According to existing accounts of indicative conditionals, any argument of the following form is valid: ϕ → ψ, ( ϕ ∧ ψ ) → χ ∴ ϕ → χ. Here, I present a set of counterexamples to show that there exist invalid arguments of this form. I argue that this data poses serious problems to variably strict accounts of conditionals, as such accounts are structurally unable to accommodate it. Dynamic strict accounts, however, are a different story. While existing dynamic strict (...) accounts do not accommodate the data, they are in principle able to, and I propose a modified dynamic strict account, drawing from von Fintel, that does. The key modification is this: whereas existing dynamic strict accounts take into account only the effects of conditional antecedents in changing the semantic context, the data shows that we must also take into account the effects of conditional consequents in changing the semantic context. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Carl Schmitt is generally considered as the father of exceptionalism – the theory that the heart of politics lies in the sovereign power to issue emergency measures that suspend everyday normality. This is why his name comes up anytime state governments, whether liberal or not, impose limits on constitutional rights and freedoms to cope with emergencies. This article problematises such a received understanding. It argues that Schmitt held an exceptionalist view for a limited period of time and that even (...) in that period his thinking cannot be regarded as unshakably exceptionalist. This interpretation offers a new entry point to Schmitt’s overall theory. While it can hardly be defended from allegations of reactionary conservatism, it remains a juristic theory of the legal order that tries to answer the question of what ensures the stability of social life. The backdrop of this view is an institutional theory of law and politics that is hardly reconcilable with any form of exceptionalism. In this light, the core of Schmitt’s thinking turns out to be the exaltation of legal science as a jurisgenerative practice that shelters a community’s institutional practices and the traditional identity. (shrink)

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations for (...) an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem (Sect. 2), and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction (Sect. 3). I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V (Sect. 4). I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria (Sect. 5), and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction (Sect. 6). (shrink)

Taking the classification of certainties or hinges in Wittgenstein’s sense provided by Moyal-Sharrock, (Moyal-Sharrock, Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) as a reference, Fortney (Fortney, Philosophia 48:967–979, 2020, this journal) held that certainties can be regarded as universal when they are restricted to those certainties that we should have to be able to participate in complex language-games. In this paper, however, I show that Fortney’s conception of universal certainties is wrong, for it does not allow us to distinguish between (...) local and universal certainties. After this first approach, in which I attempt to clarify what universal certainties are not, I focus on what they are. To this end, I analyze Pleasants’ (Pleasants, Ethical Perspectives 22:197–215, 2015) proposal to consider the certainty of the wrongness of killing innocents as a universal certainty that allows exceptions. Focusing on the mentioned certainty, I explain why a universal certainty that admits exceptions should be regarded as a local certainty. But this analysis also leads me to conclude that universal certainties are those that allow no exception at any time or in any culture. (shrink)

In this article, I show that David Hume’s argument of Section 10 of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding does not encourage dogmatism. Instead, it suggests a program for how to categorically deny the existence of miracles without bringing about the stagnation of science. In recognizing the entailments of Hume’s notion of proof while realizing his commitments regarding the laws of nature, we must acknowledge that miracles are possible. Yet this is consistent with Hume’s claim that we are never justified in (...) believing the testimony affirming them. This conclusion is strengthened when we realize that only a doxastic notion of lawlikeness is at work in Hume’s argument rather than a robust, efficacious notion of metaphysical laws. When properly understood, we see that the course he advocates does not impede the advances of science, as has sometimes been suggested. Instead, Hume’s deliberate use of specific examples of two very different sorts propounds a procedure for dealing with purported miracles that is much richer than merely denying them, and tells us when revisions to our conception of the laws of nature are necessary and when they are not. (shrink)

Politics, public discourse, and legislation restricting abortion has settled on a moderate orthodoxy: restrict abortion, but leave exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape and incest. I challenge that consensus and suggest it may be much harder to defend than those who support the compromise think. From both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice perspectives, there are good reasons to treat all abortions as equal.

