Book Review: Feminist Edges of the Qurâan

Philosophy

Overall, this book is indispensable for anyone wanting to have a richer understanding of how the Qurâan is read and interpreted within a feminist context. It is a wonderful synthesis of the work that has been done in the field thus far and provides tools necessary to seek out new avenues in understanding the Qurâan while still retaining a feminist spirit. Yet, in the end, this book does not disturb Muslim world order. It remains an overwhelming possibility for Hidayatullah that interpretations which hierarchally differentiate between men and women may not be wrong. There is a comforting sense of resignation, or at least an affirmation of the ambivalence that Muslim mothers have transmitted to their daughters for centuries. We, feminist Muslims, are left with the same ambiguity with which we started the book.  However, we now have a much deeper understanding of the nature of that ambiguity, and that perhaps is worth embracing in itself.

Aysha Hidayatullah Feminist Edges of the Qur'an NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014 (ISBN 978-0-19-935956-1) Reviewed by Saba Fatima, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville http://hypatiaphilosophy.org/HRO/reviews/content/219 I begin this review on a self-reflective note, as my thinking here relates to my discussion of Feminist Edges of the Qur'an. When Hypatia approached me to consider reviewing this book, I was cautious. The challenge of analyzing commentary on a text that I, like many Muslims, have close ties to is daunting. This stems from knowing that a lack of academic rigor may not only bear consequences on one's own salvation, but also possibly create much larger unintended ripple effect within our social and political discourse. However, as a scholar on Islamic contemporary thought, it is crucial to undertake this exercise of examining the exegesis of the Qur'an in order to forge feminist possibilities for today's world. As a self-identified feminist and Muslim, Aysha Hidayatullah is acutely aware of the responsibility of such a project and carries it well. Hidayatullah prefaces her analysis of the Qur'an with aforementioned practical, but indispensable concerns. She worries that any critique of feminist works by her predecessors, such as Riffat Hassan, Azizah Al-Hibri, Amina Wadud, and Asma Barlas may work to erase Muslims' hope of ever reconciling feminist ideals with the Qur'an. Furthermore, it may provide fodder for both a violent Western imperialist agenda and for seemingly authoritative, patriarchal voices on Islam that rob women of their rights. Her acknowledgement of this awareness is significant because it allows Muslims who hold feminist ideals (even if they do not identify with the term feminism) and those who do not, to approach her work with an open mind. This intellectually generous gesture creates an atmosphere that allows more engagement between feminist works on the Qur'an and those unconcerned with feminist aims and methodology. The introduction and the second chapter of the book reflects an awareness of the baggage attached to the term 'feminism' within an Islamic context. This term has been used to justify wars under the guise of saving Muslim women from their barbaric cultures and has also served to erase the experiences of liminals within feminism. However, Hidayatullah chooses to identify with the term in order to capture the essence and purpose of her critique, that of subverting the male dominated interpretations of the Qur'an through a set of 'dynamic epistemological tools' (45). For scholarship on the Qur'an to be taken seriously by practicing Muslims, it has to engage with existing exegesis and move carefully with regard to established traditions. Amina Wadud in her seminal book, Qur'an and the Woman, functioned in a vacuum and engaged in conversations with those works that supported her preexisting beliefs in Islam's equitable treatment of both genders. This methodological move was necessary in order to forge out possibilities for understanding the justice of God as it pertains to gender, independent of male-centric frameworks. Hidayatullah acknowledges that it is the work of feminists such as Wadud, Barlas, Hassan, and al-Hibri, among others, which has allowed herself, a self-identified feminist, to reengage with Islamic scholarship and explore gender relations anew. But, unlike some of her predecessors, she does not wish to rely on pre-supposed feminist ideals. In her endeavor to reexamine gender relations, Hidayatullah systematically engages with some of the most influential works on the Qur'an. The book is divided into three main parts. Part I, Historical Emergence of Feminist Qur'anic Interpretation, lays out the historical developments in the exegesis of the Qur'an, both traditional and feminist. The author explores the ways that feminist interpretations have engaged with and been impacted by the traditional interpretations and by Jewish and Christian feminist theological approaches. In Part II of the book, Three Methods of Feminist Qur'anic Interpretation, Hidayatullah articulates three main interpretative methods of reading the Qur'an: historical contextualization, intratextual reading (view of the Qur'an as a cohesive text), and the tawhidic paradigm (a focus on incomparability and supremacy of God). Historical interpretative method places the verses of the Quran within the context in which they were revealed. This is used to figure out whether a ruling is particular to an event or universal, and to distinguish between the descriptive and prescriptive verses. Hidayatullah writes that feminists within this framework, namely Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas, deploy historically descriptive (as opposed to normative) claims regarding the Prophet that further the feminist cause but fail to give the same scrutiny to other traditions of the Prophet that may undermine those ideals. Hidayatullah advocates that feminists should pursue a more balanced approach when using the hadiths (traditions of the Prophet) and avoid cherry-picking preferred passages. Given the wide spectrum of the traditions, she insists that feminist should explicate their own stand on the use of the hadiths. She finds similar problems with the other two frameworks of interpretation. Her critiques of Islamic feminist work focus on the underlying assumption among feminist Muslims apologists that claim that inequality between genders is a result of interpretation within a patriarchal framework, rather than an issue with the text of the Qur'an itself. According to Hidayatullah, feminist work within all three frameworks conveniently prioritized verses that emphasize gender equality over verses on gender hierarchy, by either relying on the exegetical principle that the Qur'an cannot contradict itself (the intra-textual method) or on theological principle of supremacy of God which stands in contradiction with obedience of women to men (tawhidic paradigm). However, these preceding feminist works had little evidence to make such bold moves. As 'believing women,' these scholars are committed to the Qur'an being the exact word of God and a guidance for all time, simultaneously they are also committed to conceptions of gender equality that arise within their current social circumstances. Commitment to both, the infallibility of the Qur'an and to feminism, has led these feminist scholars to necessarily place the fault with interpretation, rather than the text itself or with their understanding of justice as it pertains to gender. Hidayatullah builds on the works of Raja Rhouni and Kecia Ali who focus on the failure of feminist scholarship on the Qur'an that presupposes with certainty the truth of equality and then attempts to extract this 'truth' from the Qur'an; when it may possible that it does not exist within the text. Hidayatullah makes her most significant contribution in her last two chapters, A Critical Assessment and Confronting Feminist Edges, which appear in Part III. She makes the normative claim that feminist exegetes superimpose their own historically particular notion that verses where men are deemed dominant are in contradiction with verses which support gender equity. We, present day feminist Muslims, find the two in contradiction precisely because of how we are situated in time. So while the Qur'an explicitly asserts equal worth and moral agency of men and women, feminist tend to impose their own interpretations of what this equality ought to look like in God's plan. Thus, Hidayatullah attempts to untangle, what she regards as a historically specific and theoretically unclear movement of feminism, from the Qur'anic text. Until the last chapter in the book, I was not certain how to proceed after accepting the irreconcilable idea of gender equity with my belief in the divine status of the Qur'an. Hidayatullah writes of new possibilities, but is not at all clear what those possibilities are for feminist Muslims. She suggests that we either revise our sense of justice as it pertains to gender or renounce the Qur'an as the unaltered word of God, both of which carry immense psychological burden on feminist Muslims. However, toward the end, Hidayatullah offers us a glimpse of what may be possible in the field of feminist exegesis of the Qur'an. One possibility that she wants to explore is treating sex as a fluid and a historically contingent concept, much like how feminist Muslims view gender. Here she relies on Joan Scott and Judith Butler's conceptions of sex, to forge a new avenue of a Qur'anic interpretation where sexual difference is viewed as a shifting relation of interdependence, rather than a binary. For example, because of a technological shift, men too can now feed their child. If sexual difference is treated as context-dependent then a woman's biological difference is no longer relevant to that particular context. Hidayatullah writes: Not only does this view of difference make it more difficult to divide the sexes hierarchally (since they are generative and mutually constitutive of one another), but it also allows for a scheme in which difference and equality are not opposed to one another (191). A fluid, contextualized view of sex can help us in reevaluating male-female hierarchy to account for the realities of inter-dependency. Verses that refer to nursing a child can be reexamined with a different sort of feminist lens. While I find her example hopeful, there is much more work to be done in order to interpret the Qur'an with conceptions of sexual differences as mutually and constitutionally interdependent, while still holding onto the text's divine status. For example, it is unclear how one would evaluate the verse on inheritance or the verse that asks for two female witnesses in place of one male in debt contract cases, without indulging in the same theoretical summersaults that Wadud partakes in order to quench ones feminist spirit. Hidayatullah acknowledges this point insofar that she states that theoretical ideas may not have practical import and that there is great uncertainty in where this sort of inquiry would lead (193, 194). Furthermore, the book lacked a Shia perspective and mentioned it only in passing. Shia