In an article published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Nick Zangwill (... more In an article published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Nick Zangwill (2021) argues that “eating meat is morally good” (p. 295). It is “our duty” to eat animals, he says, “when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals” (Zangwill, 2021, p. 295). Since certain animals can be said to exist in some sense only because of meat-eating practices, and those practices benefit animals if they have good lives, argues Zangwill, that's why we owe it to the animals to eat them—it is our moral duty. I carefully dissect this crude argument into its components and debunk its conclusion.
Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative po... more Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative political theory? Anything well-established ‘moralist’ theories do not already acknowledge, that is? Addressing Jaggar’s (Aristotelian Soc Suppl Vol. XCIV, pp. 87–113, 2020) and Finlayson’s (Aristotelian Soc Suppl Vol. XCIV, pp. 115–139, 2020) critical intercessions into contemporary discourse about migration I argue that a political realist approach to the theory of migration faces what I call the ‘surplus challenge’: realists supposedly have no normative surplus over (liberal) cosmopolitan and nationalist moralist approaches. This nothing-more-to-add narrative is a common argument against the possibility and integrity of political realism (as seen in, inter alia, Leader-Maynard and Worsnip in Ethics 128(4), pp. 756–787, 2018). I show how it misconstrues the realist agenda. Finlayson, on the other hand, paints the realist intervention as primarily about paying closer attention to colonial...
The political psychologists Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith accuse orthodox moral foundations theory o... more The political psychologists Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith accuse orthodox moral foundations theory of predicting what is already intrinsic to the theory, namely that moral beliefs influence political decision-making. The authors argue that, first, political psychology must start from a position which treats political and moral beliefs as equals so as to avoid self-justificatory theorising, and second, that such an analysis provides stronger evidence for political attitudes predicting moral attitudes than vice versa. I take this empirical result as a starting point to intervene in a debate in contemporary normative political theory which has, to my mind, become largely unwieldy: the political realism controversy. I advise the realists to ‘downplay’ the (thus far) inconclusive debate over realism’s metanormative standing in favour of a non-metanormative inquiry. Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith’s study makes for an excellent backdrop. It affirms the realist hypothesis that politics is in some ...
01 In unserer Zeit der Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit ist es kaum vorstellbar, dass es eine Zeit ga... more 01 In unserer Zeit der Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit ist es kaum vorstellbar, dass es eine Zeit gab, in der Wissenschaftler um ihr Leben fürchten mussten, wenn sie Entdeckungen veröffentlichten, die das vorherrschende Weltbild ins Wanken brachten. 1634 war dies allerdings der Fall. Also schrieb Johannes Kepler eine phantastische Geschichte in die er seine Thesen einfließen ließ. Seine Literatur kann heute als Prototyp der Weltraum-Science-Fiction verstanden werden kann. Keplers "Traum vom Mond", vorgestellt von Franziska Wolf, ist die erste Station auf unserer Reise durch die Science-Fiction Galaxie. 02 Die Glaubensgemeinschaft Scientology ist weltweit bekannt und dabei durchaus umstritten. Ihr Begründer L. Ron Hubbard scheint wie eine Art Gottesfigur über der Religion und ihren Anhängern zu stehen. Hubbard, auf den alle religiösen Schriften der Scientology und auch ihre Therapiemethoden zurückgehen, war einst Science-Fiction Autor. Er unterhielt das Publikum von Fiction-Ma...
In recent debates on the globalization of authoritarianism, China is considered one of the centra... more In recent debates on the globalization of authoritarianism, China is considered one of the central, if not the single most important actor. Paradigmatic for this view is the European Commission’s Strategy Paper (2019:1) of March 2019, in which China is portrayed as the “systemic rival” propagating an “alternative governance-model”. A recent GPPI report (2018:1) goes as far as announcing that “China’s rapidly increasing political influencing efforts in Europe and the self-confident promotion of its authoritarian ideals pose a significant challenge to liberal democracy (...).” Many scholars (cf. Huotari et al., 2017; Chun, 2018; Starrs, 2018) have put forward the hypothesis that Chinese authoritarianism is, perhaps through transitions in global hegemony (cf. Arrighi, 2007; Robinson, 2011), beginning to expand around the world––to semi-periphery countries, in particular. This is the hypothesis I wish to put under scrutiny in this essay. I call it, the expansion-hypothesis. While all of...
