Rorty's Debt to Sellarsian Metaphysics

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance secularization and anti‐authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post‐theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism.     

马克思主义与自由主义论战的哲学基础

近年来,从自我所有原则到契约原则,国外马克思主义与自由主义展开了全方位的论战,这一论战涉及到从哲学到经济学、从政治学到伦理学的诸多方面。自由、平等和正义,尽管对于马克思主义和自由主义来说它们的涵义是如此地不同,却是双方所共同追求的价值导向。这些价值标准能否在自我所有原则和契约原则的具体实践中体现出来,正是双方争论的焦点所在。本文围绕着双方的争论,从一些基础理论入手,对双方的论争进行了分析和思考,试图为我们回答时代提出的新挑战,与时俱进地发展马克思主义理论提供一点借鉴作用。     

World Government,Social Contract and Legitimacy

Abstract

The notion of world government is anathema to most political theorists. This is the case due to the arguments that a world government is infeasible, undesirable and unnecessary. This threefold argument is partly predicated on the assumption that in world politics the larger a geographical and political entity is, the greater the chance of it becoming unstable, ungovernable and, ultimately, illegitimate. On the one hand, if this assumption is correct, then a world government is likely to be illegitimate. On the other hand, if the assumption is wrong, then it is not far-fetched to consider a world government to be legitimate. Considering a world government that emerges from a global social contract, this paper contends that the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a world government and the extent to which it is legitimate or illegitimate depends on the kind of social contract that produces it and the extent to which it fulfils or fails to fulfil the conditions of the social contract.     

Should inter-collegiate football be eliminated? Assessing the arguments philosophically

Recently, there have been discussions about whether or not inter-collegiate football should be eliminated in the US. This article philosophically assesses the arguments for its elimination as well as the arguments proffered against its elimination. While a variety of arguments are discussed, a new one is brought into the foray of philosophical investigation, one that combines the unfairness and economic arguments: the health care and medical costs to others argument. It is believed that this argument is sufficient to justify the elimination of inter-collegiate football.     

Consistent Liberalism does not Require Active Euthanasia

I argue that ‘classical liberalism’ does not sanction any easy permissiveness about suicide and active euthanasia. I will use liberal arguments to argue that the distinction between active and passive euthanasia is real and that assisted suicide is, at the very least, deeply troubling when viewed from an authentic liberal perspective. The usual argument for active euthanasia is a utilitarian, not a liberal argument, as recent calls to eliminate the conscientious objection rights of doctors who refuse participation in such procedures plainly demonstrate. The paper focuses on arguments in the public sphere (such as those articulated by James Rachels).     

Argument Quality and Cultural Difference

Central to argumentation theory is a concern with normativity. Argumentation theorists are concerned, among other things, with explaining why some arguments are good (or at least better than others) in the sense that a given argument provides reasons for embracing its conclusion which are such that a fair- minded appraisal of the argument yields the judgment that the conclusion ought to be accepted -- is worthy of acceptance -- by all who so appraise it.This conception of argument quality presupposes that the goodness of arguments is characterizable in terms of features of the argument itself. It makes no reference either to the attributes of the persons appraising the argument and judging its normative force, or to the context in which that appraisal is carried out. But recent work by a wide range of philosophers, argumentation theorists, and social theorists rejects such an abstract, impersonal notion of argument goodness. Instead, these theorists insist upon taking seriously, in the evaluation of arguments, the features of the evaluators themselves. In particular, such theorists emphasize the importance of cultural difference in argument appraisal. Often locating themselves under the banner of multiculturalism, they argue that the quality of an argument depends upon culturally-specific beliefs, values, and presuppositions; that an argument may be of high quality in one cultural context but of low quality in another. Consequently, they contend, no abstract, impersonal characterization of argument quality can succeed.In this paper I consider this multiculturalist approach to argument quality. I argue that while there is much merit in the general multiculturalist perspective, the multiculturalist argument against impersonal conceptions of argument quality fails. It fails for several reasons detailed below; most fundamentally, it fails because it itself presupposes just the kind of impersonal account of argument quality it seeks to reject. I call this presupposition that of transcultural normative reach. I identify this presupposition in the multiculturalist argument, and show how it undercuts the multiculturalist challenge to abstract, impersonal, transcultural conceptions of argument quality. I conclude with an evaluation of the strengths, and weaknesses, of the multiculturalist challenge to such conceptions of argument quality.     

All Liberty is Basic

Recent arguments for the basic status of economic liberty can be deployed to show that all liberty is basic. The argument for the basic status of all liberty is as follows. First, John Tomasi’s defense of basic economic liberties is successful. Economic freedom can be further defended against powerful high liberal objections, which libertarians including Tomasi have so far overlooked. Yet arguments for basic economic freedom raise a puzzle about the distinction between basic and non-basic liberties. The same reasons that economic liberties and the traditionally defined list of basic liberties are basic can also be given for all other liberties. Therefore, high liberals and Rawlsian libertarians ought to accept almost all other liberties as basic, even liberties that may strike us as trivial, silly, or unimportant. This claim has revisionary implications for high liberalism. Namely, liberals should endorse strong institutional protections for almost all liberties, even at the expense of other social values.     