Islam draws heavily on examples of women from the Prophet's time to contextualize the Qur'an and makes reference from certain verses to specific people from the Prophet's time. For example, according to Shia interpretation, in Surah Kausar (Chapter 108 of the Qur'an), Kausar refers to the daughter of the Prophet, and not to 'abundance' as Sunni interpretations claim. Some of the strong women whose lives guide Shia interpretation include Khadija binte Khuwaylid (the wife of the Prophet, who was an independent business woman, and first convert to Islam), Fatima binte Mohammad (daughter of the Prophet, who fought for her inheritance from the 1st Caliph after the Prophet's death and has a status of being free of sin – mausoom – within Shia Islam), and Zainab binte Ali (granddaughter of the Prophet, who is credited with securing the message of Islam through her courage in the face of the brutal 7th Caliph.) Similarly, Murtadha Mutahhari, a noted Shia theorist has distinguished between, what he terms as, identicalness and equality of rights. Mutahhari holds unwarranted assumptions about the 'innate' natures of men and women, a notion that Hidayatullah explicitly argues against in her conclusion. He also makes broad and hasty generalizations about the West. However, he too, like Hidayatullah, is wary of ideals situated within a particular socio-historical framework and reading them into a scripture meant for eternity. He writes: If we can begin to put aside the imitation and blind following of western philosophy ...we must see firstly whether identicalness of rights is or is not necessary for equality of rights. ...Equality means parity and equitableness, and identicalness means that they are exactly the same. It is possible that a father distributes his wealth equally and equitably among his sons but he may not distribute it identically. He distinguishes between social rights and family rights. A social right constitutes the public sphere, where men and women have equal and identical rights whereas family rights constitute the private sphere, where men and women have equal rights but not identical ones. However, Hidayatullah's lack of engagement with Shia interpretations is not in any way fatal to her analysis, but is merely indicative of a broader lack of serious engagement by mainstream Sunni scholars with the Shia school of thought. Overall, this book is indispensable for anyone wanting to have a richer understanding of how the Qur'an is read and interpreted within a feminist context. It is a wonderful synthesis of the work that has been done in the field thus far and provides tools necessary to seek out new avenues in understanding the Qur'an while still retaining a feminist spirit. Yet, in the end, this book does not disturb Muslim world order. It remains an overwhelming possibility for Hidayatullah that interpretations which hierarchally differentiate between men and women may not be wrong. There is a comforting sense of resignation, or at least an affirmation of the ambivalence that Muslim mothers have transmitted to their daughters for centuries. We, feminist Muslims, are left with the same ambiguity with which we started the book. However, we now have a much deeper understanding of the nature of that ambiguity, and that perhaps is worth embracing in itself. References: Ayatullah Mutahhari, Murtadha. 1980. The Rights of Women in Islam. Tehran, Iran: World Organization for Islamic Services. http://www.al-islam.org/rights-women-islam-ayatullahmurtadha-mutahhari (accessed October 16th, 2014). Wadud, Amina. 1999. Qur'an and Woman. New York: Oxford University Press


Philosophy

Cecilea discusses with Shelley Tremain her experience as a first-generation U.S. citizen and first-generation university graduate; why she was motivated to study philosophy and become a professional philosopher; the launching of the new, open access, online journal, the Journal of Philosophy of Emotions (JPE); the âmismatchâ between what she seemed like âon paperâ and what she is is capable of; how societal, institutional, professional, and philosophical practices and policies must be adjusted to enable others like her to flourish as professional philosophers; and any resourcesâsuch as articles, books, and videosâthat she would like to recommend on the topics and issues that she has addressed in this interview.

/19/2016 Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Cecilea Mun Hello, I'm Shelley Tremain and I'd like to welcome you to the nineteenth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy. My guest today is Cecilea Mun. Cecilea is a philosopher of emotion, currently at work on a manuscript entitled Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion: Unification Without Consilience. She is also putting together a proposal for an anthology entitledInterdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame: Theory, Method, Norms, Cultures, and Politics, for which she seeks a publisher, and will soon launch the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion, along with its associated Society for Philosophy of Emotion. Cecilea is seeking a full-time academic position that supports her research and currently works as a full-time adjunct at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, while spending quality time with her family. Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Cecilea! You are a first-generation U.S. citizen and first-generation university graduate. Please tell us about your personal and educational background, as well as why you were motivated to study philosophy and, ultimately, become a professional philosopher. Hello, Shelley and Everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to share my experiences. My father first visited the United States through a partnership between the U.S. Army and the Korean Army, eventually emigrating to the U.S. with my mother and older sister. Like many of us, he had various jobs, eventually landing a position with McDonald Douglas/Hughes Helicopters. My mother worked as a seamstress, starting off with piecework at home. She received something like twenty cents for each article of clothing that she sewed, but the job allowed her to be at home in order to take care of us when we were kids. She was eventually employed by the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, in their costuming/uniform department. My life as a first-generation U.S. citizen and university graduate echoes the narratives that reflect the lives of others like me. But, as the youngest of three, with about eleven years in age difference between my older sister and myself, my experiences were very different from my sister's. Like most immigrants, my parents worked very hard throughout their lives and they were very frugal with their money, trying to make sure that they used their money wisely. So my sister had a more difficult childhood than I did. I did not grow up under conditions of wealth and privilege, but my parents had more resources by the time I was born than when my older sister was growing up. In many ways, I owe a lot of thanks to my older sister for the kind of person that I am today. My sister was the first person in our family to earn a B.A. and, at the time, my parents did not realize the value of an Ivy-League education. So my sister had to rebel against my father in order to take advantage of her opportunity to go to Yale, even with a full ride. Things were quite difficult for her as a student because she had to pay for anything that wasn't covered by her scholarship. Despite her difficulties, what my sister learned, she brought back to us and shared with us. She was the person who introduced us to alternative cultures and experiences. She was the person who took me to my first play, musical, and art museum, and introduced me to many non-Korean, non-American foods. I love the arts and am a "foodie" because of her influence. My parents were unable to share these kinds of experiences with us, mostly because their experiences were limited and they did not have a lot of free time; they were doing their best to provide the "necessities" of life. Given the elitist culture of academia, the experiences that my sister shared with us were invaluable. As a side note, I think academia can retain the appreciation of culture as part of its ethos without being elitist about it. Rather than use the appreciation of culture as a weapon of marginalization-to mark those who are "in" and those who are "out"; those "in the know" and those "not in the know"-we can use the appreciation of culture as a way to build bridges across communities, even across other areas of the discipline and across other disciplines. What's important, I think, is that one has the appropriate intention-simply the desire to share valuable experiences with others as a way to establish a community. Of the three children in my family, I was the one that people would never have guessed would eventually become an academic (unless they knew me as a Lincoln-Douglas debater). Both my brother and my sister were high school valedictorians, both are Yale graduates, and my brother is also a Harvard graduate. My sister was the first in our family to earn a B.A. My brother was the first in our family to earn a M.A. Although I am the first in our family to earn a Ph.D., in contrast with my siblings, I was considered the "social butterfly" of the family and "not very studious." My intelligence was readily acknowledged, but that didn't mean much in my family since everyone else was intelligent. As a child, unbeknownst to me, I was enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program. I was never informed about the program, why I was in it, and that I was tested for it. I didn't find out until my junior or senior year of high school, when my high school guidance counsellor called me into his office and asked me why, given that I had such a high I.Q., my grades were not that great. Only then, did I find out that I had scored an I.Q. of 164 at the time of my testing. I had no answer at the time, but it angers me sometimes when I think about the fact that I was not fully informed, despite the fact that I was a child. I might have been more motivated to do well in school if I had known, not simply that I was intelligent, but that I was exceptionally so. Perhaps my disability would not have gone undetected until I became an adult. All that I knew as a child was that, unlike other students, I had "lessons"-the I.Q. assessments-outside of class and additional assignments that I had to complete in class. I was also enrolled in honors courses whenever the option was available, except during my senior year at Bishop Gorman high school, due to my unimpressive G.P.A. Although I was not a very remarkable student at Gorman, I was an outstanding Lincoln-Douglas debater. It was through speech and debate that I met some of the most kindred of spirits that I have known in my life. I was also introduced to philosophy, and fell in love with researching, writing argumentative papers, debating, public speaking, and teaching. I taught myself Lincoln-Douglas debate and eventually, during my junior and senior years, taught new team members. I also began to develop my leadership skills at this