Agent-Regret,Accidents, and Respect

I explore how agent-regret and its object—faultlessly harming someone—can call for various responses. I look at two sorts of responses. Firstly, I explore responses that respect the agent’s role as an agent. This revolves around a feature of “it was just an accident”—a common response to agent-regret—that has largely gone ignored in the literature: that it can downplay one’s role as an agent. I argue that we need to take seriously the fact that those who have caused harms are genuine agents, to ignore this fails to allow these agents to move on. Secondly, following Sussman and MacKenzie, I explore responses that benefit the victim. I argue that we should strive to understand how to configure these responses in a way that does not blame the agent. To do this I look at the role of actions in our self-understanding, as people who have done particular things. I end by briefly considering the ways in which tort law and restorative justice might help us to understand how to appropriately respond to accidentally harming someone. I urge that we need to take this as a starting point to find a better way to respond to the agents of faultless harms.

     

DISABILITY,IMPAIRMENT, AND SOME MEDIEVAL ACCOUNTS OF THE INCARNATION: SUGGESTIONS FOR A THEOLOGY OF PERSONHOOD

Drawing on insights from the medieval theologians Duns Scotus and Hervaeus Natalis, I argue that medieval views of the incarnation require that there is a sense in which the divine person depends on his human nature for his human personhood, and thus that the paradigmatic pattern of human personhood is in some way dependent existence. I relate this to a modern distinction between impairment and disability to show that impairment—understood as dependence—is normative for human personhood. I try to show how medieval theories of the resurrection of the body can provide, within this context, plausible accounts of what it might be for human persons to be redeemed.     

Disability as Abject: Kristeva,Disability, and Resistance

In this essay, I develop an account of disability exclusion that, though inspired by Julia Kristeva, diverges from her account in several important ways. I first offer a brief interpretation of Kristeva's essays “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and … Vulnerability” and “A Tragedy and a Dream: Disability Revisited” and, using this interpretation, I assess certain criticisms of Kristeva's position made by Jan Grue in his “Rhetorics of Difference: Julia Kristeva and Disability.” I then argue that Kristeva's concept of abjection, especially as developed by Sara Ahmed and Tina Chanter, offers important insights into disability oppression; Ahmed's and Chanter's contributions improve upon Kristeva's account. Understanding disability as abject helps to explain both resistances to interacting with disabled others and ways to resist disability oppression. Finally, I argue that understanding disability as abject is preferable to recent deployments of Lacanian theory in disability studies and that this account is compatible with social models of disability.     

Disability,Respect and Justice

Recent political philosophers have argued that criteria of social justice that defend distributing resources to individuals on the basis of the disadvantages of their natural endowments are disrespectful and disparaging. Clearly influenced by the social model of disability, Elizabeth Anderson and Thomas Pogge have recently defended criteria of social justice that distribute resources to people with disabilities on the basis of eliminating discrimination, not making up for so‐called natural disadvantage. I argue that it is implausible to suggest that just entitlements for people with disability can be secured solely by eliminating discrimination. Resources for people with disabilities must sometimes be justified on the grounds that some natural endowments pose disadvantages even in societies that do not discriminate. I argue further that there need be nothing at all disrespectful about this way of explaining disadvantage; nor have proponents of the social model of disability or political philosophers provided any compelling reasons for supposing that it is disrespectful. There is thus no motivation for Anderson's and Pogge's attempts to secure justice for people with disabilities by appealing solely to the imperative to eliminate discrimination.     

Right Motive, Wrong Action: Direct Consequentialism and Evaluative Conflict

In this paper I look at attempts to develop forms of consequentialism which do not have a feature considered problematic in Direct Consequentialist theories (that is, those consequentialist theories that apply the criterion of rightness directly in the evaluation of any set of options). The problematic feature in question (which I refer to as ‘evaluative conflict’) is the possibility that, for example, a right motive might lead an agent to perform a wrong act. Theories aiming to avoid this phenomenon must argue that causal relationship entails motives and acts (for example) having the same moral status. I argue that attempts to ensure such ‘evaluative consistency’ are themselves deeply problematic, and that we must therefore accept evaluative conflict.     

Queer/Fear: Disability, Sexuality, and The Other

This paper examines the relationship between disability and “queerness.” I argue that the hostility frequently expressed against both disabled and queer individuals is a function of fear of the undecidability of the body. I draw on feminist, queer, and disability theory to help us understand this phenomenon and suggest that these different kinds of theories have a complementary relationship. That is, feminist and queer theory help us see how this fear works, disability theory helps us see why it exists.     

