Diversity Reading List

Publisher’s Note:

The relation between philosophy and language in Africa seems to favor the languages of written expression to the detriment of the languages of "oraural" expression. Concretely, this has meant not only the exclusive use of Arabic and European languages in the philosophies in Africa, but also the assumption that philosophy is only possible in, with, and through written languages. This article argues that change is long overdue, and that African languages should play significant roles in both the exploration of the past and in contemporary and future philosophical inquiries in Africa. In other words, the real problem is not so much to determine how far philosophy is compatible or incompatible with specific languages and with language as a whole, or vice versa, as to discern what role African languages should play within the framework of the past, contemporary, and future philosophies in Africa. For if colonial experiences obliged Africans to confront this predicament without success, the contention here is that Africans cannot continue to philosophize sine die in European languages and according to European models of philosophy as if African languages cannot provide and play the same roles. Today more than before, both the lettered and "oraural" traditions of Africa invite Africans to practice self-reliance in such matters.

Abstract: The book presents Kant's theory of the cognitive subject. It begins by setting the stage for his discussions of the unity and power of 'apperception' by presenting the attempts of his predecessors to explain the nature of the self and of self-consciousness, and the relation between self-consciousness and object cognition. The central chapters lay out the structure of the transcendental deduction, the argument from cognition to the necessary unity of apperception, and the relations among his theories of the unity and power of apperception, the 'psychological ideal,' and the 'noumenal' self. Later chapters draw on this material to offer a more precise account of his criticism that the Rational Psychologists failed to understand the unique character of the representation 'I-think' and to defend Kant against the charges that his theory of cognition and apperception is inconsistent or psychologistic. The concluding chapters present Kantian alternatives to recent theories of the activities of the self in cognition and moral action, the self-ascription of belief, knowledge of other minds, the appropriate explananda for theories of consciousness, and the efficacy of 'transcendental' arguments.

Summary: In this paper, Kittay advances a conception of justice that 'begins with an acknowledgement of dependency and seeks to organise society so that our well-being is not inversely related to our need for care or to care' (576). Her motivation for advancing this view is that ideals of citizenship in liberal society, including independence and productivity, perpetuate the victimisation, social exclusion, or stigmatisation of people with mental retardation and their carers. This is because liberal definitions of personhood do not provide resources for responding in a morally adequate way to the mutual dependence of people with mental retardation and their carers/advocates. People with mental retardation are inescapably dependent because of their central need for attentive care. And, carers' work is so deeply other-directed that they also do not fit the liberal model of the rationally self-interested actor. Thus, both carers and their charges are vulnerable and need to be advocated for so that they can be seen as having important entitlements to public resources and claims to justice. To this end, Kittay proposes a conception of personhood that is based on relationships. Although those with mental retardation are inherently dependent, they still count as persons because they are able to participate in relationships. This makes them entitled to the satisfactions that make life worth living. To achieve the twin goal of achieving justice for familial or paid carers, Kittay advances a new principle of justice, doulia, which calls for larger society to support those who care for the inexorably dependent. Kittay takes her relational conception of personhood and her principle of doulia to ensure that appropriate forms of social organization exist to support all those who become dependent. She claims her view is needed because principles of charity and beneficence are not adequate since they are consistent with the continued stigmatization of mental retardation and care work, and ground only low-priority social obligations.

Abstract: At the heart of the argument of the Critique of Practical Reason, one finds Kant's puzzling and much-criticized claim that the consciousness of the moral law can be called a 'fact of reason'. In this essay, I clarify the meaning and the importance of this claim. I correct misunderstandings of the term 'Factum', situate the relevant passages within their argumentative context, and argue that Kant's argument can be given a consistent reading on the basis of which the main questions and criticisms can be answered.

Abstract: Although epistemic possibility figures in several debates, those debates have had relatively little contact with one another. G. E. Moore focused squarely upon analyzing epistemic uses of the phrase, 'It's possible that p', and in doing so he made two fundamental assumptions. First, he assumed that epistemic possibility statements always express the epistemic position of a community, as opposed to that of an individual speaker. Second, he assumed that all epistemic uses of 'It's possible that p' are analyzable in terms of knowledge, not belief. A number of later theorists, including Keith DeRose, provide alternative accounts of epistemic possibility, while retaining Moore's two assumptions. Neither assumption has been explicitly challenged, but Jaakko Hintikka's analysis provides a basis for doing so. Drawing upon Hintikka's analysis, I argue that some epistemic possibility statements express only the speaker's individual epistemic state, and that contra DeRose, they are not degenerate community statements but a class in their own right. I further argue that some linguistic contexts are belief- rather than knowledge-based, and in such contexts, what is possible for a speaker depends not upon what she knows, but upon what she believes.