time. I was vice president of the speech and debate team in my junior year and president in my senior year, during which time our team was pretty successful. Our team was one of a few teams that almost always placed at any local tournament. We also did very well in out-of-state tournaments, including one at Stanford and one ASU. It was during my speech and debate years that I decided to become a philosopher. I had thought about what kind of profession would allow me to pursue the kinds of activities that I did as a Lincoln-Douglas debater. Philosophy was my answer. One might say that I studied philosophy for around twenty years, taking into account my speech and debate years in high school; but, I was actually introduced to my first philosophical problem around the age of five or so when my father showed me a picture of the old woman/young woman illusion and asked me what I saw. Interestingly enough, my answer became the basis of a section in my dissertation, though the section was later edited out because at least one committee member thought my point was too orthogonal to my dissertation's primary aims. Over the past year, you have worked diligently to introduce a new online, openaccess philosophy journal, the Journal of Philosophy of Emotions (JPE). What sorts of material do you hope to publish in it, and from whom? Why will this journal be an important addition to the range of journals already available? That is, what gap in the literature do you think that this journal fills? Currently, there are several psychological and interdisciplinary journals dedicated to publishing work on emotion and, recently, a journal that focuses on publishing work on the social-historical aspects of emotion was introduced. When I first envisaged the JPE, there was no journal that published work on the broad range of issues within the philosophy of emotion, including interests and concerns within metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, logic, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophies of marginalization, moral psychology, experimental philosophy, etc., as well as interests outside the discipline of philosophy, such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, and the arts. In other words, the JPE aims to publish high-quality manuscripts that address the questions and problems in the philosophy of emotion, strictly speaking, and that demonstrate how issues in the philosophy of emotion are relevant to other areas in the discipline and other disciplines, and vice versa. So, rather than "filling a gap in the literature," I see the JPE as providing a space where interdisciplinary pursuits in the philosophy of emotion can flourish. I think some readers and listeners might be interested to know how one initiates a new philosophy journal. What has brought you to the point at which you will circulate the journal's first call for papers this month? During my years as a graduate student, I noticed that although a lot of work was produced in the area of philosophy of emotion, there was no journal dedicated to this area. That was when I had the initial idea for a journal. At the time, however, I didn't have the resources or experience to pursue the idea any further. As I gained more experience as an academic, in general, and in publishing, in particular, I decided that I had what was needed to start a journal. So, I took a very business-oriented approach to the whole process. I conducted a market survey to gauge interest in the JPE. I enlisted the support of other scholars, which led to the establishment of the Society for Philosophy of Emotion; I researched other journals to use as models, spoke to publishers, and spent a lot of time developing it. (Thank you, by the way, for your support!) I was also motivated by my intention to fulfill what I saw to be a need within the academic publishing industry in philosophy. This intention inspired me to not only launch the JPE, but to also employ the JPE'sfully transparent, cooperative, openreview (FTCOR) process. Although all the articles and meditations that it publishes will undergo the FTCOR process, we plan to have a symposium in our inaugural issue for prominent scholars who work in the area of philosophy of emotion- primarily or as a related area- to share their thoughts about a range of ideas, including philosophy of emotion as an area of research, interdisciplinarity in philosophy of emotion, and their vision for the future of philosophy of emotion. Currently, seven accomplished scholars have made a commitment to contribute to the symposium and we hope to add a few more. It seems as if it would be a monumental feat for one person to initiate, develop, and launch the sort of well-organized and well-respected philosophy journal that the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion promises to be. You feel that your education and career history have, in some ways, been shaped by a "mismatch" (to use your term) between what you seem like "on paper," on the one side, and that of which you are capable, on the other. How would you describe this mismatch and to what do you attribute it? Thank you for the compliment, and yes, starting a new academic journal is not an easy task. I could not have done it without the help and support of my editorial assistants (especially Kalahan Stoker, who has worked with me from the initiation of the project) associate editors, and the Society for Philosophy of Emotion. I don't have any regrets and I will do my best to help fulfill its aims; however, starting a journal from scratch is not something that I would recommend to anyone, although I wouldn't necessarily stop anyone from doing so. In regard to the mismatch between my G.P.A. and my abilities, due to my A.D.D., and the fact that I was not diagnosed until I became an adult, there is a mismatch in my academic history between what I seem like "on paper," that is, my grades and what I am capable of. Nowadays, this discrepancy might have indicated to some people that I have a learning disability, but back in the day, there was- especially on the West coast-very little talk of A.D.D. For those who are not aware of what A.D.D. is, I should explain that it's not simply a deficit in attention or focus. Rather, the underlying difficulty is a deficit in "executive control," which is involved in focus, attention, impulse control, and general decision-making. There are motivational issues as well. In regard to the mismatch between what I "looked like on paper" and what I am capable of, I believe the motivational issue was a significant factor. For people with A.D.D., it is difficult to complete a task or project if they are not appropriately motivated to do so. I realize that this can be true for people in general, just as it is true that people in general can get depressed; but, like depression, for people with A.D.D., the circumstances are heightened: sometimes it is almost impossible to complete a task if we are not interested in it or it is not challenging in some way. This factor presented a problem for me as a student because I found it difficult to motivate myself to complete my schoolwork. Unless some particular subject matter really caught my interest, I waited till the last minute to complete projects, or I purposely challenged myself. For example, while I got a C (I believe) in my Advanced Placement (AP) History course, I scored a four on my AP History exam. My brother took the same course before me and had done very well; so, I felt like I had a reputation to live up to. My parents also had a difficult time figuring out how to properly motivate me. They didn't realize that what I required was a really good reason to do something. This is pretty much the case with everything I do except when I decide that I don't, such as occasions when I am ambivalent about something or when I allow myself to be impulsive just to remind myself that, yes, I do have freewill (à la Kant). Simply getting good grades was not a good enough reason for me when I was in high school. By the time I figured out my own good reason to get good grades-namely, to be a professional philosopher-it was a bit too late. So, after high school, I did what I could, given my unimpressive G.P.A, to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy: I attended my local university, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, at which I earned a B.A. in philosophy and a M.A. in Ethics and Policy Studies. I then moved on to Arizona State University, where I earned a M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy. My A.D.D. may explain not only my unimpressive academic history on paper, but also my broadly ranging capacities and ability to quickly adapt or respond to a variety of circumstances. Apart from the effects of my A.D.D. on my reading and writing when left untreated, it's difficult for me to pry apart my A.D.D., my intelligence, and my passion for philosophy. I am-and I know this sounds cliché-a philosopher. Being a philosopher is not something that I do only part of the time, after which time I go home and do something else. I became a philosopher because it allows me to be myself, to my fullest potential; and it can provide me with an environment in which I can feel "normal." To me, being a philosopher is not necessarily about what theories and facts one knows; it's about how one thinks. I can't help but find the world and people interesting. I can't help but want to know more and to solve problems. I have a need to systematize, organize, and tie off loose ends in order to understand things and remember them. I also enjoy thinking about processes, possibilities, and thinking at various levels of abstraction. These are some of the reasons why my dissertation was on the foundations of interdisciplinary research for the science of emotion, and also why, if I were to say that I had one area of specialization, it would be the philosophy of emotion. Both interdisciplinary research and the philosophy of emotion give me the freedom that I need to explore, make sense of, teach, and contribute to solving various problems. All of this might also be the reason why I took what some might believe to be a considerable amount of time to complete my Ph.D. At this point, however, I think I've done enough to almost make up for what I did not do when I was younger due to the fact that my A.D.D. went undetected and untreated. So, I think that although my A.D.D. has shaped my career history, it will cease to significantly influence my future career trajectory, especially since my disability has been identified. I was also advised by a very prominent philosopher that search committees focus more on who one's advisers were, what one has accomplished besides earning one's degree, and one's demonstrated potential for research, rather than on one's G.P.A. or the institution at which one's degree was conferred. How must societal, institutional, professional, and philosophical practices and policies be adjusted to enable others like you to flourish as professional philosophers? This is a really difficult question because there are many things that ought to be changed and so many things that need to be considered. So I'll preface my response with the qualification that it