Rational Capacities Research Articles

Women and Liberty 1600–1800: Philosophical Essays ed. by Jacqueline Broad, Karen Detlefsen

Reviewed by: Women and Liberty 1600–1800: Philosophical Essays ed. by Jacqueline Broad, Karen Detlefsen Sandrine Bergès Jacqueline Broad and Karen Detlefsen, editors. Women and Liberty 1600–1800: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 252. Cloth, $65.00. This book, comprised of thirteen essays and an introduction by the editors, is an exploration of the concept of liberty—moral and political (part 1), theological and metaphysical (part 2)—in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The topic in itself is interesting, raising the question of the extent to which moral and political liberty are related to metaphysical liberty. With the possible exception of Catherine Cockburn (1679–1749), these types of liberty seem harder to separate in the centuries under discussion than they would be now. This could be because moral and political liberty were more of an omnipresent concern to philosophers generally then than they are now, but it is also relevant that all but one of the philosophers discussed in the volume are women. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women were more likely than men to be deprived of liberty, not just through the accidents of politics—war, life under a tyrant—or luck—being born to poor or enslaved parents—but because women were systematically denied liberty regardless of their social status. This means that women philosophers’ writings on liberty have a particular poignancy as well as a distinct epistemic value and authority. Margaret Cavendish (1723?–1773), for instance, has a different and perhaps richer understanding than does Thomas Hobbes of what counts as an external constraint (153). What is truly striking about this collection is not only the variety of perspectives on liberty expressed by the women of the period in their own arguments and theories, but also the different interpretations that contemporary contributors give to those expressions. For instance, Mary Astell (1666–1731) favored a sort of internal freedom that consisted in mastering one’s own unruly passions and developing one’s reason. But how did this affect her view of women’s lack of external freedom? Broad (chapter 4) argues that the internal affected the external to some extent when women were successful in building internal lives that helped them bear their external ones: if it helped them make decisions that would minimize their loss of freedom (e.g. to remain unwed, as Gabrielle Suchon [1632–1703] also recommended), or if it softened their tyrants—husbands—by helping them to become more reasonable. But Alice Sowaal (chapter 11) interprets Astell rather differently, arguing that, for Astell, internal freedom is sufficient and nullifies the evil of external tyranny; it is achieved not just through the cultivation of reason, but with the help of the love of God; and women who become internally free are like Christian martyrs, able to face external evils with joy and love. In contrast to both readings of Astell, Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) defines free will as a causal capacity, so that freedom cannot be simply an internal condition, but must include a capacity to act. Another thing to note is that this collection shows a marked development between the discourse of seventeenth-century women, still very much tied to the institution of marriage and having to make the best of it, to the more political discourse of late eighteenth-century [End Page 166] philosophers, Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), and Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822), who were engaged in efforts at reform that were centered on liberty: it may have seemed to them that they themselves might be liberated through reform. Moreover, while Mary Astell and her contemporaries predicate their arguments about liberty on the idea that women have equal rational capacity to men, François Poulain de la Barre (1648–1723), for instance, had to assert and defend such equality before he could begin to argue for liberty through the development of reason. All this would make for a nice and optimistic account of the historical development of women’s freedom and the way in which it became gradually more accepted, if it were not for a chilling passage from Benjamin Constant, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which Broad and...

Hesitant Empathy: Sun Baoxuan's Diary and Approaches to Reading Fiction in Late Qing China

ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE FIFTH MONTH OF 1903, SUN BAOXUAN—A SCHOLAR-OFFICIAL IN LATE QING DYNASTY CHINA—documented in his diary that he had acquired a copy of the periodical 新小說(Xin xiaoshuo;“he New Novel”), founded by Liang Qichao in 1902 to propagate translated fiction and new Chinese fiction. Immediately drawn to the stories and novels it carried, Sun soon concluded that Western fiction had the unique strength of imparting knowledge and expanding rational capacity: 「觀西人政治 小說，可以悟政治原理；觀科學小說，可以通種種格物原理；觀包 探小說，可以覘西國人情土俗及其居心之險詐詭變，有非我國所 能及者」 (“Political novels teach us principles of politics; scientific novels teach us theories of things; detective novels show us Western customs and treachery, which often surpass ours”; 690). Immersed in a culture where vernacular novels had been suppressed by official censorship and prejudice among the elites, Sun ardently embraced translated fiction. By contrast, vernacular Chinese novels, with few exceptions, seemed to him routinely 「陳腐」 (“decadent”), providing no more than 「排遣」 (“diversion and entertainment”; 677, 690) The perceived rationality of Western fiction gave him a sudden license to seriously engage with a genre that the literary culture in China continued to exclude well into the twentieth century. Sun's encounter with foreign fiction marked the early stage of a somewhat bumpy adventure. In later sections of the diary, Sun documents reading sentimental strains of translated fiction and the more ambiguous responses they incited in him.

BELIEF AS AN ACT OF REASON

Most philosophers assume (often without argument) that belief is a mental state. Call their view the orthodoxy. In a pair of recent papers, Matthew Boyle has argued that the orthodoxy is mistaken: belief is not a state but (as I like to put it) an act of reason. I argue here that at least part of his disagreement with the orthodoxy rests on an equivocation. For to say that belief is an act of reason might mean either (i) that it’s an actualization of its subject’s rational capacities or (ii) that it’s a rational activity (hence, a certain kind of event). And, though belief is not an act of reason in the second sense, it may nonetheless be one in the first: it may be a static actualization of its subject’s rational capacities.

La philía y la guerra en la filosofía de la historia epicteteana

El presente artículo estudia el uso filosófico que Epicteto realiza de varios pasajes de la historia de Grecia y de Roma. Los conceptos de amor-amistad (philía) y de conveniencia (sumphéron) personal secundan al filósofo para explicar el motivo de que la felicidad (eudaimonía) no se haya alcanzado para el ser humano a través de toda la historia. Toda guerra y contienda (pólemos) histórica, como la de Troya, las Médicas o la del Peloponeso, es provocada por errores epistemológicos-morales derivados del desconocimiento del lugar correcto para colocar el sumphéron, tal lugar correcto sólo es la “capacidad racional” personal (proháiresis). Esta explicación causal de los actos humanos incorrectos y viciosos, de los que está llena toda la historia y que destruyen la philía entre los pueblos y provocan pólemos, constituye una auténtica filosofía de la historia epicteteana. No obstante, esos actos viciosos tienen su justificación plena en el superior nivel Cósmico ya que están pre-determinados y ordenados por la Providencia-Dios. Lo anterior dicho lleva a que podamos observar que la filosofía de la historia estoica, en particular la epicteteana, es análoga a ciertos sistemas especulativos modernos en torno al devenir histórico como el viqueano o el hegeliano.

A Kantian virtue epistemology: rational capacities and transcendental arguments

In this paper, I’ll sketch an approach to epistemology that draws its inspiration from two aspects of Kant’s philosophical project. In particular, I want to explore how we might develop a Kantian conception of rationality that combines (1) a virtue-theoretical perspective on the nature of rationality with (2) a role for transcendental arguments in defining the demands this conception of rationality places upon us as thinkers. In discussing these connections, I’ll proceed as follows. First, I’ll describe the sorts of epistemological questions I’ll be focusing on, and the framework within which I’ll try to address them. Then I’ll say a bit about the connections between this framework on Kant’s own views. Next, I’ll explain in more detail how the two main elements of this framework relate to one another by explaining how a certain sort of “transcendental argument” allows us to derive conclusions about the requirements of rationality from facts about the nature of rational capacities. Then, I’ll briefly illustrate these connections with two examples: (1) the rationality of explanatory inference like inference to the best explanation and (2) the rationality of perceptual belief. Finally, I’ll conclude by saying a bit about the relevance of this ideas for debates about the rationality of basic beliefs or prior probabilities.

VIII—Epicurus on Pleasure, a Complete Life, and Death: A Defence

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that “death is nothing to us”. These claims appear in tension. For, if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives.

