Institutskolloquium

Vulnerability has often been described as an inherently human characteristic. In this ontological sense, humans are vulnerable due to the embodied nature of human lives. A second way of conceptualizing vulnerability has proposed it as a constraint to individual autonomy. The argument then is that those who are vulnerable are not able to take decisions about the course of their lives since their decision-making capacity is hampered by dependency on the acts of another. Accordingly, morally problematic vulnerability arises in interaction with another.

In this paper, I explore the concept of vulnerability with these two uses in mind. I suggest that a neglected aspect of individual vulnerability is the limits it may pose for epistemological capacity. In particular, I am interested in how specific circumstances of individual vulnerability may challenge the role individual introspection can play in leading autonomous lives. I want to argue that individual vulnerability can jeopardize the role introspection is usually assumed to play in deciding what course we hope to give our lives. In some cases of vulnerability, individuals may not be able to endorse and take responsibility for choices they make due to the fact that they don’t trust their introspective knowledge. In this way, vulnerable individuals loose the authoritative grip on their introspective self-knowledge. Yet self-knowledge is a vital condition of individual autonomy: without self-knowledge, individuals lack the internal requirements of personal autonomy.

Fichte on Rape
17-19Uhr

Abstract

In this essay, I examine Fichte's brief remarks on rape in his Foundations of Natural Right. My aim is to assess his conception of the harm of rape and to situate his discussion within the context of his theory of sexual politics generally and his theory of marriage in particular. I employ the work of the feminist philosopher Rae Langton to assess the extent to which his remarks on rape and marriage are compatible with his egalitarianism and theory of mutual recognition, both of which are central to his theory of right.

Abstract

Moral blackmail is a phenomenon whereby one agent forces some other agent to act in a particular way by making it morally impermissible for them to act otherwise. In this paper I explain this phenomenon, and argue that in the arena of intergenerational justice moral blackmail is an under-recognised but ubiquitous problem. Understanding that helps us see who should bear the costs of environmental risk and reparative justice, and thereby lays the foundations of a theory which deals adequately with diachronic as well as synchronic injustice.

Abstract

The world is full of many things, like shoes and ships and cabbages and kings. But the world is also full of lots of stuff, like sealing wax. And while the mereology of things has received much attention from contemporary philosophers, the mereology of stuff has been comparatively neglected. I’ll argue that an account of the mereology of stuff can be extracted from John Buridan’s Summulae de Dialectica. Buridan's mereology is unusual by contemporary standards in two ways: it is pluralist, and it underwrites a deep analogy between stuff and predication. This mereology, I’ll argue, makes possible a novel solution to the problem of mereological change. Although it is not a solution that Buridan himself endorses or even discusses, I will suggest that it deserves our serious consideration.

Abstract

According to a widely endorsed conception of fundamentality, the metaphysically fundamental is characterized in terms of a certain privileged metaphysical dependence relation or set of relations: something is fundamental just in case it does depend on anything else, relative to the privileged relation or set of relations. Let us say that such a conception of fundamentality is ‘favouritist’, for it favours a unique property as the mark of the fundamental. First, I argue that a single fundamentality property cannot do all the work we need fundamentality to do. Second, I show that a single fundamentality property—fundamentality simpliciter—characterized in terms of a single metaphysical dependence relation or set of relations is either objectionably arbitrary or incoherent, and so cannot be privileged as the mark of the fundamental. I then use these two claims to motivate the need for an ecumenical conception of fundamentality that embraces multiple fundamentality properties. On this conception, there is no one privileged relation or set of relations that can determine what is fundamental simpliciter. Instead, an entity qualifies as fundamental relative to a given metaphysical dependence relation just in case it does not depend on anything else, relative to that relation.

Abstract

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Abstract

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