Symposion

This paper further cashes out the notion that particular types of intelligent systems are susceptible to the is-ought problem, which espouses the thesis that no evaluative conclusions may be inferred from factual premises alone. Specifically, it focuses on top-down artificial moral agents, providing ancillary support to the view that these kinds of artifacts are not capable of producing genuine moral judgements. Such is the case given that machines built via the classical programming approach are always composed of two parts, namely: a world model and utility function. In principle, any attempt to bridge the gap between these two would fail, since their reconciliation necessitates for the derivation of evaluative claims from factual premises.

A valid and arguably sound private language argument is built using premises based on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations augmented by familiar analytic distinctions and concepts of logic. The private language problem and the solution presented here can be plausibly traced to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both literatures missed the connection.

This paper presents an argument synthesized from the works of Sen and Žižek on how the one-dimensional view of pathological subjective violence is a mystification of the idea of violence. First, the paper provides an elaboration of the concept of objective violence as opposed to (but nonetheless still in relation to) subjective violence. Second, the paper follows with a discussion of the dialectics of the colonized mind as an example of how the objective violence of past colonialism is linked to the instigation of subjective violence even in recent times. Third, the paper provides a brief description of symbolic violence as another category of violence that is distinct from subjective violence. Lastly, the paper asserts its main argument on the mystification of subjective violence and proposes an alternative and more nuanced view of the mechanisms and causes of violence.

Should the state teach ethics? There is widespread disagreement on whether (and how) secular states should be in the business of promoting a particular moral viewpoint. This article attempts to schematize, and evaluate, these stances. It does so by posing three, simple questions: (1) Should the state explicitly promote certain ethical values over others? (2) Should the state have ultimate justifications for the values it promotes? (3) Should the state compel its citizens to accept these ultimate justifications? Logically, each question in this series is a prerequisite for considering those questions further down the list. The result is that responses can be categorized into one of four possible permutations or ‘camps.’ These are: (1) The Libertarian (“No” to all three questions) (2) The Pluralist (“Yes” to question 1; “No” to questions 2 and 3) (3) The Rationalist Republican (“Yes” to questions 1 and 2; “No” to question 3) (4) The Rigorous Republican (“Yes” to all three questions) It will be shown that just one of these positions, the ‘rationalist republican,’ stands out from all the rest. For only the rationalist republican can account for a normative politics while also safeguarding the individual’s freedom of conscience.

The innovation of Alain Badiou’s theory of change, which has attracted a great amount of attention from scholars working in disciplines across humanities, social sciences, and art over the past two decades, cannot be appreciated independently of the account of situations prior to an event’s irruption, namely, the order of being that is conceived using modern set theory in his treatise on general ontology. Retracing the meticulous systematicity with which pre-evental situations are conceived in Being and Event, this paper offers a reconstruction of Badiou’s general ontology that points toward the potential therein for articulating an account of structures and situations that may be qualified as social.

The topic of the ideal, that is, the topic of the possible or impossible human attainment of the absolute is ascribed divergent treatments throughout Kant’s work. Namely, it is either promptly accepted as possible by the critical Kant, and seen as something attainable by a means other than an infinite approximation (which would indeed imply a violation of autonomy, but denies the genuineness of the ideal), or it is rejected as impossible by the non-critical Kant, that is, it is seen as something attainable only through an infinite approximation (which would involve an unconditional acceptance of heteronomy, but safeguards the authenticity of an aspiration to the ideal). Yet, the topic of the ideal receives a new, if not conciliatory, at least mutually explanatory approach in Kant’s Anthropology. Here – such is our proposition – Kant proposes a terminus medius between both conceptions of ideal, insofar as he is led to ponder on the mutual benefits of an autonomic possibility and an heteronomic impossibility of an infinite progression in thought; something which Kant proposes under the form of an almost-infinite, or an almost perennial, yet finite duration, to be endured until the attainment of an almost unreachable, yet indeed reachable practical ideal. A terminus medius which, we hope to prove, is none other than that at the root of Kant’s proposition of Pragmatic Anthropology as a mediating science in Kant’s fundamental scheme of human knowledges, and which therefore may be ultimately seen as the embodiment of Kant’s anthropo-cosmological, or indeed cosmopolitical dimension of thought, as expressed in Kant’s political and/or historical writings.