The Language-Game View of Religion and Religious Certainty

In his important recent book, Aaron James has defended a principle – Collective Due Care – for determining when a form of economic integration is morally objectionable because it causes unjustified harm (including unemployment, wage suppression and diminished working conditions). This essay argues that Collective Due Care would yield implausible judgements about trade practices and would be too indeterminate to play the practical role for which it is intended.     

Caught in the Language-Game

In this paper, I first introduce the main motivations for the internalism/externalism dichotomy in epistemology and explore different accounts of epistemic justification, mostly externalist, arising from Dretske’s relevant alternatives theory of knowledge, namely the reliabilism of Goldman and Nozick, the contextualism of Cohen and DeRose, which is governed by fallibilist standards, and Lewis’ version of contextualism, to which infallibilist standards apply. I then argue that Wittgenstein critically anticipates many of these strategies and tries to avoid such a dichotomy by assuming a form of infallibilism which is neither internal nor external. After introducing the idea of a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology and how it responds to the problem of epistemic justification and to the particular challenge posed by radical scepticism, I defend the view that infallibility is logically unavoidable when we realize that we are always trapped in one language-game or another, even if we constantly switch between language-games.

     

语言博弈论与科学博弈

一、从维特根斯坦的语言游戏到辛提卡的语言博弈“语言博弈 ,Ｌａｎｇｕａｇｅ ｇａｍｅ”概念源于维特根斯坦。它又被学者们译作“语言游戏” ,因为“ｇａｍｅ”既有“游戏”也有“博弈”的含义。其实博弈本身也是一种游戏 ,只不过它更强调弈手间的对抗性。从这个意义上讲 ,就维氏对“Ｌａｎｇｕａｇｅ ｇａｍｅ”的运用而言译为“语言游戏”是恰当的。但从辛提卡理论中“Ｌａｎｇｕａｇｅ ｇａｍｅ”译作“语言博弈”更准确。维特根斯坦是在批评自己早期的语言图式论时提出“语言游戏 (ｇａｍｅ)”概念的。语言图式论中有一个基本观念 :名…     

The Morality of Nationalism

Book Information The Morality of Nationalism. Edited by R. McKim and J. McMahan. Oxford University Press. New York. 1997. Pp. xii + 371. Paperback, $42.95.     

The Morality of Terrorism

In this paper (a sequel to ‘What Is Terrorism?’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 7 [ 1990]) I discuss both consequentialist and deontological justifications of terrorism. In the consequentialist context, I look in particular into Leon Trotsky’s classic defence of the ‘red terror’, based on the argument of continuity of war, revolution, and terrorism, and the claim that the distinction between the guilty and the innocent, combatants and noncombatants, is not relevant to modern warfare. On the deontological side, I discuss Virginia Held’s recent attempt at justifying terrorism in terms of basic human rights and distributive justice. The conclusion reached is that terrorism remains almost absolutely morally impermissible.     

The Morality of Daycare

An increasing number of parents are electing to use daycare to assist them with their parenting from infancy onward. Strikingly, there is scant discussion of whether or not such a practice is morally permissible. In this paper, I shall discuss three different arguments that I believe are implicitly thought to support the use of daycare. I shall argue that the current widespread use of daycare, particularly with respect to infant children, often involves arbitrarily subjugating the needs of children in favor of the desires of parents, and thus is often morally wrong. Finally, I consider a possible fourth argument; one that I believe stands a better chance of justifying the use of daycare, though in the final analysis I argue that it also fails to justify the current widespread use of daycare.     

The Biology of Morality

Abstract. The morality of human beings, defined here as our ability to determine whether our actions are right or wrong, depends not just on following rules but also on understanding the impact of our actions on another person. How we understand the impact of our actions on another person depends on our state of consciousness, which is mediated by our brain and nervous system. We describe how we understand our morality to flow naturally from the biological state we are living in and how we see our biology and our morality as mutually interactive. A change in one changes the other. Another way of saying this is that changing either our morality or our biology changes both—changes who we are and what we do.     

The Morality of Motorcycling

Abstract

Personal motor vehicle use is a common, yet dangerous, practice. While using a motor vehicle one poses himself and others to risk. If it is immoral to pose unnecessary risk to others, it is immoral to drive a car when an alternative is readily available. In this paper I claim that there is a morally better, readily available, alternative to driving a car alone: using a motorcycle. While this claim might sound dubious at first, I will show why it is sound and stands against all kinds of objections. I believe most people should switch from cars to motorcycles as their primary means of transportation, and governments should adopt policies to help people make this switch.     

The Morality of Feminism

Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Social Science Faculty at the University of Utrecht.     

The Transcendental Necessity of Morality

David Gauthier tries to defend morality by showing that rational agents would choose to adopt a fundamental choice disposition that permits them to cooperate in prisoner's dilemmas. In this paper, I argue that Gauthier, rather than trying to work out a prudential justification for his favored choice disposition, should opt for a transcendental justification. I argue that the disposition in question is the product of socialization, not rational choice. However, only agents who are socialized in such a way that they acquire a disposition of this type could acquire the capacity to use language. Given the internal connection between language and thought, this means that no agent endowed with such a disposition could rationally choose to adopt another. Thus rational reflection by moral agents upon their own fundamental choice disposition will have no tendency to destabilize it.
"It is a necessary truth that people tend to do what they think they ought to do, for it is a necessary truth that people who occupy a linguistic position which means / ought to do A now , tend to do A. If they did not, the position they occupy could not mean I ought to do A now."
Wilfrid Sellars, "Some Reflections on Language Games."     

论政治道德的定位

政治生活的整合和政治文明的建设要求对政治道德进行合理的定位。政治道德的定位问题既涉及政治道德体系的内容问题,又关涉什么样的政治道德才是合理的问题。政治道德应该定位于政治公共领域这一客观基础;应该定位于个人权利与公共利益相结合的视角;应该定位于目的（或者功利）与道义（或者义务）的统一。     

Authorization and The Morality of War

Why does it matter that those who fight wars be authorized by the communities on whose behalf they claim to fight? I argue that lacking authorization generates a moral cost, which counts against a war's proportionality, and that having authorization allows the transfer of reasons from the members of the community to those who fight, which makes the war more likely to be proportionate. If democratic states are better able than non-democratic states and sub-state groups to gain their community's authorization, this means that some wars will be proportionate if fought by democracies, disproportionate if not.