is from a limited perspective, given my status as an early-career, junior philosopher. First, I think it's important to acknowledge that regardless of our discipline's and academia's goal of diversification, professional academics constitute an exclusive community. Not everyone can do what professional academics do, and not everyone wants to or should want to. This is one reason why professional academics belong to "disciplines" (to be contrasted with the "institutions" with which we are affiliated). It takes years of study and practice to succeed in any academic discipline. Like all other work, it is mentally and physically exhausting to do our work well. Not everyone will be able to perform in such a way that will allow them to flourish as professional academics in their chosen discipline. This does not lessen one's value as a person nor afford anyone the right to treat someone with less respect. It is simply a reason that one ought to take into consideration when deciding whether or not a professional life as an academic is one that would make them happy. Some may be happier as lawyers, stay-at-home parents, business professionals, construction workers, artists, etc. Such professions are also mentally and physically exhausting, and not everyone will be able to perform in these professions as well in such a way that will allow them to flourish. This is one reason why a professional academic does not have less or more worth than someone who is not an academic. Furthermore, there are many reasons that explain why some people choose an alternative path after pursuing an academic profession, and we have no right or authority to judge them for doing so. Second, we need to acknowledge that the exclusivity of academia is not in itself a factor when addressing the problem of diversifying academia. Two related problems are the implicit biases that have been surreptitiously at work and the elitist attitude to which various academics believe that they are entitled simply as a consequence of academia's exclusivity, ranking system, and their place in both, as well as what they take as good indicators of a successful academic-for example, one's institutional affiliation or one's rank. It is possible for an exclusive community to employ a ranking system without also committing acts of recognitional injustice. It is possible to equally value each member of a community without also assuming that each member should have an equal share of responsibilities, that each member should have an equal amount of authority in a community's decision-making process, or that each member ought to produce the same quality of work although every member ought to try to achieve their best. Third, in terms of establishing academic ranks, I believe institutions should offer the option of a fully transparent, open-tenure review to their tenure candidates, and that review committees ought to be constituted by members who have good working knowledge of both the tenure candidate's work and the area within which they work. I also believe that institutions should give equal weight to the balance of the quality and number of a candidate's publication and a candidate's academic service. Due to my A.D.D., I will never be as prolific as some philosophers; however, I can ensure that the quality of what I can and do produce, or what I contribute in terms of academic service, can compete with some of the best. Fourth, I believe it's important for everyone to recognize that imperfection does not diminish the value of one's contribution; and no one is in fact perfect. This fact is readily acknowledged for nondisabled white male academics by their fellow academics, by staff members, and students; however, it is rarely, if ever, extended to disabled, minority professors, especially when one's disability is not outwardly visible. I now make it a point to tell my students about my disability and I believe doing so has helped; but, for various reasons, including considerations of privacy, neither I, nor anyone else in my situation, should be compelled to do so in order to receive the kind of understanding that my students who are aware of my disability have given me, understanding that white male professors are typically given from the start. Regardless of my disability, if I am standing there in front of you, teaching the course for which you registered, I earned my way there, and my intermittent typos and misspoken words-which I try to quickly correct-do not negate that fact. Furthermore, the simple fact that, at times, I make mistakes does not necessarily imply that the error is mine in every case of miscommunication. In short, everyone should practice the principle of charity, not only in reading someone's work, but also when making any judgments about a person's character, potential, whether or not the person has anything of value to teach them, and even when listening to someone speak. Fifth, there needs to be a shift in the attitudes that some students hold when they take courses from any professor, but especially when they take a course with a disabled, minority professor. Students need to understand that they are not in competition with their professor; that finding some fault with a professor's argument, fact, or writing-especially at the risk of assuming an uncharitable interpretation-does not establish them as superior to their professor. They need to understand that their professor is there to help them, rather than hinder them, and that in most cases, when they refuse to be open to the value of their professor's teachings, even if their professors sometimes make mistakes, that they are in fact standing in the way of their own success and progress, not anyone else's. Students, of course, should not refrain from questioning an argument or a proposed fact, but this should be understood as challenging an argument or fact, rather than professors themselves. The intention that ought to motivate students is the desire to be a part of a cooperative pursuit for truth. Intentions make a difference. Sixth, there needs to be a shift in the attitudes that some professors and staff members take when interacting with each other and any student, especially when one of them is a disabled minority. Professors and staff members should approach relevant interactions in a way that is motivated by their desire to allow others to be a part of a cooperative pursuit for truth. When I interact with my students, I assume that regardless of what they actually say or write, they had in mind, or intended to say, something that is coherent, reasonable, or sensible. I assume that if there was a lack of clarity in what they actually said or wrote, this lack is primarily due to some misunderstanding with the definition of a term, a limitation in their vocabulary, or the use of a problematic rule of inference. So, rather than immediately reply with a negative response, I typically follow up with questions in order to get a better idea of what my students might have in mind, offering a charitable interpretation of what they said as a way to establish an intersubjective perspective that allows a lack in clarity to be brought to light. Seventh, there needs to be a societal shift in how we, as members of our society, understand the value of education. Not everyone needs a B.A. to flourish. For some, perhaps many, a technical degree may serve them better than a liberal arts education; but every member of a society should be taught and encouraged to communicate clearly, read carefully, think critically, and to take the time to focus on quality (to the best of their ability), rather than quantity, in various aspects of life, especially in learning how to think and communicate with clarity. To do so requires time and patience, which is not available to any educator who is burdened with an excessive number of students or service responsibilities. So, our society needs to realize the value of funding education, and school administrators need to invest in securing and maintaining the quality of what professional academics and staff members do by providing them with what they need, including time, to do their jobs well. Are there resources-such as articles, books, and videos-that you would like to recommend on the topics and issues that you have addressed in this interview? Thank you for this question. Yes, there are a few resources that have helped me avoid the various hazards and pitfalls of academia, and life in general, that I would like to share. First, Mindset by Carol Dweck, which provides a framework for thinking about oneself and one's abilities that would allow one to approach life and interact with others in ways that encourage, rather than hinder, not only one's own flourishing, but also the flourishing of others. Second, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Sharon L. Lechter and Robert T. Kivosaki. Along with the lessons my parents taught me, it has helped me immensely with using my money wisely. For example, it helped put some of what I might have considered to be "extravagant spending" into perspective by allowing me to understand how spending a little more upfront on various key items in order to ensure quality is more cost effective in the long run. Third, How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich, which is a great introduction to the various errors people make simply by virtue of being human and provides a very good foundation for critical thinking and reasoning. I've used this book in the past for my critical thinking and reasoning courses, and I might do so in the future. Fourth, any number of text-to-voice applications or PDF readers to help with reading comprehension (not as a substitution for reading) and proof reading. What I like to do, especially with very long readings or writings, is to use these applications to help me quickly review a reading during a long commute or to help me proof read my work by listening as my writing is read to me and following along, reading the text, and catching any grammatical errors or awkward passages. Thank you again, Shelley. I hope this interview and resources help in some way! Cecilea, thank you for your very instructive and provocative remarks throughout this interview. I'm sure that your colleagues have learned a great deal from them. Readers/listeners are invited to use the Comments section below to respond to Cecilea Mun's remarks about learning disability, ask questions about forthcoming issues of the Journal of Emotion, and so on. Comments will be moderated. As always, although signed comments are encouraged and preferred, anonymous comments may be permitted. _________________________________________ Please join me here again on Wednesday, November 16th at 8 a.m. EST for the twentieth installment of the Dialogues on Disability series and, indeed, on every third Wednesday of the months ahead. I have a fabulous line-up of interviews planned. If you would like to nominate someone to be interviewed (selfnominations are welcomed), please feel free to write me at email@example.com. I prioritize diversity with respect to disability, class, race, gender, institutional status, nationality, culture, age, and sexuality in my selection of interviewees and my scheduling of interviews.


