Diversity Reading List

Abstract: This essay responds to a (1991) Tanner Lecture by Rorty in which he criticizes 'universalist-realist' views in ethics, as exemplified by the work of Lovibond up to 'Feminism and Postmodernism' (where he is discussed, along with Alasdair MacIntyre and Jean-Francois Lyotard, as a specimen postmodern thinker), and promotes his pragmatist philosophy as a congenial intellectual basis for feminism. The essay questions the claims of pragmatism in this respect, and reflects more generally on issues of realism, essentialism, conceptual innovation, and legitimation. It argues that to acknowledge the historically situated character of human existence is not to give up on the idea of an ethically orientated politics. Likewise, it suggests that the risk of flawed or irresponsible generality in political discourse is not all located on the side of realism. Finally, some consideration is given to the notion of gendered identity as a basis for feminist consciousness.

Publisher's Note: Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social imaginary' within which Murdoch's work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing

Introduction: The history of Analytic Philosophy we are familiar with is a story about men. It begins with Frege, Russell, Moore. Wittgenstein appears twice, once as the author of the Tractatus and then again later as the author of the Philosophical Investigations. Between Wittgenstein’s first and second appearance are Carnap and Ayer and the all-male Vienna Circle. Then come the post-second-world war Ordinary Language Philosophers – Ryle, and Austin. After that Strawson and Grice, Quine and Davidson.

The male dominance is not just in the names of the ‘star’ players. Michael Beaney’s 2013 Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy begins by listing the 150 most important analytic philosophers. 146 of them are men. For women who wish to join in this conversation, the odds seem formidably against one.

Today we will be speaking about two of the four women who warrant an entry in Beaney’s list – Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. We will be talking about them alongside two other women Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley. We think they should also be in the top 150, but our broader aims are more ambitious than increasing the proportion of important women from 2.7% to 4%.

Abstract: This talk surveys a range of positions on the fundamental metaphysical and epistemological questions about elementary logic, for example, as a starting point: what is the subject matter of logic - what makes its truths true? how do we come to know the truths of logic? A taxonomy is approached by beginning from well-known schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics - Logicism, Intuitionism, Formalism, Realism - and sketching roughly corresponding views in the philosophy of logic. Kant, Mill, Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ayer, Quine, and Putnam are among the philosophers considered along the way.

Abstract: Leibniz's Law (or as it sometimes called, 'the Indiscerniblity of Identicals') is a widely accepted principle governing the notion of numerical identity. The principle states that if a is identical to b, then any property had by a is also had by b. Leibniz's Law may seem like a trivial principle, but its apparent consequences are far from trivial. The law has been utilised in a wide range of arguments in metaphysics, many leading to substantive and controversial conclusions. This article discusses the applications of Leibniz's Law to arguments in metaphysics. It begins by presenting a variety of central arguments in metaphysics which appeal to the law. The article then proceeds to discuss a range of strategies that can be drawn upon in resisting an argument by Leibniz's Law. These strategies divide into three categories: (i) denying Leibniz's Law; (ii) denying that the argument in question involves a genuine application of the law; and (iii) denying that the argument's premises are true. Strategies falling under each of these three categories are discussed in turn.

Summary: In this article Massimi discusses the important role that history and philosophy of science plays or ought to play within philosophy. The aim of the paper is to offer a historical reconstruction and a possible diagnosis of why the long marriage between philosophy and the sciences was eventually wrong after Kant. Massimi examines Kant's view on philosophy and the sciences, from his early scientific writings to the development of critical philosophy and the pressing epistemological he felt the need to address in response to the sciences of his time.

Abstract: In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn famously advanced the claim that scientists work in a different world after a scientific revolution. Kuhn's view has been at the center of a philosophical literature that has tried to make sense of his bold claim, by listing Kuhn's view in good company with other seemingly constructivist proposals. The purpose of this paper is to take some steps towards clarifying what sort of constructivism (if any) is in fact at stake in Kuhn's view. To this end, I distinguish between two main (albeit not exclusive) notions of mind-dependence: a semantic notion and an ontological one. I point out that Kuhn's view should be understood as subscribing to a form of semantic mind-dependence, and conclude that semantic mind-dependence does not land us into any worrisome ontological mind-dependence, pace any constructivist reading of Kuhn.

