Department of History & Philosophy, The University of West Indies at Cave Hill

This page contains all the abstracts accepted for the Symposium, and links to the full text when we have it. Please note that the texts are all in pdf format, for which you may need the Acrobat Reader, which can be acquired at Adobe.

Please note also that e-mail addresses have all been altered to include 'nospam' after the '@', so none of them will work as given.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Questions of Moral Witness and Moral Imagination in the (Literary) Epistemology of War: Who has the ‘right’ to tell a ‘true’ war story?
Nora Anderson
nora.anderson@nospamyale.edu

For this lecture, I will discuss the concepts of ‘moral witness' and ‘moral imagination' as used by Avishai Margalit in his The Ethics of Memory (2002) and Inga Clendinnen in her Reading the Holocaust (1999), respectively, and raise the tangential question that arises from those works: is it possible (or worthwhile) to read war fiction differently when written by a ‘moral witness' than when written by a ‘pure novelist'? To wit, is ‘moral imagination' the exclusive purview of the ‘moral witness'?

The conclusion I will offer is three-fold. One, fiction holds a decidedly different bind with its reader than non-fiction and the personal experience of the novelist is irrelevant; imagination – the currency of fiction – is a product of one's mind, not one's direct experience.

Two, the concepts defined by Margalit and Clendinnen both limit the epistemic authority to those immediately and directly involved; by raising the definition to ‘moral' (thick relations) above ‘ethics' (thin, personal, partial relations), the definitions themselves would seem to counter their creators, and warrant the inclusion of, by definition, all humanity.

Yet three, problematically to one and two, lived reality does seem to value a war novelist's experience when evaluating the text, privileging those with personal experience as more knowledgeable, more trustworthy, more ‘truthful' in some critical way.

My work to date has been on the memoirs and novels of combat veterans. And I admit, in myself, that when I read the novels by Junger, Céline, Drieu La Rochelle, Vonnegut, O'Brien, knowing their direct involvements in war, I feel (or indulge that I feel) closer to the violence, hearing from those who had been there, behind the trigger. Epistemically, I want this feeling to be false; and, I will argue strongly that it is, but yet it rankles, and warrants discussion among epistemic scholars.

There is something attractive in the voices of experience; but experience must be separated from imagination in fiction. Historical (war) fiction is beholden to historical accuracy and the aesthetics of fiction. (The unequal aesthetic talent of the ‘moral witness' is another concern to be examined herein). In the case study of the Holocaust, used by both Clendinnen and Margalit in their texts, it would seem more important than ever to allow ‘outsiders' to venture inside and imagine through fiction the happening of such a catastrophe, performed as it was by ‘ordinary hands' (Goldhagen) and conjured therefore by ordinary ‘moral imaginations.' If war is to be considered a ‘human catastrophe' (Margalit's term), it becomes an issue of humanity (morality) entire; it then, by definition, becomes the license of everyone to witness and engage it, imagine and write fiction about it – fiction that is no less ‘true' than that by those with direct experience. In the end, to my mind, tout le monde is a ‘moral witness' to war. Limiting the purview of war fiction to those with direct experience would render the human (moral and epistemic) consciousness of war slack like an elastic, not stretched or tried.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A pragmatist critique of Bodunrin's conception of epistemology
Lawrence Bamikole
bamikolelawrence@nospamyahoo.com

(i)“Our culture may be dear to us, but truth is dearer” ( P.O .Bodunrin, “The Question of African Philosophy”)

(ii) “When logic and experience conflict, we can resolve the conflict by pointing out the flaw in the logic or by deciding that experience is illusory. In most cases, the verdict must be that experience is illusory until more evidence is available” ( P.O. Bodunrin, “Witchcraft, Magic and E.S.P.: A Defence of Scientific and Philosophical Scepticism”) (Our emphasis)

The above two assertions are exemplifications of the late Bodunrin's conception of epistemology. It is a well known fact, among African philosophers, that Bodunrin belonged to the universalist school in philosophy and the professional trend in African philosophy. The spirit of his conception of African philosophy derived from his universalist conception of philosophy. The universalist school in philosophy holds that philosophy is one for all cultures by virtue of the fact that the discipline has a unique method which is the systematic, rigorous, critical and examination of ideas, beliefs and practices. The universalist conception of philosophy equates philosophy with epistemology in the sense that much premium is put on the ability of the philosopher to justify and account for his/her beliefs. It is only when he/she can do this that it could be claimed that he/she knows. From the above two quotations, it is clear that Bodunrin emphasizes the importance of truth and evidence, two concepts that are very important in epistemology.

In this paper, therefore, we shall focus attention on what is involved in the normative epistemologist's conceptions of truth and evidence as exemplified in Bodunrin, and the pragmatist critique of such conceptions. The point of the paper is that normative epistemology represents a period and tradition in philosophy in general and African philosophy in particular and that this view of epistemology has been transcended by the pragmatic conception which puts emphasis on constant revision of concepts and ideas in consonance with the existential and historical situations of a given culture or philosophical tradition.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Case for Cosmopolitan Sovereignty?
Dave Benjamin
dbenjami@nospambridgeport.edu

In his 1999 and 2000 treatises, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed a new definition of sovereignty: that of the individual. Building on the notion that the state has evolved from Hobbes' first man in which the holder of central power was the sovereign in theoretical and practical terms to one in which the state is expected to protect its citizenry in a broad sense and on an inclusive basis, Annan was attempting to address a new international community riddled with collapsing or collapsed states in which systematic crimes against humanity were committed by those who held political power or were competing for it through civil wars and ethnic conflict. The Annan thesis has provoked much debate about the responsibilities of states to their populations. It has also stimulated discourse about conceptualizing the state in the post-cold war era. This paper examines the evolution of the state from Machiavellian/Hobbesian paternalism in which the ‘first man' held a monopoly on power (and its use) to a post-modern construct in which the state is deemed to be animate, accountable in international law, and functions in a broad framework of global cosmopolitan democracy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leadership, Knowledge and National Development
Tunde Bewaji
tundebewaji@nospamyahoo.com

There is a general problem of underdevelopment which plagues many countries of the South, such that they suffer the most when there are international economic and financial downturns. It is argued in this essay that the disproportionate burden of ecological disasters, economic depression, poverty and socio-political degradations and uncertainties these societies bear is directly proportionate to the extent to which the leadership of these societies has apprised themselves of the necessary skills and knowledge necessary for meaningful and sustainable development of their societies. In order to do this I examine the limitations of content based education that is promoted in Western formal educational systems, which fail to develop in the educated the critical capacity to attain all round knowledge, analytical instinct or culturally tethered intellectual appreciation of the continuities and discontinuities in human history, with a view to enabling the societies of the south better prepare leadership and the general population for a balancing of resources with expectations.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Being Finely Aware of Lolita's Charms
Scott Clifton
sclifton@nospamu.washington.edu

One of the debates in ethics centers around the suggestion that having knowledge of all the moral principles there are still wouldn't be enough for someone to be a good moral agent, that another crucial piece of knowledge would be necessary—i.e., knowing when to apply which moral principles that one knows. The suggestion is that there are many moral principles and that each situation would call for the application of only a subset of the larger set of moral principles. Merely applying moral principles to a situation isn't enough to insure the right decisions are made. One must know which moral principles are relevant in order to make the correct moral decisions.

