The Value of Public Philosophy to Philosophers
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Comment Fundamentalism and Science
SISSA – International School for Advanced Studies Journal of Science Communication ISSN 1824 – 2049 http://jcom.sissa.it/ Comment Fundamentalism and science Massimo Pigliucci The many facets of fundamentalism. There has been much talk about fundamentalism of late. While most people's thought on the topic go to the 9/11 attacks against the United States, or to the ongoing war in Iraq, fundamentalism is affecting science and its relationship to society in a way that may have dire long-term consequences. Of course, religious fundamentalism has always had a history of antagonism with science, and – before the birth of modern science – with philosophy, the age-old vehicle of the human attempt to exercise critical thinking and rationality to solve problems and pursue knowledge. “Fundamentalism” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences 1 as “A movement that asserts the primacy of religious values in social and political life and calls for a return to a 'fundamental' or pure form of religion.” In its broadest sense, however, fundamentalism is a form of ideological intransigence which is not limited to religion, but includes political positions as well (for example, in the case of some extreme forms of “environmentalism”). In the United States, the main version of the modern conflict between science and religious fundamentalism is epitomized by the infamous Scopes trial that occurred in 1925 in Tennessee, when the teaching of evolution was challenged for the first time 2,3. That battle is still being fought, for example in Dover, Pennsylvania, where at the time of this writing a court of law is considering the legitimacy of teaching “intelligent design” (a form of creationism) in public schools. -
A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws Andrew Michael Winters University of South Florida, [email protected]
University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 3-20-2015 A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws Andrew Michael Winters University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy of Science Commons Scholar Commons Citation Winters, Andrew Michael, "A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws" (2015). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5603 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws by Andrew Michael Winters A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Douglas Jesseph, Ph.D. Co-Major Professor: Alexander Levine, Ph.D. Roger Ariew, Ph.D. Otávio Bueno, Ph.D. John Carroll, Ph.D. Eric Winsberg, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 20th, 2015 Keywords: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Naturalism, Ontology Copyright © 2015, Andrew Michael Winters DEDICATION For Amie ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my co-chairs, Doug Jesseph and Alex Levine, for providing amazing support in all aspects of my tenure at USF. I greatly appreciate the numerous conversations with my committee members, Roger Ariew, Otávio Bueno, John Carroll, and Eric Winsberg, which resulted in a (hopefully) more refined and clearer dissertation. -
”What Is It Like to Be a Robot?” Review of David Mcfarland's Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs
:KDW,V,W/LNHWR%HD5RERW" *XLOW\5RERWV+DSS\'RJV7KH4XHVWLRQRI$OLHQ0LQGVE\'DYLG0F)DUODQG 5HYLHZE\'DQLHO&'HQQHWW %LR6FLHQFH9RO1R 6HSWHPEHU SS 3XEOLVKHGE\University of California PressRQEHKDOIRIWKHAmerican Institute of Biological Sciences 6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2009.59.8.14 . $FFHVVHG Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and American Institute of Biological Sciences are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to BioScience. http://www.jstor.org Fall Focus on Books learn to appreciate some of the advances respect, that they go back to Harvard out the terrain using what you already and controversies in evolutionary de- Press and propose to use the current know to interpret what you find. For- velopmental biology while reading Greg version of their book as the seed for a tunately, David McFarland has chosen Wray. Then again, there is no essay on community-wide, online, open-ended the second option in Guilty Robots, the role of phenotypic plasticity in evo- effort. Of course, it would also be nice if Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien lution, a topic that has acquired central it were open access, but that’s another Minds, and there is much food for status during the past two decades; after story. -
The Condition of Material Adequacy Classical Liberals
CONSTITUTIONAL CAPITALISM: Economic Freedom, Social Justice and the Myth of Modern Liberalism John Tomasi Working draft: please do not quote. Chapter 4: The Condition of Material Adequacy Classical liberals should accept social justice as concept. But what particular conception of social justice should classical liberals affirm? In this chapter, I gather materials to answer this question. With varying degrees of self-consciousness, most every major thinker in the classical liberal tradition affirms some version of what I call the condition of material adequacy. According to this condition, a liberals can advocate the classical liberal institutions of limited government and wide economic liberty only if, in light of a broad-gauged evaluation of the historical and economic realities of the society in question, they believe those institutions are likely to generate an adequate material and social outcome for all citizens. Towards what state of affairs must the provision of the material goods be adequate if, according to classical liberals, the condition 1 of material adequacy is to be satisfied? There are probably as many ways to answer that question as there are classical liberals. I shall suggest, though, that one way is morally most attractive when we consider that question at the level of regime-advocacy that I call political theory. It is this: classical liberal institutions can be advocated only if those institutions are deemed likely to generate social conditions within which citizens might develop the powers they have as free and equal citizens. That is, classical liberal institutions should be advocated only if they are deemed likely to help secure a thickly substantive conception of liberal social justice. -
Consequentialism
