Reid, Wolterstorff, And The Way Of Ideas, III-F

William P. Alston, Syracuse University

Wolterstorff's Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology is by far the best book on Thomas Reid we have and are likely to have for the foreseeable future. But like all excellent books in philosophy, it can be improved. Here are a few suggestions for improvement, directed to Wolterstorff's treatment of Reid's attack on the "Way of Ideas" (WI).

The first problem concerns Reid's own depiction of his target, with which Wolterstorff goes along in the main. To be sure, both Reid and Wolterstorff are well aware that there are important differences among the thinkers Reid identifies as partisans of WI. But most of his criticisms are of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and since of these only Locke takes ideas to represent "external objects" in a realist sense, and since many of Reid's criticisms are directed to this aspect of the matter, we may use Locke as a test of the accuracy of Reid's depiction of WI. So judged there are two main discrepancies. Reid repeatedly takes WI to hold that (all) ideas are "images" of external objects and that perception of them involves an inference from ideas to external objects. But neither of these is held by Locke.

Wolterstorff's treatment of Reid's critique of WI emphasizes two objections. One, that ideas cannot resemble external objects, has been nullified by the first misrepresentation of Locke just mentioned. The second is that the deepest root of WI is in a failed attempt to explain sense perception of external objects. One trouble here lies in supposing this explanation to involve an account of how physiological events give rise to conscious perception, something not attempted by any of the Big Three of British Empiricism. Deleting this, the only sort of explanation of sense perception that remains is the view that the initial (mental) component of sense perception is an immediate awareness of ideas + the claim that they represent their external objects. Wolterstorff gives a strong presentation of Reid's criticism of a main argument for the thesis that the only direct awareness in sense perception is of ideas in the mind. The argument is that direct awareness requires a presence of object to subject, and that only what is the mind can be present to the mind. The criticism of this argument can be the keystone of a powerful criticism of WI as represented by Locke.
Socratic Learning

Hugh H. Benson, University of Oklahoma

In this paper I explore how Socrates, as depicted in Plato's elenctic dialogues, sought to acquire the knowledge he lacked. I maintain that the evidence of those dialogues indicates that the strategy Socrates pursued and recommended to others was to learn from others who had the knowledge one sought to acquire. Such a strategy proved rather unproductive, since Socrates, again as depicted in the elenctic dialogues, was unable to uncover anyone who possessed the knowledge he sought to acquire.

Will the Real Kant Please Stand Up, VI-B

Robert Bernasconi, The University of Memphis

A number of the historical figures to whom contemporary philosophers still often turn in their efforts to combat racism — for example, Locke, Kant, and Hegel — also articulate what we today would identify as virulently racist positions. In this paper I investigate the tension or even contradiction that this generates and the very different ways in which analytic and dialectical thinking seek to resolve it.

Socrates after Vlastos, VI-A

John Beversluis, Butler University

In my paper I will argue that it is still possible to speak of an early (or "Socratic") period in Plato's philosophical development — albeit not as sharply and unproblematically as Professor Gregory Vlastos did in Socrates, lronist and Moral Philosopher. I will consider several objections that have been raised against this enterprise — particularly by Charles Kahn and Debra Nails — and attempt to show that they are not as decisive as these critics suppose. I will conclude with some remarks about the sincere assent requirement and Socrates' alleged fundamental seriousness and honesty in argument.

Trusting Moral Experts, II-D

Travis L. Butler, Iowa State University

Many epistemologists who think trust has an important, if not necessary, role to play in the acquisition of nonmoral knowledge are hesitant to make a similar claim in the moral case. The domain of morality, on their view, imposes individualist constraints absent in other domains.

This view has recently been called into question by Karen Jones. She argues that even in the moral domain, experience can produce a kind of expertise that deserves the trust of the morally inexperienced. Moreover, trust will be warranted even in many cases where the first-order judgments of the experts (L1 judgments) are not accompanied (in the experts' ken) by conscious awareness of the features that ground the judgments (L2), or explicit judgments about the natures of the moral properties in question (L3).
In this paper, I follow Jones in discussing trust together with expertise, but I argue that expertise should be associated with the kinds of thoughts and judgments characteristic of L2 and L3, and not simply with reliable judgment at L1. So, although reliable judgment at L1 may make one a knower, it does not make one an expert; accordingly, although it may (in some cases) warrant deference, it does not warrant trust.