In her paper “‘Finely Aware and Richly Responsible'” Martha Nussbaum extends this suggestion and tries to show that reading literature can give persons the ability to determine which situations fall under which moral principles. She argues that reading (certain works of) fiction can show the reader how better to perceive particular features of situations—features that could be morally relevant. Thus readers can learn how to be more “finely aware” of situations, enabling them to determine which moral principles to apply. Her suggestion is that without a heightened ability to determine the salient features of a situation, we likely won't have full knowledge of which moral principles should be applied, thereby making us less than full informed moral agents. She concludes, therefore, that since certain novels give us pieces of knowledge that stand to make us better moral agents—pieces of knowledge which would likely not ever derive from non-fictional works of moral philosophy—these novels should then be considered works of moral philosophy themselves.

Morally evaluating works of literature has a long history, but it usually centers around certain propositions that seem to be expressed or asserted in the work. Nussbaum's account seems to focus on the creation of the work itself—that is, what the author does in writing the work. We praise the work—and the author—because the work enables the reader to perceive more effectively, thus making the reader a better informed moral agent. But what should we say about works of literature that only get it partly right? On Nussbaum's view, we morally praise a work of literature because it teaches (1) readers how to be more finely aware of (2) the morally salient details, so that the reader is better able to apply moral principles to the situation at hand. But what does this imply about works that satisfy (1), but not (2)? What about works that teach readers how to be more finely aware of the wrong details?

In this paper I try to answer this question, using a couple of models that seem most helpful in this context. I conclude that intention looms large and that we should blame someone for failing to achieve both (1) and (2) if they clearly set out to satisfy both.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Testimony, Advocacy, Ignorance: Thinking Ecologically About Social Knowledge
Lorraine Code
codelb@nospamyorku.ca

Epistemologists in the twenty-first century come from a long tradition in which perception, memory, and testimony were viewed as the sources of knowledge. Of these, perception and memory, however enhanced, abstracted, or elaborated, counted as the most reliable sources, with testimony ranking as a distant, and usually compromised, third. In my view, social epistemology reverses this ranking, granting a central place to testimony in the production of knowledge, and interrogating assumptions about the replicability and homogeneity of perception and memory. It thus generates a range of issues that had seemed to be hors de questions for traditional epistemologists. Drawing on the conceptual framework I develop in my 2006 book, Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location, I will suggest that epistemic inquiry socially reconfigured is more fully naturalized than post-Quinean naturalized epistemology has been. Social epistemology focuses on epistemic practices communally engaged by identifiable knowers in the world (thus not principally in the laboratory); who are situated not just socially, but ethically, politically, demographically, geographically, and ecologically, where aspects of such “situatedness” often count among the conditions that make knowledge possible. The inquiry will focus on testimony and advocacy as practices where these factors are particularly salient, and on ignorance not as a mere lack or failure of knowledge, but as a modality of not-knowing, or knowing inadequately/unjustly, which is itself situationally fostered, inhibited, or eradicated.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The standard JTB [justified, true belief] model of knowledge meets difficulties in Gettier cases. The usual response is to strengthen or alter the justification requirement. In this paper I'll analyze instances where knowledge is understood to be an understood true belief, and where understanding justifies the belief. I give several examples where a justified true belief is not understood, and is therefore not knowledge, and show that when the belief is understood, it becomes knowledge. The following case is paradigmatic: A student hears a physics professor say that fermions have half-integral spin, and reads the same claim in a textbook. The student adopts this as a belief, and is justified by the authority of the sources. However, she does not know what “fermion” means, nor what it would mean to have “half-integral spin.” Thus, her justified true belief is not understood, and, I argue, would not be taken as knowledge. Looking at cases then where the belief is better and better understood, we see a spectrum of knowledge arising, from cases where a belief is not understood, to where it is poorly understood, on to “full” understanding. By accepting that knowledge has degrees, we complexify it, and open up an interesting pedagogical possibility: the point of education is not to instill knowledge, in the sense of justified, true beliefs. That would not admit of degrees of knowing of any individual proposition, and education would then be the mere accretion of individual true propositional beliefs. Instead, the goal is to increase understanding, altering one's state of knowledge even of the same proposition. Thus I'll take issue with Stephen Grimm and Wayne Riggs, who each claim that knowledge is fully distinguishable from understanding, and propose a more eclectic account of knowledge where the concept frequently entails understanding. I'll also follow Jonathan Kvanvig in claiming that understanding is the source of epistemic value but, contra Kvanvig, will claim that this is still part of knowledge.

Theoretical and Conceptual Practices: Karen Barad's “Agential Realism” and Embodied Objectivity
Emilie Dionne
emilie.dionne@nospamgmail.com

In Time Travels, Elizabeth Grosz raised concerns regarding environmentalists on the grounds that their methods focus too aggressively on conservation and preservation, on what already exists , thus acknowledging the systems already in place, and their organization, even harmonization, in holistic terms (2005, 220-1). Similarly, in Politiques de la Nature , Bruno Latour has problematized the notion of an ‘ecosystem', thus showing how it has been (ab)used in order to depict nature as an all-encompassing and unquestioned whole, a usage that leaves in a nebula the current state of interrelations as well as the structures of these systems (1999, 183).

These visions of nature, of the environment, raise many concerns since they borrow their understanding of society and nature from a fixed and transcendent conception of reality, of objectivity, and of truth, which perpetuate the idea that such knowledge can be acquired solely through a specific scientific method. The objective of this paper is to explore how the notion of ‘agential realism' proposed by Karen Barad in Meeting the Universe Halfway, who is inspired by a Bohrian notion of Quantum Theory, allows a revision of our conception of the world, of objectivity, as well as of nature. Barad's ‘agential reality' aims at reconciling two opposing positions, that is, social constructivism and a classical notion of objectivity, by unveiling their contradictions and limitations.