En este artículo discrepo de Kusch (2016) en tres cuestiones relacionadas con las expresiones de certezas aritméticas –en el sentido de Wittgenstein– y los usos regulares de las expresiones aritméticas. Específicamente, explico por qué los cálculos no se convierten en certezas por el hecho de haber sido probados; Argumento que los cálculos probados constituyen enunciados de conocimiento; y, por último, pero no menos importante, concluyo de esto que tales cálculos probados son decibles, mientras que las certezas aritméticas son inefables o (...) indecibles. (shrink)

Shadmehr and Ahmed cogently argue that vigor of appetitive movements is positively correlated with their value, and that value can therefore be inferred by measuring vigor. Here, we highlight three points to consider when interpreting this account: (1) The correlation between vigor and value is not obligatory, (2) the vigor effect also arises in frameworks other than optimal foraging, and (3) the term vigor can be misinterpreted, thereby affecting rigor.

Debates on assisted dying remain controversial and call out for conceptual clarification. What is the moral basis for assessing competing arguments, and what is the best way to frame these arguments in terms of actual and potential human rights? This article aims to investigate whether autonomy alone suffices as a moral source for human rights and whether, on this basis, there should be a positive human right to assisted dying, and a negative human right to assist others in dying. Drawing (...) upon discussions in political theory, medical ethics, and human rights scholarship, the article develops an account of autonomy as multidimensional and subject to trade-offs. Autonomy is divided into the dimensions of liberty, opportunity, capacity, and authenticity. Furthermore, there is a common intuition that human beings ought to be endowed with a domain of core autonomy that must never be compromised in any trade-off. This analytical framework is used to map conflicts and trade-offs concerning assisted dying. By way of conclusion, it is argued that autonomy suffices to describe what human rights protect, but not why they do so. Furthermore, it is argued that the terminology of rights used in debates on assisted dying risks misrepresenting what the debate is actually about, and that the debate should be framed in terms of the right to health and exceptions to the right to life, rather than general rights related to assisted dying. Thus, assisted dying should be seen as an extreme option, where death is not the end, but the means, and ought to be considered alongside other means, as a last resort, already in the legislative process. (shrink)

Exception phrases often consist of an exceptive marker and a noun phrase. Though these markers all have to do with making exceptions, they differ somewhat in their semantic properties. This chapter focuses on English and on its presumably most typical exceptive marker: except. Except can be inserted in sentences in several different positions. The distinction between free and connected exception phrases is discussed. This chapter also casts some doubt on the so-called Inclusion Condition and the Negative Condition (in its (...) various versions), arguing that these are often too strong, but suggests a principle of exception conservativity that seems to hold generally. The so-called Quantifier Constraint, which says that only the quantifiers _every_ and _no_ admit exceptions, is examined. (shrink)

While across the animal kingdom offspring are born smaller than their parents, notable exceptions exist. Several dipteran species belonging to the Hippoboscoidea superfamily can produce offspring larger than themselves. In this essay, the blood‐feeding tsetse is focused on. It is suggested that the extreme reproductive strategy of this fly is enabled by feeding solely on highly nutritious blood, and producing larval offspring that are soft and malleable. This immense reproductive expenditure may have evolved to avoid competition with other biting (...) flies. Tsetse also transmit blood‐borne parasites that cause the fatal diseases called African trypanosomiases. It is discussed how tsetse life history and reproductive strategy profoundly influence the type of vector control interventions used to reduce fly populations. In closing, it is argued that the unusual life history of tsetse warrants their preservation in the areas where human and animal health is not threatened. (shrink)

This letter responds to the article “Beneath the Sword of Damocles: Moral Obligations of Physicians in a Post-Dobbs Landscape,” by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Ruth R. Faden, and Michelle M. Mello, in the May-June 2024 issue of the Hastings Center Report.

