The Problem of Propagation: Original Sin as Inherited Discourse

As Modernist doctrines emphasizing the unity and agency of the educated self are increasingly set up as the straw men of contemporary educational discourses, premodern and Medieval theories of selfhood tend to disappear from the horizon of educational thought altogether. In this essay, in order to subvert this overcoming of our intellectual past, I examine Thomas Aquinas’ reading of the doctrine of original sin. Relying on Graham McAleer’s claim that Aquinas’ metaphysical theory sanctifies the body, I argue that Aquinas’ understanding of original sin relies on a discursive, pedagogical model to account for human finitude.     

Puzzles of Discourse in Being and Time: Minding Gaps in Understanding

Abstract

This paper takes issue with Heidegger’s claim that discourse and understanding are equally basic in the constitution of our making sense of the world. I argue that Heidegger cannot consistently establish this claim, and that discourse can be thought of as being more basic than understanding. The proposed line of thinking has the advantage of shedding light on both the finitude and the normativity of our making sense of the world. Thus, by setting up an exchange with the later Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule‐following makes it possible to develop an approach to the normativity of meaning which was not readily available on Heidegger’s account. Further, the paper offers an inquiry into a certain aspect of our finite sense of the world which, in spite of Heidegger’s marked attention to finitude, was obscured by his approach to discourse. The implications of the argument might be far‐reaching. The view of a basic role of discourse can put into question Heidegger’s guiding vision according to which time alone is ultimately the fundamental constituent of our sense of what there is. The engagement with Wittgenstein indicates, in conjunction with other themes of the paper, that there are certain perspectives and issues in phenomenology which are much closer to aspects of the analytic tradition than is usually granted.     

Situation and Limitation: Making Sense of Heidegger on Thrownness

Abstract: As Heidegger acknowledges, our understanding is essentially situated and so limited by the context and tradition into which it is thrown. But this ‘situatedness’ does not exhaust Heidegger's concept of ‘thrownness’. By examining this concept and its grammar, I develop a more complete interpretation. I identify several different kinds of finitude or limitation in our understanding, and touch on ways in which we confront and carry different dimensions of our past.     

Secondary self‐deception

According to doxastic accounts of self‐deception, self‐deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self‐deceiver really believes what he, in self‐deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self‐deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self‐deceiver's defending his professed (deceit‐induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non‐doxastic account of how we should understand self‐deception in terms of the self‐deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P.     

A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhn’s Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability Revisited

In this article, I discuss Gadamer’s hermeneutic account of understanding as an alternative to Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis. After a brief account of Kuhn’s aesthetic account and arguments against it, I argue that the linguistic account faces a paradox that results from Kuhn’s objectivist account of understanding, and his lack of historical reflexivity. The statement ‘Languages are incommensurable’ is not a unique view of language, and is thus subject to contest by incommensurable readings. Resolving the paradox requires an account of incommensurability that is self‐referentially consistent, open‐ended, and historically reflexive whereby we recognize that our very interest in incommensurability is historically conditioned. By meeting these conditions, Gadamer’s account of historical understanding offers a middle ground between two extremes: on the one side is the claim that understanding involves becoming a native of an incommensurable language, and on the other side is the rejection of the prospect of understanding a contextually removed language altogether. Gadamer is discussed as a mediator between Kuhn’s epistemic and historical projects, and thus paves the way for a new hermeneutics of science. The notions of traditional horizon, historically effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation, dialogical openness, and the fusion of horizons are also discussed.     

Kierkegaard on the (un)happiness of faith

Hegel famously accuses Christianity of ‘unhappy consciousness’: it has a normative goal – union with the divine – that it cannot, in principle, satisfy. Kierkegaard was intimately aware of this criticism and, unlike some of Hegel’s other accusations, takes it seriously. In this paper my co-author and I investigate the way in which Kierkegaard addresses this issue in two texts published in 1843: Fear and Trembling and ‘The Expectancy of Faith’. We are especially interested in how the two texts describe faith’s relationship to finitude: for instance, whether the person of faith is permitted to expect that God will bless her in particular and concrete ways. My co-author and I offer competing interpretations. I argue that there is a deep tension in the way faith is described in the two texts; my co-author argues that there is consonance.     