This paper will present her argument and the major concepts she puts forth while opening a dialogue with Donna Haraway's concept of ‘situated knowledge' as well as Bruno Latour's idea that we have never been modern, and how human and nonhuman's representation (political or scientific) is more alike than it seems , as a tale on modernity wrongly depicts.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Practical Inadequacy: Bas van Fraassen's Failures of Systematicity
Curtis Forbes
curtis.forbes@nospamutoronto.ca

In this paper I argue that all of Bas van Fraassen's various anti-realist empiricist philosophies have failed, in similar ways and for similar reasons. Van Fraassen remains, even in his most recent book Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (2008), unable to account for the place of science in the modern industrial context, more specifically the role of science in public policy crafting. This failure is not present in the views of his main philosophical opponent: the scientific realist.

The paper is divided into three sections: one to address van Fraassen's The Scientific Image (1980), another for The Empirical Stance (2002), and another for Scientific Representation .

The position explicated in The Scientific Image – “constructive empiricism” – is criticized on the grounds that the aims he attributed to science are not consonant with the goals that the public has for such inquiry. In particular, the achievement of empirically adequate theories, which constructive empiricism sees as the ultimate aim of science, cannot serve our social-political goals of predicting novel phenomena such as anthropogenic global warming. Achieving true theories, by contrast, can serve such goals. This is because a) empirical adequacy, unlike truth, is not necessarily preserved under conjunction b) untested, novel predictions of global warming can only be made on the basis of a conjunction of many locally well-tested theories. If we take such local theories to be only empirically adequate we have no reason to believe that their conjunction in the form of global warming theory will be empirically adequate. Contradistinctively, taking such local theories to be true we will be warranted in believing that their conjunction to be empirically adequate. In general, public-policy makers need theories whose empirical adequacy is preserved under conjunction, a property that only truth can guarantee, rather than empirical adequacy per se . Thus, the aim of science, in its social context, must be more than empirical adequacy.

The position van Fraassen defends in The Empirical Stance – namely, the “empirical stance” – is criticized on the grounds that its adequacy falls apart once we move beyond the narrowly defined, traditional problems of philosophy. In particular, I argue, the empirical stance is unable to inform our public policy crafting. This is because it explicitly bars us from seeking out information about unobservables, deeming such information “irrelevant”. Information about the dispositional properties of unobservable like carbon dioxide, for instance, is deemed irrelevant given that information about the observable consequences of such behaviour would be just as useful in solving philosophical problems or predicting the future. However, given an inability to test the empirical adequacy of certain theories directly, information about unobservables is obviously very important for more practical purposes. For example, we cannot go out and test the observable predictions of global warming theory directly, for this would require us to pump gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and see if the predicted warming occurs. Attempting to bring about global warming would obviously go against our social-political goals of crafting public policy with the intention of predicting, anticipating, preventing, and avoiding global warming before it occurs . If we had information about the nature of carbon dioxide, by contrast, we could accurately project the future state of observables based on this information, without collecting information about observables directly. The “metaphysical stance”, which opposes the empirical stance, allows us to seek out such useful information about unobservables, and is thus able to serve our social-political goals of crafting well informed public policy.

The position van Fraassen defends in his newest book – namely, “empiricist structuralism” – is criticized on two grounds. First, it employs a pernicious method of conceiving of science, in terms of its telos or “envisioned end-state”, which is far too abstract to be of much use in understanding actual human science which is not only inevitably incomplete but also multiply motivated. While van Fraassen attributes a similar method of conceiving science to scientific realists, I argue that realists can and should resist such a characterization of their views. Second, despite trying to do so, empiricist structuralism fails to provide an account of how science is used in practice. While it does outline how individual representations can be successfully used, given that they are known to be empirically adequate, it does not at all discuss how one can practically decide which representation to use. Modern scientific realists have provided such methods of using science in general, rather than only certain scientific representation in particular, based on the kinds of predictions different theories have had vindicated (novel vs. ad hoc ). Empiricist structuralists cannot even make this epistemologically important distinction between novel predictive success and ad hoc predictions that have been “written-in” to a theory. Because the ability to discriminate such predictions is important for deciding which representations to rely on, empiricist structuralism cannot inform our attempts to use science, in the here and now, to inform our public-policy crafting. Scientific realism can make such discriminations, by contrast, and is therefore a more comprehensive, “systematic”, and social-politically useful theory of science than van Fraassen's newest anti-realist empiricism, just as it was with his previous empiricisms.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Early Feminist Epistemology of Frances Wright: Interconnectivity and Synthesis
Catherine Gardner
cgardner@nospamumassd.edu

This paper will argue that the nineteenth century feminist philosopher Frances Wright (1795-1852) deserves a place in the history of feminist epistemology. Wright has remained neglected as a philosopher; the few studies of her work that exist have typically focused on her arguments for gender justice. However, it is not just in Wright's social philosophy that an early form of feminist philosophizing can be seen, she also offers a feminist metaphysics and an epistemology. Modern feminist epistemologists have pointed to the way that women have been excluded from access to knowledge or have been labeled as incapable of knowledge in some way. Wright was an early exponent of this view, moreover – and more interestingly – she takes this view further and states that denying women access to knowledge prevents the progress of the human race itself.

Wright shares with some modern day feminist epistemological projects two elements: knowledge has a political goal, and knowledge itself is ultimately accumulated agreement among the community of knowers. Like some feminist epistemologists, Wright does not hold to the rigid dichotomy that is traditionally drawn between pure knowledge and the political values of the knower. For Wright, knowledge for its own sake is not the ultimate goal; rather knowledge must be shared and the ultimate goal of knowledge is the amelioration of social injustice. Even though Wright's knower is not the situated knower of modern feminist epistemology, this Wrightian knower does not generate a universal account of knowledge in the traditional manner. Traditionally, it is only through being free of one's particular concrete situation that we can generate a universal account of knowledge. For Wright, not only are we accumulating knowledge for the sake of others as well as ourselves, but we must not conceive of ourselves as separate from the world around us. It is through agreement with others that we can generate a universal account of knowledge, and I shall show that – for Wright – this agreement is a collaborative enterprise conducted among social equals (and Wright includes class and race as well as gender here). Thus Wright's epistemology and social philosophy are theoretically intertwined; the generation of true knowledge can only come about with radical social change leading to human equality.

The paper will conclude with some suggestions as to how Wright's work may be of use to modern feminist epistemology as well as some comments on the importance of creating a “canon” for feminist epistemological thought.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plasticity, Phenomenal Character and Brain Qualia
Nada Gligorov
ngligorov@nospamgmail.com

One of the proposed solutions to the mind and body problem is Eliminative Materialism (EM). On this view, the seeming irreducibility of mental properties to physical states is resolved by eliminating mental states. The foundation of EM is the argument that commonsense psychology, or folk psychology (FP), constitutes an empirical theory, which can be revised. The revision of FP, and the adoption of a new scientific framework, is supported by further views on plasticity. Perceptual plasticity is defined as the change in experience which results from conceptual change. Conceptual frameworks, according to Churchland, influence the manner in which entities are introspected or observed. What one sees is influenced by what one knows.