There is a complex relationship between rules and exceptions in different contexts. Rules and exceptions are not always distinct but rather dynamically related concepts. There are a variety of alternative terms, such as patterns, normalities, rarities, and abnormalities, that can be used interchangeably with rules and exceptions. This emphasizes the flexibility in the use of these terms. Singularity is often used as a synonym for exception, as something unique. This uniqueness can be both positive and negative and (...) contributes to the value of individuality in biology. This feature demonstrates the possibility of mixed patterns and the importance of scale in analyzing them. Four scenarios of change and two types of dynamics between rules and exceptions can emerge. These scenarios cover situations where rules remain stable, exceptions persist, rules become exceptions, and vice versa. These dynamics can occur in a variety of contexts, including biological evolution. Changes in scientific knowledge and paradigms can be compared to the dynamics between rules and exceptions. Overall, this chapter explores the complex and interrelated nature of rules and exceptions in different domains, highlighting their dynamic and evolving relationships. (shrink)

I propose and defend a proof-based account of legal exceptions. The basic thought is that the characteristic behaviour of exceptions is to be explained in terms of the distinction, relative to some given decision-type C in some decision-making context, between two classes of relevant facts: those that may, and those that may not, remain uncertain if a token decision C is to count as correctly made. The former is the class of exceptions. A fact F is an (...) exception relative to some decision-type C, I claim, if (i) the ascertainment of F is sufficient for a token decision C not to count as correctly made, and (ii) the ascertainment of the negation of F is not necessary for a token decision C to count as correctly made. I also recuperate, reconstruct and discuss some of HLA Hart’s early views on defeasible judicial decisions. These two projects are closely connected: the latter is a vehicle for the former. (shrink)

Chapter 1 traces the development of the discussion around exceptions to scientific laws and the different solutions previous philosophers of science have taken on this issue. It is argued that a case can be made for separating exception-ridden laws into a least two groups: ceteris paribus laws and ideal laws. The former make true but indefinite claims about the world, whereas the latter make false but definite claims. Each comes with distinctive epistemological and metaphysical problems.

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with contingent creaturehood, (...) it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

To my knowledge, this is the first book to try to understand the way in which enforcement rights are configured across both public and private law. It examines what it means for an enforcer to have a ‘right of action’; the way in which such rights are currently distributed between public and private enforcers across both areas of law; the devices via which their exercise is protected, moderated and controlled; and the explanations and potential justifications (deontic, moral, pragmatic, and constitutional) (...) for choosing one type of enforcer over another. It draws on a wide range of examples selected from the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, detailing enforcement systems from Roman and medieval times right through to those operating in the modern criminal law, competition and consumer law, environmental law, administrative law, charity law, human rights law, the law of trusts, tort, contract, guardianship, and corporate insolvency. A theme of the book is that whilst the dominant paradigm suggests that public law is (and should be) enforced publicly by the State because it is concerned with the protection of public interests—and private law enforced privately because private law protects private interests—the truth is far more complex and interesting, involving frequent overlap, exceptions, and hybridity. The book details and rationalizes the basic enforcement paradigms and their exceptions, suggests improvements to design in particular contexts, and identifies some of the key challenges for enforcement in the twenty-first century. Not the least of these is the widening gap between the State’s regulatory ambitions and its own enforcement capacity, which increases the pressure for government to revert to private enforcement strategies (or public–private enforcement ‘partnerships’) in both public and private law. (shrink)

One of the most disturbing problems of social decision making and indeed quite difficult to resolve is the need to reconcile individual rationality with that of society. While individual rationalizing rules indicateways to maximize benefits without any restriction, the collective point of view tilts toward the limitation of individual maximization. This is the very core of the so-called Prisoner’s Dilemma which is but a formalway of saying that there is good reason for every individual to defect on a bargain; the (...) ‘good reason’, that generally takes the gentler form of a self-exception, is that if a player defects and his opponent does not, then the former profits. The purpose of this study is to show the highly erosive character of this self-exceptions and also to make evident its perverse normative power. (shrink)

Exception from Informed Consent (EFIC) regulations detail specific circumstances in which Institutional Review Boards (IRB) can approve studies where obtaining informed consent is not possible prior to subject enrollment.To better understand how IRB members evaluate community consultation (CC) and public disclosure (PD) processes and results, semi-structured interviews of EFIC-experienced IRB members were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis.Interviews with 11 IRB members revealed similar approaches to reviewing EFIC studies. Most use summaries of CC activities to determine community members’ attitudes; none (...) reported using specific criteria nor recalled any CC reviews that resulted in modifications to or denials of EFIC studies. Most interviewees thought metrics based on Community VOICES’s domains (feasibility, participant selection, quality of communication, community perceptions, investigator/IRB perceptions) would be helpful.IRB members had similar experiences and concerns about reviewing EFIC studies. Development of metrics to assess CC processes may be useful to IRBs reviewing EFIC studies. (shrink)

