The perennial problem of the exact nature of epistemic justification has recently become even more interesting upon Laurence BonJour's openly converting himself to foundationalism following a long and successful career built mainly around a strong defense of coherentism cum internalism. Even though the famous debate between foundationalism and coherentism is often associated with the "technical" issues of epistemic regress, basic beliefs, and so on, in this paper I will approach the debate from the standpoint of the post-Wittgensteinian literature and try to provide some useful insights about the justification of those beliefs alleged by the foundationalist to constitute our ultimate touch with reality. More specifically, I will offer a neo-Kantian interpretation of the subvenient basis of supervenience relations believed to take place between the world and our basic cognitive states, and claim that such an approach has a better chance of combining the strengths of the traditional rivals in epistemology and coming up with a viable synthesis on this matter.

A number of p rofessionals claim that moral bioenhancement (MB) is n ecessary f or humanity to avert catastrophe. With the rapid advancements of science and technology, human beings have drastically altered their natural and social environments while their moral sensibility continues to be unaffected. They alleged that this is a mismatch, and since it becomes easier to harm than to benefit others, which they anticipate as a global threat, they p romptly want MB to be obligatory to all. But the essay argues that MB is not necessary, and that it is not equivalent to moral enhancement (ME). In keeping with this argument, the essay advances the following: (1) a reexamination of ME and its relation to MB, (2) distinction between bioenhancement and biomedicine (BM), (3) the human being in relation to nature and technology, and (4) the meaning and axiology of MB.

I will challenge the manipulation argument, aiming to argue for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. By examining the intuition behind the first premise, stating that manipulated agents are not responsible, it will turn out that this statement can be traced to the manipulators themselves, who intentionally set up a plan against their subjects. The second premise, which states that there is no difference between determinism and manipulation concerning responsibility, will be argued to be false. In the deterministic worlds, actions are determined by blind causation. However, under the manipulation theory, agents are determined by the manipulator. I claim that the first premise is true, but the second premise is false.

This paper is premised on the thought that aside from Emerita Quito, who is generally considered in the Philippines as the "Filipino philosopher, " there is another Filipina philosopher who is unfortunately ignored in the various philosophy circles in the country but whose works and scholarship can easily rival those of the former. This paper, therefore, surveys the thoughts of Mary John Mananzan in order to understand her contributions to the development of Filipino philosophy. To attain such a goal, this paper discusses six substantive sections, which tackle the following: (]) her intellectual biography, (2) her critique of patriarchal religion, (3) her critique of the Philippine political economy, (4) her critique of patriarchal everyday culture, (5) her critique of Philippine colonization, and (6) her recollections on her own political praxis. This paper defines the place of Mananzan among the various discourses of Filipino philosophy and assesses her contributions to such a philosophy.

Recent theorizing has emphasized the concept of "difference" and how its normative deployment orders our knowledge of the world. This ethical determination of how we know, however, is only half of a loop as difference has epistemological roots. It is precisely the concept '.s inherent connection to the epistemological demand that we must be certain of what we know that underprops it as a contemporary problematic. This demand is basic to philosophy since ancient times. We find it, for example, in the late Platonic dialogues Theaetetus and Sophist as Plato endeavors to define and account for knowledge and true belief We also find this in Aristotle '.s Categories, which not only underpins his other philosophical works, but also founds the categorialism still current in philosophical thinking. We can think of categorial thinking as defining and structuring what we can know. And insofar as our knowledge guides our practice, categorial thinking also defines and structures our reality. In this essay, I perform a simple content analysis of the Categories. The aim is to look for difference and its variants, to count how many times they appear, to identify the general and specific contexts of their appearance, to find related terms and concepts in the specific context of the sentences that they appear in. The essay's analyses try to find explanations as to what Aristotle's concept of difference is, as to what Aristotle think of it as it appears in various contexts in the Categories, as to how it reflects the structure of our knowledge of the world, and as to how it likewise reflects the manner by which we attempt to structure or order our world.