Abstract:

This paper stresses the importance of identifying the nature of an author’s conception of logic when using terms from modern logic in order to avoid, as far as possible, injecting our own conception of logic in the author’s texts. Sundholm (2012) points out that inferences are staged at the epistemic level and are made out of judgments, not propositions. Since it is now standard to read Aristotelian sullogismoi as inferences, I have taken Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentaries to Aristotle’s logical treatises as a basis for arguing that the premises and conclusions should be read as judgments rather than as propositions. Under this reading, when Alexander speaks of protaseis, we should not read the modern notion of proposition, but rather what we now call judgments. The point is not just a matter of terminology, it is about the conception of logic this terminology conveys. In this regard, insisting on judgments rather than on propositions helps bring to light Alexander’s epistemic conception of logic.

Introduction: The mind – body problem exposes the inconsistencies that arise when mind and body are conceived as ontologically distinct entities. Human experience clearly shows that our minds interact with our bodies. Philosophers who reject the identity of mind and body or mind and brain face the task of explaining these relations by illuminating the precise manner in which the mind moves the body and the body affects the mind. It is unsurprising, then, that the mind – body problem was first articulated as a response to René Descartes’ dualistic philosophy [...]

Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to discuss how the legal metaphors in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason can help us understand the work's transcendental argumentation. I discuss Dieter Henrich's claim that legal deductions form a methodological paradigm for all three Critiques that exempts the deductions from following a stringent logical structure. I also consider Rüdiger Bubner's proposal that the legal metaphors show that the transcendental deduction is a rhetorical argument. On the basis of my own reading of the many different uses of legal analogies in the first Critique, I argue that they cannot form a consistent methodological paradigm as Henrich and Bubner claim.

Abstract: Despite Hegel's effusive praise for art as one of the ways humans express truth, art by his description is both essentially limited and at perpetual risk of ending. This hybrid assessment is apparent first in Hegel's account of art's development, which shows art culminating in classical sculpture's perfect unity, but then, unable to depict Christianity's interiority, evolving into religion, surrendering to division, or dissipating into prose. It is also evident in his ranking of artistic genres from architecture to poetry according to their ability to help humans produce themselves both individually and collectively: the more adequately art depicts human self-understanding, the more it risks ceasing to be art. Nevertheless, art's myriad endings do not exhaust its potential. Art that makes humans alive to the unity and interdependence at the heart of reality continues to express the Idea and so achieves Hegel's ambitions for its role in human life.

Abstract: Anselmian theists, for whom God is the being than which no greater can be thought, usually infer that he is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. Critics have attacked these claims by numerous distinct arguments, such as the paradox of the stone, the argument from God's inability to sin, and the argument from evil. Anselmian theists have responded to these arguments by constructing an independent response to each. This way of defending Anselmian theism is uneconomical. I seek to establish a new defence which undercuts almost all the existing arguments against Anselmian theism at once. In developing this defence, I consider the possibility that the Anselmian God is not an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being.

From the Introduction: "Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson extend the work begun in the former’s book Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism, by showing that a Quinean understanding of logic as an empirical field implies that logic remains open to revision in light of fundamental shifts in knowledge. Nelson and Nelson point to the revisions in scientific understandings made possible by the incorporation of women and women’s lives as emblematic of the possible ways that feminist thought can provide a deep reworking of the structures of knowledge and thus potentially of logic. Although they are cautious of any conclusions that logic must change, their work offers a theoretical ground from which the effects of feminist theorizing on logic can be usefully explored."

Diversifying Syllabi: Plato’s belief in the commensurability of values (shared by modern utilitarians) ultimately “cuts very deep: taken seriously, it will transform our passions as well as our decision-making, giving emotions such as love, fear, grief, and hence the ethical problems that are connected with them, an altogether different character” (56). The upshot is that “certain proposals in ethics and social choice theory that present themselves as innocuous extensions of ordinary belief and practice could actually lead, followed and lived with severity and rigor, to the end of human life as we currently know it” (56).

Publisher's Note: Onora O'Neill suggests that the conceptions of individual autonomy (so widely relied on in bioethics) are philosophically and ethically inadequate; they undermine rather than support relationships based on trust. Her arguments are illustrated by issues raised by such practices as the use of genetic information by the police, research using human tissues, new reproductive technologies, and media practices for reporting on science, medicine, and technology. The study appeals to a wide range of readers in ethics, bioethics, and related disciplines.