape from Freedom synthesizes Marxist, Freudian, Weberian, and existentialist insights to offer an Original theoretical explanation of Nazism that combines both Macrostructural and micropsychological levels of analysis. After forty-five Years of research into the social origins of fascism and with recent Theorizing in the sociology of nationalism and emotions, Escape from Freedom, its analysis of Nazism, and Fromm's larger theoretical perspective are worth reconsidering. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s-80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

We rely on metaphors and the stories they imply as heuristic devices for communication on all important social and political matters. We are easily trapped by dominant metaphors, though fresh metap...

As someone who wishes Escape from Leviathan (EfL) to succeed, I am grateful for a review with such high praise from a well-known classical liberal. As a critical rationalist who also wishes to learn from his mistakes, I am also grateful for Norman Barry’s criticisms. The only way that I can hope to try to repay these and appreciate their full force is by doing my best to reply to them.

Disparities in lending to minority applicants persist even as algorithmic lending practices proliferate. Further, disparities in interest rates charged can remain large even when loan applicants from different groups are equally creditworthy. We study the role of risk-management constraints, specifically Value-at-Risk (VaR) constraints, in the persistence of segregation in loan approval decisions. We develop a formal model in which a mainstream (low-interest) bank is more sensitive to variance risk than a subprime (high-interest) bank. If the mainstream bank has an inflated (...) prior belief about the variance of the minority group, it may deny that group credit indefinitely, thus never learning the true risk of lending to that group, while the subprime lender serves this population at higher rates. We formalize this as a “subprime trap” equilibrium. Finally, we show that a small, finite subsidy (or partial guarantee) can help minority groups escape the trap by covering enough of the mainstream bank’s downside so that it can afford to lend and learn the minority group’s true risk. Once it has sufficiently many data points, it meets its VaR requirement with no further assistance, minority groups are approved for loans by the mainstream bank, and competition drives down the interest rates of subprime lenders. (shrink)

This article explores and defends the claim that addictive desires—for alcohol in particular—are partly explained by the motive of self-escape. We consider how this claim sits with the neurophysiological explanation of the strength of addictive desires in terms of the effect addictive substances have on the dopamine system. We argue that nothing in the neuroscientific framework rules out pluralism about the causes of addictive desire.

Since William Jones announced the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages, a massive body of scholarship has illuminated the development of the so-called "Indo-European" language group. This new historical philology has enormous technical achievements to its credit. But almost from the start, it became entangled with prejudices and myths--with efforts to recreate not only the lost language, but also the lost--and superior--civilization of the Indo-European ancestors. This drive to determine the identity and nature of the first language of humanity (...) was deeply rooted in both near eastern and western traditions. The Bible described the perfect, transparent language of Adam and followed its degeneration, caused by human sin, into the multiple, opaque languages of later nations. The three sons of Noah became, for Jewish and early Christian writers, the founders of three distinct human groups. By the sixth and seventh centuries, historians began to magnify the deeds of certain later peoples, such as the Scythians and Goths, and to connect them with the biblical genealogy of languages and races. And in the Renaissance, speculative historical etymology took root and flourished, as national pride led European intellectuals to assert that their own modern languages--for example, Flemish--either could be identified with the original one or offered the closest surviving approximation to it. Japheth, Noah's favorite son and the forefather of the Europeans, emerged as the hero who had preserved the original language in its purity. A new history of the European languages developed, one which traced them back to the language of the barbarian Scythians and emphasized the connections between Persian and European languages. It came to seem implausible that the European languages derived from Hebrew. By the eighteenth century, in short, all the preconditions were present for a discovery that the ancestors of the Europeans, like the common ancestor of their languages, had been independent of Semitic influence. A modern scholarly thesis whose political and intellectual consequences are still working themselves out reveals the continuing impact of a millennial tradition of speculation about language and history. (shrink)

in the euthyphro, socrates tells euthyphro that Meletus is taking him to court for impiety.1 Upon hearing Euthyphro’s claim to have knowledge of piety, Socrates asks Euthyphro to take him on as a pupil, so that he might acquire knowledge of piety himself. Although this may seem unsurprising, given Socrates’s high regard for knowledge in other dialogues, the reason that Socrates gives for wishing to acquire knowledge, in this case, is bizarre—for he says it is because knowledge of piety will (...) help him to secure his acquittal on charges of impiety.It is unclear, however, why Socrates believes that his learning what piety is should lead to the impiety charges against him being dropped, yet no one has ever made a.. (shrink)

(2002). Clinical Research Should Not Be Permitted to Escape the Ethical Orbit of Clinical Care. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 27-28.

This essay places Isaiah Berlin’s famous “Two Concepts of Liberty” in conversation with perspectives defined as black fugitive thought. The latter is used to refer principally to Aimé Césaire, W. E. B. Du Bois and David Walker. It argues that the trope of liberty in Western liberal political theory, exemplified in a lineage that connects Berlin, John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Constant, has maintained its universal meaning and coherence by excluding and silencing any representations of its modernity gestations, affiliations and (...) entanglements with Atlantic slavery and European empires. This particular incarnation of theory is characterized as the Western discursive and hegemonic effects of colonial-racial foreclosure. Foreclosure describes the discursive contexts in which particular terms or references become impossible to formulate because the means by which they could be formulated have been excluded from the discursive context. Through an examination of the action of foreclosure, based largely on unraveling the liberal-colonial convergences of Two Concepts the essay reflects on the political and theoretical problems posed for black political thought by the hegemony of Western formulations of liberty that deny their indebtedness to Western colonialism. Drawing upon juxtapositions between white liberal/republican thinkers and black fugitivity thinkers, it argues a particular lineage of black political thought is compelled to conceive of itself as an escape from the colonial and racial hegemony of Western liberty. (shrink)

One set of arguments on judicial review states that this is a necessary consequence of understanding rights as limits to democracy. This paper brings some nuances to this argument, arguing that the answer to the problem of judicial review should rely not only on rights‐based arguments, but also on institutional arguments. In order to do so, the first part will present the idea that links rights as trumps to judicial review. In the second part, the article will show it is (...) possible to split the conception of rights as limits into two questions, one regarding what the state should or should not do and the other regarding who should be the one to give content to this set of decisions. The third part will show that all rights‐based arguments fail because they cannot deal with the fact of disagreement. The last part will show that rights still have a part to play in the discussion on judicial review, though without the final word. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s–80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

It goes without much further saying that the vision on (unbridled) capitalism as the determining economic system on earth that has been described above, is not an optimistic one.

A partir de la biología teórica de Jakob Von Uexküll, el artículo expone cómo una protoetología constituye la condición de posibilidad del diseño de trampas y de todas las prácticas de cacería; en qué sentido la liberación del comportamiento garantizan la fidelidad de la investigación etológica aplicada a los hábitos de consumo; que el concepto de cibernética exhibe una lógica semiorgánica que permite aproximarse a ciertos objetos digitales como si fueran agentes más que herramientas; y la idea de una etología (...) de la máquina como modo de acceso al comportamiento de los algoritmos. (shrink)

This is an interview with Yan Xue, the mother of Xiao Huang who has severe cerebral palsy and other disabilities in Xi’an. Yan Xue’s detailed story of her son, the pain each family member had suffered in the process of raising her son. She also reflects upon her challenge in running her own kindergarten and special education center together with other parents to find a way for children like her son to gain education and rehabilitation. The family situation exposes a (...) typical one of the hopeless condition of families having children with severe disabilities and their exclusion from education due to a lack of social support; and calls for urgent policy and system development for these families to survive. (shrink)