This paper constitutes my philosophy of teaching. I aim to model self-examination of teaching practice with the use of philosophical actionresearch. I use the method of triangulation and a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to validate and to strengthen my assertions. The analysis was grounded on empirical information, relevant current literature, and reflection. I argue that self-examination of practice is a worthy exercise for educators. When conducted systematically, self-examination efforts should not be regarded as merely subjective. It can be harnessed as a tool to improve an educator's academic performance and personal wellbeing. It should rather be viewed as a basic or foundational discipline to sustain one's growth and love for teaching. The reflections on experience, insights, and the external validation one gathers in the process are worth the challenge. An examined life becomes worth living.

Utopia has always been a political concept and utopian fiction establishes a link between the illustration of a desirable world and the condition of politics. The imaginary, desirable, yet attainable societies described in utopian fiction bring us face to face with our mental imprisonment. Utopia p rovides us with the ideal world of justice, human rights, freedom, and equality. Illustration of an ideal world in fiction is a step towards the establishment of a just, equal, and free world. The present focus of this study is on Le Guin's short story entitled "The ones who walk away from Ornelas," which pictures an untraditional kind of utopia and in which Le Guin criticises human rights, justice, freedom, and morality via a scapegoat motif. The analysis of the story directs us to the political concept of utopia while depicting the boundaries of the utopian genre.

This paper focuses on Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics. My aim is to discuss the intimate relation of freedom and rights in order to suggest that the ethical implications of her phenomenological-existentialist analysis of the human condition, developed mainly in The ethics of ambiguity, can make a valuable contribution to ethical value and corroboration of human rights, the conceptual grounding of which is sometimes received with intellectual skepticism. I argue that in Beauvoir’s ethical theory, grounded on the will to freedom, not only do rights become more intelligible but their significance also becomes more communicable. By making freedom conditional upon willing not only that oneself be free but that everyone else may also be free, Beauvoir advances a universal demand for the most basic conditions necessary for individuals to realize themselves. Accordingly, Beauvoir’s conception of genuine freedom, incorporating the value of freedom and the duty to act in recognition of this value, gives us the possibility to argue for the requisite freedoms as well as the necessity to substantiate these freedoms in human rights.

The aim of this paper is to situate the notion of reification as a neutral foundation for the three spheres of recognition. Reification, as a negative concept, allows the possibility of recognition to take place in Axel Honneth’s three spheres of recognition; namely, love, law, and esteem. My argument is that the givenness of these positive aspects of recognition is made possible by the existence of necessary reifications to which pathologies allow a certain form of intersubjective realisations. This form brings about the possibility of an “otherwise” situation. Drawing from the intersubjective theory of recognition in Georg Hegel’s and Martin Heidegger’s instrumentalist hermeneutics (i.e., Vorhandenheit) of authenticity, I aim to pursue the necessary qualification to which reification is to be considered as a neutral ground for normativity to germinate. My contention is that the neutral state of reification is made possible when it is seen as a productive discourse situation in which recognition becomes possible.

The damaging effects of the activities of corporations on the natural environment have given rise to the need to evaluate corporate policies, decisions, and actions affecting the natural environment on moral grounds. There are two important questions that need to be addressed in this regard. The first is whether corporations have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, which is over and above their economic duty to maximize profits for their stockholders and their legal duty to obey environmental laws. And the second is, given that they do have this moral obligation, what sort of environmental ethical theory (homocentrism, biocentrism, utilitarianism) ought to guide the exercise of such an obligation? This paper argues that corporations do have such moral obligations, for they are moral agents in virtue of their nonmetaphorical possession of rational capacities. This, however, implies that the corporations’ exercise of this obligation can only be properly guided by a rationalist type of ethics.

Aristotle is credited with the first full-fledged robust philosophical discussion and presentation of substance. His account of substance presents different notions of substance, which were elaborated on and modified in the medieval and modern periods. Among those that elaborated on the conception of substance in the modern period are Rene Descartes, John Locke, Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza, George Berkeley, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. What is the nature of substance and how is it understood by these philosophers? In this paper I examine the notions of substance in the philosophical systems of Locke, Spinoza, and Kant. I go beyond this comparative and exploratory exercise to show why Kant takes on a more expansive notion of substance. In particular, for Kant the conceptions of substance we find in Locke and Spinoza do not allow the idea of substance to do the work that substance as a pure concept of the understanding should do.