IV—Kant's Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic

This paper gives an interpretation of Kant's argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. I argue against a common way of reading this argument, which sees Kant as arguing that substantive a priori claims about mind-independent reality would be unintelligible because we cannot explain the source of their justification. I argue that Kant's concern with how synthetic a priori propositions are possible is not a concern with the source of their justification, but with how they can have objects. I argue that Kant's notion of intuition needs to be understood as a kind of representation which involves the presence to consciousness of the object it represents, and that this means that a priori intuition cannot present us with a mind-independent feature of reality.     

Sport,Wholehearted Engagement and the Good Life

I present an account of the good life as one in which wholesale engagement in the social practices that human agents take up is the signature feature. I then argue that sport, because it is one of a select few human undertakings in which such full-blown action is the rule rather than the exception, is a paradigmatic example of such a good life. I close by claiming that equating the good life with wholehearted action is an especially promising way not only to appreciate the contribution sport makes to our lives but to legitimize that contribution to would-be detractors.     

Fundamentality,Effectiveness, and Objectivity of Gauge Symmetries

Much recent philosophy of physics has investigated the process of symmetry breaking. Here, I critically assess the alleged symmetry restoration at the fundamental scale. I draw attention to the contingency that gauge symmetries exhibit, that is, the fact that they have been chosen from an infinite space of possibilities. I appeal to this feature of group theory to argue that any metaphysical account of fundamental laws that expects symmetry restoration up to the fundamental level is not fully satisfactory. This is a symmetry argument in line with Curie’s first principle. Further, I argue that this same feature of group theory helps to explain the ‘unreasonable’ effectiveness of (this subfield of) mathematics in (this subfield of) physics, and that it reduces the philosophical significance that has been attributed to the objectivity of gauge symmetries.     

DISPOSABLE BODIES,DISABLED MINDS,AND CHRISTIAN HOPE: RESURRECTION IN LIGHT OF TRANSHUMANISM AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

This piece brings into critical conversation Christian resurrection hope, virtual versions of transhumanism, and intellectual disability and demonstrates that Christian resurrection provides a more cogent hope for people with severe intellectual disabilities than transhumanism. I argue that transhumanist virtual futures are theologically problematic, as bodily resurrection is neither required nor desirable. It is particularly problematic for people with severe intellectual disabilities given the way they would be excluded from these futures. Disability theology also raises issues with the traditional notions of “healing” in the resurrection and the implications for the value and identity of persons with intellectual disabilities. Starting with these problems, I explore the nature of Christian hope, noting the inadequacies of a virtual transhumanist future with respect to both resurrection faith and intellectual disability, and address how resurrection hope can account for issues raised in disability theology, and so properly include people with intellectual disabilities.     

Rethinking the metaphysical questions of mind,matter, freedom,determinism, purpose and the mind-body problem within the panpsychist framework of consolationism

Consolationism is an emergent intellectual current in 21st century African philosophy that presents itself as an alternative constructive framework for metaphysics, with an epistemic foundation in the African thought-world and being universally applicable. In this paper, I trace the influences of consolationism within African philosophy, and argue that this original philosophical system is the product of the African complementary perspective of the universe understood as an interconnected whole of diverse entities. I submit that the doctrine of mood which lies at the heart of the consolationist system introduces new concepts into African metaphysics and recasts the question of being. I show how the consolationist perspective sheds light on the persistent mind-body problem and establishes consciousness as a necessary feature of the universe. Deploying the method of exposition and analysis, I assert that the panpsychist framework of consolationism facilitates a novel way of conceptualising such metaphysical questions as mind, matter, the mind-body problem, purpose, freedom, and determinism.     

Leibniz on the Metaphysics of Color

Drawing on remarks scattered through his writings, I argue that Leibniz has a highly distinctive and interesting theory of color. The central feature of the theory is the way in which it combines a nuanced subjectivism about color with a reductive approach of a sort usually associated with objectivist theories of color. After reconstructing Leibniz's theory and calling attention to some of its most notable attractions, I turn to the apparent incompatibility of its subjective and reductive components. I argue that this apparent tension vanishes in light of his rejection of a widely accepted doctrine concerning the nature of bodies and their geometrical qualities.     