Deference and self-knowledge

Philosophy

DEFERENCE AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE Henry Jackman University of Toledo It has become increasingly popular to suggest that non-individualistic theories of content1 undermine our purported apriori knowledge of such contents because they entail that we lack the ability to distinguish our thoughts from alternative thoughts with different contents. However, problems relating to such knowledge of 'comparative' content tell just as much against individualism as non-individualism. Indeed, the problems presented by individualistic theories of content for self-knowledge are at least, if not more, serious than those presented by non-individualistic theories. Consequently, considerations of self-knowledge give one no reason to embrace individualism. If anything, they give one reason to reject it. That there should be a tension between non-individualistic theories of content and self-knowledge is not surprising. If features of our (physical and) social environment contribute to the contents of our thoughts,2 and we don't have apriori access to these features, then it would seem that we should lack apriori access to the content of our own thoughts.3 An influential reply to this sort of worry was provided by Tyler Burge, who stressed that our judgments about our thoughts have their contents determined by the very same external factors that determine the content of our 'first-level thoughts'. Consequently, 'second level' thoughts such as "I am thinking that water is wet" will always be true.4 Since the very same factors that determine the contents of our thoughts also determine the content of our judgments about these thoughts, the fact that we may not be authoritative about these factors does not prevent our judgments about the contents of our thoughts from being authoritative. However, even if we did have this type of 'reflexive' knowledge of content, there is still a type ofself-knowledge that the non-individualist can' t claim that we have. Namely, the non-individualist cannot claim that we have knowledge of comparative content.5 Even if we know that our thoughts about our current thoughts must be true, we still may not know that we are having, say, water-thoughts rather than twater-thoughts.6 Without such knowledge of 'comparative content, ' it might seem as ifwe can' t know what we are thinking. As Brueckner puts it: I claim to know that I am thinking that some water is dripping. If I know that I am thinking that some water is dripping, then I know that I am not Henry Jackman thinking, instead, that some twater is dripping. But I do not know that I am not thinking that some twater is dripping, since, according to externalism, if I were on twin earth thinking that some twater is dripping, things would seem exactly as they now seem (and have seemed). So I do not know that I am thinking that some water is dripping.7 However, to know what our thoughts are, we need not distinguish them from every possible thought that we might have in alternate environments. The fact that I could not distinguish my parents from their twin earth counterparts (were such counterparts to exist and be switched with my parents), does not change the fact that I know my parents when I see them. Such possible counterparts are not alternatives that I need to rule out when I claim to know that, say, my parents are in the roomwith me. In much the same way, possible twater-thoughts are not the sorts of things I need to rule out when I claim to know that, say, I am thinking that some water is dripping. One need only rule out relevant alternatives, and since there is no twin earth (or if there is one, since we have no contact with it), twaterthoughts are not relevant alternatives of the sort that would undermine self-knowledge. Knowledge of comparative content does not, then, seem necessary for knowledge of content.8 Paul Boghossian, however, has provided an argument that suggests that a lack of knowledge of comparative content can undermine our knowledge of content.9 For instance, non-individualism would seem to lead to the following sort of problem case. Assume that Smith is an inhabitant ofEarth, and thus that his 'water' thoughts are about water. If Smith is then moved to Twin Earth without his knowledge, then after a number of years his 'water' thoughts will come to be about twater. 10 Even if a number of such switches are made, his judgments about his current thought contents will always be self-verifying in the way that Burge suggests. Nevertheless, ifhe is informed of the switches, but not of the precise times of their occurrences, he will not be able to tell whether last year' s 'water' -thoughts were waterthoughts or twater-thoughts. The significance of this, Boghossian claims, sterns from the following "platitude about memory and knowledge:" If S knows that p at tl, and if at (some later time) t2, S remembers everything S knew at Tl, then S knows that p at t2. Now let us ask: why does S not know today whether yesterday's thought was a water thought or a twater thought? The platitude insists that there are only two possible explanations: either S has forgotten or he never knew." Since it is extremely implausible to think that Smith has forgotten anything in such a case, Boghossian concludes that, in spite of the self-verifying character of his self-ascriptions, Smith does not know the content of his 'water' thoughts. There has been considerable controversy over just what Boghossian's 172 Deference and Self-Knowledge argument shows. Many admit that in cases such as Smith's, where 'switching' actually occurs, twater-thoughts are a relevant alternative to water-thoughts, and so an inability to rule them out would undermine selfknowledge. Non-individualism would thus seem to rule out our necessarily knowing the contents of our own thoughts. This is, itself, a non-trivial conclusion that would rule out standard 'Cartesian' conceptions of our knowledge of our minds. Nevertheless, many insist that such 'slowswitching' cases rarely, if ever, occur, and when they don't, the alternate contents still are not relevant alternatives that need to be ruled out. 12 Nonindividualism might thus still be compatible with our actually having a priori knowledge of the contents of our thoughts. Others, however, have argued that (especially ifone accepts the sorts ofnon-individualistic content attributions associated with Burge' s work) 'switching' cases are fairly common. Peter Ludlow, for instance, argues that, if the non-individualist is right, the contents of our thoughts may change without our noticing whenever we move between linguistic (sub)communities who attach differentmeanings to the same terms. Such movement may be fairly common, and so switching cases could present relevant alternatives that actually undermine self-knowledge. 13 Indeed, it has been suggested that, switching cases are prevalent enough for the 'switched thoughts' to be relevant alternatives even in those cases where no switching occurs. 14 If counterfeit coins become generally prevalent they are a relevant alternative to real coins even in contexts where there are no counterfeit coins actually present. 15 In much the same way, if our concepts 'switch' frequently, then ' switched' alternatives are relevant even for those concepts that have never switched. To know the content ofany of our thoughts we would have to rule out the possibility of their involving switched concepts, and that is not something that we can do apriori. Nonindividualistic accounts of content would thus lead not only to possible failures of self-knowledge, but also to our actually lacking apriori knowledge of our own thought contents. The purported prevalence of slow switching suggests that without knowledge of comparative content, knowledge of content is undermined. Nevertheless, even if the prevalence of such unperceived content switches is enough to undermine self-knowledge, this does not give one reason to be an individualist rather than a non-individualist about content. After all , the possibility that the contents of a speaker' s thoughts could change without the speaker being aware of it is hardly a problem that is unique to non-individualistic accounts ofcontent. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case. For instance, consider the following quotation from Boghossian 173 Henry Jackman about a speaker, S, who believes that he has always lived on earth, but who has undergone aseries of slow switches between earth and twin earth. If someone were to ask him,just after one set oftwin-earthian concepts has been displaced by a set of earthian ones, whether he has recently thought thoughts involving an arthritis-like concept distinct from arthritis, S would presumably say "no." And yet, of course, according to the antiindividualist story, he has. His knowledge ofhis own past thoughts seems very poor, but not presumably because he simply can't remember them. Could it be because he never knew?16 Boghossian's point may be telling, but one could ask precisely the same question about what the individualist must say when Bert defers to his doctor's use of"arthritis."17 The non-individualist allows that Bert's arthritis-concept need not change when his doctor corrects his belief that people can get arthritis in theirthighs. The individualist, on the other hand, typically insists that what Bert' s concept has changed when he accepts the correction. Bert now, like us, has an arthritis-concept. However, before being corrected, he had a tharthritis-concept (tharthritis being much like arthritis, but also occurring in the thigh).18 This leaves the individualist open to precisely the sorts of rhetorical questions raised by Boghossian above. After all: If someone were to ask Bert, just after his idiosyncratic ' arthritis' concept has been displaced by the standard one, whether he has recently thought thoughts involving an arthritis-like concept distinct from arthritis, he would presumably say "no." And yet, of course, according to the individualist story, he has. His knowledge of his own past thoughts seems very poor, but not presumably because he simply can't remember them. Could it be because he never knew?19 Such unacknowledged changes in content will be extremely common ifthe individualist' s account of content is correct. Indeed, one of the purported advantages of non-individualistic accounts of content is precisely that they seem to make content comparatively stahle.2o Since we typically don't perceive ourselves as changing what we mean when we deferto correction, individualistic accounts ofcontent suggest that our deference behavior manifests a lack of self-knowledge on our part. For instance, after being corrected Bert will admit that he previously falsely believed that he had arthritis in his thigh. Consequently, the individualist who insists that he actually had a true belief about having tharthritis in his thigh will have to say that Bert is mistaken aboutwhat he believed in the past. Giyen that, by the individualist' s lights, Bert clearly doesn' t now know what concept he had prior to his correction, and given that it is implausible to suggest that he has forgotten anything in the interim, the individualist should conclude that Bert didn't know that he was thinking tharthritis-thoughts 174 Deference and Self-Knowledge while he was thinking them. It seems, then, that whenever we (are disposed to) defer to the usage around us, the individualist must claim that we are disposed to misidentify the contents of our own thoughts.21 The argument for the incompatibility of non-individualism and self-knowledge presupposes that knowledge of comparative content is necessary for knowledge of content. However, since we often think that the concepts associated with our words remain unchanged in circumstances where the individualist must insist that they have changed, the individualist must deny that we have knowledge of comparative content in such cases.22 Furthermore, the sorts of deference cases that cause problems for the individualist will be more prevalent than the switching cases that cause problems for the non-individualist. Deference seems relevant whenever we use a word in a fashion that is different from someone who' s correction we are disposed to defer to. Given that we may be willing to alter our usage in deference to experts with most of our terms, it might seem as if the individualist is committed to our not knowing any of our concepts.23 If the people to whom we are inclined to defer to are prevalent enough, then the sorts of alternate concepts that they bring are relevant alternatives even in those cases when no correction and deference occurs. Our mere disposition to defer when 'corrected' in a persuasive fashion is enough to undermine our self-knowledge. lust as the non-individualist' s problems with self-knowledge are not limited to those cases where we have actually switched concepts, the individualist's problems are not limited to those cases where we actually defer to correction.24 In addition to this, those who suggest that switching cases are prevalent enough to make them a relevant alternative even in those cases where no switching actually occurs may be overestimating how much switching the non-individualist is committed to. For instance, it has been suggested that the non-individualist is committed to one' s undergoing a 'switch' every time one spends time in (and is inclined to defer to) a new group that uses one's words in a way different than how they had been used in one's old group.25 However, if my disposition to defer to the correction of an Englishman about my use of 'chicory' depends upon my being unaware that the English and American usages differ with respect to that term, then the disposition itself is not enough to commit the non-individualist to my concepts shifting. Things may be different if I actually engage in a significant amount of ' chicory' discussion in England without having any more in North America, but merely being in England will not be enough to alter the content of my chicory thoughts. 26 Switches may happen, but they will be less common than some might think. 175 Henry Jackman An argument for prevalence of switching cases that is tied more closely to changes in one' s physical environment is provided by Keith Butler, who reasons as folIows: Assume (what I believe to be true) that there are subtle differences in constitution, too small really for non-expert cola drinkers to notice, between the colas sold by a certain brand X in Europe, and the colas sold by that same brand X in the U.S.; there are, in other words, E-colas and Ucolas. Now imagine that S is an average cola drinker who has spent a fair amount of time in both Europe and the U.S., and has all the while been ignorant of the systematic differences between E-colas and U-colas. Externalism seems to entail that S will have developed, unwittingly, two concepts, one ofE-colas and one ofU-colas. But suppose that S thinks the thought she would express as "colas taste good". What concept, according to externalism, is deployed in this thought? Regardless of which concept is in fact featured, it is clear that the other would be a relevant alternative. So, if S cannot tell the difference between E-cola-thoughts and U-colathoughts, S cannot know the contents of her thoughts; such is the dictate of externalism.27 Butler goes on to suggest that similar arguments can be generated for beers, pizzas, flowers and any kinds in which "come in sub-varieties that bear superficial similariti"es to each other, but are nonetheless of different lowerorder types."28 Butler's argument, however, presupposes that, say, "ColaX" should be treated as a natural kind term, when it more plausibly viewed as picking out a (for lack of a better word) "corporate kind." lust as a riyal companies 'knock-off' brand would not be Cola-X even if it had precisely the same formula, the European version oftheCola-X can still be ofthe same kind even if its internal make up is slightly different from the American version. What would produce a 'switch' would be ifthe "Cola-X" in Europe were produced by a completely different corporate entity that stumbled on the same name by coincidence. Such cases would, however, be far less frequent than the sort Butler imagines. A similar reply could be given for all of the purported cases ofnon-social switching that Butler presents, so the claim that the switching cases are prevalent for the non-individualist is still open to doubt.29 The worry that unperceived changes are prevalent enough to make the alternate concepts relevant alternatives even when no change actually occurs is, then, if anything, more pressing if one is an individualist. Knowledge of content nlay thus seenl problematic whether one is an individualist or not.30 Nevertheless, if we nlust leam to live with our lack ofself-knowledge, it seemsmuch easier to do so within a non-individualistic framework. After all, since the non-individualist allows that our contents 176 Deference and Self-Knowledge are pal1ially determined by facts about things 'extemal' to us, our occasional lack of knowledge about our thought contents can be explained in terms of our ignorance of such facts. 31 The non-individualist can explain the speaker' s beliefthat his concept hasn't changed in terms ofhis ignorance of the fact that his physical or social environment has changed in a relevant way. However, it isn' t clear that there is a similar factual mistake that the individualist can appeal to explain the speaker' s belief that his concept hasn't changed in terms ofhis ignorance ofthe fact that his physical or social environment has changed in a relevant way. However, it isn' t clear that there is a similar factual mistake that the individualist can appeal to explain the speaker' s mistake about his thought contents in deference cases. When Bert now claims that he had a false belief about arthritis, there is currently no factual mistake he can be said to make about what is going on around hirn. His purported mistake about the content of his earlier thought seems selfstanding. While the non-individualist may have to admit that ignorance of fact can sometimes lead to mistakes about meaning and content, the individualist seems forced to say that we are sometimes simply mistaken about the content of our thoughts. The non-individualist can explain our mistakes in terms ofmistakes about the world, the individualist must explain them in terms of mistakes about the nature of meaning and content.32 In conclusion, the explanation of the intuition that there is a tension between non-individualism and self-knowledge relies on the assumption that knowledge of comparative content is needed for knowledge of content (at least whenever the 'compared' contents were relevant). However, if this is the source ofthe tension, then the individualist seems even worse offthan the non-individualist. Considerations of self-knowledge, while often presented as one of the stronger considerations in favor of individualism, may actually provide us with a compelling reason to reject it. Notes 1 Such theories are often also referred to as "externalistic" or "anti-individualistic". My reasons for preferring "non-individualistic" can be found in Jackman 1996, 1998. 