In making this case, I appeal to Plato's discussion of the trustworthy doctor in the Laws. These doctors earn their trust by instructing their patients cooperatively, at each of L1-L3. What Plato thus presents are the beginnings of a portrait, not of the wise truster, but of the deserving moral trustee.

Relational Autonomy and Genetic Decisionmaking, I-B

Anne Donchin, Indiana University, Indianapolis

Feminist bioethicists have often responded ambivalently to the standard bioethical account of personal autonomy. Though they recognize the importance of protecting autonomous choice and promoting personal agency, they criticize the tendency of the standard model to view agents as generalized individuals abstracted from the conditions of their embodiment rather than as situated social beings. Out of this ambivalence a new model is emerging called relational autonomy that seeks to free the conception from such assumptions.

My intent here is to carry this project forward, first, by developing an account of relational autonomy that applies the resources of feminist scholarship to a set of bioethical issues that have previously disregarded gender hierarchies. This conception of autonomy differs from the standard notion in two principal ways. First, it assumes not only that social relations provide the ground for the development of autonomy capacities, but it integrates this notion into a stronger claim, that there is a social component built into the very meaning of autonomy. Thus the self exists fundamentally in relation to others, so that an individual's network of relationships bears on the effort to become a self-determining, responsible agent. Second, this account envisages autonomy from within structures of power and authority rather than assuming that personal goals can be isolated from social aims and involvements. Thus it is sensitive to structural inequities in the position of differently situated women and members of social groups whose opportunities to shape their lives in self-determining ways have often been meager and inadequate.

Second, I demonstrate the applicability of a relational account of autonomy by examining practical problems that arise within families that are bound together through biological connection. Genetic-related decisionmaking brings into clear focus underlying tensions between standard accounts of autonomy and the interpersonal dependencies so prevalent in families with inherited genetic disorders. Applying this extended model to genetic quandaries, I show how it is able to clarify conflicts and tensions that arise among members of biological families and open new routes to their resolution.
Generalizing from these instances, I propose that the guiding notion of personal autonomy within clinical medicine and practice should be recharacterized to recognize individuals as positioned relationally_to their families, and intimates, to the medical practitioners and support staff who care for them, and to surrounding social structures. Adoption of such a model would facilitate more effective communication, advance self-determination, recognize the impact of decisions on family members, and promote the agency of those most likely to be marginalized from decision-making processes.

Touchstones of History: Anscombe, Hume, and Julius Caesar, III-E

Catherine Z. Elgin, Harvard University

In `Hume and Julius Caesar,' G.E.M. Anscombe argues that some historical claims, such as `Julius Caesar was assassinated', serve as touchstones for historical knowledge. Only Cartesian doubt can call them into question. I examine her reasons for thinking that the discipline of history must be grounded in claims that it is powerless to discredit. I argue that she is right to recognize that some historical claims are harder to dislodge than others, but wrong to contend that any are invulnerable to non-Cartesian doubt.

Religion, Truth and Spirituality in Recent French Philosophy, I-D

Thomas R. Flynn, Emory University

The return of the repressed? Failure of nerve? However one wants to interpret the phenomenon, there is no gainsaying the fact: "religious" themes and theses have received sympathetic treatment with notable frequency in the writings of European philosophers in recent years. Whether it be the question of negative theology in the work of Derrida, the notion of Pauline "truth" in the exegesis of Badiou, the frequent reference to the spiritual in Foucault or more direct allusions to religious themes and images in the writings of Levinas, Henry, Marion, Irigaray, Courtine, Chrétien, and others, the religious in both its orthodox and its heterodox forms is enjoying an attention among professional philosophers that is unprecedented in our generation. Because this "religious turn" is so rich and variegated, I shall focus on just two of its aspects that, nonetheless, should help us clarify and assess the philosophical significance of what is happening and why. The first is the distinction between the religious and the spiritual. Many people who deny they are religious will admit to being "spiritual." I shall try to sort out this difference with respect to the work of Michel Foucault. The other dimension of this curve in recent thought is Badiou's focus on the Christian Truth-Event as the "universal singular." Though assuring us of his personal atheism, Badiou insists that St. Paul is the "anti-philosophical theoretician of the formal conditions of the truth-procedure" in the sense that he "provides the first detailed articulation of how fidelity to a Truth-Event operates in its universal dimension" (Žižek). I shall reflect on these two aspects of the phenomenon and situate them in the context of post postmodern thought.