In this paper, I will criticize Paul Churchland's view on perceptual plasticity. I will argue that perceptual plasticity will not resolve the emergence of phenomenal properties. It will be my contention that adopting this new framework will result in new qualitative states, associated with the introspection of brain states. Reconceptualization will give rise to brain qualia, which will undermine reduction. Even if brain states and sensations are strictly identically, the qualia associated with each framework will be different.

I will further argue that eliminative materialism only establishes the conceivability of radical conceptual shifts, while perceptual plasticity requires their nomological possibility. I consider the implications of direct introspection of brain states. I conclude that a shift to introspection of brain states is either just a change in terms or a permanent stumbling block for reduction. If each new conceptual framework gives rise to distinct qualia, no qualitative states can have physical explanations. EM assumes that observation is an outcome of the endorsement of a conceptual framework. Any entity featured as part of a conceptual framework can be introspected. Any introspected entity can give rise to qualitative states. Each framework has distinct qualitative states. Thus, even strictly identical entities can have distinct qualia. If brain qualia are possible, elimination cannot resolve the problem of irreducible subjective properties. I conclude that brain states cannot be introspected noninferentially.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Logic, Mathematics and Knowledge: On the Epistemology of Negritude or Negritude as Epistemoogy
Clevis Headley
headley@nospamfau.edu

This essay provides an alternative philosophical perspective on negritude, a perspective antagonistic to the tradition of calcified interpretations that construe negritude as the ruminations of naive nationalist politics or unimaginative and vulgar essentialist identity thinking. This essay, among other things, seeks to liberate negritude from encrusted and disabling psychological and literary structures of intelligibility. Consequently, it connects negritude to a more illuminating epistemological framework. Here it is argued that the French tradition in epistemology played a decisive role in shaping the formation of negritude as an epistemology. Executing this task warrants establishing an affective relationship between negritude and the crisis in the foundations of mathematics, a crisis situation whose ultimate outcome, at least in certain circles, encouraged a serious curtailing of the epistemological dominance of logic and reason. Negritude thinkers deflated the epistemological status of reason but did not embrace irrationality or emotionalism. Indeed, these thinkers provided an alternative conception of knowledge modeled on alternative metaphors of knowing. These metaphors obviously differ from the Cartesian visual metaphorical framing of knowledge and truth .

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Memories of the States, Histories of the Historians: Epistemologies of the Pasts in the Czech Republic and South Africa
Radim Hladik
radim.hladik@nospamgmail.com

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of cross-areas and cross-regime comparisons in the cases of the Czech Republic and South Africa. We shall attempt to sketch out only a couple of memorial strategies deployed in framing the post-socialist and the post-apartheid public histories. Still, these strategies may be considered as pivotal given the authority they enjoy in the public space devoted to commemoration. The focus will be on 1) the identification of the crucial steps that the state apparatuses have taken to account for the immediate past; 2) the identification of the main trends in national historiographies of the immediate past. The abrupt change of life-trajectories, or of organizations and institutions, turns collective, public, and personal memories into a political battleground. The ties as strong as personal biography or close generation sequence across a narrow time frame ensure that the experience of the immediate past is a popular, rather than specialist enterprise. The apartheid past weighs heavily on the reimagined South-African nation; but what is more peculiar and deserves a notice is the fact that the current state expresses this overtly in its highest law. The new South African state thus assigns itself a duty to remember its racist predecessor. A patrimonial perspective also runs through the above-mentioned constitution, when it recognizes national “heritage” and “traditional” structures. This is an aspect that the South African constitution shares with the Czech one. The latter acknowledges the patrimony as well. Yet this sole allusion to past appears to disregard its immediate component. As far as the text of the constitution is considered, state-socialism never existed, unless one would foolishly suppose it to be a part of the “heritage” that the lawmakers deemed as important to “protect and develop”. To identify the key aspects of the official memories, we need to give heed to the specific legislation and institutions that the states have introduced to specifically deal with the past under discussion. In other words, the focus should be also on the on the methods of transitional justice. While the South-African state seems to be resolute in its commitment not to forget, it also went out of its way to forgive. On the contrary, “to forget but not to forgive was the more common strategy in Central and East European countries leaving Communism behind” (Irwin-Zarecka). An obsession with archives is a salient feature of the Czech post-socialist historiography of the immediate past. The purpose of those is to reveal the identities of individuals who were either members of secret service police or who collaborated with them. This fringe history proliferates in intimate connection with the state's objectives. This contrasts strongly with the South African case, where the range of historiographic approaches tends to border with the sphere of collective memory. When confronted with the predominant South African historiographic trends, should we assume that there are important constituencies in the Czech society that would welcome their deeper inscription into the history of state socialism?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Giving Testimony and the Coloniality of Knowledge
Sarah Hoagland
s-hoagland@nospamneiu.edu

The coloniality of knowledge involves epistemic framings and methodologies through which colonial orderings, including racial and gendered orderings, are naturalized and thereby normalized, such that the colonizing cultures come to be portrayed as the only producers of knowledge and that knowledge the arbiter of all that is known or knowable. I want to explore this in relation to the performance of voices giving testimony on the part of those marginalized by hegemonic understanding.

Recent innovative work in epistemology has involved re-valuing testimony as a source of knowledge, challenging standard methodologies of research that maintain the coloniality of knowledge by deauthorizing the testimony of the very people about whom the research is conducted. Concerns of advocacy researchers involve voices of those normally excluded from hegemonic discourse production. I have raised questions with regard to a researcher¹s competency to hear an Other in order to be an advocate and also with regard to the relationality between the researcher and the subject (object) of knowledge; for Western scientific practice positions the researcher as a judge of credibility and a gatekeeper for its authority. A question becomes, when does a subject of knowledge become a knowing subject? (Hoagland forthcoming).

In this paper, I take up questions arising from the positions of those giving testimony, including what they/we must do in order to speak, and investigate relationality in the process of knowledge production. In becoming a knowing subject, someone marginalized and giving testimony must enter a frame of meaning within which the inquiry itself makes sense, and speak to an audience not normally used to hearing the sorts of things they have to say. My concern involves what marginalized testifiers are required to do to enter the field of meaning within which the testimony is to be given. I am interested in exploring strategies available to marginalized others giving testimony in light of the conceptual framework within which we/they are interpellated. And I am interested how marginalized peoples approach each other: Within which fields of meaning do we insist other Others meet us?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we compare our traditional account of what comprises a case of ‘knowing' (i.e. a justified true belief) with the notion that ‘knowing' is simply a factive mental state, an interesting and controversial set of debates soon follows. It has been the standard amongst many western philosophers for quite some time now that having a belief, which is true along with some form of reliable justification, satisfies the conditions for ‘knowing'. It is believed that a case C is a case of ‘knowing' if and only if C is a case of believing truly, with some kind of justification. However, recently the following question has been raised by a few philosophers such as Timothy Williamson and Anthony Brueckner. Is ‘knowing' purely a mental state?