2 As suggested in Putnam 1975 and Burge 1979. 3 See Woodfield 1982, p. viii. 4 "Knowledge of one's own mental events ... consists in a reflexive judgment which involves thinking a first-order thought that the judgment itself is about. The reflexive judgment simply inherits the content of the first order thought. Consider the thought, 'I hereby judge that water is a liquid.' What one needs in order to think this thought knowledgeably is to be able to think the first-order, empirical thought (that water is a liquid) and to ascribe it to oneself, simultaneously. Knowing one's 177 Henry Jackman thoughts no more requires separate investigation of the conditions that make the judgment possible than knowing what one perceives." (Burge 1988, p. 118. See also Davidson 1987.) S See Flavey and Owens 1994, Butler 1997, Boghossian 1989. 6 That is, the thoughts one would have had one acquired one' s language on 'Twin Earth" (a planet just like ours other than that the 'water' is made up of a chemical compound XYZ rather than H20). (See Putnam 1975.) 7 Brueckner 1990, p. 448. See also: The idea is that a pair of intemally identical twins on earth and twin earth respectively have different but, as far as they can tell, indistinguishable substances, which they both call " water," in their environments; so, given externalism, they have different 'water' -concepts and 'water' -thoughts. Since they have different thoughts without really being able to tell the difference, they do not fully know what their own thoughts are. (Bilgrami 1992b, p. 235.) 8 See Flavey andOwens 1994. Boghossian 1989 also endorses such a response to the suggestion that the mere possibility of, say, someone having twater thoughts, is enough to undermine self knowledge. 9 Boghossian 1989. 10 This assumption will be accepted here for the sake of argument, but it strikes me as implausible to suppose that natural kind terms 'switch' in this fashion (rather than becomingmore general tenns that can be applied in both environments). In this sense they are not like proper names, which are less weIl suited for this soft of generalization of their extension. 11 Boghossian 1989, pp.171-2. The idea that the switching could be fast enough to make problematic our connection to yesterday's 'water' thoughts may strike many as implausible, but this doesn 't affect the general point. Of course some may reject the dilemma by questioning Boghossian's assumptions about how memory should be treated if one is a non-individualist. (See, for instance, Ludlow 1996, Brueckner 1997.) 12 See, for instance Warfield 1992. 13 Ludlow 1995. See also Butler 1997. 14 As Butler puts it, "circumstances that tend to occur give rise to relevant alternatives, even if they do not actually occur in a particular instance, simply because their general prevalence indicates that they might easily have occurred." (Butler 1997, p. 780.) IS See Ludlow 1995, pp. 226-7. 16 Boghossian, p. 160. 17 Burge 1979. 18 See, for instance, Bilgrami 1992a, p.80. 190ne might wonder, as in Boghossian' s case, whether questions about whether they were "thinking thoughts with slightly different concepts" would get any clear answer from Bert if he were not a philosopher. Nevertheless, the fact that he thinks of his last hours' belief that he had arthritis in his thigh as fa/se suggests that he is committed to the concepts being unchanged. 178 Deference and Self-Knowledge 20 For a discussion of this, see Jackman 1996, 1998. 21 Furthermore, things are even worse if one is committed to the sort of internalism characteristic of, say, conceptual role semanties. In that case it may seem that, in spite of their perceived constancy, the concepts associated with a term will change every time there is a change in the set of beliefs involving it. (For a discussion of this, see Fodor aLepore 1992.) 22 It should not be surprising, then, that defenders of individualism occasionally argue that when we defer to standard usage, we do not understand ourselves as having had false beliefs or as having misapplied our own terms, but rather as having spoken a language ill-suited to our communicative interests. (See, for instance, Bilgrami 1992a, pp. 79-89, 110). However, as a general psychological claim, saying that deference is a response to such a norm relating explicitly to our desire to communicate has little plausibility. 23 One should note that the problem cases for the individualist are not limited to those in which we are actually out ofline with our communities usage. We may be disposed to defer to people who are not actually authoritative about the terms in our language (either because they have no real expertise, or that they are experts, but not in our own community). 24 Or for the conceptual role semanticists, those cases where we actually revise our beliefs. 25 "Take, for example, a native speaker ofAmerican English, S, who travels to Britain and stays for an extended period oftime; suppose she takes'chicory' to mean the same in British English as it does in American English, though she has only incomplete knowledge of the meaning of the term; according to Burge and Putnam, she then defers to her language community, particularly the 'experts,' who fix the meaning of the term. As a matter of fact, however, 'chicory' means something different in American and British English. Because S' s language community has become relevantly different, S is a victim of slow switching." (Butler 1997, p. 778. For a more guarded description of such cases, see Ludlow 1995, pp. 227-8.) 26 Furthermore, if I continually 'switch' between the communities, it is likely that the meaning ofthe term will become indeterminate. Why this may happen, and why simply being in a new community that one is inclined to defer to is not enough to produce a content switch can be seen if the cases are understood in the framework suggested by Evans 1973, and discussed in more detail in Jackman 1996. 27 Butler 1997, p. 779. 28 Butler 1997, p. 779. 29 Butler does point that non-individualists are rarely forthcoming about how one should pick out the relevant sorts of kind (p. 780), and 1try to do so in Jackman 1996. 30 Boghossian 1989 draws a similar conclusion, but for different reasons. 31 Within such a framework it seems preferable to explain why our judgments are authoritative rather than how we know our contents. 179 Henry Jackman Works Cited Bilgrami, A. 1992a, Belief and Meaning, Cambridge: Blackwell. Bilgrami, A. 1992b, "Can Externalism Be Reconciled with Self-Knowledge?" Philosophical topics 20: 223-267 Boghossian, P. 1989, "Contentand Self-Knowledge", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998. Brueckner, A. 1990. "Skepticism and Knowledge ofContent." Mind 99: 447-451. Brueckner, A. 1997. "Externalism and Memory", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998 Burge, T. 1979. "Individualism and the Mental", in French, Uehling & Wettstein, Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV: Studies in Metaphysics, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1979. Burge, T. 1988, Individualism and self knowledge", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998 Butler, K. 1997. "Externalism, Internalism, and Knowledge or Content", Philosophy and Phenomenlogogical Research vol. LVII no. 4. Davidson, D. 1987, "Knowing One's Own Mind", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998 Davidson, D. 1989. "TheMyth ofthe Subjective", in Krausz, M. (ed.). Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1989. Davidson, D. 1994. "Donald Davidson", in Guttenplan, S. (ed.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994. Falvey, K. and Owens, J. 1994. "Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and Skepticism", The Philosophical Review, vol. 103, 00. 1. Evans, G. 1973. "TheCausal Theory ofNames", inEvans, G. Collected Papers, New York: OUP, 1985. Fodor, J. and Lepore, E. 1992. Holism: a shopper's guide, Cambridge: Blackwell. Jackman, H. 1996. Semantic Norms and Temporal Externalism, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pittsburgh. Jackman, H. 1998. "Individualism and Interpretation" Southwest Philosophy Review, V.14, n. 1, Jan 1998. Ludlow, P. 1995, "Externalism, Self-Knowledge and the Prevalence of Slow Switching", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998 Ludlow, P. 1996. "Externalism and Memory: A Problem?" reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998 Ludlow and Martin (eds.), 1998, Externalism and Self-Knowledge, Stanford: CLSI Publications. Putnam, H. 1975. "TheMeaning of 'Meaning"', in Putnam, H. Mind Language and Reality, New York: CUP, 1975. Warfield, T. 1992, "Privileged Self-Knowledge and Externalism are Compatible", reprinted in Ludlow and Martin 1998. Woodfield, A. 1982. "Introduction" to Woodfield, A. (ed.). Thought and Object, New York: OUP, 1882.


