Diversity Reading List

Abstract: Now THAT THE NEW essentialism is forcing us to reconsider many issues in diverse areas of philosophy, it is appropriate to examine some of the implications of Saul Kripke's work for aesthetics. I shall be focusing on Kripke's "Naming and Necessity." 1 On Kripke's account, the table in my dining room could not have been made out of any other wood than the wood that was, in fact, actually used to make it. It is not merely that this particular kind of wood must have been used, namely oak, but this very piece, otherwise it would not be this particular table. I intend to show how Kripke's line of argument applies to a work of art and to draw the consequences of it for aesthetics. If we do not want to accept these consequences, then we will be forced into a ra- tional reconstruction of the identity issue. My application of Kripke's position is con- fined to painting and sculpture and turns for its example on Michelangelo's David. (Whether or not or how Kripke's analysis and our conclusions can be extended to the other arts is outside the scope of this paper.) Let me be clear about strategy. Through- out I assume without argument Kripke's position. I also assume and, in fact hold, again without argument, that the David is a physical entity. When the consequences of CATHERINE LORD is professor of philosophy at Syra- cuse University. the Kripkean analysis are explored, I engage in a descriptive metaphysics and assume these to be the facts. There is no waffling on the assumption that the David is a physical object. When the consequences of the Kripkean analysis are applied to that assumption, we may not wish to accept them. At that point I engage in a rational reconstruction. The descriptive metaphysics and the rational reconstruction or revisionary meta- physics must not be confused. Following Kripke's analysis, I shall show how it is that Michelangelo could not have made his David out of a different block of marble than the block which he actually used. Since this is counter-intuitive, we may want to protest as follows. Let us pretend that Michelangelo walks into his studio. There are two blocks of marble before him, block A and block B. As the sculptor de- liberates as to which block he will use, he has the work of art in his mind. In fact he has before his mind a perfect image, complete in every detail, of the statue which will result from his efforts. (Here I am not com- mitted to any particular theory of the imagination - one could be Rylean. On any account I see no logical difficulty in supposing that Michelangelo knew exactly what he wanted to do, that he had a representation vivid in every detail of what he would later execute.) We may say, then, that Michelangelo's intention, and I emphasize the word, intention, was to embody a certain idea in matter perhaps even a certain kind of matter, marble, and even perhaps a certain kind of marble. (Again, in speaking of embodying a certain idea, I should not be taken as prejudicing the case in favor of or against any theory of aesthetics.) After examining block A and block B and finding nothing to choose between them, Michelangelo chose block A. Now as far as Michelangelo's intention was concerned it could have been realized in block B. His intention was to create a definite statue which he envisioned in every detail. Accordingly, we seem bound to say that the David might just as readily have been made out of block B as block A. On a Kripkean analysis that is not the case. Had Michelangelo chosen to embody his idea in block B, an entity different from the David would have resulted. It would have looked exactly as the David does in fact look. It might, indeed, have weighed the same amount, etc., but it would not have been identical to the entity to which the David is identical. It would certainly have been a David. ". . . is a David" is a general term which is true of many statues; "the David," as I am using the expression, is a singular term referring to only one. Al- though there is a possible world in which Michelangelo embodies his idea in block B and in which the resulting sculpture comes to be put in the Academia in Florence and even to be enjoyed in precisely the same way as we do in fact enjoy the David, the object of our attention in that possible world is not to be identified with the entity in the Academia, i.e., with the David we ac- tually do enjoy. To grasp Kripke's central contention, let us consider it in its most dramatic formula- tion where he argues that Socrates could not possibly have come from different parents. More precisely, Kripke is willing to allow that the sperm and egg from which Socrates came might possibly have been transplanted from the bodies of his mother and father to the bodies of a different man and woman. Had such a transplantation taken place, Socrates might well have come from differ- ent parents, as the term is ordinarily under- stood. The key issue can be brought out as follows. Suppose that Socrates' parents had died in an earthquake in their early youth at a time before they first met. There is such a possible world. Now suppose that some other Athenian couple gave birth to a son on the precise date on which Socrates, our Socrates, was born. Suppose that this son was snub-nosed like Socrates, indeed looked exactly like him at every stage of his life. We may even suppose that his per- sonality, his genetic make-up, etc. was the same as our Socrates. We can imagine his living a life from birth to death just like the life Socrates lived, even becoming the teacher of Plato and being given the hem- lock. Would that person have been our Socrates? The answer for Kripke is No. Somewhere in outer space there may now, in fact, be a double of Gerald Ford. He may live on a planet qualitatively indistin- guishable in every respect down to the last detail from the planet Earth. He may even be president of a country exactly like ours, etc., but he would not be Gerald Ford even though his name may be "Gerald Ford." Qualitative similarity cannot suffice to es- tablish identity. To return to the table in my dining room, in traditional Aristotelian terms, Kripke in- sists that essential to the table is both its form and its matter, its being a table, on the one hand, and its being made of the very wood it is indeed made of, on the other. Supposing Michelangelo had chosen block B instead of block A for embodying his idea. Suppose also that Leonardo da Vinci had stepped into his studio and absconded with block A.2 Suppose that by some extraordi- nary coincidence Michelangelo and Leo- nardo, working separately, each produced a statue qualitatively indistinguishable from the David which is in the Academia. Which of the two works, that of Michelangelo or that of Leonardo would be the David, Michelangelo's made out of block B or Leo- nardo's made out of block A? Take a simpler case. Suppose that Michelangelo had worked on both blocks of marble and produced two qualitatively indistinguish- able statues. Let the one made from block A find its way to the Uffizi or the Louvre and the one made from block B find its way to the Academia (perhaps in the manner of Kripkean Approach To Identity of Art Work those statues of Daedelus). There is no logical reason why our David should have found its way to the Academia. There is, however, a necessity - an onto- logical necessity - that the David should have been made out of block A, though the truth of the sentence, "The David was made out of block A," cannot be established on the basis of a purely a priori reflection. We have here, then, a necessary a posteriori proposition. And it is the a posteriori char- acter of the proposition that encourages one to suppose that we could have discovered that the David was made out of granite. If we discover that the David is made out of granite, not marble, then we have dis- covered that the David is necessarily made out of granite. This is merely an epistemic possibility. We could even now, in a scepti- cal frame of mind, say that as far as we know David might in fact have been made out of granite. But since, in fact, the David is made out of marble and made from block A, in all possible worlds it is made of marble and from block A. There is no ontologically possible world in which we discover it to be made of granite or out of block B.