There are two theses in contemporary philosophy that have brought a serious challenge to our traditional theory of knowledge. The most current work on these theses can be found in the writings of Timothy Williamson. The goal of this paper will be to defend Williamson's theses by providing an independent argument and structural model for them, which can be found in a previously existing philosophical theory. Williamson's theses are the following: 1) knowing is a prime, factive mental state, and 2) knowledge explains justified, true belief and not the other way round. The central focus of this paper will be to show that Williamson's theses can be found not as a critical argument, but as a positive account in William James' general theory of cognition. Williamson points out that believing truly that something is the case is a necessary condition for knowing that it is so. However, as he also points out this does not imply that truth and belief are constituents or components of knowing. A necessary condition is a logical notion, whereas being a constituent of something is a metaphysical notion and being a necessary condition for something is not the same as being a metaphysical constituent of it.

For Williamson, to be aware that some object has some property is to know that that object has that property. A similar idea is found in James' treatment on the cognitive function and acquaintance with objects. According to James, from this basic acquaintance relation a cognitive organism can build what we call propositional knowledge of the world. In this idea lies the alternate route to Williamson's thesis that knowing is a prime, factive, mental state. If we hold that knowing is a cognitive function of the organism, one which ultimately occurs at the most basic level of awareness, then it isn't completely unreasonable to think that we can give an account of how we have propositional knowledge about things if we have the right theory of cognition. William James' theory of cognition is just such a theory in rudimentary form. I will argue that with James' account of how cognition occurs at the sensory level a theory of knowledge that holds Williamson's two theses can be developed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oral Tradition, Myth and Education in African Francophone Literature
Kahiudi C. Mabana
kahiudi.mabana@nospamcavehill.uwi.edu

It is generally admitted that Africa is a continent whose culture is based on oral tradition. It is a non written civilization, where the word has a powerful impact on the life of the people. A word can mean life sentence according to the circumstances under which it is spoken. The artistic use of the word has created a valuable poetry and a rich range of oral devices that constitute what is known as the African oral literature. In the recent decades it has been called orature, an Anglophone shortcut combining “oral and literature”.

Ritual, praising, epic, proverbs, storytelling were traditionally practiced in Africa since centuries, and the word was always at the centre of those performances. The advent of the colonial and written literature has profoundly translated or inserted the oral in modern forms of communication such as books, radio, cinema or television. Nonetheless the oral tradition is still alive in Africa , it is present in modern forms of arts, despite all means used to eradicate it and dismiss it from the Reason's area of influence.

On the other hand there is a common sense received from birth that prevails beyond any rational attempt of acquisition. There are received ideas, which conduct the human's behaviour but cannot be rationally justified. These ideas belongs to the area of myth with its numerous and polysemic significances.

In this paper, I will first of all examine the links between myth and African thought, then the ethnophilosophy issued from this perception, before considering the creative literature. The aim is to discuss the problematic of the hegemony of knowledge by some privileged cultures.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The aims of this paper are twofold: firstly, to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge in the moral domain, and secondly to specify the ‘objects' of such knowledge. Moral non-cognitivism is seriously flawed in its account of truth in relation to moral judgments, in its rejection of the possibility of moral facts as well as in its reliance on a number of questionable distinctions such as that between fact and value and descriptive and evaluative discourse. It operates with an excessively narrow, and all too frequently absolutist conception of reality, the result of which is a misplaced skepticism.

The nature of moral facts is explicated by reference to moral properties and moral requirements. Such facts, though non-inferential, may be said to be directly observable by those in possession of a distinct sensibility and conceptual vocabulary upon which the recognition and significance of morally salient features depends.

Underpinning the argument for moral knowledge is a form of non-naturalistic moral realism whereby moral knowledge may be said to be arrived at in ways very different from, but equally valid as those yielding scientific knowledge. The utility, as well as the limitations, of the analogy between secondary qualities and the mind-dependency of moral properties will demonstrate how moral properties may be said to possess a dispositional character, in those with the requisite sensibility, towards feeling and action even if such a disposition is not accountable in purely mechanistic terms. The skills associated with the discovery of moral facts are identifiable as requiring a sensitivity to context without recourse to any mysterious faculty associated with intuitionism. Any such discovery has both a cognitive and affective dimension, the latter having all too frequently been ignored in discussions of moral knowledge. The respects in which this is crucial to identifying features in the world possessing moral salience merits particular scrutiny in view of the fact that morality's concern is not only with belief, but also with action, feeling, qualities of character and lives that may be lived with integrity. Moral knowledge cannot therefore be reduced to something merely propositional. Internal moral realism provides a clear link between morality and reasons for action, with the so-called belief-desire theory of moral motivation relying on nothing more than Humean dogma.

In so far as the focus of our moral vision is on specific contexts, with their own unique features, moral epistemology is concerned with the truth of particular judgments as opposed to the search for rules or principles. If the latter exist, they are shown to be both pro tanto and uncodifiable. The significance of this for moral education is noted.

Moral claims may be said to possess objective status in virtue of the fact that moral properties are objective features of the world, in spite of attempts by non-cognitivists such as Mackie to portray them as inescapably queer. The defence of moral objectivity will rely on the denial of Williams' unwarranted assumption that all knowledge requires explanation without reference to parochial concepts such as the ‘thick' moral concepts on which moral discourse relies. Their dependence on the existence of social realms of meaning does nothing to damage the possibility of objective moral judgment. The so-called threat to moral objectivity posed by the existence of widely differing cultural viewpoints and moral disagreement is shown to be exaggerated. The truth in relativism is addressed, and the fact that there may well be a measure of relativity in moral judgment fails to undermine the possibility of rational adjudication between competing viewpoints; it merely serves to demonstrate the unavoidability of pluralism within the moral sphere, whereby moral agents may well justifiably differ in their ascription of different emphases to values such as justice on the one hand and compassion on the other, as witnessed in the recent dispute concerning the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Human Knowledge, Survival Values and Social Order
Sandra McCalla
oneras1973@nospamyahoo.com

Progressively human society is moving toward what can be regarded as a “knowledge” world. This is a world in which human beings will have to depend on knowledge in the determination of success, survival and failure. It can be indicated that evidence of this abound in various parts of the world, of which Japan and the Switzerland are examples: both countries with little natural resources, yet having developed highly advance social, technological and political systems. Even with the global decline in trade, productivity, economic activities and standard of living, knowledge societies have the potential to weather the storm better than those which are not knowledge societies.

