T H E
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P H I L O S O P H Y
PA S T & PRESENT
P H I L O S O P H Y
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5 Introduction
9 Ian James Kidd
Stephen Law
History and Humility
19 Christine Korsgaard
25 Thomas Nagel
31 John Searle
39 Mary Warnock
43 J端rgen Habermas
57 Noam Chomsky
69 Jerry Fodor
Personhood, Animals, And The Law Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem Freedom of the Will as a Problem in Neurobiology What is Natural and Should We Care About It? Religious Tolerance? The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights Simple Truths, Hard Choices: Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice and Self-defence The Revenge of the Given: Mental Representation without Conceptualisation
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76 Sir Anthony Kenny
88 Bernard Williams
96 John McDowell
Knowledge, Belief and Faith: Is Religion Really the Root of all Evil? Philosophy as a Humanist Discipline Intention in Action
104 T. M. Scanlon
Reassessing Reasons
111 Simon Blackburn
The Sovereignty of Reason
124 Ned Block
Attention and Mentalism
130 Derek Parfit
Is Personal Identity What Matters?
137 Alasdair MacIntyre
Social Structures and their Threats to Moral Agency
142 Tyler Burge
Perception: Where Mind Begins
148 Biographies
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WELCOME – Stephen Law –
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out. No speedy enterprise. But now it’s done, it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar. There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four.
The Past & Present event was the highlight of my year; a fascinating collection of ideas from the greatest minds in modern philosophy. ~ a b thinker
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creature of which he few are able to above of the time. ~ Voltaire 7
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HISTORY AND HUMILITY – Ian James Kidd –
Philosophy is an ancient subject, but what is the value of an understanding of its history for its practice? What can contemporary philosophers draw from an historical understanding of their subject? I argue that amongst its many benefits, the history of philosophy is an excellent resource for the cultivation of certain intellectual virtues, most notably gratitude, humility, and justice. Acquaintance with the history of philosophy can, therefore, be edifying, in the sense of being conducive to the cultivation and exercise of virtues. These virtues can be cultivated in many ways, but the history of philosophy offers unique means for securing those virtues just mentioned – or so I will argue. In what follows, I hope to show that some familiar pedagogical* and intellectual uses of the history of philosophy in fact reflect its edifying functions. >>
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The origins of philosophy are unclear, but certainly there were, in Greece, India, and China, vigorous philosophical traditions by the sixth to fifth centuries bce. Indeed, it is possible that Confucius, the Buddha, Thales and the authors of the Upanishads may have been contemporaries. The last six thousand years have, of course, seen philosophy, both Eastern and Western, go on to sustain vigorous, dynamic traditions. Indeed, one striking fact evidenced by history is the ubiquity of philosophical reflection. Across the scope of human cultures, in different times and climes, one finds sustained philosophical reflection, on topics ranging from knowledge and justice, to society and education, to reality and meaning. Although philosophy, like any subject, has its boom and bust periods, recent scholarship indicates that even periods previously considered to be rather barren – such as the Dark Ages of medieval Europe – were, in fact, philosophically dynamic, even if their questions and problems reflected concerns rather different from ours. The fact of the historical ubiquity of philosophy naturally pleases those engaged in the business of philosophy today. Certainly philosophers, whether professional or lay, should find a legitimate sense of pride in their participation in a venerable tradition of thought. This should include an appreciation of the sincere and sustained efforts, by men and women historically and culturally distant from us, to articulate ideas about their place in the order of things, which we may, today, profitably draw upon. And there isn’t, one hopes, too much vainglory in the optimistic sentiment that philosophy has been, and continues to be, an ennobling feature of human life. Although such sentiments have their place, the history of philosophy surely offers us more than just a sense of pride of one’s place within a venerable tradition. Those things matter, if only to motivate, but the value of the history of philosophy should not be narrowly construed as a capacity to encourage
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young philosophers – those sitting through hard going undergraduate lectures on Kant, say – to keep at it and work hard. A sense of standing on the shoulders of giants, to borrow Newton’s handy phrase, is useful. But so, too, is one’s knowing something about those giants and about how, and why, they worked and wondered as they did. In the history of philosophy, these giants would be all those earlier thinkers whose work is now part of our shared history. Some of the giants are obvious and familiar, such as Plato or the Buddha, whereas others, like Nāgārjuna or Josiah Royce, remain reliably obscure, at least within certain areas of academic philosophy. Both familiarity and obscurity can be fickle things, of course. Some philosophical giants are prominent for their notoriety, like Nietzsche, and others for their accessibility, like Russell. But what does it mean