Kant and Kaplan on Quantifying In

Robert Greenberg, Brandeis University

One topic in analytic philosophy is chosen for the purpose of relating Kant to analytic philosophy. This is the topic of quantifying into modal contexts, in particular, contexts introduced by a necessity operator. For Kant, the object quantified into the necessity context to be discussed is called a thing, and it is to be distinguished from both an appearance and a thing in itself, although it must be related to each of them. A representation operator precedes the necessity operator. I have adapted the combination of the two operators from David Kaplan's combination of a necessity operator with a denotation operator, in particular, Church's denotation operator. Kaplan did this in his paper, "Quantifying In." At this stage in his career, he was still trying to hold on to Frege's notion of sense as he tried to resolve Quine's problem of quantifying into modal contexts. That is, he was attempting to show how we could quantify into intensional, necessity contexts. This was before he joined Kripke and Putnam and adopted a theory of direct reference. The point of my remarks is that Kant, too, wanted to quantify into intensional contexts governed by a necessity operator, and I try to show how Kant could have done this according to a formula that has been adapted from Kaplan, which would thereby relate Kant to at least some of analytic philosophy.

Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy:
The Case of Arithmetic, III-A

Robert Hanna, University of Colorado at Boulder

In earlier work I have argued (i) that the analytic tradition emerged by struggling with some of the central doctrines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, (ii) that a careful examination of this foundational debate shows that Kant's doctrines were never in fact refuted but instead only, for various reasons, rejected, and (iii) that ironically enough it is the foundations of analytic philosophy, not the Critical Philosophy, that are inherently shaky. This paper extends that line of argument by revisiting Kant's much-criticized views on the nature of arithmetic. I argue that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the logicists' attack on Kant' s theory of arithmetic fails. This is because Kant's theory is not only internally coherent but also provides fairly plausible solutions to three fundamental problems in the philosophy of mathematics—Frege's Caesar problem, the applicability problem, and Benacerraf's dilemma—that logicism apparently cannot solve. My argument has two stages. In the first stage, I reconstruct Kant's argument for the synthetic apriority of arithmetic. And in the second stage I develop a new account of Kant's notorious doctrine of the dependence of arithmetic on time. The upshot is that, for Kant, arithmetic is not only an exact science, but also at bottom a human science. Furthermore, Kant' s aprioristic and anthropocentric theory of arithmetic can be logically detached from any implausibly strong form of idealism. In other words, it may turn out that the logicists' failure to solve the three fundamental problems in the philosophy of mathematics depends mainly on a prior failure to understand the deeper significance of Kant's Copernican Revolution.

Prophecies and Profits: A Feminist Investigation of Genome Sequencing and Engineering, I-B

Helen Bequaert Holmes, Center for Genetics, Ethics and Women, Amherst, MA

Human genome research is the epitome of Francis Bacon's dream come true: "…the knowledge of…secret motions of things…to the effecting of all things possible." This is the paradigm for the United States NIH National Human Genome Research Institute, the international HUGO project, and numerous independent research laboratories. Also, Western science's commitment to this research tacitly preserves Bacon's gendered metaphors and dualisms of science — science as male and nature as a female mystery to unveil and penetrate. The pursuit of science should be a neutral and impartial search for truth, but this can be obscured and even forgotten in the drive for power, profits, and prestige.

Findings in cell and developmental biology seriously compromise Watson and Crick's "Central Dogma," the foundation of genome science theory. Such discoveries were at first ignored, but then had to be incorporated into the genomics paradigm, as exemplified by the new `Genomes to Life' project. Such disregarded realities of DNA cellular activity illustrate why success rates of cloning in mammals are extremely low and why genetic engineering of plants and mammals has significant conceptual flaws.

My critique of genome science relies on the discernment and insight of feminist scholars in science studies, on goals and convictions from feminist ethics, and on yardsticks of feminist technology assessment. Feminist experience analyzing multiple dominations plays a valuable role, especially on how the tyranny of `difference' can be augmented by results in clinical genetics. Concerned feminists have exposed genome science's patriarchal underpinnings, its reinforcement of the expected role of women as (blamable) mothers, its commercial investment in chronic health conditions, its capitalization on the fear of cancer, its false prophecies, and its neglect of current pressing health issues.