In this essay, I examine the concept of “knowledge society”, with a view to understanding not just the concept of knowledge and society as epistemic and sociological ones, but with a view to undertaking an analysis of the perpetual impoverishment of developing societies like those in the Caribbean, where absence of knowledge constitute a factor in the debilitation of all facets of human existence. I attempt to link the weak knowledge base to naïve survival values which pervade the human existence, impacting negatively on social order and cultural advancement.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re-reading Class, Re-reading Cultural Studies, Re-reading Tradition: Neo-Marxist Nostalgia and the Remorselessly Vanishing Pasts
Cameron McCarthy
cmccart1@nospamillinois.edu

In this presentation, Cameron McCarthy assesses the status of the concepts of tradition and class within contemporary cultural studies literature on the industrial working class. He maintains, in part, that these terms have been deployed within a center-periphery thesis and a field-bound ethnographic framework by cultural studies scholars pursuing a sub-cultural studies approach. Within this framework, “Britishness” has been the silent organizing principle defining metropolitan working class traditions and forms of cultural resistance. British cultural studies proponents have therefore pursued the study of class and culture as a localized, nation-bound set of interests. This has placed cultural studies in tension with postcolonial subjectivities often reduced, as they have been in the classic works of Paul Willis's Learning to Labor and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style, to the metonymic “Pakis” (referring to recent Asian immigrants) and “Jamaicans” (referring to West Indians). McCarthy theorizes against the grain of the textual production of the working class within cultural studies scholarship insisting that recent films such as The Full Monty, Billy Eliot, and Bend It Like Beckham, and the literary works of Kazuo Ishiguro, (Remains of the Day), Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry), George Orwell (Shooting an Elephant), George Lamming (The Emigrants), Samuel Selvon (The Lonely Londoners), among others—offer a more complex story of class identities in the age of globalization and transnationalism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Epistemic Significance of Address
Benjamin McMyler
mcmyler@nospamphilosophy.tamu.edu

The overwhelming consensus amongst epistemologists is that there is no salient epistemological distinction between addressees of a speaker's testimony and non-addressees. If we divide a hearer's testimony-based beliefs into beliefs based on testimony that is addressed to the hearer—call these addressed-based beliefs —and beliefs based on testimony that is not addressed to the hearer—call these non-addressed-based beliefs —then there is no difference between the epistemic credentials of addressed-based and non-address-based beliefs. From an epistemological perspective, addressed-based and non-address-based beliefs are of a piece. If this is right, then the notion of address is of no proper epistemic significance. The other-directed intentions embodied in the act of addressing one's testimony to an audience make no salient difference to the epistemic credentials of an audience's belief.

In this paper I argue that this overwhelming epistemological consensus is mistaken. The other-directed intentions involved in addressing one's testimony to an audience do make a difference to the epistemic credentials of an audience's belief, and so an adequate epistemology of testimony must be in a position to account for the distinction between address-based and non-address-based beliefs. In particular, I argue that a hearer's epistemic responsibilities with respect to address-based beliefs are very different from a hearer's epistemic responsibilities with respect to non-addressed-based beliefs. Plausibly, one aspect of the way in which epistemic agents are responsible for their beliefs concerns their epistemic conduct in the face of reasonable challenges to their beliefs, where reasonable challenges to their beliefs involve the presentation of evidence that counts against their beliefs. Typically, when confronted with such a challenge, a responsible epistemic agent ought to either find some way to meet the challenge (some basis upon which to rationally discount the evidence presented) or else give up her belief. When it comes to address-based beliefs, however, a hearer can discharge her epistemic responsibilities by “deferring to the speaker” or “passing the epistemic buck”. If a hearer's belief acquired from a speaker's testimony is an address-based belief, and if a third party challenges the hearer's belief by producing evidence that tells against the content of the hearer's belief, then the hearer is entitled to defer the challenge back to the testimonial speaker. This is not the case with beliefs based on perception, memory, or inference, and it is also not the case with non-address-based beliefs. If a hearer's belief acquired from a speaker's testimony is a non-address-based belief, and if a third-party challenges the hearer's belief by producing evidence that tells directly against the content of the hearer's belief, then the hearer is not entitled to defer the challenge back to the testimonial speaker. There is thus a salient epistemic distinction between address-based and non-address-based beliefs. Address-based beliefs involve an entitlement to defer challenges, while non-address-based beliefs do not. Finally, I go on in the paper to develop a provisional account of address that is in a position to mark this salient epistemic distinction.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Epistemological Dilemma for Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Simeon Mohansingh
simeon.mohansingh@nospamuwimona.edu.jm

Read complete paper

Abstract

At its very least, the definition of knowledge should include justified true belief: belief being a personal conviction and hence the believer would act according to that belief; true, according to Aristotle's definition of truth; and justification being the evidence to support one's claim. Since ‘knowledge' of the benefits of Stem Cells is necessary for the approval by the relevant authorities of its usage on humans, then ‘knowledge' has to be had prior to being approved and its subsequent administering of these cells to humans as a curative measure.

Considering the tripartite definition of knowledge however, it is evident that while the ‘belief' component is subjective and hence could be difficult to prove, certainly the ‘truth' and ‘justified' components are more objective and in the realm of the public, and hence should be less challenging to prove. Therefore, for the researchers to satisfy the truth and justified components of the definition of knowledge, they have to demonstrate and prove the benefits of stem cells in the medical field. While this may not be difficult to do however, the dilemma occurs when in their attempt to satisfy the medical aspect of the benefits of stem cells, they encounter the ethical problem of taking the life of embryos. If these ‘lives' are not ‘taken', then researchers cannot prove they have knowledge of the benefits of ESC, since they have to justify their claim to show that it is true. Without the knowledge of benefits however, approval for use on humans would necessarily be denied. If ESC research is to be continued, then a decision will have to be made regarding deliberately taking a life, or inevitably not saving one, is deemed ethical or unethical, or more unethical or less unethical.