to say that these figures, and others more like them, are part of a shared history, and how and why does that history matter? The significance of the history of philosophy turns on the answer to that question. Certainly there are many reasons why one might not want to teach philosophy in an historical manner. One might prefer, for instance, to teach or write about philosophy in terms of ‘problems’ or discrete areas, like Metaphysics*, Consciousness, or Topics in Philosophy of Science. This way of philosophising focuses on topics, issues, and themes, like the nature of time, mental causation, or scientific methodology. And that can be a valuable and effective way of doing philosophy, especially within the context of the structure of modern universities. Yet a focus on abstract argument divorced from concrete context does, at least sometimes, compromise one’s understanding and appreciation of the ideas and problems being discussed. One could, for instance, take a course on Knowledge and Scepticism, covering Pyrrho, Descartes, Kant and others, without ever detailing why, for each of those figures, questions
about knowledge and scepticism mattered. An appeal to the inherent fascination or trickiness of their questions usually suffices, at least for those who opt to take such courses, but often those questions are presented without a clear account of why those philosophers were troubled by them. Most philosophers, at least in the past, were troubled by philosophical questions not simply out of mere curiosity, but rather because they perceived that those questions, even the most abstract ones, had implications for aspects of life which mattered to them. Such concerns are easily to neglect. A philosopher’s position can be summarised as an argument, or a series of bullet-points on a PowerPoint slide, but this format is apt to neglect the vital concerns that animated them. For instance, it often tends to obscure the biographical and historical context of a philosopher’s life, reducing them to names and dates, of the form “Thomas Hobbes (1588 –1679)”. Where, after all, is the contextual richness of a biography such as that which Heidegger offered for Aristotle: ‘He was born … he worked, and … he died’. Heidegger may have been right that, for certain purposes, Aristotle’s biography is not of interest, but that fact is only true at a certain level of analysis. Certainly it is not a general axiom of philosophising.
Context is not only pedagogically or interpretively valuable. There are entertaining anecdotes in the history of philosophy, for sure – and not solely in the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein – but the value of historical context goes further than that. Showing the wider social and political conditions within which philosophers worked, worried and wondered can help us to appreciate their more practical objectives. The Presocratics offer interesting arguments against traditional Greek religion, but they were, ultimately, intended to facilitate social and political reform. Or to take a slightly later example, the Pyrrhonian sceptics did not engage in abstract epistemology*, asking abstruse questions about the nature of knowledge, just because they were interested. Rather, it was because they perceived that a person who is to be happy must understand, first, what things are like and, second, how one should be disposed towards them. Put another way, they thought that knowledge of things was essential if we are to act properly regarding them, therefore interlinking epistemology and ethics in a way that will, one worries, remain invisible if one concentrated simply on the arguments themselves. Many derisive assessments of the value of philosophy arise because, in many cases, those critics do not see how the abstract issues raised by the philosophically-minded bear on practical
Across the scope of human cultures, in different times and climes, one finds sustained philosophical reflection, on topics ranging from knowledge and justice, to society and education, to reality and meaning.
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issues. The fault may be shared, but it can, I think, be partially resolved by an historical perspective upon philosophy. Once one becomes accustomed to an historical articulation of philosophy, the task of providing accounts of the practical import of abstract philosophising should become much easier. By being able to explain how earlier philosophers came to their ideas, or what provoked their questions, it should become easier for us to do the same for our own inquiries. And this should be understood, not as accounting for ourselves, but, rather, as explaining ourselves, for our benefit, and for that of our critics. Certainly a knowledge and appreciation of the history of philosophy can be a valuable feature of the actual practice of philosophy. An understanding of philosophy as an historical discipline shows how it is bound up with social and political change, religious controversy, scientific innovation, and so on. Those sorts of issues are, of course, features of our world today; indeed, many philosophical questions are perennial in the sense that they return, each generation, often in evolving forms. Questions about beauty and art, justice and goodness, knowledge and certainty, and the like have featured within the public and private lives of human beings across all times and cultures. An historical understanding of the philosophers that responded to them can help us, today, in our own efforts to address them. The history of philosophy is, therefore, a feature of philosophising itself. To ask and address philosophical questions is to enter into a longstanding tradition of inquiry. The specific content and form of philosophical questions changes over time, of course, in response to changing social and intellectual conditions. Questions about the certainty of knowledge, say, were changed by the development of the modern sciences. But appreciating this involves an historical sensitivity. It requires us to look not only at earlier philosophers who asked similar questions, but also at the context