The Double-X Syndrome (the most common genetic condition) can illustrate false prophecy, test unreliability, and the tenacity of androcentricism. Yet I advocate an imperative to involve affected individuals in policy-making, even when, in my view, frightened or mesmerized patients often advocate policies that are not in their best interests. And they may become `consumer eugenicists.' Examples include testing for susceptibility to late-onset diseases and deciding whether one's own flesh-and-blood will have a `life worth living.'

The ethics branch of the U.S. Genome Project (ELSI Branch), after its misogynist inception, has functioned effectively as a smoke screen. Even though many women have received ELSI grants, we must take false comfort if we believe that all awards are based on unbiased assessment of proposals and that all ethical questions are being explored by those most competent to do so.

`Success' in genome science depends on women, frequently unpaid or underpaid spouses and technicians. And the field progresses through the work of other women as genome scientists (often internationally recognized), genetic support-group leaders, and genetic counselors. They function as strong role models for young women contemplating careers in science; they improve the lives of women and persons with disabilities. Yet, paradoxically, at the same time they nurture and support androcentricity in genome science.

Rightness and Goodness, I-C

David McCarthy, University of Bristol

Thomson has argued that there is no such thing as goodness. I discuss her arguments and ask what they mean for moral theory if they are sound.

Justice and Rectification: A Taxonomy of Justice, III-C

Rodney C. Roberts, University of Hawai'i, Manoa

In sharp contrast to the concern over retributive and distributive aspects of justice, Western philosophy has paid relatively little attention to questions of injustice and its rectification. With philosophical concern about justice focused on private property, individual liberty, and the like, questions regarding compensation that may be due to victims of injustice, for example, are well outside the central debate on justice, and are, relatively speaking, of little concern to philosophers.

One serious problem with this approach is that it favors a privileged perspective on justice. Limiting our reflection on justice by focusing on the Rawlsian world of ideal theory helps to ensure that the concerns of victims of injustice, including those who are systematically oppressed in liberal democracies, have little place in our deliberations about justice. Not surprisingly, no one has yet come close to advancing a comprehensive and integrated theory of rectificatory justice, one grounded in a more general theory of justice.

My aim in this paper is to sketch an initial framework for a moral theory of justice. This is accomplished by way of a taxonomy of justice, the focus of which is on framing a conception of rectificatory justice. In Part I, I examine the notion of justice itself, posit distributive justice as a species of justice, and suggest a theory of compensation. I conclude that the idea of compensation is inadequate as ground for a second species of justice. I then argue in Part II for a conception of rectification that is adequate ground for a species of justice, and that includes accounts of compensation, restoration, apology , and punishment (at least insofar as I suggest where punishment ought to be posited in a theory of justice). On this view, a taxonomy of justice consists of only two species: distributive justice and rectificatory justice.
Testability and the Unity of Science, V-C

Sherri Roush, Rice University

In this paper I consider the claim that there is an inverse relationship between the unification of scientific theories and the testability of those theories. I conclude that though there is a relationship between these two properties, it is not simply inverse and does not by itself constitute grounds for giving up the goal of unity in scientific theories. Ian Hacking (1983) claimed as a selling point for disunity in science that this property is what underwrites the testability of theories. The idea is that if there is ontological disunity, a theory will make no claims about the processes used to probe whether the theory is true, for example, about the workings of the instruments of observation and experimentation. Those processes will be understood through other theories, if through theories at all. It is because the theory's subject matter is thus unrelated to the subject matter of those instruments, Hacking claims, that it is possible to gain evidence for or against the theory independently of the theory. I argue that though the de facto disunity of science does in this way make insuring independent testability of theories relatively easy, disunity is not necessary to achieving this aim. To assume so would be to conflate epistemic independence with probabilistic independence. I defend the claim that (ontological) unity need not undermine the testability of theories by considering a maximally unified theory, and showing that though it is probabilistically relevant to every process—and so every process that could be used to test it—it is nevertheless in principle testable independently of itself.

Foucault's `Sexual' Ethics: Desexualizing Queer Politics, IV-C

Jana Sawicki, Williams College

This title of this paper might strike many as ironic, especially insofar as Foucault's own sexual behavior has undergone considerable moral scrutiny since his death from AIDS in 1984. Yet, in a late interview with a gay press, Foucault claimed that his History of Sexuality represented in part an effort to suggest a new "ethics of sexual behavior." Here the term "ethics" does not refer to a prescriptive code or set of values, but rather to a form of self-relationship, and a model for work on the self, that might govern one's sexual and erotic acts. In this reading of Foucault as a homosexual author I show how he gestures toward such an ethics in his writings on ancient Greek and Roman texts. I also discuss the implications of his late genealogical and "ethical" writings for our understanding of sexual freedom and the recent emergence of "queer politics."