Perception as a Rational CapacitySources of knowledge: On the concept of a rational capacity for knowledge, by AndreaKern, translated by Daniel Smyth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, 304 pp. ISBN 13: 9780674416116 hb £25.95

Perception as a Rational CapacitySources of knowledge: On the concept of a rational capacity for knowledge, by AndreaKern, translated by Daniel Smyth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, 304 pp. ISBN 13: 9780674416116 hb £25.95

Sistemas de Informação Estratégicos Habilitando Estratégia-como-prática na Incerteza Ambiental

Resumo Recentes pesquisas da nova era do planejamento estratégico (PE) destacam a sua capacidade ambivalente de racionalidade prescritiva como forma de orquestrar a criação de estratégias emergentes e flexíveis para enfrentar os desafios da turbulência ambiental. Contudo, há um número limitado de pesquisas sobre como essa capacidade pode ser desenvolvida e, ainda menos, sobre o papel das práticas do PE habilitadas pelo strategic information systems (SIS). Investigou-se sobre a lente da teoria da Contingência e da Prática, como o SIS habilita a efetividade do PE na dimensão da prática sobre a influência da incerteza ambiental. Utilizou-se da técnica estatística de PLS-PM com uma amostra de 139 empresas. O estudo confirmou que o SIS habilita a efetividade do PE em todas as suas fases sobre a influência dos diferentes níveis de contingência de dinamismo, heterogeneidade e hostilidade. Resultados a partir do estudo pós-análise: (a) o SIS demonstrou maior poder preditivo na formulação e no controle da estratégia e da menor ênfase para executá-la; (b) o SIS apresentou maior influência da efetividade do PE em ambientes de alta heterogeneidade; (c) as empresas mostraram maior ênfase para controlar e formular do que para executar a estratégia. O estudo contribuiu para compreensão da criação de valor do SIS na abordagem da estratégia-como-prática frente aos desafios da incerteza ambiental.

Empirical moral rationalism and the social constitution of normativity

Moral rationalism has long been an attractive position within moral philosophy. However, among empirical-minded philosophers, it is widely dismissed as scientifically untenable. In this essay, I argue that moral rationalism’s lack of uptake in the empirical domain is due to the widespread supposition that moral rationalists must hold that moral judgments and actions are produced by rational capacities. But this construal is mistaken: moral rationalism’s primary concern is not with the relationship between moral judgments and rational capacities per se, but rather with developing a conception objectivity normativity that avoids Platonism. In light of this, I develop an alternative approach to translating moral rationalism into the empirical domain that builds on the common rationalist view that normative requirements are explained by the relationship between agents and the social structures and practices in which they are embedded. I propose that this social conception of normativity can be translated into a scientific framework by interpreting it as a claim about the importance of constraint-based explanation when accounting for norm-governed behavior. In order to develop this point more concretely and show that it is empirically tractable, I turn to research on macaque social organization that highlights the ways in which (proto)normative standards are generated by empirically observable social structures. The insights garnered from the macaque case allow me to then locate moral rationalism’s core claims about the relationship between morality and the standards of practical rationality within an empirically plausible framework.

Trouble with Knowledge

AbstractThis paper is a critical notice of Andrea Kern's book Sources of Knowledge. In the first part, I outline some criteria of adequacy I believe any credible philosophical account of knowledge should meet. In the second, I consider how Kern's book measures up to those criteria. Finally, I offer a sympathetic and constructive discussion of a number of key elements of Kern's approach, including the relation of her position to the philosophy of John McDowell, from which Kern draws inspiration; her defence of disjunctivism; her concept of a rational capacity for knowledge and its acquisition; and her understanding of scepticism.