Time, tense, truth

A theory of time is a theory of the nature of temporal reality, and temporal reality determines the truth-value of temporal sentences. Therefore it is reasonable to ask how a theory of time can account for the way the truth of temporal sentences is determined. This poses certain challenges for both the A theory and the B theory of time. In this paper, I outline an account of temporal sentences. The key feature of the account is that the primary bearers of truth-values are not utterances, but sentences evaluated with respect to a time. I argue that unlike other views, the present proposal can meet the challenges faced both by the A and the B theory.     

Keynote Address to the Third International Global Ethics Association, 30 June 2010, Bristol Human dignity,respect, and global inequality

In this paper I argue that respect for human dignity establishes a justificatory presumption in favor of egalitarian rules, which presumption is applicable to the global economic association. This is the basis for condemning several feature of current global inequality as unjust.     

Disabled – therefore,Unhealthy?

This paper argues that disabled people can be healthy. I argue, first, following the well-known ‘social model of disability’, that we should prefer a usage of ‘disabled’ which does not imply any kind of impairment that is essentially inconsistent with health. This is because (a) one can be disabled only because limited by false social perception of impairment and (b) one can be, if impaired, disabled not because of the impairment but rather only because of the social response to it. Second, I argue that it is often wrong to use the term ‘healthy’ in a way that makes health inconsistent with any degree whatsoever of health-relevant bodily dysfunction. Whether someone is ‘healthy’ properly-so-called depends on standards of health presupposed in conversational context. Sometimes, I argue, these standards are or ought to be lax enough to allow some people with some health deficits still to count as ‘healthy’ per se. Taking inspiration from David Lewis and Mary Kate Mcgowan, I go on to argue that denying that someone is ‘healthy’ in a context typically succeeds in shifting going presuppositions to require standards strict enough to make that denial acceptable. And this, I conclude by arguing, often constitutes an abuse of conversational power.     

Science Communication,Cultural Cognition,and the Pull of Epistemic Paternalism

There is a correlation between positions taken on some scientific questions and political leaning. One way to explain this correlation is the cultural cognition hypothesis (CCH): people's political leanings are causing them to process evidence to maintain fixed answers to the questions, rather than to seek the truth. Another way is the different background belief hypothesis (DBBH): people of different political leanings have different background beliefs which rationalize different positions on these scientific questions. In this article, I argue for two things. I argue that two attempts by proponents of the CCH to discredit the DBBH fail. And I argue that this matters, because while the CCH makes epistemic paternalistic interventions seem called for (as some philosophers have argued compellingly), the DBBH does not. The DBBH makes it much easier to stay closer to an ideal of deliberative democracy.     

The Body Politic: Theorising Disability and Impairment

abstract  In her critique of the social model of disability, Lorella Terzi argues that it over-socialises disability, and that some kind of connection must be made between disability and bodily impairment. In this paper I argue that, far from over-socialising disability, the social model does not go far enough. The important contribution of the social model is that it politicises disability. I argue that bodily impairment must itself be politicised, and the insights of the social model should be extended to the body itself.     

A Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion – or A Philosophy of Wittgensteinian Religion?

I evaluate the plausibility of how broadly 'Wittgensteinian' approaches to the philosophy of religion: looking in the first half of the essay at the account such approaches give of the meaning of religious utterances, and in the second half at the account given of the required justification for believing such utterances. As regards the meaning of religious utterances I distinguish weak and strong Wittgensteinian theses, supporting the former but refuting the latter. Turning to Wittgensteinian approaches to the justification of religious beliefs I argue that although some beliefs are 'groundless' in a way that makes them an unquestionable feature of our conceptual landscape, anything as interesting as a religious belief can not be 'groundless' in the relevant sense (of being invulnerable to attack). Finally I argue that only Wittgensteinian approaches can capture the meaning and justificatory requirements of religious beliefs for a minority of 'believers': but that this minority is important.     

Impartiality and disability discrimination

Cost-effectiveness analysis is the standard analytical tool for evaluating the aggregate health benefits of treatments and health programs. According to a common objection, however, its use may lead to unfair discrimination against people with disabilities. Since the disability discrimination objection is seldom articulated in a precise way, I first provide a formulation that avoids some implausible implications. Then I turn to the standard defense of cost-effectiveness analysis and argue that it does not succeed. But this does not settle the question of whether the use of cost-effectiveness analysis leads to unfair discrimination. Rather, it shows that the controversy should be approached in a different way. Thus, I conclude by outlining an alternative strategy for answering the question.