Abstract: This article will examine how the notion of emotional authenticity is intertwined with the notions of naturalness and artificiality in the context of the recent debates about ‘neuro-enhancement- and ‘neuro-psychopharmacology.- In the philosophy of mind, the concept of authenticity plays a key role in the discussion of the emotions. There is a widely held intuition that an artificial means will always lead to an inauthentic result. This article, however, proposes that artificial substances do not necessarily result in inauthentic emotions. The literature provided by the philosophy of mind on this subject usually resorts to thought experiments. On the other hand, the recent literature in applied ethics on ‘enhancement- provides good reasons to include real world examples. Such case studies reveal that some psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants actually cause people to undergo experiences of authenticity, making them feel ‘like themselves- for the first time in their lives. Beginning with these accounts, this article suggests three non-naturalist standards for emotions: the authenticity standard, the rationality standard, and the coherence standard. It argues that the authenticity standard is not always the only valid one, but that the other two ways of assessing emotions are also valid, and that they can even have repercussions on the felt authenticity of emotions. In conclusion, it sketches some of the normative implications if not ethical intricacies that accompany the enhancement of emotions.

Summary: The abject - expressed through the grotesque, the gross and the physically challenging - has long been a source of innovation and scandal in the art world. For Kristeva abjection accounts for much of the complexity of the human condition. She understands abjection to encompass various aspects of our humanity that are often seen as conceptually and/or experientially disparate - emotion, embodiment, affect, repression, criminality, hygiene etc. Kristeva's guiding intuition is that the abject helps arbitrate between our perception of ourselves as subject and object. In the liminal space between the two, the "I" is experienced in its full heterogeneity to the frequent detriment of traditional ethical, aesthetic, and scientific considerations. This has direct bearing on performance art, whose history is marked by the deliberate departure from beauty and, concurrently, the constant renegotiation of identity between the extremes of subject and object.

Abstract:

Kristeva (b. 1941) is known for mixing psychoanalysis, literary criticism and philosophy. In this essay, she explores depression, melancholy and mourning, starting from one of its most exaggerated manifestation. Seeing pain as "the hidden side of [her] philosophy", she investigates it through language and aesthetics. In doing so, Kristeva uncover its meaning by relying heavily on the symbolic dimensions, demonstrating how depression destabilizes language itself. With a particular focus on the feminine experience of sadness, she discusses romantic relationships and maternity, using Freud, Klein and Lacan alongside empirical observations from her psychoanalytic practice. The main thesis locates the origin of true depression in the separation from the mother, where she finds the "lost Thing" which causes melancholy without a precise loss, leading to a ruin of identity itself through an impossible mourning. Engaging with Holbein, Nerval, Dostoevsky and Duras, a large part of Kristeva's book is dedicated to a quest for the sublimation of such emotions into works of art. Deliberately fragmented and linked with poststructuralism, Black Sun is a a personal account of how subjective emotions are tied with signs and the possibility of meaning. Part of a psychoanalytic, feminist reading of feminism, Kristeva has been accused of essentialism.

Abstract:
Article: Epistemologists generally think that genuine warrant that is available to anyone must be available to everyone who is exposed to the relevant causal inputs and is able and willing to properly exercise her rationality. The motivating idea behind this requirement is roughly that an objective view is one that is not bound to a particular perspective. In this paper I ask whether the aperspectivality of our warrants is a precondition for securing the objectivity of our claims. I draw upon a Sellarsian account of perception in order to argue that it is not; rather, inquirers can have contingent properties and perspectives that give them access to forms of rational warrant and objective knowledge that others do not have. The universal accessibility of reasons, on my account, is not a precondition for the legitimacy of any actual warrant, but rather a regulative ideal governing inquiry and communication

Introduction: In increasing numbers, philosophers are coming to read Sellars' "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1997, hereafter EPM) as having dealt the definitive death blow to the idea that inner states with epistemic authority could have this authority immediately. EPM purportedly proves that instead, such states necessarily show up already embedded within a web of inferentially articulated conceptual knowledge, and that in order for this to be possible,  the epistemic subject must be a negotiator of a normative space in which standards of justification and correctness are already recognized. [...] In this paper I will attempt to show that Sellars' mythical explanations in EPM employ a very specific and rhetorically complex methodology, and likewise that we will not be in a position to critically assess the paper's arguments unless we give careful attention to its overall textual structure and to the nature of the mythical explanations it employs.