Dao of the Go

The remarkable defeat of Lee Sedol, an international Go champion by AlphaGo, a computer program, raised again the question of the future of humanity vis-à-vis increasingly competent machine intelligence. Exploring the origin of Go in East Asia, we find that the rational capacity emphasised in the Go game was traditionally associated with spiritual meanings while the etymology of spirituality in English reveals a connection with rational humanity. The cultural paradigms of intelligence invite us to rethink the dichotomy between ‘spirituality’ and ’intelligence’, so as to abate the alienation we feel towards AI-based technologies that are simulated upon our own intelligence. The contextualization of intelligence and spirituality further provides a model of resistance against the homogenizing forces and assumptions of globalization without succumbing to cultural stereotypes, which also renders a framework for the development of AI philosophy and technologies beyond universalism while addressing the future concerning the human collective.

Methodological individualism as anti-reductionism

The demarcation criterion of methodological individualism is not defined in relation to entities ultimately involved in explanation – individuals to the exclusion of structures – as supposed by its reductionist interpretations. It introduces an epistemological approach that distinguishes between causal powers representing driving forces – they arise from individual (trans-situational) rational capacities – and structural properties which do not exert a causal power but have nevertheless a crucial causal role – they define the situational properties on the basis of which individuals’ rational capacities are developed. Whereas the forces in action in society are governed by the subjective meaning of/the reasons for individual actions, social structures have an explanatory or causal role insofar as they affect the subjective meaning of/the reasons for individual actions.

Una sociología histórica global de la construcción del estado racionalizado en la modernidad internacional

El estado es una institución clave en la modernidad internacional. Desde sus orígenes al estado se le ha supuesto y reconocido una capacidad racional y funcional. Este estatus racional del estado ha sido incorporado a la realidad naturalizada en la modernidad internacional contemporánea y se ha constituido como estado racionalizado. El análisis de la construcción social del estado racionalizado se centra en la relación entre ideologías e ideas y las dinámicas de las estructuras sociales. El análisis se organiza en un doble eje. Primero, el eje interior y exterior de los estados en la historia occidental: se distingue entre la dimensión interior respecto al orden social interno y la dimensión exterior en la relación con otros estados y sociedades. Segundo, el eje occidente y no-occidente: el enfoque global aspira a superar el etnocentrismo occidental, y reconoce que el mundo no-occidental ha sido es una referencia clave para la construcción del estado racionalizado. Se concluye que: primero, el estado racionalizado ha sido una construcción histórica, social y cultural liderada por los países europeos y occidentales en relación a y con la realidad no-occidental; y en segundo lugar, que el estado racionalizado es un factor clave en la creciente multipolaridad en las relaciones internacionales.

Correction to: Possessing epistemic reasons: the role of rational capacities

In the original publication of the article, the last sentence in footnote 16 was incorrectly published as “Thanks to—for raising this issue.” The corrected sentence should read as “Thanks to Daniel Star for raising this issue.”

Epicurus on Pleasure, a Complete Life, and Death: A Defence

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that ‘death is nothing to us’. These claims appear in tension. For if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives.

Replies: Autonomy and human dignity. A reassessment of Kant’s political legacy. Human rights, peace, progress

The paper centers on some problematic theses of my book Kant?s Political Legacy. Human Rights, Peace, Progress (UWP 2017). This reconsideration is occasioned partly by comments I received and partly by my own process of self-criticism. I focus on the point that commentators have mainly criticized, that is, the link I suggest between human dignity and our capacity for moral behavior, or autonomy. The first part recalls the basic features of my Kant-inspired and yet in many regards anti-Kantian account of the relation between dignity and autonomy and replies to some criticisms received from orthodox Kantians. The second part is strictly connected to the first because it deals with the reasons we have to believe that we are autonomous. While in the book I sketched Kant?s own reasons for the ?reality of freedom,? as he puts it, I focus now on Bojan Kovacevic?s suggestion to look at characters in novels written by artistic geniuses (in particular Leo Tolstoy) to find indirect evidence in favor of autonomy. This allows me to reflect on the kind of evidence one can legitimately expect in the proof at issue. Thirdly, I reply to a classical objection, ignored in the book, that impacts with equal force Kant?s ethics and my own position. The problem concerns people with temporary or permanent impairment of rational capacities. If I let human dignity depend on our capacity for autonomous behavior, am I committed to the counterintuitive (and rather devastating) conclusion that children or people suffering from momentary or irreversible loss of rational capacity, and a fortiori of autonomy, do not have dignity and therefore do not deserve to be protected by human rights?