This paper revisits Giorgio Agamben’s text The Time That Remains and through a comparative analysis contrasts the author’s reading of St Paul’s Romans to relevant Derridean thematics prevalent in the text. Specific themes include language, the law, and the subject. I illustrate how Agamben attempts to revitalise the idea of philosophical anthropology by breaking away from the deconstructive approach. Agamben argues that language is an experience but is currently in a state of nihilism. Consequently, the subject has become lost; or, (...) more specifically, the subject and its object have not disappeared in language but through language. The resuscitation of experience is thus required to defeat this condition: only in language does the subject have its site and origin. Unlike deconstruction, which highlights an inherent paradox within a situation unearthing a questionable foundation, Agamben argues that, by investigating the “exception,” one finds neither a norm nor an inherent truth of the situation, but the confusion which surrounds them both. (shrink)

Within a state-space approach endowed with a generalized potential function, mental states can be systematically characterized by their stability against perturbations. This approach yields three major classes of states: (1) asymptotically stable categorial states, (2) marginally stable non-categorial states and (3) unstable acategorial states. The particularly interesting case of states giving rise to exceptional experiences will be elucidated in detail. Their proper classification will be related to Metzinger’s account of self-model and world-model, and empirical support for this classification will be (...) surveyed. Eventually, it will be outlined how Metzinger’s discussion of intentionality achieves pronounced significance within a dual-aspect framework of thinking. (shrink)

This essay develops three key claims made in my 2018 book, Exceptional Technologies. Part one argues for ‘trivialising the transcendental’, to remove stigmas attached to the word ‘transcendental’ in philosophy in general and philosophy of technology in particular. Part two outlines the concept of ‘exceptional technologies’. These are artefacts and practices that show up as limit cases for our received pictures of what constitutes a ‘technology’ and that force us to reassess the conditions for the possibility of these pictures. I (...) focus on the case of autonomous vehicles here, arguing that Google Street View provides a relatively better picture for approaching philosophical issues at stake than the famous ‘Trolley Problem’. Part three then concludes with a focus on Heidegger’s ‘Question Concerning Technology’ essay. Heidegger asserts that philosophical questioning ‘builds a way’. I argue that philosophical approaches to technologies might better be considered in terms of a multidimensional problem space. (shrink)

Introduction : Picturing technology -- A sense of the transcendental -- The blank page -- Embodiment conditions -- Three exceptional technologies -- Which way to turn? -- Conclusion : Exceptional technologies, not technological exceptionalism.

Can laws of nature be universal regularities and nevertheless have exceptions? Several answers to this question, in particular the thesis that there are no laws outside of fundamental physics, are examined and rejected. It is suggested that one can account for exceptions by conceiving of laws as strictly universal determination relations between (instances of) properties. When a natural property is instantiated, laws of nature give rise to other, typically dispositional properties. In exceptional situations, such properties manifest themselves either (...) in an unusual way or not at all. (shrink)

For the first time a uniform compositional derivation is given for quantified sentences containing exceptive constructions. The semantics of exceptives is primarily one of subtraction from the domain of a quantifier. The crucial semantic difference between the highly grammaticized but-phrases and free exceptives is that the former have the Uniqueness Condition as part of their lexical meaning whereas the latter are mere set subtractors. Several empirical differences between the two types of exceptives are shown to follow from this basic lexical (...) difference. (shrink)

Exceptions are often cited as a counterargument against formal causation. Against this I argue that Aristotle explicitly allows for exceptions to essences in his biological writings, and that he has a means of explaining them through formal causation – though this means that he has to slightly elaborate on his general case theory from the Posterior Analytics, by supplementing it with a special case application in the biological writings. Specifically for Aristotle an essential predication need not be a (...) universal predication. Rather an essential predication is where a property belongs essentially to a species or genus. This essential predication serves a causal and explanatory role, and is not dependent on a corresponding universal predication. (shrink)