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within which those questions were asked. After all, it is often context which lends our questions urgency, vitality, and significance. There are many philosophical questions and puzzles, but which ones matter to us, and why, is as much a matter of history as it is of curiosity and inquiry. The role of history in shaping our own ideas points to another role for the history of philosophy. Many questions face us, but not all of them matter to us. Certain questions move us, either by disturbing or fascinating us (or indeed, both). Other questions are curiosities – interesting, but deemed neither urgent nor essential. Understanding the distribution of significance across the philosophical landscape will, again, require a historical perspective. After all, we are ourselves subjects of a history. To ape Nietzsche’s famous remark, when we stare into history, history also stares back into us, insofar as the concerns and issues of contemporary society are products, at least in part, of that society’s history – that is, of our history. Such a reflexive historical stance is, of course, only useful beyond a certain point. We can get on much of the business of philosophising, debating and arguing without ever engaging in the historical project of tracing what Nietzsche called the ‘genealogy’ of our questions and methods. But that point at which history becomes essential is, I think, reached far sooner than is often imagined. Beyond a certain point, philosophical understanding must, if it is to satisfy us, become historically sensitive. This would include an understanding of how and why those questions came down to us, what presuppositions must be in place to enable our inquiries, and of why those questions and their answers matter to us. A great deal of valuable philosophical work can proceed without the sort of historical understanding just described. A philosopher would be foolish to pursue a historical perspective where that would neither aid nor complement their concerns. Analytic
So, who is Ian James Kidd…? Ian James Kidd works in epistemology, the philosophy of medicine, religion, history and science as well as the philosophical traditions of Asia and Continental Europe. He is particularly interested in Epistemic virtues and vices (especially epistemic injustice and epistemic humility); the experience and value of illness; the nature of a religious life; contingency and pluralism in science; scientism and anti–scientism; the practice and nature of philosophy and the life and thought of Paul Feyerabend. Ian founded the Durham Philosophy Department’s Gender Action Group and is committed to improving the representation of women in philosophy. He is also involved with the Leeds University chapter of Minorities in Philosophy (MAP).
…And what is he on about? a g l o s s a ry o f t e r m s haecceity
e pist e mology
The theory of knowledge, especially with regard
The property of being a unique and individual thing:
to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction
“He has a paramount concern with haecceity, the
between justified belief and opinion.
thisness of things.” [1] m i n d - b o dy d ua l i s m
m e ta p h y s i c s
The branch of philosophy that deals with the first
In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position
principles of things, including abstract concepts
that mental phenomena are, in some respects,
such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.
non-physical, or that the mind and body are not
Metaphysics has two main strands: that which holds
identical. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about
that what exists lies beyond experience (argued by
the relationship between mind and matter, and is
Plato), and that which holds that objects of experience
contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism,
constitute the only reality (argued by Kant, the logical
in the mind–body problem. [2]
positivists, and Hume). p e dag o g i c a l
The method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.
[1] Haecceity – Wikipedia · http://tiny.cc/4 y 70 qx · [2] Dualism – Wikipedia · http://tiny.cc/pz 70 qx
The history of philosophy is, therefore, a feature of philosophising itself.
philosophy, for instance, is often said to be largely ahistorical, but that is most often, I think, because its questions and concerns are not usually of the sort to invite historical input. The salience of history depends upon the questions being asked and the kind of answers one is seeking. My emphasis on the role of the history of philosophy is directed at those with more vital, practical concerns. The refinement of a complex argument about logical relations might not invite historical reflection; but questions about the nature of ‘the good life’, for instance, surely are – it is questions of this sort that are perennial, appearing across the spectrum of cultures and generations. And it is, I suspect, such big questions which command the interest and attention of most of those drawn to philosophy. It is these questions, and the richer conception of philosophy they reflect, which Kant had in mind when he wrote of the cosmopolitan sense in philosophy, which issues in four questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? What is man? The history of philosophy, then, is an essential feature of a certain broad conception of philosophy. It may be called cosmopolitan, after Kant, or humanistic, after Bernard Williams, or it may be judged, following Pierre Hadot, as a series of spiritual exercises manifesting in a certain way of life. Whatever its name, it is a conception of philosophy focused upon questions and concerns of vital importance to thinking, reflective human beings: questions of beauty, meaning, goodness, and the like, where these questions are understood, not as exercises in conceptual ingenuity, but as essential