Consequentialism Consequentialism is the view that morality is all about producing the right kinds of overall consequences. Here the phrase “overall consequences” of an action means everything the action brings about, including the action itself. For example, if you think that the whole point of morality is (a) to spread happiness and relieve suffering, or (b) to create as much freedom as possible in the world, or (c) to promote the survival of our species, then you accept consequentialism. Although those three views disagree about which kinds of consequences matter, they agree that consequences are all that matters. So, they agree that consequentialism is true. The utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham is a well known example of consequentialism. By contrast, the deontological theories of John Locke and Immanuel Kant are nonconsequentialist. Consequentialism is controversial. Various nonconsequentialist views are that morality is all about doing one’s duty, respecting rights, obeying nature, obeying God, obeying one’s own heart, actualizing one’s own potential, being reasonable, respecting all people, or not interfering with others—no matter the consequences. This article describes different versions of consequentialism. It also sketches several of the most popular reasons to believe consequentialism, along with objections to those reasons, and several of the most popular reasons to disbelieve it, along with objections to those reasons. Table of Contents 1. Basic Issues and Simple Versions a. Introduction to Plain Consequentialism b. What is a “Consequence”? c. Plain Scalar Consequentialism d. Expectable Consequentialism and Reasonable Consequentialism e. Dual Consequentialism f. Rule Consequentialism 2. Two Simple Arguments for Consequentialism a. -
Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition”
Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition” Robin W. Lovin* In his classic essays in We Hold These Truths, John Courtney Murray developed an understanding of “the American proposition” that integrated a theological account of human good with the search for public consensus in a constitutional democracy. While this understanding of the relationship between religious freedom and political life was incorporated into Catholic social teaching at the Second Vatican Council, subsequent developments in both political theory and theology call Murray’s understanding of public discourse into question. This essay examines these challenges and argues that Murray’s reconciliation of moral truth and political choice is still an important resource for discussion of religious freedom and other moral issues in today’s polarized politics. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 25 I. MURRAY’S LEGACY .................................................................... 26 II. THE PUBLIC ARGUMENT ............................................................ 29 III. THE CASE FOR CONSENSUS ...................................................... 32 IV. IS IT GOOD? ............................................................................. 35 V. IS IT POLITICS? .......................................................................... 39 CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 43 INTRODUCTION From the late 1940s -
Evaluating Public Philosophy in Higher Education: Lessons Learned Baking Philosophical Bread
EVALUATING PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: LESSONS LEARNED BAKING PHILOSOPHICAL BREAD ANTHONY CASHIO (University of Virginia, Wise) & ERIC THOMAS WEBER (University of Kentucky) In the Last decade, there has been a resurgence of public phiLosophy. Many institutional structures and chalLenges impede or impose heavy costs on phiLosophers interested in public engagement. The American PhiLosophical Association has called for the development of tools for recognizing, evaLuating, supporting, and rewarding public phiLosophy. This essay offers a proposaL incLuding four concepts that couLd be usefuL for the fruitfuL evaLuation of pubLic phiLosophy in higher education: substance, accessibility, invitingness, and community-building. These concepts have arisen out of the authors’ experience with engaged public phiLosophy by means of the syndicated and award-winning PhiLosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast that Launched in January of 2017. The four concepts we propose for evaLuating public phiLosophy arise centraLLy in the work that we do and couLd offer a valuable starting point for the recognition and much needed support for public phiLosophical work in higher education. Volume 2 · Number 1 · Spring 2018 · Pages 72-94 Anthony Cashio & Eric Thomas Weber 73 n 2017, the American PhiLosophical Association released a statement drafted by its Committee on Public PhiLosophy calling I for members of the profession to encourage and reward quaLity work in public phiLosophy and to develop tools for evaLuating such work professionalLy.1 The need for evaLuating public phiLosophicaL work calls for systematic thinking about the vaLue of public phiLosophy and remains one of the movement’s challenges. While there are many nuanced forms of public phiLosophy and some usefuL considerations 1 APA Communications, “APA Statement on Valuing Public Philosophy,” The Blog of the APA, May 18, 2017, https://bLog.apaonLine.org/2017/05/18/apa-statement- on-vaLuing-pubLic-phiLosophy/. -
Liberalism, Republicanism and the Public Philosophy of American
Liberalism, Republicanism and the Public Philosophy of American Democracy I Introduction Political philosophers can be placed on a spectrum according to how they view the relationship between philosophy and social institutions. At one extreme, a naive a priorism considers social institutions only to the extent that they are necessary for the practical realization of, supposedly timeless, philosophical principles. At the other extreme, are certain Marxists and post-structuralists for whom philosophy is no more than an expression of specific social institutions: a particular discursive practice which occupies no privileged critical vantage- point in relation to other institutions. In this paper, I shall look at the relationship between philosophy and institutions in the context of a critical examination of the work of the contemporary Harvard political philosopher, Michael Sandel. Sandel made his name in the early nineteen-eighties with his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice1, a fierce and eloquent critique of the work of his Harvard colleague, John Rawls. The extraordinary resonance of his original polemic 1 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. The recently published second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) contains a new preface and final chapter responding to Rawls’s Political Liberalism (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1993) as well as a very useful supplementary bibliography of the most important contributions to the debate that Liberalism and the Limits of Justice has provoked. Since, as far as the main body of the text is concerned, the two editions are identical, I shall specify an edition only when referring to this new material. 1 has elicited important clarifications of Rawls’s position on the part of Rawls’s followers and Rawls himself.2 But Sandel’s work recommends itself in the present context for another reason. -