Harmonising physis and techne: the mediating role of philosophy

Philosophy

EDITOR LETTER Harmonising Physis and Techne: The Mediating Role of Philosophy Luciano Floridi Published online: 27 January 2011 # Springer-Verlag 2011 An interesting way of looking at the history of cultures is in terms of the increasing distance of human life from the natural course of events, thanks to an everthickening layer of technological mediations. A culture (not necessarily a good culture, let alone a civilization) emerges when a society is able to detach itself from the physical world (physis), and generate sufficient resources to express itself with some stability. From the division of labour to sheer oppression, from the invention of tools to the creation of weapons, there must be at least a fissure between surviving and living, where the seeds of a culture can take root non-ephemerally. A culture therefore can be pre-historical (no recordings) but hardly pre-technological; "hardly" because, exceptionally, such breaking away from physis may be achievable by barehanded individuals in unaided contexts. In theory, nothing prevents extraordinary people from planting some cultural seeds even when life is flattened into survival twodimensionally, here and now. In practice, however, cultures tend to emerge and flourish only behind the dam provided by some techne. Even embittered stylites need pillars on which to stand, and peasants to bring food. Once cultures are sufficiently advanced to be able to reflect critically on their technological conditions of possibility, they seem to encounter two traps. One is the trap of nostalgia for some primordial authenticity. It leads a culture to believe that the future could improve if only there were no dam. Pristine nature, virgin phenomena and the humanly untouched are seen, from the safe distance afforded by techne itself and the accumulation of its benefits, as the regulative ideal one should at least aspire to implement. Physis appears as the promised land, lost because of techne, and hence progressively reclaimable only through the increasing removal of the latter. With a caricature: if only technology could be eradicated, our problems would be solved. Aristotle has a wonderful analogy that can be borrowed to chastise such illusion: it is as foolish as the dove's, which believed it could fly faster if there were no air. Philos. Technol. (2011) 24:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s13347-010-0012-5 L. Floridi (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK e-mail: email@example.com The other trap is the hubris of ultimate power. In this case, a better future allegedly lies in ever smarter and more efficient uses of physis. The space on the other side of the dam is now seen as a reservoir of resources, which techne can appropriate and process more and more effectively. The other caricature in the diptych suggests that our problems would be solved if only we had more and better technologies. In this case, Hegel provides the insightful analogy which can be recycled to expose the mistake: the mastery culture foolishly fails to grasp that its increased technological reliance on the resources of the enslaved physis inevitably leads to the empowerment of the latter and its ultimate rebellion. Predictably, physis will take revenge, if the culture that exploits it is too careless. In both cases, nostalgia or hubris, a lack of reflective discernment causes a seriously dangerous misunderstanding about the ecological relationship between physis and techne. Only together can they create the environment in which humanity may flourish. Ultimately, the equation is simple: culture requires resources, and resources are acquired and managed through technology. No techne, no resources, no culture. The question is not which side of the relation to drop or disregard, physis or techne, but rather how to negotiate the fine balance that can harmonise both. Unfortunately, locating the traps and describing their nature are much easier than identifying the right course of action for the development of a successful marriage between physis and techne. Fortunately, it is exactly here that philosophy can help by exercising its mediating role, in the following sense. The three-player game between physis, techne and philosophy can be complex, in the same way that chess is complex: not because of the basic rules, but because of the sophisticated ways in which they can be applied in a variety of circumstances full of implicit constraints, consequences and potential pitfalls. Indeed, the rules are trivial: avoid the two traps, nurture the right sort of physis (after all, we do wish to eradicate malaria once and for all, if possible), develop the right sort of techne, (e.g. renewable, non-polluting energy), and foster the right sort of culture. And all this thanks to the right sort of philosophy, which can enable us to make the right sort of moves that guarantee a harmonious and healthy decoupling of human history from natural events. The superficial simplicity of all these "the right sort" is misleading, as many examples of mistaken decisions and misdirected policies too often testify. The game is incredibly hard to master, not least politically and economically. And as if all this were not already bad enough, it is a game against the clock, in which time is running out, and one on which the future well-being of humanity is increasingly dependent. Nobody sufficiently informed can fail to feel a deep sense of urgency. This is why more philosophy is required, not less. We need to know the state of the game better, we need more discernment about the next promising moves, and we need more originality in envisioning the feasible strategies that may be successful. Analyses, syntheses, insights and intellectual creativity: this is how philosophy as conceptual engineering can help us to design a world in which, to use the previous metaphor, the marriage of physis and techne may be successful and bear fruit. We need to be stubbornly intellectual. What I have sketched above is of course an enormous task, to which no contributing effort can be deemed too small. This is why, in presenting this first issue of Philosophy & Technology, I wish to express a sense of hope and pride. Hope that the new journal will join and support the crucial effort of ensuring that our future 2 L. Floridi will be better than our present, in the ecological sense outlined above. Pride in expecting that the journal will serve both the specialised community of researchers interested in the interactions between philosophies and technologies, and the wider community of all those keen on making techne and physis work together to mutual benefit. The project is to publish articles that will engage with the conceptual investigation and the critical discussion of the challenges posed by technologies and their impact or implications. We intend to publish the best research produced in all areas where philosophy and technology meet. Good philosophy knows no cultural barriers or geographical borders, so the journal welcomes high-quality submissions, regardless of the tradition, school of thought or disciplinary background from which they derive. Any rigorous approach or methodology may be adopted: ethical, epistemological, philosophico-political, hermeneutic, analytic and so forth. And every area of technological innovation may be addressed, from new technologies in healthcare (e.g. e-Health), to nanotechnologies and their industrial development, from military technological applications to recent innovations in renewable energies, from transformations in transport systems to new information and communications technologies and developments in AI. Of course, investigations of cultural and conceptual issues are also most welcome, as well as efforts to address purely philosophical problems and topics from a technologically informed perspective. Ultimately, Philosophy & Technology seeks to improve our critical understanding of the nature and practical consequences of technologies, and hence provide the foundation for their fruitful and sustainable developments. Before closing this editorial introduction, I wish to thank all the staff at Springer, and in particular Marco Andal, Raul Boloron and Judy Pieren, for the outstanding work done in establishing and managing this new journal. Without Ties Nijssen, publishing editor at Springer, the project would have never been developed. His input and support have been extraordinary. There is something dreamlike about the two teams forming the executive editorial board and the scientific editorial board. Their quality could hardly find a match elsewhere, and I wish to thank them for their willingness to serve as members of each board. I have already relied heavily on their fine expertise, and I owe them more than I can express here. My debt is only going to increase. Ultimately, the quality of a journal is only as high as the quality of the articles it publishes. So, my final word is to you reader. We at Philosophy & Technology hope that you will find the journal interesting to read and worth your submissions. We look forward to your feedback and research. Harmonising Physis and Techne