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components of one’s practical activities within the world. These questions are certainly not absent from ahistorical philosophising, but arguably they may be better served by an historical approach. Abstract reflection has a part to play in articulating and addressing these questions, but often they cannot be fully appreciated, or answered, without an historical appreciation of those earlier generations of philosophers who, troubled by similar worries, offered their own responses. Sensitivity to the history of philosophy therefore offers resources for understanding that may be unavailable to those who forsake context for raw argument. By neglecting the context of philosophical inquiry, one deprives many problems of their urgency and salience. Earlier philosophers, stripped of context, may seem peculiar, even perverse, for persisting in abstruse intellectual inquiries – about flux, haeccities*, mind-body dualism*, and the like. However to accuse them thus does them an injustice, and indicates, at the same time, our own ignorance. Once Cynic iconoclasm, say, or Cartesian dualism is located within its proper intellectual and historical context, their urgency and salience may be clarified and amplified. The result is, argue two recent writers, the maturing of a kind of modesty or humility, an increased perception not only of the presuppositions and prejudices of earlier eras, but also an increased capacity, on our own part, to expose similar presuppositions and prejudices that may be shaping beliefs and commitments today. Such a historical conception should also help protect philosophy from certain persistent and ill-informed challenges to it. Those who object
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that philosophy is often abstract and detached, I suspect, have certain caricatures of contemporary academic philosophy in mind. Certainly successive British Governments since Thatcher seem to have shared that view, the present one included. Other philosophers have also expressed worries about the deleterious impact of certain features of academic philosophy upon the genuine pursuit of philosophical inquiry. However, the objection that philosophy is detached is invalid because it relies upon a false conception of philosophy. That image of philosophy – as detached, abstract speculation, isolated from a practical context – would certainly make it difficult to see what, if anything, those speculations had to do with the world. However that conception of philosophy is dependent upon an ahistorical approach to the subject, one which strips it of context and isolates it from those real-world concerns which animate it. Reaffirming the contextual and historical nature of philosophy should also help to insure us against various vices. The awareness that our problems are not new and that earlier generations also encountered them should encourage a certain humility on our own part. Only presentist hubris could persuade us that our predilections – our anxieties and insights – are privileged guides to the nature of reality. An appreciation of context should, one hopes, indicate that our anxieties and insights arise from ideas and developments which are not wholly of our making. Our achievements are, therefore, not ours alone. At the least, we owe a debt to both the errors and the insights of earlier generations, a debt which an understanding of the history of philosophy can help to make apparent.
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There is ignorance, injustice and also ingratitude in the attitudes of those who deride the value of philosophy whilst living within a society so shaped by it. Voltaire urged us, when considering our history, to admire those who first brought us to the path of truth as much as those who afterwards conducted us through it. To cherry-pick from the history of philosophy those figures whose views prefigure ours smacks of what historians of science call Whig History: a neglect of the role of critics, rival schools and the like in shaping the ideas that, from a parochial perspective, won in the end. Failure to acknowledge those who brought us to our current path reflects badly upon us, especially if, as d’Alembert reminds us, we are but a passing generation, our concerns being ‘nothing for the next one, still less for distant posterity’. Once a historical approach to philosophy is in place, that impoverished view of philosophy – and the stereotypes it sponsors, of philosophers as intellectual narcissists, preoccupied with their own uncertainties – should dissolve. For sure there is a place for abstract reflection but philosophy is, for many, necessarily rooted in the practical concerns of human beings, who are themselves subjects of a history. Understanding that history will not only illuminate our contemporary concerns but, one hopes, also renew our appreciation of philosophy. Our participation in that history will, at the least, enable us to do justice to those who came before, and hopefully let us endow future generations, as best we can, with ideas which in time may be of use to those who follow us. At the very least, such historical philosophising brings with it a set of intellectual virtues – gratitude, humility, and justice – which lend it a moral as well as an intellectual significance.
At the very least, such historical philosophising brings with it a set of intellectual virtues ‌ which lend it a moral as well as an intellectual significance.