This paper deals with the exceptions-tolerance property of generic sentences with indefinite singular and bare plural subjects (IS and BP generics, respectively) and with the way this property is connected to some well-known observations about felicity differences between the two types of generics (e.g. Lawler's 1973, Madrigals are popular vs. #A madrigal is popular). I show that whereas both IS and BP generics tolerate exceptional and contextually irrelevant individuals and situations in a strikingly similar way, which indicates the existence (...) of a basically equivalent tolerance mechanism, there is also a difference between them, unnoticed so far, which concerns the degree to which the properties of the legitimate exceptions can be characterized in advance. Following claims in Greenberg (2003), I argue that both this newly observed difference as well as the traditional felicity differences result from an underlying contrast in the type of ‘non-accidentalness’ expressed by the two types of generic sentences, and more formally, in the accessibility relations that their generic quantifier (Gen) is compatible with. To capture the new difference in tolerance of exceptions, I develop an improved version of the exceptions-tolerance mechanism for generic sentences suggested in Kadmon & Landman (1993), namely, a restriction on the set of individuals and situations quantified by Gen, which is partially vague to two different degrees using supervaluationist methods. The different degrees of vagueness in this restriction are shown to be systematically dependent on the two types of accessibility relations that IS and BP generics are compatible with, which are redefined as precise and vague restrictions on the generic quantification over worlds. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitanism in contemporary political theory, based upon the hopeful premise that it heralds an ameliorative response to the malignity of sovereignty's lack and the treacherous violence of sovereignty's excess. The promise of cosmopolitanism inheres in the claim that state sovereignty is and should be supplemented by an international system backed by the legitimacy of international law, grounded in the sovereignty of human rights. Drawing upon Foucault and Agamben, my argument in this essay (...) is that the laudable endeavour of liberal cosmopolitans is flawed in two ways: first, cosmopolitanism cannot escape sovereign violence, because it cannot escape sovereignty; and second, cosmopolitans misconstrue the composition of the very sovereignty they aim to escape. This means that cosmopolitan theorists are unable to identify cosmopolitan practices of sovereignty that also entail forms of violence: cosmopolitan exception. Cosmopolitan exception denotes violent sovereign practices that cannot be differentiated from the protection of rights. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming a popular business concept in developed economies. As typical of other business concepts, it is on its way to globalization through practices and structures of the globalized capitalist world order, typified in Multinational Corporations (MNCs). However, CSR often sits uncomfortably in this capitalist world order, as MNCs are often challenged by the global reach of their supply chains and the possible irresponsible practices inherent along these chains. The possibility of irresponsible practices puts global (...) firms under pressure to protect their brands even if it means assuming responsibilities for the practices of their suppliers. Pressure groups understand this burden on firms and try to take advantage of the situation. This article seeks to challenge the often taken-for-granted-assumption that firms should be accountable for the practices of their suppliers by espousing the moral (and sometimes legal) underpinnings of the concept of responsibility. Except where corporate control and or corporate grouping exist, it identifies the use of power as a critical factor to be considered in allocating responsibility in firm-supplier relationship; and suggests that the more powerful in this relationship has a responsibility to exert some moral influence on the weaker party. The article highlights the use of code of conducts, corporate culture, anti-pressure group campaigns, personnel training and value reorientation as possible sources of wielding positive moral influence along supply chains. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel proof-theoretic approach to a logic specifically designed to handle exceptions and typicality. Our method extends the classical first-order sequent calculus by incorporating a specialized framework to manage both negative extra-logical information (explicit exceptions) and positive information (background assumptions). We prove that the resulting sequent calculi satisfy the cut-elimination theorem, thereby ensuring strong analytical properties. Furthermore, we show how this framework effectively models traditional reasoning patterns involving conflicting information and typicality. Finally, we establish a (...) natural correspondence between our approach and the Kraus-Lehmann-Magidor postulates, further grounding our work within established theoretical foundations. (shrink)