False belief in infancy: a fresh look

Can infants appreciate that others have false beliefs? Do they have a theory of mind? In this article I provide a detailed review of more than 20 experiments that have addressed these questions, and offered an affirmative answer, using nonverbal ‘violation of expectation’ and ‘anticipatory looking’ procedures. Although many of these experiments are both elegant and ingenious, I argue that their results can be explained by the operation of domain‐general processes and in terms of ‘low‐level novelty’. This hypothesis suggests that the infants' looking behaviour is a function of the degree to which the observed (perceptual novelty) and remembered or expected (imaginal novelty) low‐level properties of the test stimuli – their colours, shapes and movements – are novel with respect to events encoded by the infants earlier in the experiment. If the low‐level novelty hypothesis is correct, research on false belief in infancy currently falls short of demonstrating that infants have even an implicit theory of mind. However, I suggest that the use of two experimental strategies – inanimate control procedures, and self‐informed belief induction – could be used in combination with existing methods to bring us much closer to understanding the evolutionary and developmental origins of theory of mind.     

Critique,Finitude and the Importance of Susceptibility: A Rossian Approach to Interpreting Kant on Pleasure

In this paper, I take Philip Rossi’s robust interpretation of critique as an interpretive guide for thinking generally about how to interpret Kant’s texts. I reflect first upon what might appear to be a minor technical issue: how best to translate the term Fähigheit when Kant utilizes it in reference to the human experience of pleasure and displeasure. Reflection upon this technical issue will, however, end up being a case study in how important it is when we are interpreting Kant’s texts to have Rossi’s focus on human finitude in the background. The terrain for these reflections on human finitude will be the realm of feelings of pleasure and displeasure. And the result will be that, counter to recent interpreters, like Elizondo (2014), who have suggested that Kant could welcome a thoroughly active conception of rational feeling, we must instead, as guided by Kant’s commitment to human finitude (and really his commitment to Transcendental Idealism itself), remember that every feeling for Kant—even the most rational of feelings, like the moral feeling of respect, or the pleasure he notes that we take in the proper functioning of one’s virtuous rational self—must be understood within the purview and constraints of the finite and sensibly-affected human being. I hope, then, that this brief reflection can be taken as one small piece of that larger story Rossi so aptly describes in his book, the story which answers the question of “What is critique?” in a way that insists upon but also simultaneously celebrates the centrality of finitude in human existence.

     

Levels of Reality

Philosophers and non‐philosophers have been attracted to the idea that the world incorporates levels of being: higher‐level items – ordinary objects, artifacts, human beings – depend on, but are not in any sense reducible to, items at lower levels. I argue that the motivation for levels stems from an implicit acceptance of a Picture Theory of language according to which we can ‘read off’ features of the world from ways we describe the world. Abandonment of the Picture Theory opens the way to a ‘no levels’ conception of reality, a conception that honors anti‐reductionist sentiments and preserves the status of the special sciences without the ontological baggage.     

Self‐awareness and self‐understanding

In this paper, I critically examine Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self and show how the distinction he makes among “pre‐reflective minimal,” “interpersonal,” and “normative” dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call “pre‐reflective self‐understanding.” The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person's pre‐reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau‐Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre‐reflective self‐understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi's claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre‐reflective self‐awareness. To carve off self‐awareness from the self's practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre‐reflective action shows that pre‐reflective self‐awareness and pre‐reflective self‐understanding are co‐constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience.     

Criminalising Unknowing Defence

Should a legal plea of self‐ or third‐party defence include an ‘awareness component’ that requires that the actor was aware of the justificatory facts at the time of action? Some theorists argue that in cases of so‐called unknowing defence, where an actor in fact averts an otherwise unavoidable danger to himself or another person although unaware at the time of action that this is what he is doing, the objective facts alone should allow a plea of self‐ or third‐party defence. Cases of unknowing defence raise issues that are highly significant to the nature of justification and liability. In this article I reject some common approaches to this issue and I offer an account of why acts of unknowing defence are appropriately subject to criminal liability for the complete offence (e.g. murder).     

