Ambitious Theories Research Articles

Il capitalismo nella Wertkritik contemporanea

The critique of value has emerged in recent years as one of the most radical and ambitious critical theories of capitalism. It is based on a comprehensive reconstruction of the Marxian passage from commodity to capital. In this article, however, I show why it is questionable to think of the passage from the commodity relation to the capital relation without considering the centrality of the modern transformation of labour into labour-power. Linked to this, in the last part of the article, is an examination of the reading that the Wertkritiker offer of the contemporary process of financialization.

Asja uuritakse. Mõttevahetus materiaalse kultuuri uurimise üle Eestis ja Ameerika Ühendriikides / All Things Considered. An interview about the material culture research in Estonia and in the United States of America

Asja uuritakse. Mõttevahetus materiaalse kultuuri uurimise üle Eestis ja Ameerika Ühendriikides / All Things Considered. An interview about the material culture research in Estonia and in the United States of America

Higher-order theories of consciousness and what-it-is-like-ness

Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation—there being a HO state about a state the subject is not in—leads to a contradiction. In contrast, the awareness argument aims to bolster HO theories by showing that subjects are aware of all their conscious states. Both arguments hinge on how we understand two related notions which are ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness: those of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like for a subject to be in a mental state. This paper examines how HO theorists must understand the two crucial notions if they are to reject the misrepresentation argument but assert the awareness argument. It shows that HO theorists can and do adopt an understanding—the HO reading—which seems to give them what they want. But adopting the HO reading changes the two arguments. On this reading, the awareness argument tells us nothing about those states there is something it is like to be in, and so offers no support to ambitious HO theories. And to respond to the misrepresentation understood according to the HO reading is to simply ignore the argument presented, and so to give no response at all. As things stand, we should deny that HO theories can account for what-it-is-like-ness.

Volver al estudio del Estado desde el marxismo: aproximaciones y perspectivas

El presente artículo pretende dar una breve aproximación intelectual al estudio del Estado desde el marxismo. En él se abordarán en concreto tres ideas principales: la idea del Estado como relación social; la idea del Estado socialista como Estado de transición; y la idea de la transición socialista como transición democrática. Así pues, sobre el desarrollo de estos ejes de discusión se irá proyectando una de las tesis más ambiciosas del marxismo: la construcción histórica de la forma-Comunidad sobre el debilitamiento socio-político de la forma-Estado.

Introduction: Political Philosophy and Criminal Justice

Philosophical study of the criminal justice system is a branch of political philosophy. This should be obvious from the fact that the criminal justice system is one of the central institutions of the state. In light of this, it is puzzling that despite the fact that a great deal of excellent work is being done both on the philosophy of the criminal law and in political theory, engagement between the two scholarly communities remains quite limited. Most major treatises on political theory have almost nothing to say about criminal justice—John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1999), Joseph Raz’s The Morality of Freedom (1986), Ronald Dworkin’s Sovereign Virtue (2000) are classic examples. At the same time, most major treatises on the philosophy of the criminal law are at best very tentative about the political dimensions of the project, and leave these dimensions undefended. The most ambitious general theories of the criminal law that have recently been provided, such as Michael Moore’s Placing Blame (1997) and Antony Duff’s Answering for Crime (2007), have limited ambitions in outlining the general political theory within which a theory of criminal justice is to be defended. As contemporary criminal law theory demonstrates, a great deal of progress can be made on many of the most important questions about the justification of criminal justice institutions and practices without situating them within a comprehensive political theory. It may even be argued, as Adil Haque does in his contribution to this Special Issue, that the ability of a political theory to provide suitable answers to questions of criminal justice is a requirement of a satisfactory political theory. Nevertheless, the importance of political theory to questions of criminal justice can hardly be doubted. Surely the lack of adequate engagement between these two branches of moral and political philosophy is to be lamented. This is so even if, as Haque suggests, it is too much to expect every philosopher of the criminal law to become a political theorist. To paraphrase Haque, even if we cannot expect every philosopher of the criminal law to engage in political theory we can expect him or her to engage with political theory. No doubt the somewhat unfortunate state of affairs where philosophers of the criminal law and political philosophers have not engaged with each other as much as might be

Are Roman seal-boxes evidence for literacy?