In this paper, I have proposed a compositional semantic analysis of exception NPs from which three core properties of exception constructions could be derived. I have shown that this analysis overcomes various empirical and conceptual shortcomings of prior proposals of the semantics of exception sentences. The analysis was first formulated for simple exception NPs, where the EP-complement was considered a set-denoting term and the EP-associate was a monadic quantifier. It was then generalized in two steps: first, in order to account (...) for quantified EP-complements, and second, in order to account for polyadic quantifiers as the EP-associates. An additional assumption that was made in several places was that EPs may operate at the level of implications. The consequences of this assumption, though, still have to be investigated. (shrink)

This article examines the lasting phenomenological consequences of inhabiting “spaces” of exception by rethinking the operation of sovereign violence therein. Taking as its point of departure Giorgio Agamben’s suggestion that the ‘state of exception’ is the ‘rule’ of modern politics, I argue that arbitrary sovereign violence has taken the place of the ‘sovereign decision’ of Carl Schmitt’s original theory. However, recognizing that it is neither enough simply to articulate the institutional grid of intelligibility of the state of exception nor expose (...) the logics of sovereignty that make possible arbitrary violence, it draws on phenomenology, affect theory, and trauma studies to reorient our focus from the sovereign to the subject upon whom sovereign power is executed. Ultimately it proposes a new understanding of modern subjecthood as one of existential insecurity generated by the ‘new age of anxiety’ permeating social and political life today. (shrink)

Exception phrases have recently gained renewed attention in semantics. Our contribution is two-fold. (1) We provide a range of empirical data that show a much broader use of exceptives than acknowledged in previous accounts. (2) Based on advances in linguistics and philosophy—namely type-theoretical semantics and a two-dimensional denotational underpinning of plural NPs—we propose a new analysis of exception phrases. We develop a balance scale model of exceptions in terms of reference and complement sets, a model that captures previous analyses (...) as well as the new data. The theoretical generalization to be drawn is that exceptions are linguistic manifestations of reference repair strategies, strategies that are linguistically constrained by the quantificational properties of the NP constituent from which exceptions are to be drawn. Restrictions of different types of exception phrases are formulated as restrictions on an NP’s balance scale within a compositional grammar fragment. (shrink)

This chapter shows how libertarianism can be seen to be a moral theory that explains exceptions to earlier moral norms and principles and the chapter shows how various exceptions to libertarian principles, including necessity and unconscionability exceptions, can be seen to lead beyond libertarianism to contractarian theories of morality and justice. The chapteer raises a general problem for contractarian theories and shows how the problem applies to the theories of Rawls and Habermas. This sets the stage for (...) the book’s own meta-level consequentialist explanation of the exceptions in the next chapter. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin’s writings are often read in terms of their emphasis on undecidability. This article focuses on Benjamin’s view of decision as a philosophic capacity to suspend recognizable myth. Myth is recognizable as closure. Myth becomes recognizable as myth when exceptions and extremes arise in relation to it. Without necessarily following the specific exception or extreme (which may itself be mythic), philosophy is a politics that is attuned to the capacity of an exception or extreme to perform the limit (...) of a specific mythic form. In elaborating philosophically impelled decision as a capacity to take exception to myth, the article compares Benjamin’s works with writings by Agamben, Schmitt, Hiller, Sorel, Derrida and others. At various points in the article, and especially towards the end, the discussion of the notion of philosophic decision includes consideration of ways in which aspects of Benjamin’s enmity to myth might themselves become mythic, unphilosophic. (shrink)