Prima facie, MMK (18:8) on the left, and Wúmén Guān (18) (Ch. 無門關) on the right don’t have a lot ... more Prima facie, MMK (18:8) on the left, and Wúmén Guān (18) (Ch. 無門關) on the right don’t have a lot in common—but they do.1 Both are, and this is the main hypothesis of this essay, a schema for upāya (Skt. उपाय): skilful means of teaching the path to enlightenment. Wúmén Guān: (18) is a Kōan (Ch. 公案), which features predominantly in the Chinese Chan and the Japanese Zen tradition. The focus of §4 will be on the Kōan. The subsequent section, §2, will be concerned with the argument from MMK (18:8) above which goes under the name catuṣkoṭi (Skt. चतुष्कोटि), which literally means “four corners.” In its simplest from, the catuṣkoti is the view that any claim can be true, false, both true and false or neither true nor false. Those are, metaphorically, the four corners (kotis). The origins of the catuṣkoṭi and the origin of Buddhism are concomitant. In fact, as
At Kyoto, there is something peculiar going on with negations, or so it seems: A is A, and yet A ... more At Kyoto, there is something peculiar going on with negations, or so it seems: A is A, and yet A is immediately not A, and therefore A is A. Without a doubt, this looks a lot like a paradoxical inference and yet we find it repeatedly in the writings of the Kyoto School philosophers. This inference, call it SH, has the form of the soku-hi dialectic, developed and put into practice by Nishida Kitarō. The soku-hi dialectic gets its name from the negation employed in the inference above: the soku-hi negation, as I call it. What is this ominous negation, where does it come from, and what’s its use? This paper intends to clarify.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2020
Bei einem Spaziergang durch London, durch die wohlhabendsten als auch die ärmeren Stadtviertel, s... more Bei einem Spaziergang durch London, durch die wohlhabendsten als auch die ärmeren Stadtviertel, sieht man die vielen leerstehenden Wohnungen – 125.000, um genau zu sein –, die von Investoren gekauft und zu einem Symbol für die kaputte Wohnungspolitik einer zunehmend ungerechten, fast schon hobbesianischen Gesellschaft geworden sind. Rowland Atkinsons Alpha City (2020) befasst sich eingehend mit der Frage, wie vermögende Privatpersonen als Inkarnationen des Kapitals – zumeist von ‚offshore‘ – das urbane Gefüge Londons veränderten, indem sie andere verdrängten, die Stadt zu ihrer ‚Hauptstadt‘ – ihrer ‚Alpha-Stadt‘ – machten, und was genau dies für die Verdrängten bedeutet.
Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy, 2019
The recent literature on Nāgārjuna's catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield's (2009) and Graham Pr... more The recent literature on Nāgārjuna's catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield's (2009) and Graham Priest's (2010) interpretation. It is an open discussion to what extent their interpretation is an adequate model of the logic for the catuskoti, and the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā. Priest and Garfield try to make sense of the contradictions within the catuskoti by appeal to a series of lattices-orderings of truth-values, supposed to model the path to enlightenment. They use Anderson & Belnaps's (1975) framework of First Degree Entailment. Cotnoir (2015) has argued that the lattices of Priest and Garfield cannot ground the logic of the catuskoti. The concern is simple: on the one hand, FDE brings with it the failure of classical principles such as modus ponens. On the other hand, we frequently encounter Nāgārjuna using classical principles in other arguments in the MMK. There is a problem of validity. If FDE is Nāgārjuna's logic of choice, he is facing what is commonly called the classical recapture problem: how to make sense of cases where classical principles like modus pones are valid? One cannot just add principles like modus pones as assumptions, because in the background paraconsistent logic this does not rule out their negations. In this essay, I shall explore and critically evaluate Cotnoir's proposal. In detail, I shall reveal that his framework suffers collapse of the kotis. Taking Cotnoir's concerns seriously, I shall suggest a formulation of the catuskoti in classical Boolean Algebra, extended by the notion of an external negation as an illocutionary act. I will focus on purely formal considerations, leaving doctrinal matters to the scholarly discourse-as far as this is possible.