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Excellence is It is always high intention, and intelligent represents choice of many – choice, determines
never an accident. the result of sincere effort, execution; it the wise alternatives not chance, your destiny. ~ Aristotle 17
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PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS AND THE LAW – Christine M Korsgaard –
The idea that all the entities in the world may be, for legal and moral purposes, divided into the two categories of ‘persons’ and ‘things’ comes down to us from the tradition of Roman law. In the law, a person is essentially the subject of rights and obligations, while a thing may be owned as property. In ethics, a person is an object of respect, to be valued for her own sake, and never to be used as a mere means to an end, while a thing has only a derivative value, and may be used as a means to some person’s ends. This bifurcation is unfortunate because it seems to leave us with no alternative but to categorise everything as either a person or a thing. Yet some of the entities that give rise to the most vexing ethical problems are exactly the ones that do not seem to fit comfortably into either category. For various, different, kinds of reasons, it seems inappropriate to categorise a foetus, a non-human animal, the environment, or an object of great beauty, as a person, but neither does it seem right to say of such things that they are to be valued only as means. >>
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in the law, the bifurcation between persons and things or persons and property leaves non-human animals in an especially awkward position. Animals, or at least many of them, are sentient beings with lives of their own and capacities for enjoyment and suffering that seem to make some sort of claim on us. Some have very sophisticated cognitive capacities, including some sense of self. But because animals are classified as property, efforts to secure them some legal protections have been of mixed success and have introduced a certain level of incoherence into the laws. In the face of this, some animal rights advocates have suggested that all cognitively sophisticated animals, or all animals generally, ought to be re-categorised as legal persons. But it may be argued that those who make this proposal are ignoring something important about the concept of a person. It has generally been assumed that personhood, whatever it is – is, or is based on, an attribute that is characteristic of human beings, and not of the other animals. In the philosophical tradition, the most common candidate for the attribute that establishes ‘personhood’ is rationality, but understood in a specific sense. Rationality is sometimes loosely identified with the ability to choose intelligently between options or to solve problems by taking thought, but those are attributes that human beings arguably share with many other animals. The more specific sense of rationality refers to a normative capacity, a capacity to assess the grounds of our beliefs and actions, and to adjust them accordingly. On the side of action, for instance, it is the capacity to ask whether something that would potentially motivate you to perform a certain action is really a reason for doing that action – and then to be motivated to act in accordance with the answer that you get. Rationality, in this sense, is normative selfgovernment, the capacity to be governed by thoughts about what you ought to do or to believe. In fact,
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even some thinkers who would deny that rationality is the distinctive characteristic of humanity would still agree that normative self-government is both definitive of personhood and distinctive of humanity. In the empiricist* tradition, the tradition of Locke, Hume, and Hutcheson, it has been common to attribute to human beings, and human beings alone, a capacity to form so-called second - order attitudes – for instance, attitudes towards our own desires – that make them liable to normative assessment. Though I may desire to do something, I may also disapprove of that desire, and reject its influence over me. According to empiricists, second-order attitudes are what make human beings subject to an ‘ought’. So many philosophers have agreed that it is in virtue of normative self-government that human beings count as persons in the legal and moral sense. Certainly, if something along these lines is correct, it is natural to think that only human beings can have obligations. In order to have obligations, you need to be able to think about whether what you are doing is right, and to adjust your conduct accordingly. This requires a highly developed theory of mind, as ethologists call it. An animal has a theory of mind when the animal knows that animals (herself included) have mental attitudes, such as beliefs and desires. But in order to be rational in the sense I just described, an animal must not only know that she and other animals have mental attitudes. She must also know that her attitudes are connected in certain ways – for instance, that she is inclined to perform a certain action because she has a certain desire. To ask whether you have a good reason for doing what you propose to do, or whether it is right, is to think about and evaluate that connection, and it seems likely that only human beings can do that. But it is a much harder question whether being rational in this sense is necessary for having rights, and that is the question most pressing from the point of view of those who seek legal protections
for animals. The traditional distinction between persons and things groups the ability to have rights and the liability to having obligations together. One common view about why that should be so is that rights are grounded in some sort of agreement that is reciprocal: I agree to respect certain claims of yours, provided that you respect certain similar claims of mine. The view of society as based on a kind of social contract supports such a conception of rights. But in fact our laws do not merely protect those who as citizens are involved in making its laws: rather, they protect anyone who shares the interests that the laws were made to protect. So for instance, foreigners on our soil have rights not to be robbed or murdered, regardless of the fact that they are not parties to our own social contract. The laws that we make against murder and robbery are intended to protect certain human interests that foreigners share with citizens, and that is sufficient to give them the relevant rights. Of course, foreigners on our soil can also be made to conform to our laws – reciprocity can be required of them. But when we speak of universal human rights, we speak of interests that are shared by every human being and that we think ought to be protected, not merely of the interests protected under some actual social contract. So it makes sense to raise the question whether the other animals share the kinds of interests that our laws – either legal or moral – are meant to protect. Animal
It makes sense to raise the question whether the other animals share the kinds of interests that our laws – either legal or moral – are meant to protect.