An objection to gareth evans' account of self-identity

In chapter seven ‘Self Identification’ of his challenging book The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans attempts to give an account of how it is that one is able to think about oneself self‐consciously. On Evans’ view, when one attempts to think of oneself self‐consciously that person is having what he calls an ‘I’ thought. Since these ‘I’ thoughts are a case of reference, more specifically self‐reference, Evans thinks that these thoughts can be explained by employing the same theoretical framework that he uses to explain other kinds of reference. Evans thinks all thoughts are essentially structured, and this means that they must fall under his ‘generality constraint’. Since ‘I’ thoughts are also ‘thoughts’ they are essentially structured as well, and they too must be subject to the generality constraint. The radical implication of this is that Evans thinks that if ‘I’ thoughts are subject to the generality constraint, then he can show that self‐reference must be reference to a thing which we can locate on a spatio‐temporal map. In this article I hope to accomplish three things. First, I will spell out in detail the argument Evans uses to arrive at his claim that self‐reference must be reference to something located on a spatio‐temporal map. Second, I will raise an objection, which states that Evans’ conclusion that self‐reference must involve spatio‐temporal location is not a consequence of the generality constraint. Finally I will argue that Evans’ conclusion that self‐reference must involve spatio‐temporal location is in fact in tension with the generality constraint, rather than being an implication of it.     

Additive Theories of Rationality: A Critique

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually‐given reasons for belief and desire‐based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our believing‐on‐the‐basis‐of‐perception and our acting‐on‐the‐basis‐of‐desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal.     

Self-Determination, Wellbeing, and Threats of Harm

David Rodin argues that the right of national‐defence as conceived in international law cannot be grounded in the end of defending the lives of individuals. Firstly, having this end is not necessary because there is a right of defence against an invasion that threatens no lives. However, in this context we are to understand that ‘defending lives’ includes defending against certain non‐lethal threats. I will argue that threats to national‐self determination and self‐government are significant non‐lethal threats to the wellbeing of individuals that can justify lethal defensive force. Therefore the end of defending individuals can ground a right of national‐defence against a ‘bloodless invasion’. Secondly, Rodin argues that defending lives is not a sufficient condition for military action to be national self‐defence, because humanitarian intervention is military action to defend individuals, and such action is in deep tension with national self‐defence. I will argue that a reductive account, grounded in claims of need and threats of harm, can justify principles of both intervention and non‐intervention on the same grounds; that is, protecting the wellbeing of individuals.     

The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self‐disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach.     

One Man's Authenticity is Another Man's Betrayal: A Reply to Levy

This article responds to Neil Levy's recent suggestion that: (1) the use of pharmaceutical enhancers can be understood as promoting our authenticity, no matter which of the two main contemporary conceptions of authenticity we adopt; and that (2) we do not need to decide between these two rival models (the ‘self‐discovery’ and the ‘self‐creation’ conception) in order to assess the common worry that enhancements will undermine our authenticity. Levy's core argument is based on a comparison between cases of people with ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ (GID) seeking sex reassignment surgery, and cases of enhancement via pharmaceuticals. While conceding the plausibility of Levy's claim (1), I offer reasons to resist (2), by pointing out structural differences between GID cases and some paradigmatic cases of pharmacological enhancement. I argue that these differences prevent the latter sort of cases from counting as authenticity‐promoting on the self‐discovery view. I conclude that Levy's proposed way of ‘breaking the stalemate’ in this debate is unsuccessful: we cannot avoid settling the dispute between the two models if we are to adequately address the authenticity worry about pharmacological enhancement.     

Book Review

Putnam's internal realism attempts to overcome both radical subjectivism and metaphysical realism. While he agrees with subjectivists that we understand the world through conceptual schemes, Putnam rejects their ‘anything goes’ relativist conclusions, arguing that states and properties of the external world co-determine our understanding of the world, and that some theories are more rational to accept than others. Theories, in other words, while they can't be expected to correspond ‘absolutely’ to the external world, can nevertheless be objective-for-us. When theorising about rationality, however, Putnam runs into problems, claiming that the criteria of rational acceptability, determining the choice of conceptual schemes, are a set of historically evolving cultural norms. This causes a slide into subjectivism and relativism. In this paper, I argue that the main tenet of internal realism – the possibility of an objectivity-for-us – can be maintained. Taking a naturalistic approach, I defend the view that both the conceptual tools and the epistemic values making up our conceptual schemes are ultimately grounded in our genetically determined cognitive apparatus. The conceptual schemes mediating our understanding of the world, therefore, are not merely contingent cultural products but, to an important extent, necessary biological products. In this regard, although Putnam explicitly rejects any attempts to naturalise reason, I argue that it is precisely such a naturalistic approach that provides his internal realism with the necessary backing.