In an article published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Nick Zangwill (... more In an article published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Nick Zangwill (2021) argues that “eating meat is morally good” (p. 295). It is “our duty” to eat animals, he says, “when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals” (Zangwill, 2021, p. 295). Since certain animals can be said to exist in some sense only because of meat-eating practices, and those practices benefit animals if they have good lives, argues Zangwill, that's why we owe it to the animals to eat them—it is our moral duty. I carefully dissect this crude argument into its components and debunk its conclusion.
Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative po... more Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative political theory? Anything well-established ‘moralist’ theories do not already acknowledge, that is? Addressing Jaggar’s (Aristotelian Soc Suppl Vol. XCIV, pp. 87–113, 2020) and Finlayson’s (Aristotelian Soc Suppl Vol. XCIV, pp. 115–139, 2020) critical intercessions into contemporary discourse about migration I argue that a political realist approach to the theory of migration faces what I call the ‘surplus challenge’: realists supposedly have no normative surplus over (liberal) cosmopolitan and nationalist moralist approaches. This nothing-more-to-add narrative is a common argument against the possibility and integrity of political realism (as seen in, inter alia, Leader-Maynard and Worsnip in Ethics 128(4), pp. 756–787, 2018). I show how it misconstrues the realist agenda. Finlayson, on the other hand, paints the realist intervention as primarily about paying closer attention to colonial...
The political psychologists Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith accuse orthodox moral foundations theory o... more The political psychologists Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith accuse orthodox moral foundations theory of predicting what is already intrinsic to the theory, namely that moral beliefs influence political decision-making. The authors argue that, first, political psychology must start from a position which treats political and moral beliefs as equals so as to avoid self-justificatory theorising, and second, that such an analysis provides stronger evidence for political attitudes predicting moral attitudes than vice versa. I take this empirical result as a starting point to intervene in a debate in contemporary normative political theory which has, to my mind, become largely unwieldy: the political realism controversy. I advise the realists to ‘downplay’ the (thus far) inconclusive debate over realism’s metanormative standing in favour of a non-metanormative inquiry. Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith’s study makes for an excellent backdrop. It affirms the realist hypothesis that politics is in some ...
01 In unserer Zeit der Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit ist es kaum vorstellbar, dass es eine Zeit ga... more 01 In unserer Zeit der Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit ist es kaum vorstellbar, dass es eine Zeit gab, in der Wissenschaftler um ihr Leben fürchten mussten, wenn sie Entdeckungen veröffentlichten, die das vorherrschende Weltbild ins Wanken brachten. 1634 war dies allerdings der Fall. Also schrieb Johannes Kepler eine phantastische Geschichte in die er seine Thesen einfließen ließ. Seine Literatur kann heute als Prototyp der Weltraum-Science-Fiction verstanden werden kann. Keplers "Traum vom Mond", vorgestellt von Franziska Wolf, ist die erste Station auf unserer Reise durch die Science-Fiction Galaxie. 02 Die Glaubensgemeinschaft Scientology ist weltweit bekannt und dabei durchaus umstritten. Ihr Begründer L. Ron Hubbard scheint wie eine Art Gottesfigur über der Religion und ihren Anhängern zu stehen. Hubbard, auf den alle religiösen Schriften der Scientology und auch ihre Therapiemethoden zurückgehen, war einst Science-Fiction Autor. Er unterhielt das Publikum von Fiction-Ma...
In recent debates on the globalization of authoritarianism, China is considered one of the centra... more In recent debates on the globalization of authoritarianism, China is considered one of the central, if not the single most important actor. Paradigmatic for this view is the European Commission’s Strategy Paper (2019:1) of March 2019, in which China is portrayed as the “systemic rival” propagating an “alternative governance-model”. A recent GPPI report (2018:1) goes as far as announcing that “China’s rapidly increasing political influencing efforts in Europe and the self-confident promotion of its authoritarian ideals pose a significant challenge to liberal democracy (...).” Many scholars (cf. Huotari et al., 2017; Chun, 2018; Starrs, 2018) have put forward the hypothesis that Chinese authoritarianism is, perhaps through transitions in global hegemony (cf. Arrighi, 2007; Robinson, 2011), beginning to expand around the world––to semi-periphery countries, in particular. This is the hypothesis I wish to put under scrutiny in this essay. I call it, the expansion-hypothesis. While all of...