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rights advocates urge that the other animals, like human beings, do have interests; let me do a little philosophising about why this is so… Animals have interests because of the way in which things can be good or bad for them. Generally speaking, we use the concepts of good-for and badfor when we regard objects functionally. Something is good for an object when it enables the object to function well, and bad for it when it interferes with its ability to function. So we might say that riding the brakes is bad for your car, while a regular oil change is good for it. Organisms may be regarded as functional objects, ‘designed’ by the evolutionary process to survive and reproduce. We are thinking of things that way when we say that plenty of water and sunshine are good for the plants. Because a car is an artefact made for human purposes, the ways in which things are good or bad for the car are derivative from human interests. But the way in which things are good or bad for organisms is non-derivative: things are good or bad for the
We should ask on what basis we claim rights for ourselves, and demand respect for them from each other, if it is not that we ourselves are beings with interests or a welfare?
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organisms themselves. What is distinctive of animal life is the way that it functions, which is by means of perception and action. Through perception, an animal forms some sort of representation of her environment. As a result of instinct, learning, and in the case of some animals, intelligent thought, objects in the animal’s environment are represented as desirable or aversive in specific ways: as something to eat, or to flee from, or to mate with, or to take care of. Or some sort of practical representation may arise from within, as when you get hungry and find yourself irresistibly thinking about a sandwich. The animal then acts in accordance with these practical representations. The practical representations serve, though very imperfectly of course, to enable an animal to get what is good for her and avoid what is bad for her. In other words, when animals evolved, a kind of entity came into existence which actually experiences the goodness or badness of its own condition, or at least of some aspects of its own condition, in a positive or negative
Who is Christine Korsgaard‌? Christine Korsgaard is a fictional superhero who appears in comic books published by Oxford University Press. When not busy philosophising Korsgaard is a famed warrior princess of the Amazons and is known in her homeland as Princess Gaardener of Themyscira. When outside her homeland, she is sometimes known by the secret identity Gaardener Prince. She is gifted with a wide range of superhuman powers and superior combat and battle skills. She possesses an arsenal of weapons, including the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in some stories, an invisible airplane.
…And what on earth is she saying? A glossary of terms em pi r icist
immanuel kant
The theory that all knowledge is based on experience
Immanuel Kant ( 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804)
derived from the senses. Stimulated by the rise of
was a German philosopher who is widely considered
experimental science, it developed in the 17th and
to be a central figure of modern philosophy. He
18th centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke,
argued that fundamental concepts structure human
George Berkeley, and David Hume.
experience, and that reason is the source of morality.
[1]
His thought continues to have a major influence
p u rv i e w
The scope of the influence or concerns of something: ‘such a case might be within the purview of the legislation’.
in contemporary thought, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.[2]
[1] Empiricism – Wikipedia · http://tiny.cc/4 y 70 qx · [2] Immanuel Kant – Wikipedia · http://tiny.cc/pz 70 qx
If [animals] have no rights, they are not persons, and that leaves them to be things. But animals are not mere things, since they are beings with interests and lives of their own.
way – as something desirable or aversive. An animal experiences its own good or ill. So the way in which things are good or bad for animals is distinctive in that it is both non-derivative and capable of being experienced. We can describe these things by saying that animals have interests, or that there are facts about their welfare. Although our own welfare is more complex than that of the other animals, it is because we are animals, not because we are human beings or persons, that we ourselves have interests or a welfare. Animal rights advocates argue that having a welfare or interests is sufficient to ground rights. We should ask on what basis we claim rights for ourselves, and demand respect for them from each other, if it is not that we ourselves are beings with interests or a welfare? Well, here is one possible answer. Immanuel Kant*, who made the concept of a person central to his ethics, argued that a person is an end in himself, to be valued and respected for his own sake, and never to be used merely as a means. Kant claimed that the basis of that value is the capacity for rational choice, or autonomy. He also claimed that it is because of our autonomy that human beings have rights. Because human beings are rational beings, Kant argued, human beings, unlike the other animals, are able to choose our own way of life. We reflect about what counts as a good life, decide
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the question for ourselves, and live accordingly. In the liberal tradition, with its strong emphasis on toleration, and its antagonism to paternalism, this kind of autonomy has often been regarded as the basis of rights. We have the basic rights of personal liberty, liberty of conscience, and freedom of speech and association, because each of us has the right to determine for himself or herself what counts as a worthwhile life, and to live that life, so long as the way we act is consistent with a like right for everyone else. Because the other animals do not choose their own way of life, they do not have rights grounded in this kind of autonomy. But this response is not wholly satisfactory. I think we do have specifically human rights grounded in our autonomy. But the trouble with leaving it at that, is that what makes it important to us that our rights should be respected is not just that we value our autonomy. It is also that we value, to speak almost circularly, our welfare, our interests, or our good. Rights grounded in autonomy may often give us an indirect way to protect what we regard as our good. If someone cannot interfere with your freedom of speech, for example, he cannot interfere with your saying your prayers. It is in part because you care about saying your prayers, and not just because you care about your autonomy, that you care about your right to say them. This is where it becomes