Possessing epistemic reasons: the role of rational capacities

In this paper, I defend a reasons-first view of epistemic justification, according to which the justification of our beliefs arises entirely in virtue of the epistemic reasons we possess. I remove three obstacles for this view, which result from its presupposition that epistemic reasons have to be possessed by the subject: (1) the problem that reasons-first accounts of justification are necessarily circular; (2) the problem that they cannot give special epistemic significance to perceptual experience; (3) the problem that they have to say that implicit biases provide epistemic. The first problem will be overcome by introducing presentational attitudes that are not in need of justification as basic ways of possessing epistemic reasons. The latter two problems will be solved by introducing epistemic rational capacities of two different kinds, which are exercised in mental states that are ways of possessing epistemic reasons, and by distinguishing these from mental states that are not exercises of epistemic rational capacities .

Global health inequalities and the need for solidarity: a view from the Global South.

Although the world has experienced remarkable progress in health care since the last half of the 20th century, global health inequalities still persist. In some poor countries life expectancy is between 37-40 years lower than in rich countries; furthermore, maternal and infant mortality is high and there is lack of access to basic preventive and life-saving medicines, as well a high prevalence of neglected diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Moreover, globalization has made the world more connected than before such that health challenges today are no longer limited within national or regional boundaries, making all persons equally vulnerable. Because of this, diseases in the most affluent countries are closely connected with diseases in the poorest countries. In this paper, we argue that, because of global health inequalities, in a situation of equal vulnerability, there is need for global solidarity not only as a means of reducing health inequalities, but also as a way of putting up a united force against global health challenges. We argue for an African approach to solidarity in which the humanity of a person is not determined by his/her being human or rational capacity, but by his/her capacity to live a virtuous life. According to this view of solidarity, because no one is self-sufficient, no individual can survive alone. If we are to collectively flourish in a world where no individual, nation or region has all the health resources or protection needed for survival, we must engage in solidarity where we remain compassionate and available to one another at all times.

Mitgefühl in Kants Ethik

AbstractAccording to Kant, building moral character is not limited to developing rational capacities but also includes developing emotional capacities as well as responsibly managing and deliberately cultivating emotional dispositions. Kant assigns central importance specifically to the cultivation of sympathy. This paper first distinguishes three levels on which sympathy is significant in Kant’s ethics. Referring to recent philosophical and psychological research, it then aims to reconstruct the process of cultivating sympathy in a way that is persuasive both as an interpretation of Kant and as a systematic account. Contrary to what Kant’s brief comments on this process seem to suggest, cultivating sympathy does not consist in a mere stimulation of a natural emotional mechanism – this, I argue, would be inconsistent with central concerns of Kantian ethics. Rather, it consists in a morally motivated, reflexive transformation of a natural disposition that aims to make us responsive to the needs of others.

Kant on space, time, and respect for the moral law as analogous formal elements of sensibility

AbstractTo advance a successful reading of Kant's theory of motivation, his interpreter must have a carefully developed position on the relation between our rational and sensible capacities of mind. Unfortunately, many of Kant's commentators hold an untenably dualistic conception, understanding reason and sensibility to be necessarily conflicting aspects of human nature that saddle Kant with a rigoristic and fundamentally divided moral psychology. Against these interpreters, I argue for a reading that maintains a unified conception, claiming that we must think of reason and sensibility as interdependent capacities, which stand to one another as form to matter. Our sensible nature thus does not stand opposed to reason; its fundamental character is determined by reason's activity. I take Kant's account of moral motivation and the feeling of respect to represent the lynchpin of this unified account. Against interpreters who would emphasize either the intellectual or affective nature of respect, I claim that it should be understood as the formal element of moral sensibility, the result of practical reason determining the capacity to feel and fundamentally transforming its character. To make this argument, I draw on Kant's account of sensibility in the Critique of Pure Reason, claiming that space, time, and respect for the moral law are analogous formal elements of sensibility.