The Standard of Morals, IV-D

Ira Singer, Hofstra University

Much recent work about Hume has involved a struggle to find in him resources for a satisfactory account of moral normativity. Such an account cannot end with bare uncriticizable feelings; it must leave room for standards and for reflective moral change. The new Humeans argue that Hume has long been misinterpreted on these issues; behind a rhetoric that focuses on feelings is an elaborate philosophical structure explaining how these feelings become reflective and self-critical.

Interpretive accuracy aside, this Humean enterprise is attractive in two programmatic ways. First, Hume has served as a patron saint of moral non-cognitivism; it is an intriguing subversion of non-cognitivism to display the broadly cognitivist aspects of Hume's account of morality. Second, Hume is committed to explaining morality naturalistically. Many of us have this same commitment; but we are unclear on what counts as a naturalistic explanation (in particular, whether naturalistic explanation must be "reductionist" and "scientistic," or can be more latitudinarian), and we worry that any properly credentialed naturalistic explanation of morality subverts morality's normativity. Hume, we might hope, can furnish us with a model of naturalism that does not undermine normativity. We could then construct a new naturalistic account, for instance replacing Hume's introspective psychology with a more developed and plausible empirical psychology, having learned from Hume the trick of deploying facts to explain values without thereby undermining those values.

My aim here is threefold: first, to explore this general interpretation of Hume, which I claim is both plausible in itself and an illuminating model for us; second, to acknowledge the limits of the Humean account, by elaborating some criticisms with a Kantian pedigree; third, to suggest a broadly Humean reply to the criticisms, a reply that tempers the ambitions of "naturalism" and imports suitably weakened analogues of Aristotelian teleology and Kantian rational necessity.

Erotic Love as a Moral Virtue, VI-C

Robert C. Solomon, University of Texas at Austin

In this talk, I would like to defend an unusual claim, that erotic love is a moral virtue. Indeed, the claim that love is a moral virtue, that is, non-erotic love (agapé or philia, for instance), has received plenty of opposition, both because passions or emotions as such are not supposed to be virtues (Aristotle's argument), and in any case they are not to be counted as moral virtues (Kant's separation of practical reason and the "inclinations"). But in the case of erotic love (eros), the denial gets quite vehement, first, one suspects, because of the puritanical view that any thought or behavior is corrupted by the least taint of sexuality, and, more generally, because eros is often characterized as self-interested desire, even when it is not downgraded to mere lust. Even where love is defended as a moral emotion, for instance, by David Velleman in an already classic essay published just a few years ago, there is no effort (and several caveats against) trying to extend the defense to erotic love. (And, of course, Velleman, a Kantian, is not particularly interested in defending it as a virtue). I believe, however, that there are good reasons for thinking of erotic love as a virtue, for rejecting Aristotle's distinction between the passions and the virtues (as "states of character"), and for rejecting Kant's distinction between morality and the inclinations. Behind it all, needless to say, I want to reject the puritanical attitude toward sexuality and sensuality. It may be that the passion that characterizes one-night stands and at least some illicit affairs is certainly no virtue, but I do not want to conflate eros and mere sexual desire much less eros and lust. The erotic love I have in mind is the love that one can find in a good marriage, though I do not want to restrict it to that. I have no doubt that the same is true of many long-term affairs, same-sex relationships, and perhaps even multiple and more complicated relationships. I would not deny for a moment that the best marriages (and the best loves, in general) are also examples of friendship, but it is not as if a sexual relationship (that is, a relationship that is in part characterized by sexual desire and passion) becomes virtuous or moral only when the sex has diminished or moved into the background. Eros and philia are a wonderful combination, but it is not philia alone that makes it virtuous.

Reparations and the Locus of Repair, III-C

Elizabeth V. Spelman, Smith College

The current movement for reparations for African Americans has been described as being, among other things, a call for repair. The prospects of success for any repair job depend on properly locating and assessing the damage, on the knowledge and skills of the repairers, and on the adequacy of their tools. What are the implications of thinking of the relevant site of damage being African Americans who have been subject to systemic racism; whites or others who have unfairly benefited from unearned privileges; or a country long broken into pieces along the fault line of race? What would be restored by repair of the damages to which the reparations movement brings our attention? What would be imploded?