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clear that there is a problem with dividing the world into persons and things. The other animals, who do not have autonomy, are left with no legal means of protecting their interests or their welfare. If they have no rights, they are not persons, and that leaves them to be things. But animals are not mere things, since they are beings with interests and lives of their own. Insofar as they come within the purview* of human laws at all, it is because they are a subject population, and the only way to afford any effective protection for their welfare is through human laws. It is worth emphasising that last thought. The idea of animal rights sounds silly to some people, because it seems to suggest an insane desire to moralise nature: to imply that we should declare predation to be murder and to make it illegal, or perhaps to turn battles over territory into property disputes that get settled in court. But an advocate of animal rights need not be in favour of our trying to protect nonhuman animals from each other. Rather, the point is to protect them from us, from human beings. The reason only the law can do that effectively is because in a sense, the law is the reason why many of the other animals are so completely at our mercy. What I mean is this: it is not just because we are individually smarter than the other animals that human beings are able to do as we will with them. It is because human beings are so cooperative and therefore so organised. And the way that we organise ourselves is by making laws, which set the terms of our interactions and so unite us into an effective whole. If the law says it is permissible for a person to inflict torments on an animal in order to test a product, for instance, then there is nothing anyone can do to protect that animal. So it is one of those cases – and there are certainly others – in which the only thing that can afford protection against the power of the law is the law itself. The fact that we have any anticruelty laws at all embodies the idea that the welfare of any being who has a welfare – a non-derivative
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and experienced good – is worthy of regard for its own sake. It should be protected unless there is some good reason why not. It is a further step to say that all animals are ends in themselves, never to be used as mere means to someone else’s ends. But once we agree that their welfare is to be regarded, then we do need a good reason for disregarding it. And what is that reason supposed to be? Why should our interests prevail over theirs? The reason most frequently offered is that human beings just are more valuable and important than the other animals. Some theological traditions have claimed this: human beings are supremely valuable, and the world and all its contents, including the other animals, were made for our use. But in the absence of such a context, importance must be importance to or for someone or something. Perhaps we are more important to ourselves. But, then, each of us has some small circle of loved ones who are the most important people in the world to him, and we do not take that as a reason to do experiments on strangers, or eat them, or steal their organs. Something more must be said to explain the precedence that we give to ourselves. But mainly I think we should ask ourselves, on what grounds do we ourselves claim to be valuable in the way that we claim to be – ends in ourselves, never to be used as a mere means to someone else’s ends? Is it really because we have the capacity for rational choice, or is it also more simply because we have a welfare of our own? If it is the latter, simple consistency demands that, as far as we possibly can, we should treat the other animals as ends in themselves. The other animals lack normative self-government, and in that sense they are not persons; but we need not accept the idea that the world is divided into persons and property, or persons and things. Without reclassifying them as persons, we may still regard all animals as ends in themselves and, as such, the proper subjects of rights against human mistreatment.
Once we agree that their welfare is to be regarded, then we do need a good reason for disregarding it. And what is that reason supposed to be? Why should our interests prevail over theirs?
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The reasonable himself to unreasonable in trying the world Therefore depends unreasonable
man adapts the world: the one persists to adapt to himself. all progress on the man. ~ George Bernard Shaw 27
BIOGRAPHIES
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Ian James Kidd Christine Korsgaard Thomas Nagel Alasdair MacIntyre Bernard Williams John Searle Mary Warnock J端rgen Habermas Noam Chomsky John McDowell Jerry Fodor Sir Anthony Kenny T M Scanlon Simon Blackburn Ned Block Derek Parfitt Tyler Burge
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B I O G R A P H I E S
IAN JAMES KIDD Ian James Kidd works in epistemology, the philosophy of medicine, religion, history and science as well as the philosophical traditions of Asia and Continental Europe. He is particularly interested in Epistemic virtues and vices (especially epistemic injustice and epistemic humility); the experience and value of illness; the nature of a religious life; contingency and pluralism in science; scientism and anti-scientism; the practice and nature of philosophy and the life and thought of Paul Feyerabend. Ian founded the Durham Philosophy Department’s Gender Action Group and is committed to improving the representation of women in philosophy. He is also involved with the Leeds University chapter of Minorities in Philosophy (ma p).