In my view however, the use of ESC should be discontinued, since taking a life is deemed more unethical, as opposed to not saving one.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Court Constructed Theories of Gender: Knowing Man and Woman in an American Employment Law Context
Camille Monahan
camille.monahan@nospamgmail.com

Read complete paper

Abstract

In American employment law, there is a narrow exception to the general prohibition to discrimination in employment based on the sex of the applicant/employee. That exception is the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). The bona fide occupational qualification exception to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act allows employers to engage in sex-based discrimination in those instances in which the sex of the employee is reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the business. The traditional inquiry into a BFOQ argument is based on the verifiable duties and requirements of the job. However, in cross-gender prison guard cases, those in which an individual of one sex seeks to guard inmates of the opposite sex (and thus either exert or subvert traditional gender power relationships), the American courts have abandoned the traditional job duties approach to ascertaining the ability of a man or woman to perform certain work. In these cases, judges have acted in the absence of legal testimony or evidence to create their own framework for knowing what it means to be male or female and how “manness” or “womanness” impacts one's qualification to hold certain kinds of employment. This paper examines two such cases and shows how a theory of gender created by the United States Supreme Court, through the power of legal precedent, creates a developing system for understanding the categories of man and woman that is overwhelmingly negative for both.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Race, Gender, and the Purification of Reason
Michael Monahan
michael.monahan@nospammarquette.edu

Read complete paper

Abstract

This paper argues that there is a governing norm of purity operant both within the practices and discourses of racism, and within the enlightenment paradigm of Reason. Specifically, the effort to purify reason in philosophy and the sciences bears more than an accidental relationship to efforts to enforce norms of racial purity. Enlightenment conceptions of the human as autonomous and rational go hand in hand with colonial efforts to bring civilization to the globe, insofar as both are efforts at purification. Finally, this paper will use this analysis to shed light on the “intersection” between race and gender, as interrelated ways of situating individuals and groups in relation to a gendered and raced norm for the purest manifestation of rationality (and thus humanity).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feminist History of Ancient Philosophy: Defending the Inheritance Approach Against an Ideological Critique
John Partridge
jpartrid@nospamwheatonma.edu

Read complete paper

Abstract

With the possible exception of Republic V, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle offer little for feminists to celebrate. Nonetheless, many feminists continue to read ancient philosophical texts, and not simply to “document and deplore” the views in them. On the contrary, some of these feminist historians of ancient philosophy try to salvage or appropriate features of the texts and deploy them to feminist ends. This is part of what has been dubbed the “inheritance approach” to the study of ancient philosophy since it is a way of claiming the canon as a resource, and it is reflected in the work of Charlotte Witt, among others. However, an article by Cynthia Freeland argues forcefully against standard ways of doing inheritance-style feminist history of ancient philosophy (“Feminism and Ideology in Ancient Philosophy,” Apeiron 33/4 (December 2000). She believes that the very discipline of history of philosophy is ideological. That is, she holds that the discipline is not only epistemically defective but also oppressive, insofar as it promotes the dominance of one set of concerns over another. Therefore, feminists who use the tools of the discipline when reading ancient texts may be engaging in an oppressive activity. For her part, Freeland does not then endorse a radical rejection of the philosophical canon, and a dramatic departure from traditional methods of doing history of philosophy, in the way that Irigaray does. Instead, she argues for a modified form of appropriation that is rooted in a pragmatic conception of the discipline of the history of philosophy. On this view, the history of philosophy aims at solving puzzles rather than seeking truth.

In this paper, I critically examine Freeland's claims. First, I argue that her critique of the inheritance model is not wholly successful. I will try to show, against Freeland, that the methods that the inheritance model borrows from the discipline of history of philosophy are either not ideological or not intractable, and thus that her case against traditional methods is not sufficiently strong to merit adopting the alternative method she puts forward. Second, I argue that her positive contribution of a modified inheritance model is at once too radical and not radical enough. It is too radical because it subordinates truth within a set of other epistemic values and then it subordinates epistemic values to non-epistemic values. But it is not radical enough because her dismissal of epistemic and alethic value comes too quick and fails to consider the complexity of what truth might come to for the Platonic or Aristotelian text. This question--the question of what is the truth at which Plato or Aristotle aim, such that we can understand and evaluate the success of their projects--is precisely what needs to be asked and especially by feminists.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the Psychological Nature and Intersubjective Force of Epistemic Reasons
Bryan Reece
bryanreece@ou.edu

Read complete paper

Abstract

Often discussions of the normative nature of epistemic behavior turn to questions about the psychological structure and causal import of epistemic reasons and how they acquire their normative force. I will sketch the rudiments of a new account of theoretical rationality that answers such questions more satisfactorily than the two major competitor views. Recently defended views on theoretical rationality can be roughly divided into two types: Instrumentalism and purism. The first appeals to naturalists, subjectivists, pragmatists, and neo-Humeans of various sorts. The second is popular among those with an evidentialist bent. Each conception has its merits and demerits: Instrumentalism has theoretical space to accommodate epistemic value pluralism and is well-positioned to explain the significance of social practices like teaching, education, and advice-giving. However, instrumentalism can lead easily to subjectivism since one's value selection is not criticizable under a purely instrumentalist framework. Purism can explain the intersubjective force of epistemic reasons, as well as how one can have reasons to adopt or change one's values. That said, a strong case can be made that the type of reasons admissible on purist accounts cannot factor into a correct psychological or causal explanation of agents' epistemic behavior. An account of theoretical rationality that brought together the advantages and eliminated the defects would clearly be preferable.

Borrowing from the ethical literature, I utilize a distinction between internal and external reasons to gain perspective on the merits and demerits of instrumentalism and purism in epistemology. I then identify a category of reasons I call dispositional reasons , which are deliberatively accessible from, though not an occurrent or operational element within, an agent's motivational structure. This type of reason is a regulative connection between an agent and her latent or implicit disposition to be motivated by the furtherance of a certain value. By encapsulating various properties and theoretical roles traditionally ascribed to internal and external reasons, dispositional reasons will enable us to construct a view of theoretical rationality that has all of the desirable features and none of the undesirable features of both instrumentalism and purism. I will conclude by defending the rudimentary account against a couple of potential objections.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This paper considers the generation and maintenance of epistemic authority in terms of aesthetic categories. I begin this inquiry with Kant's claim in the Transcendental Aesthetic that the categories of space and time are the a priori conditions of possible sense experience. I begin this way however, with a considerable critique in mind: that is the suggestion that one's experiences of space and time do not point to an organic cognitive constitution, but rather, are socially and politically malleable. I build this contention through a reading of Rancière and Benjamin together as critics of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic. In particular, I wish to highlight the concern both critics share regarding a reader's sensuous experience of a text, and how this bears upon the political context in which she reads. I argue that for both thinkers, a reader's spatial and temporal experience of a text points not to her cognitive constitution, but rather, is indicative of and further, co-constitutive of, the social and political parameters of knowledge distribution in her context.