This paper defends a principle I call Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of a belief is determined in precisely the same way as the rationality of any other state. For example, if wearing a raincoat is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value, then believing some proposition P is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value. This contrasts with the popular view that the rationality of belief is determined by evidential support. It also contrasts (...) with the common idea that in the case of belief, there are two different incommensurable senses of rationality, one of which is distinctively epistemic. I present considerations that favor Equal Treatment over these two alternatives, reply to objections, and criticize some arguments for Evidentialism. I also show how Equal Treatment opens the door to a distinctive kind of response to skepticism. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that all—or almost all—logical rules have exceptions. In particular, it is argued that this is a moral that we should draw from the semantic paradoxes. The idea that we should respond to the paradoxes by revising logic in some way is familiar. But previous proposals advocate the replacement of classical logic with some alternative logic. That is, some alternative system of rules, where it is taken for granted that these hold without (...) exception. The present proposal is quite different. According to this, there is no such alternative logic. Rather, classical logic retains the status of the ‘one true logic’, but this status must be reconceived so as to be compatible with (almost) all of its rules admitting of exceptions. This would seem to have significant repercussions for a range of widely held views about logic: e.g. that it is a priori, or that it is necessary. Indeed, if the arguments of the paper succeed, then such views must be given up. (shrink)

abstract Because we are more comfortable with judgements of conceptual conceivability than with judgements of practical possibility, we content ourselves with imaginary cases, which are useless for making many decisions that practical people most need to make, notably all-things-considered decisions about when to follow an admitted general principle and when to make an exception. The diverse cases of climate change, preventive attack, and torture all illustrate how the avoidance of the difficult task of integrating empirical judgements with conceptual judgements through (...) the flight into the sanitized abstraction of imaginary cases undermines attempts at practical ethics. All three cases involve allegedly exceptional, or emergency, situations, although climate change seems to require more than the usual compliance with general principle while preventive attack and torture supposedly require less than the usual compliance. By my lights the proposed exceptions are, respectively, fully, sometimes, and never justified. But the fundamental point is that one unfortunately cannot decide any of the cases without assessing what is in fact likely as well as what is conceptually possible. (shrink)

For over four decades feminist linguists and philosophers of language have addressed the semantic, cognitive, and political factors associated with gender asymmetries in nominal and pronominal choice. The sociolinguistic spotlight has focused on the history, extent, and implications of the prescriptively sanctioned use of man and he for sex-neutral reference—he/man language in Martyna ’s term. Bare singular and simple indefinite man in exemplify this use, while the bare singulars in yield the male-specific meaning exhibited by the man or that man.

I argue that the exception must be a legitimate possibility within law as a revolutionary project, in much the same way that civil disobedience is. In this sense, the exception is not outside law if by "law" we mean not positive law as defined by extant legal documents (statutes, legislative committee reports, written judgments, etc.) but law as a living tradition consisting of both abstract norms and a concrete historical understanding of them. So construed, the exception is what can be (...) exemplary - a law unto itself that best interprets and creatively extends (and transcends) the law that already exists, in order to make it inclusive of the other. In the final analysis, immigration law forces us to consider both the concrete individuality and abstract humanity of refugees, asylum seekers and other homeless persons who have been displaced by global economic underdevelopment. When combined with the "statelessness" of desperate classes of immigrants, this fact about immigration law reveals a revolutionary possibility for future development and perfection leading to its own transcendence: from an inhospitable immigration law that is administered exclusively by the nation state to a cosmopolitan law of universal citizenship under the auspices of a global human rights regime. (shrink)

Exceptionally Common Courage provides an extended, close reading of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard's well-known, pseudonymous book about Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. It then fits this (in)famous work into the broader and puzzling corpus that includes both other pseudonymous works and signed discourses by this same mercurial author. Though not the first to tackle Kierkegaard from the direction of either a single work or the whole authorship, this two-in-one book relates whole and part to whole and part in a way that (...) reads like a genuine musical counterpoint. The scholarly debates inevitably generated by any treatment of Fear and Trembling are here addressed in ways that arise from a detailed interpretation of the text itself without letting secondary material interrupt the primary train of thought. Along the way, Kierkegaard's ideas are brought into conversation with a much broader than usual cannon of interlocutors, including such figures as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and James Baldwin, R.H. Tawney and Wendell Berry. And by the end, the complex movement of the entire authorship becomes audible above the various isolated and doctrinaire notes typically highlighted in comparable studies. The recurring melody is about existential courage, about the risk of emotionally investing in earthly goods against the ambiguous inevitability of their loss. Woven throughout Kierkegaard's so-called esthetic and religious writings, this common task of facing threats to the integral meaning of human experience stands out in arresting color. As the chapters unfold, this understanding of faith as a form of courage provides not just direction, but a topographical score for what is originally a highly indirect and elusive textual arrangement. (shrink)