New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI
bs_bs_banner MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY Midwest Studies In Philosophy, XXXVII (2013) New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI I The so-called “New Atheism” is a relatively well-defined, very recent, still unfold- ing cultural phenomenon with import for public understanding of both science and philosophy.Arguably, the opening salvo of the New Atheists was The End of Faith by Sam Harris, published in 2004, followed in rapid succession by a number of other titles penned by Harris himself, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, and Christopher Hitchens.1 After this initial burst, which was triggered (according to Harris himself) by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a number of other authors have been associated with the New Atheism, even though their contributions sometimes were in the form of newspapers and magazine articles or blog posts, perhaps most prominent among them evolutionary biologists and bloggers Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers. Still others have published and continue to publish books on atheism, some of which have had reasonable success, probably because of the interest generated by the first wave. This second wave, however, often includes authors that explicitly 1. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004); Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Vintage, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006); Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking Press, 2006); Victor J. Stenger, God:The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007). -
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy 2800 Professor Haskins Winter/Spring 2002 Office: Humanities 2029 Humanities 2072 Phone: (251) X 6588; email: [email protected] Tues-Thurs. 12-1:20 Office Hours: Mon. 3:30-4:30 and by appt. Philosophy of Religion This course introduces a few of the most important philosophical debates about religion from medieval times to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Among the main topics discussed will be: the problem of defining "religion" as a philosophical and a cultural phenomenon ; arguments for and against the existence of God; the problem of reconciling scientific and religious worldviews; the rationality of religious belief; and the question of what forms religion might, and should, and should not, take in our postmodern and global age. This is a philosophy course, which means that emphasis will be placed not on individual religions and their histories so much as on critical reflection about general questions that a wide spectrum of religious experience and practice raises. Our philosophical readings are taken from an array of pre- modern and modern philosphers of religion. Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions, one of the required texts, contains chapters on the major religious traditions which will provide helpful background for our more general discussions. In referring to “critical reflection” above I mean that the goal of the course is not to defend any specific religious (or for that matter non-religious) point of view, including my own, even though my opinions on various issues will be evident from time to time. It is to offer intellectual tools for sorting through the cacophony of opinions and arguments about religion, spirituality, god, and related matters that is a vital (if also sometimes politically and existentially troublesome) part of our culture and that, as much as anything else in our culture today, needs the emphasis on the clear and rational evaluation of arguments that philosophy at its best tries to encourage. -
On Ai Siqi's Popular Philosophy
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 99 3rd International Conference on Social Science and Higher Education (ICSSHE-17) On Ai Siqi’s Popular Philosophy Chen Chunying Philosophy School of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law Abstract—Popular Philosophy is an important representative be known and understood by the people. Therefore, the work of the renowned Marxist philosopher Ai Siqi. As a concise popularization of Marxism became a pressing issue confronted popular reading of Marxist basic theory, it explains three aspects, with the people. In order to save the country from national namely materialism, epistemology and dialectics to the people crisis, patriots with lofty aspirations tried out political reforms with extremely plain, vivid and popular language. As the and revolutions successively. However, the successive failure foundation work for popularizing Marxist philosophy in China, it of the Hundred-Day Reform and the 1911 Revolution revealed is a particularly important resource to deepen the development of it to us that a powerful ideological weapon was demanded to Marxist philosophy in modern and contemporary times. direct our revolution. While China was trapped in dilemma, Therefore, it is of great importance and profound significance to the success of Russia’s October Revolution brought us study this work. In this essay, the author analyzes the writing background, main content, major characteristics and the valuable Marxism which as the ideological weapon of the significance of Popular Philosophy. proletariat attracted the attention of increasingly more Chinese intellectuals. Before the May 4th Movement, most people in Keywords—Ai Siqi, Popular Philosophy, popularization of China did not know Marxism or even misunderstood it. -
Rawls, Religion and the Ethics of Citizenship: Toward a Liberal Reconciliation
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2013 Rawls, Religion and the Ethics of Citizenship: Toward a Liberal Reconciliation Jeffrey Michael Cervantez University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Cervantez, Jeffrey Michael, "Rawls, Religion and the Ethics of Citizenship: Toward a Liberal Reconciliation. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2013. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2562 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jeffrey Michael Cervantez entitled "Rawls, Religion and the Ethics of Citizenship: Toward a Liberal Reconciliation." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. David Reidy, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: E.J. Coffman, Adam Cureton, Anthony Nownes Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Rawls, Religion and the Ethics of Citizenship: Toward a Liberal Reconciliation A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jeffrey Michael Cervantez December 2013 ii Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey M.