Prima facie, MMK (18:8) on the left, and Wúmén Guān (18) (Ch. 無門關) on the right don’t have a lot ... more Prima facie, MMK (18:8) on the left, and Wúmén Guān (18) (Ch. 無門關) on the right don’t have a lot in common—but they do.1 Both are, and this is the main hypothesis of this essay, a schema for upāya (Skt. उपाय): skilful means of teaching the path to enlightenment. Wúmén Guān: (18) is a Kōan (Ch. 公案), which features predominantly in the Chinese Chan and the Japanese Zen tradition. The focus of §4 will be on the Kōan. The subsequent section, §2, will be concerned with the argument from MMK (18:8) above which goes under the name catuṣkoṭi (Skt. चतुष्कोटि), which literally means “four corners.” In its simplest from, the catuṣkoti is the view that any claim can be true, false, both true and false or neither true nor false. Those are, metaphorically, the four corners (kotis). The origins of the catuṣkoṭi and the origin of Buddhism are concomitant. In fact, as
At Kyoto, there is something peculiar going on with negations, or so it seems: A is A, and yet A ... more At Kyoto, there is something peculiar going on with negations, or so it seems: A is A, and yet A is immediately not A, and therefore A is A. Without a doubt, this looks a lot like a paradoxical inference and yet we find it repeatedly in the writings of the Kyoto School philosophers. This inference, call it SH, has the form of the soku-hi dialectic, developed and put into practice by Nishida Kitarō. The soku-hi dialectic gets its name from the negation employed in the inference above: the soku-hi negation, as I call it. What is this ominous negation, where does it come from, and what’s its use? This paper intends to clarify.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2020
Bei einem Spaziergang durch London, durch die wohlhabendsten als auch die ärmeren Stadtviertel, s... more Bei einem Spaziergang durch London, durch die wohlhabendsten als auch die ärmeren Stadtviertel, sieht man die vielen leerstehenden Wohnungen – 125.000, um genau zu sein –, die von Investoren gekauft und zu einem Symbol für die kaputte Wohnungspolitik einer zunehmend ungerechten, fast schon hobbesianischen Gesellschaft geworden sind. Rowland Atkinsons Alpha City (2020) befasst sich eingehend mit der Frage, wie vermögende Privatpersonen als Inkarnationen des Kapitals – zumeist von ‚offshore‘ – das urbane Gefüge Londons veränderten, indem sie andere verdrängten, die Stadt zu ihrer ‚Hauptstadt‘ – ihrer ‚Alpha-Stadt‘ – machten, und was genau dies für die Verdrängten bedeutet.
Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy, 2019
The recent literature on Nāgārjuna's catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield's (2009) and Graham Pr... more The recent literature on Nāgārjuna's catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield's (2009) and Graham Priest's (2010) interpretation. It is an open discussion to what extent their interpretation is an adequate model of the logic for the catuskoti, and the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā. Priest and Garfield try to make sense of the contradictions within the catuskoti by appeal to a series of lattices-orderings of truth-values, supposed to model the path to enlightenment. They use Anderson & Belnaps's (1975) framework of First Degree Entailment. Cotnoir (2015) has argued that the lattices of Priest and Garfield cannot ground the logic of the catuskoti. The concern is simple: on the one hand, FDE brings with it the failure of classical principles such as modus ponens. On the other hand, we frequently encounter Nāgārjuna using classical principles in other arguments in the MMK. There is a problem of validity. If FDE is Nāgārjuna's logic of choice, he is facing what is commonly called the classical recapture problem: how to make sense of cases where classical principles like modus pones are valid? One cannot just add principles like modus pones as assumptions, because in the background paraconsistent logic this does not rule out their negations. In this essay, I shall explore and critically evaluate Cotnoir's proposal. In detail, I shall reveal that his framework suffers collapse of the kotis. Taking Cotnoir's concerns seriously, I shall suggest a formulation of the catuskoti in classical Boolean Algebra, extended by the notion of an external negation as an illocutionary act. I will focus on purely formal considerations, leaving doctrinal matters to the scholarly discourse-as far as this is possible.
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