This paper addresses two puzzles in the semantics of connected exceptive phrases (EP): (i) the compatibility of EPs modifying noun phrases headed by the negative polarity item (NPI) determiner any and (ii) the ability of a negative universal quantifier modified by an EP to license strong NPIs. Previous analyses of EPs are shown to fail to solve these puzzles. A new unified solution to the two puzzles is proposed. The crucial insight of the analysis is to allow von Fintel’s (Natural (...) Language Semantics 1: 123–148, 1993; Restrictions on quantifier domains, PhD dissertation, 1994) leastness condition on EPs to be imposed at scopes non-local to the surface position of the EP. A general result is derived concerning the truth conditions of sentences in which an existential modified by an EP occurs in the scope of a downward entailing operator. The distribution of EPs is argued to depend on how the leastness condition interacts with other pragmatic strengthening conditions, such as the one imposed on any by Kadmon and Landman (Linguistics and Philosophy 16: 353–422, 1993). (shrink)

Interpreting abortion restrictions is a critical responsibility for clinicians in the post-Dobbs legal landscape. This commentary on a case considers what it means to do so thoughtfully, courageously, to the law’s full extent, and with conviction about being an agent of abortion care who expresses respect for patients’ reproductive autonomy.

BackgroundIn specific situations it may be necessary to make an exception to the general rule of informed consent for scientific research with an intervention. Earlier reviews only described subsets of arguments for exceptions to waive consent.MethodsHere, we provide a more extensive literature review of possible exceptions to the rule of informed consent and the accompanying arguments based on literature from 1997 onwards, using both Pubmed and PsycINFO in our search strategy.ResultsWe identified three main categories of arguments for the (...) acceptability of a consent waiver: data validity and quality, major practical problems, and distress or confusion of participants. Approval by a medical ethical review board always needs to be obtained. Further, we provide examples of specific conditions under which consent waiving might be allowed, such as additional privacy protection measures.ConclusionsThe reasons legitimized by the authors of the papers in this overview can be used by researchers to form their own opinion about requesting an exception to the rule of informed consent for their own study. Importantly, rules and guidelines applicable in their country, institute and research field should be followed. Moreover, researchers should also take the conditions under which they feel an exception is legitimized under consideration. After discussions with relevant stakeholders, a formal request should be sent to an IRB. (shrink)

Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or "state of exception," has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states. The (...) sequel to Agamben's _Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception_ is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt. In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence. (shrink)

When faced with a rule that they take to be true, and a recalcitrant example, people are apt to say: “The exception proves the rule”. When pressed on what they mean by this though, things are often less than clear. A common response is to dredge up some once-heard etymology: ‘proves’ here, it is often said, means ‘tests’. But this response—its frequent appearance even in some reference works notwithstanding1—makes no sense of the way in which the expression is used. To (...) insist that the exception proves the rule is to insist that whilst this is an exception, the rule still stands; and furthermore, that, rather than undermining the rule, the exception serves to confirm it. This second claim may seem paradoxical, but it should not, once it is realized that what does the confirming is not the exception itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be an exception; and that what is confirmed is not the rule itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be a rule. To treat something as an exception is not to treat it as a counterexample that refutes the existence of the rule. Rather it is to treat it as special, and so to concede the rule from which it is excepted. The point comes clearly in the original (probably 17th Century) Latin form: Exceptio probat (figit2) regulam in casibus non exceptis. Exception (i.e. the act of excepting) proves (establishes) the rule in the cases not excepted. Clearly this form of reasoning cannot apply when the rule that we are considering has the form of a simple universal generalization. Here there can be no exceptions, only counterexamples. So what we need, and what will be developed.. (shrink)

Dominic Smith’s Exceptional Technologies has a specific project, a bridge it is hoping to build, between a philosophy of technology which has become too standardised and a continental tradition tha...

This paper will introduce the notion of a naming convention and use this paradigm to both develop a new version of the Second Incompleteness Theorem and to describe when an axiom system can partially evade the Second Incompleteness Theorem.