Specifically, I contend that for Rancière and Benjamin both, it is the sense of proximity to a text, and particularly for Rancière, a sense of velocity in apprehending it, that maintains an epistemic hierarchy among readers. For Rancière, the explicator maintains his epistemic authority by manipulating the proximity and velocity of the student's textual experience. An inferior knower is such, precisely because she is told through explication that can never be quite as close to the meaning of the text as the explicator; explication tells her that she is slower, delayed in her grasp. For Benjamin, it is the style and medium of the reporting author that performs this same manipulation. A reporting author holds the reader at a distance--making her little more than a disenfranchised spectator. This paper contends that in both cases, it is the reduction of this sense of distance and delay between the reader and her text that undoes epistemic authority. What is suggested is a new condition for the possibility of ‘sensing text' that could participate in the redistribution of epistemic authority. I will suggest that this new possibility is more than the reduction of distance and delay, that it is in fact a sense of synchronicity, or, unanimity with the text. This is the sense that nothing stands between a reader and the knowledge she is confronted with, or further, that she may indeed sense herself as a knowledge producer too in her very encounter with the text.

This paper will seek to discuss three areas of which the first is the notion of ‘sensation' as the only means of establishing truth claims. Second, is that only ‘a posteriori' accounts are credible enough to establish true knowledge, and finally, that any claims to knowledge will ultimately lead to any given number of axioms of truth, as knowledge claims are reliant upon atypical gender explications.

In first examination of Sensation, the impression that knowledge is being delivered to us by alternative methods will be addressed concurrently within the ordinance of this paper. Sensation is the method by which we as humans are connected with the world around us, and by examination of Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge, in relation to the defence of sensation, I will begin my deliberation. Sensation can range from the air that we breathe which is felt by the various receptor glands of the skin and channelled through the nostrils to give us a ‘breath of fresh air', to the elements of mental contemplations about time and space. The extent at which our knowledge relies upon sensation will be explored in adequate detail as to fulfil the requirements of establishing worth for the second position.

The second proposition will deliberate intensely that what we essentially can say with any degree of certainty is that knowledge, is that which, have been taught to us through observation, testimony, dialogue, conversational introspection and so forth. There are no other methods that can be employed which cannot be disproven; as they will all fall below the criteria set forth in establishing knowledge. The claims put forth by ‘a priori' accounts of knowledge will be assessed to show the extent of uncertainty that plaques its assertion.

Finally, that truth and knowledge is reliant upon the gender of the individual doing the requisite perception. This specific aspect of understanding will inadvertently unleash a Gender Epistemological Theory which will be momentarily suggested and introduced within the framework of this paper.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anselm's Ontological Argument serves as an example of how epistemology and ontology are simply two sides of the same coin. Epistemology necessary leads to ontology or metaphysics for the Idea of God (an epistemological statement) as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” must exist (an ontological statement). The idea of God, in itself, is not “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” and so must exist. God's essence is God's existence.

Dialectical Incarnation is aimed at clarifying how seemingly opposing concepts, such as epistemology and ontology, spirit and matter, transcendent and immanent, divine and human, are distinct “conditions of the possibility” but are never separate in actual reality. All of reality is a single dialectical entity, and this single dialectical entity is incarnation. When one says that epistemology and ontology, divinity and the humanity, spirit and matter, are distinct but not separate one means that one can intellectually grasp the condition, the “concept,” of each, but in actual reality one can never separate the two. The reality in which opposing entities can be “distinct but not separate” is what Aristotle had in mind when he stated that one cannot separate matter from form and form from matter. Incarnation is parallel to Aristotelian substance which, as he explains, is both form and matter, distinct as conditions, as “concepts,” but never separate in reality. Dialectical Incarnation is equally an epistemology of the totality of reality as it is an ontology of the totality of reality. Epistemology inevitably involves metaphysics because one must know something and that something, reality, is understood through metaphysics.

Any philosophy, any theology, and any epistemology of the divine and the world must first begin with anthropology, for it is the human person who is the philosopher, the theologian, the believer, the searcher. Within anthropology, the starting point is the subject, the Self, of that human person, the agent in the search, the active condition in which the world and God is known. All understanding of the world and God is filtered through the Self. There is no other way of observing the world and God except through the Self. The world and “divinity” have no “meaning” outside the Self.

Epistemology is only one side of any philosophical inquiry. Ontology is needed so as to describe the world and the being of God which humans seek to know. The necessary relationship between epistemology and ontology is demonstrated through the history of Western philosophy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The central claim of this paper is that in order to address the problem of ethics across borders, we ought to re-conceptualize moral objectivity in terms of trustworthiness. I use the term ‘borders' broadly to refer to those features of ethical life that generate significant diversity and inequality among people such as cultural and religious differences, but also social divisions of gender, race, class, and sexuality, or differences in global location. The problem of ethics across borders is a problem about how moral claims can be objectively justified among people who are diverse and unequally situated, especially in cases of significant moral disagreement. I argue that moral claims, and the practices they support, are objectively justified to the extent that they are trustworthy for all those who are to accept them.

My argument is inspired by recent work on the epistemic role of trust in science, and especially by Naomi Scheman's suggestion that we conceptualize scientific objectivity as trustworthiness. 1 Scheman argues that a “sustainable attribution of objectivity serves to underwrite a significant degree of—objectively refutable—authority, and it does so by rationally grounding trust.” 2 Objectivity is important because when we claim that a judgment or view is objectively justified we are claiming that others can and indeed ought to rationally trust the judgment as authoritative within a particular domain. For example, when scientists recommend certain results or outcomes as objective, they commend these outcomes to the rest of us as (scientifically) authoritative, in the sense that these claims are supposed to portray an empirically accurate picture of the world and not simply reflect a scientist's own interests, perspectives, values, or biases. When we think we are warranted in believing the results of science is it because we trust that the results are in fact empirically accurate, and our trust in the results is, at least in part, a function of our trust in the people who come up with them.

Importantly, Scheman emphasizes that objectivity functions to ground the trust of those of us who do not play a role in producing scientific knowledge and who may not share the particular experiences, biases, or interests, of those who do play such a role. I defend an account of moral objectivity as trustworthiness that parallels Scheman's account. Foregrounding the connection between trust and moral objectivity can help diagnose some of the difficulties in cross-border moral discourse and gestures towards what is required in order to make such discourse fruitful.

I begin the paper with two examples to illustrate the kinds of moral situations I am referring to when talking about ‘ethics across borders'. In the second section of the paper, I discuss the relevant aspects of Scheman's account of scientific objectivity as trustworthiness. Drawing from her analysis, in the third section of the paper I defend the claim that we ought to characterize moral objectivity as trustworthiness. I then return to the examples with which I began in order to illustrate how an account of moral objectivity as trustworthiness can advance the project of ethics across borders. I conclude by considering an objection that challenges the analogy between scientific knowledge and moral knowledge upon which my argument turns.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------