Abstract: FEW hold "A poem should not mean, but be" as dogma any longer, but most aestheticians agree that a work of art cannot be exhaustively paraphrased. Few dispute that the aesthetic ex- perience is, in some sense, disinterested, but the terms of that disinterestedness are still debated. I suggest that the work of art and the aesthetic experience are congruent and that an analysis of this congruence reveals both the nature of the import of art and the character of the aesthetic experience. I found my analysis on a faculty framework because I am convinced that neither the aesthetic experience nor the import of art can be illuminated without a fairly rigorous epistemology in which the roles of the imagination and the understanding are clearly defined. My framework is avowedly Kantian, for I think that the very incommensurability of the imagination and the un- derstanding, as emphasized by Kant, does more justice to the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience than an analysis of the cognitive faculties that stresses a difference in degree rather than kind.

Abstract: Advances in reproductive technologies – in particular in genetic screening and selection – have occasioned renewed interest in the moral justifiability of the reasons that motivate the decision to have a child. The capacity to select for desired blood and tissue compatibilities has led to the much discussed 'saviour sibling' cases in which parents seek to 'have one child to save another'. Heightened interest in procreative reasons is to be welcomed, since it prompts a more general philosophical interrogation of the grounds for moral appraisal of reasons-to-parent, and of the extent to which such reasons are relevant to the moral assessment of procreation itself. I start by rejecting the idea that we can use a distinction between 'other-regarding' and 'future-child-regarding' reasons as a basis on which to distinguish good from bad procreative reasons. I then offer and evaluate three potential grounds for elucidating and establishing a relationship between procreative motivation and the rightness/wrongness of procreative conduct: the predictiveness, the verdictiveness, and the expressiveness of procreative reasons.

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: Sabina Lovibond invites her readers to see how the 'practical reason view of ethics' can survive challenges from within philosophy and from the antirationalist postmodern critique of reason. She elaborates and defends a modern practical-reason view of ethics by focusing on virtue or ideal states of character that involve sensitivity to the objective reasons circumstances bring into play. At the heart of her argument is the Aristotelian idea of the formation of character through upbringing; these ancient ideas can be made contemporary if one understands them in a naturalized way. She then explores the implications that arise from the naturalization of the classical view, weaving into her theory ideas of Jacques Derrida and J. L. Austin. The book also discusses two modes of resistance to an existing ethical culture - one committed to the critical employment of shared norms of rationality, the other aspiring to a more radical attitude, grounded in hostility to the 'universal.' Lovibond tries to determine what may be correct in this second, admittedly paradoxical, tendency. This is a timely and valuable effort to connect the most advanced forms of thinking in the analytic tradition and in the Continental tradition, and to extend our understanding of the intimacies and resistances between these two prominent strands of contemporary philosophy.

Publisher's Note: In Realism and Imagination in Ethics, author Sabina Lovibond explores the non-cognitive theory of ethics along with its objections and the alternative of moral realism. Delving into expressivism, perception, moral sense theory, objectivity, and more, this book pulls from Wittgenstein, Hegel, Bradley, Nietzsche and others to explore the many facets of ethics and perception. The discussion analyzes the language, theories, and criteria surrounding ethical action, and describes the faults and fallacies of traditional schools of thought.

Abstract: Naomi Scheman argues that the concerns of philosophy emerge not from the universal human condition but from conditions of privilege. Her books represents a powerful challenge to the notion that gender makes no difference in the construction of philosophical reasoning. At the same time, it criticizes the narrow focus of most feminist theorizing and calls for a more inclusive form of inquiry.

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

Abstract: This paper considers the ontological implications of encountering varying levels of intelligibility when one traverses social structures, such as when one immigrates to a new culture or works in a place with people of a different economic class than one's own. This paper terms this phenomenon "world-travelling," which the paper understands as the shift in self-experience that occurs when an oppressed person moves from an environment where she is readily perceived as an active subject to one where she is perceived as a passive instrument of others' wills and desires. Such a situation opens on an ontological paradox because it seems that the same person is capable of possessing two contradictory attributes at the same time. The chapter explains how this paradoxical situation could obtain by arguing that attributes of consciousness are world-dependent. It concludes that the self is actually "a plurality of selves" and that the structure of subjectivity is neither unitary, universal, nor ahistorical.

Abstract: Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism being false: if evil is evidence against God, then seeing no justifying reason for some particular instance of evil must be evidence for it truly being pointless. I think this dialectic is mistaken. In this paper, after drawing a lesson about fallibility and induction from the preface paradox, I argue that the force of the evidential problem of evil is compatible with sceptical theism being true. More exactly, I argue that the collection of apparently pointless evil in the world provides strong evidence for there being truly pointless evil, despite the fact that seeing no justifying reason for some particular instance of evil is no evidence whatsoever for it truly being pointless. I call this result the paradox of evil.