Beyond Establishment and Separation: Political Liberalism, Religion and Democracy

Does John Rawls??s political liberalism require the institutional separation between state and religion or does it allow space for moderate forms of religious establishment? In this paper I address this question by presenting and critically evaluating Cécile Laborde??s recent claim that political liberalism is ??inconclusive about the public place of religion?? and ??indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public place of religion??. In response to Cécile Laborde, I argue that neither moderate separation nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic justice, are compatible with Rawls??s political liberalism. Furthermore, I claim that a state can ensure that both its religious and non-religious citizens enjoy a sense of self-respect and identification with their polity by leaving issues of symbolic establishment and separation open to democratic debate. I conclude that Rawls??s political liberalism transcends the standard distinction between moderate establishment and moderate separation and leaves the public place of religion open to the democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics.     

Closed systems,explanations, and the cosmological argument

Examples involving infinite suspended chains or infinite trains are sometimes used to defend perceived weaknesses in traditional cosmological arguments. In this article, we distinguish two versions of the cosmological argument, suggest that such examples can only be relevant if it is one specific type of cosmological argument that is being considered, and then criticize the use of such examples in this particular type of cosmological argument. Our criticism revolves around a discussion of what it means to call a system closed, and what it means to call an explanation complete. Our analysis makes no suppositions about the nature of the infinite, and is therefore independent of many of the issues around which contemporary discussions of the cosmological argument have tended to revolve.     

Transcendental Arguments and the Problem of Dogmatism

Abstract

Transcendental arguments have been described as undogmatic or non‐dogmatic arguments. This paper examines this contention critically and addresses the question of what is required from an argument for which the characterization is valid. I shall argue that although transcendental arguments do in certain respects meet what one should require from non‐dogmatic arguments, they – or more specifically, what I shall call ‘general transcendental arguments’ – involve an assumption about conceptual unity that constitutes a reason for not attributing to them the status of non‐dogmatic arguments. As a solution to this problem I distinguish general transcendental arguments from what I shall call ‘specific transcendental arguments’ and seek to explain how by limiting the use of transcendental arguments to the latter type it would be possible to avoid dogmatism. This methodological adjustment also opens up a possibility of re‐interpreting transcendental arguments from the past in a novel non‐dogmatic fashion.     

How Morality Can Be Absent from Moral Arguments

What is a moral argument? A straightforward answer is that a moral argument is an argument dealing with moral issues, such as the permissibility of killing in certain circumstances. I call this the thin sense of ‘moral argument’. Arguments that we find in normative and applied ethics are almost invariably moral in this sense. However, they often fail to be moral in other respects. In this article, I discuss four ways in which morality can be absent from moral arguments in the thin sense. If these arguments suffer from an absence of morality in at least one of these ways, they are not moral arguments in what I will call the thick sense of ‘moral argument’. Because only moral arguments in the thick sense could possibly qualify as proper responses to moral problems, the absence of morality in thin arguments means that these arguments will fail to give us a reason to do whatever they claim that we ought to do, even if we see no independent reason to question the truth of the premises or the logical validity of the argument.     

Religion in a private igloo? A critical dialogue with Richard Rorty

It is still a popular philosophical position to call for a strict “separationism” concerning the private and the public sphere when it comes to religious convictions. Richard Rorty is one prominent supporter of this claim. The traditional critique against this division is mostly built on a particular characterization of religion that is at odds with Rortian assumptions. In this article, however, Rorty is criticized on his own terms turning pragmatically the objection to a fully internal one. What Rorty values most, namely a tolerant and ironic liberalism as the capacity to describe oneself in new and interesting ways is precisely the role, I argue, that religious faith could play under “neo-liberal” conditions.     

Do incompatible arguments cause extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments? The role of congruence between argument compatibility and argument quality

Previous studies have demonstrated that arguments incompatible with prior beliefs are subjected to more extensive refutational processing, scrutinized longer, and judged to be weaker than arguments compatible with prior beliefs. However, this study suggests whether extensive processing is implemented when evaluating arguments is not decided by argument compatibility, but by congruence between two evaluating tendencies elicited by both argument compatibility and argument quality. Consistent with this perspective, the results of two experiments show that relative to congruent arguments, participants judged arguments eliciting incongruent evaluating tendencies as less extreme in strength, spent more time, and felt more hesitant generating strength judgments for them. The results also show that it is mainly incongruent arguments, not congruent arguments, whose strength ratings were more closely associated with the perceived personal importance of the issue, which intensified the tendency to evaluate arguments depending on argument compatibility. These results suggest that it is the incongruity between argument compatibility and argument quality, and not simply the argument compatibility, that plays a more important role in activating an extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments.     

Nozick's experience machine is dead,long live the experience machine!

Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment (Nozick's scenario) is widely used as the basis for a “knockdown” argument against all internalist mental state theories of well-being. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that Nozick's scenario should not be used in this way because it elicits judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. These arguments all include alternate experience machine thought experiments, but these scenarios also elicit judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. In this paper, several experiments are conducted in order to create and test a relatively bias-free experience machine scenario. It is argued that if an experience machine thought experiment is used to evaluate internalist mental state theories of well-being, then this relatively bias-free scenario should be used over any of the existing scenarios. Unlike the existing experience machine scenarios, when this new scenario is used to assess internalist mental state theories of well-being, it does not provide strong evidence to refute or endorse them.     

On Argumentation Schemes and the Natural Classification of Arguments

We develop conceptions of arguments and of argument types that will, by serving as the basis for developing a natural classification of arguments, benefit work in artificial intelligence. Focusing only on arguments construed as the semantic entities that are the outcome of processes of reasoning, we outline and clarify our view that an argument is a proposition that represents a fact as both conveying some other fact and as doing so wholly. Further, we outline our view that, with respect to arguments that are propositions, (roughly) two arguments are of the same type if and only if they represent the same relation of conveyance and do so in the same way. We then argue for our conceptions of arguments and argument types, and compare them to alternative positions. We also illustrate the need for, and some of the strengths of, our approach to classifying arguments through an examination of aspects of two prominent and recent attempts to classify arguments using argumentation schemes, namely those of M. Kienpointner and D. Walton. Finally, we clarify how our conception of arguments and of argument types can assist in developing an exhaustive classification of arguments.     

Patriotism and Human Rights: An Argument for Unpatriotic Patriotism

This paper centres on the question as to whether human rights can be reconciled with patriotism. It lays out the more conventional arguments which perceive them as incommensurable concepts. A central aspect of this incommensurability relates to the close historical tie between patriotism and the state. One further dimension of this argument is then articulated, namely, the contention that patriotism is an explicitly political concept. The implicit antagonism between, on the one hand, the state, politics and patriotism, and, on the other hand, human rights, is illustrated via the work of Carl Schmitt. However, in the last few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in patriotism and an attempt to formulate a more moderate form, which tries to reconcile itself with universal ethical themes. Some of these arguments are briefly summarised; the discussion then focuses on Jürgen Habermas’s understanding of constitutional patriotism. This is seen to provide an effective response to Schmitt’s arguments. There are weaknesses in the constitutional patriotic argument which relate to its limited understanding of both the state and politics. This leads me to formulate my own argument for “unpatriotic patriotism.” The discussion then examines and responds to certain potential criticisms of this argument.     

A politics of affect: Re/assembling relations of class and race at the museum

This article takes as its focus a politics of affect and its potentially transformative effects. Drawing on feminist new materialism and the process philosophy of Deleuze, I map moments in which this politics is enacted as school children encounter museum exhibits designed to address issues of class and race. Taking affect to be a matter of the capacity of bodies to affect and be affected, I attend to how the body's power of acting is increased or diminished through these encounters. Affect emerges as central to negotiations around issues relating to class and race, with some assemblages produced being particularly able to effect changes in capacities. Politics presents as a process of affective encounter through which dominant cultural norms of class and race can be contested and their exclusions ‘undone’. The argument is made that a politics of affect has the potential to unsettle normative power relations and address issues of social inequality and do so in an affirmative way. And, that attending to affect extends identity-based framings of class and race by bringing the constitutive role and contribution of the material, the micropolitical and the radically relational into view.     

Comparing language and religion in normative arguments about linguistic justice

Many of the most influential theorists of linguistic justice make arguments on the basis of comparisons between language and religion. They claim either that (1) language, by contrast with religion, cannot be separated from the state or that (2) unequal official linguistic recognition, just like unequal official religious recognition, is morally problematic. This article argues that careful attention to debates about liberalism and the place of religion in public life invites us to question the two above-mentioned liberal assumptions about religion underlying many arguments concerning linguistic justice based on (dis)analogies between language and religion. The hope is that such critical scrutiny is likely to shed some light on normative questions of linguistic justice, more precisely on questions about the legitimacy of granting more recognition to certain languages, usually those of national native groups (as opposed to groups resulting from more or less recent immigration).     

‘Everyone’, consequences,and generalization arguments

This paper addresses issues raised by recent discussion in normative ethics which concern relations between properties of individual actions and of certain groups of actions. First, an ambiguity common to ‘everyone can’ and ‘everyone ought’ is examined. Next, a similar ambiguity in talk about consequences is studied; here several procedures for identifying and evaluating consequences are compared. Then a notation that untangles the ambiguities is presented. Next, this notation is employed in an analysis of Marcus Singer's deduction of his generalization argument. Finally, there is a study of the question as to whether or not conflicts are possible between Singer's generalization argument and the dictates of consequences of individual actions. The findings are that such conflicts are or are not possible depending upon how a certain restriction on generalization arguments is interpreted, and that in either case the proponent of generalization arguments is faced with problems.