BOOKS
PAPERS
Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley
Doing Science an Injustice: Midgley on Scientism
Co-edited with Elizabeth McKinnell Published by london: routledge
Educating for Intellectual Humility
The Routledge Handbook to Epistemic Injustice Co-edited with José Medina and Gaile Pohlhaus Published by london: routledge
Historiography and the Philosophy of the Sciences
Nature, Mystery, and Morality: A Daoist View Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare: A Philosophical Analysis
TALKS Illness, Virtue, and Exemplarist Ethics University of Leeds, 25 Feb 2015 Centre for Ethics
Learning from the Best: Ethical Exemplarism in Confucius’ ‘Analects’ University of Durham, 21 Jan 2015 Durham University Philosophical Society world philosophies series
Doing Away With Scientism
Epistemic Injustice and Religious Experience
Feyerabend on Politics, Education, and Scientific Culture
Durham University, 2015 Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Religion
Co-edited with Robin Hendry Published in special section of studies in history and philosophy of science
Phenomenology, Psychiatric Illness, and Religious Commitment
Religious Beauties
Reappraising Feyerabend
Feyerabend on Science and Education
University of Leeds, Nov 20, 2014 Centre for the Philosophy of Religion
Co-edited with Matthew Brown, ut dallas Published in special issue of studies in history and philosophy of science, 2013
Was Sir William Crookes Epistemically Virtuous?
Anthropogenic Climate Change, Humility, and ‘Epistemic Activism’
Reappraising Feyerabend
Durham University, 31 Oct 2014 Philosophy and Public Policy: Philosophical Activism III
Mystery and Humility Co-edited with G Bennett-Hunter, durham Published by european journal for the philosophy of religion 40/3 (2012)
Transformative Suffering and the Cultivation of Virtue
Confidence, Humility, and Philosophy
History and Humility
EIDOS Durham University, 17 Jun 2014
Emotion, Religious Practice, and Cosmopolitan Secularism
Experiences of Illness and Narratives of Edification University of Bristol, 9 Jul 2013 Illness, Narrative, Phenomenology
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CHRISTINE KORSGA ARD Christine Korsgaard is a fictional superhero who appears in comic books published by Oxford University Press. When not busy philosophising Korsgaard is a famed warrior princess of the Amazons and is known in her homeland as Princess Gaardener of Themyscira. When outside her homeland, she is sometimes known by the secret identity Gaardener Prince. She is gifted with a wide range of superhuman powers and superior combat and battle skills. She possesses an arsenal of weapons, including the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in some stories, an invisible airplane.
BOOKS
PAPERS
The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology
The Claims of Animals and the Needs of Strangers
Published by oxford university press
The Unity of the Right and the Good in John Rawls’s Thought
Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity Published by oxford university press
The Sources of Normativity Edited by Onora O’Neill Published by cambridge university press
Creating the Kingdom of Ends Published by cambridge university press
TALKS How to be an Aristotelian Kantian Constitutivist Being and Goodness Workshop at Leipzig, Jul 2014
Human Beings as the Source of Value
Kantian Ethics, Animals, and the Law
Harvard Bioethics Society, Feb 2014
On Having a Good
A Reasonable Conception of Animal Rights
A Kantian Case for Animal Rights The Relational Nature of the Good
University of Guelph Ontario, Mar 2014
What Kinds of Entities Have a Good?
The Origin of the Good and Our Animal Nature
Gothenburg University, Jun 2013
The Normative Constitution of Agency
Lund University in Sweden, May 2013
Valuing Our Humanity
Georg-August University, Dec 14-16 2012
Reflections on the Evolution of Morality
The Unity of the Right and the Good in John Rawls’ Thought
The Activity of Reason
Eastern Division APA session on the legacy of john rawls, Dec 29, 2012
Natural Motives and the Motive of Duty: Hume and Kant on our Duties to Others Interacting with Animals: A Kantian Account
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The Right and the Good
Göttinger Philosophisches Kolloquium
The Value of the Self in the Very Long Run: A Commentary on Ian Morris’s Tanner Lectures Princeton University, Oct 17, 2012
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There is without and it is to know
no sun shadow, essential the night. ~ Albert Camus 169
Past & Present: philosophy for everyone Edited by Stephen Law The Royal Institute of Philosophy 14 Gordon Square London WC1H 0AR United Kingdom T. 020 7387 4130 www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org Publisher: Cambridge University Press Designer: Sam Stephenson