Increasingly, individual classes of artefacts are being studied less in their own right and more to garner support for broader theories and arguments. Roman seal-boxes, for example, are now routinely used as proxy evidence for literacy because it is generally accepted that they were designed to protect wax seals attached to personal letters written on wooden stylus tablets. The most unequivocal expression of this position is found in the work of T. Derks and N. Roymans, who argue that the presence of seal-boxes, even in rural areas, is evidence for the penetration of Latin literacy.1 Their work has proved influential; it was used, for example, by R. Hingley to argue that The seal boxes on non-villa settlements may indicate that the population of the Lower Rhine were drawing upon aspects of Roman culture — Latin language and the technology of writing — through a creative engagement with the imperial system.2 Yet there had been very little prior research into seal-boxes themselves to support these ambitious theories (a point noted by Hingley himself3).

Comparative Assessments of Justice, Political Feasibility, and Ideal Theory

What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect justice. Sen calls this the “comparative approach” to the theory of justice. He urges its adoption on the basis of a sustained critique of the former approach, which he calls “transcendental.” In this paper I pursue two tasks, one critical and the other constructive. First, I argue that Sen’s account of the contrast between the transcendental and the comparative approaches is not convincing, and second, I suggest what I take to be a broader and more plausible account of comparative assessments of justice. The core claim is that political philosophers should not shy away from the pursuit of ambitious theories of justice (including, for example, ideal theories of perfect justice), although they should engage in careful consideration of issues of political feasibility bearing on their practical implementation.

How General Do Theories of Explanation Need To Be? *

Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail.

How General Do Theories of Explanation Need to Be?

Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail.

Struggling over the Meaning of Recognition

Struggles for recognition are at the same time struggles over what it means to recognize and be recognized. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth propose two mutually exclusive ways to understand recognition: either as a matter of justice (Fraser) or as a matter of identity (Honneth). This article argues against the limitations of both of these construals of recognition, and offers a third way of construing it: as a matter of freedom. Recognition is not reducible, empirically or normatively, to any of these, however. Moreover, it needs to be regarded both more critically and more openly since what we are dealing with is a practice and an ideal that is by its very nature deeply contestable and therefore (more than most practices and ideals) subject to unforeseeable historical and normative change. Rather than trying to fix the meaning of recognition in order to give it a determinate role in ambitious theories of justice, it would be better to proceed more sceptically, attentive both to the complexities of recognition relations and to alternative ways of conceiving them and going on with them differently from before.

From Economicist to Culturalist Development Theories: How Strong is the Relation between Cultural Aspects and Economic Development?

Culture has been either neglected as a determinant of economic growth by economicist theories or deemed the main explanation behind international developmental differences by culturalist theses. Empirical evidence supports neither of these arguments. Less ambitious theories connecting concrete cultural aspects, such as trust and associational participation in communities, have more convincingly estimated a significant and positive impact on economic welfare. Using the case of Honduras, this paper similarly estimates a positive, significant and mutual relation between interpersonal trust and participation in community management and economic welfare.La culture a été soit négligée comme déterminant de la croissance économique par les théories économiques, ou prise comme explication principale des différences de développement international par les thèses culturalistes. L'approche empirique n'avalise aucune de ces perspectives. Des théories moins ambitieuses rapprochant des aspects culturels concrets, tels que la confiance et la participation associative dans la vie communautaire, ont clairement mis en évidence un impact favorable sur le bien-être économique. De la même manière, ce papier met en évidence à partir du cas de l'Honduras l'existence d'une relation positive, importante et mutuelle entre la confiance interpersonnelle et la participation dans la gestion de la communauté et du bien-être économique.

Simple rules yield complex food webs.

Several of the most ambitious theories in ecology describe food webs that document the structure of strong and weak trophic links that is responsible for ecological dynamics among diverse assemblages of species. Early mechanism-based theory asserted that food webs have little omnivory and several properties that are independent of species richness. This theory was overturned by empirical studies that found food webs to be much more complex, but these studies did not provide mechanistic explanations for the complexity. Here we show that a remarkably simple model fills this scientific void by successfully predicting key structural properties of the most complex and comprehensive food webs in the primary literature. These properties include the fractions of species at top, intermediate and basal trophic levels, the means and variabilities of generality, vulnerability and food-chain length, and the degrees of cannibalism, omnivory, looping and trophic similarity. Using only two empirical parameters, species number and connectance, our 'niche model' extends the existing 'cascade model and improves its fit ten-fold by constraining species to consume a contiguous sequence of prey in a one-dimensional trophic niche.

The Psychology of Emotion: Theories of Emotion in Perspective, 4th ed.

The Psychology of Emotion: Theories of Emotion in Perspective, 4th ed.