The ethical philosophies of Kant and Levinas would seem, on the surface, to be incompatible. In this essay. I attempt to reconcile them by situating Levinas’s philosophy “beneath” Kant’s as its existential condition thereby addressing two shortcomings in each of their works, for Kant. the apparent difficulty of making ethics apply to real concrete cases, and, for Levinas, the apparent difficulty of establishing a normative ethics that can offer prescriptions for moral behavior. My general thesis is that the existential ethical terrainunearthed by Levinas turns Kantian when transposed into the rational order.

The dilemma confronted by Buridan’s Ass leads into a problem about nil-preference situations, to which there is a solution in the literature that is inspired by Alan Turing: we have evolved with a computational module in our brains that comes into play in such situations by picking a random action among the alternatives that detennines the subject’s choice. We relate these Buridan’s Ass situations to a larger, theoretically interesting category in which there is no alternative that is decisively superior to others with respect to expected utility, and we try to show how our emotional makeup figures in a rational response, particularly as informed by symbolic utilitythat we draw down from our culture’s shared understandings. The category is theoretically interesting because it contains moral dilemmas, as well as hard cases in which an imponant choice must be made without an option that has clearly superior expected utility. We argue that our Emotional Response Model is preferable to Turing’s Randomizer for this category, as well as more illuminating about nil-preference situations or close approximations thereto.

This essay does not argue for any specific conception of time as ethically superior or significant, but argues that the conception of time we choose from among possible such conceptions has ethical consequences.

The Confederate Battle Flag (CBF) is in the news again. On January 16th, 2000, 46,000 people came to Columbia, South Carolina, to protest its display over the state’s capital dome. On July 1st, the CBF was removed. But on the same day, it was raised in front of the Statehouse steps. The controversy has received a great deal of media coverage and was a factor in the 2000 presidential primaries. CBF displays raise a philosophical question I wish to address: What determines whether a symbol or symbol-display is racist? I will focus on the CBF because of its contemporary relevance. But the discussion will shed light on the general issue of when a symbol or symbol-display has a particular meaning and when it does not.

Much of Ian Hacking’s recent work has concerned the notion of ‘human kinds’, that is, ways of classifying people as objects of study in the human and social sciences. In this paper, I use a study of the development of a particular kind of person---the punk rocker---to clarify and extend the idea of a human kind. With regard to clarification, this case provides an excellent opportunity to consider examples of what Hacking calls ‘looping effects’, i. e. particular kinds of interactions between ways of classifying people and those who are classified. As for extending Hacking’s ideas, in punk we see a sort of kind creation largely absent from the examples he has considered. While the human kinds Hacking has focused on typically emerge from investigations by experts and then filter out intopopular consciousness, in punk we see the opposite process take place.

The essay challenges the de facto dichotomy between the discipline of logic and the activity of social criticism, i.e., it provides an illustrated reminder to philosophers that the gulf between these two areas of philosophy is not quite as wide as our curriculum andspecialization designations tend to suggest. Social criticism plays some necessary roles in certain branches of logic, and the second-order accounting of the contents of these branches leads back to social criticism. These points suggest an adjusted conception of logic that would, among other things, render phrases such as “applying logic to social criticism” as misleading since certain branches of logic would not even coherently exist apart from social criticism. The lead illustrations are the identification of basic, pervasive, and thought-impeding logical errors that have been missed by numerous logic texts, and the assessment of contemporary academic logic as properly a quest for communal sanity that lies caught between communal insanity and communal mendacity.

Thompson (1994) proposed a re-visioning of the oikos/polis dichotomy in classical philosophy. She offers a dual systems paradigm based on two ancient Greek mythemes---Hestia, goddess of the oikos, or domestic “homeplace,” and Hermes, god of the polis, or public “marketplace,” as an alternative to gender as the primary analytic lens to advance feminist theory. This paper applies hestian/hermean lenses of analysis, described in two propadeutic papers (SPCW 1996; 1997), to the writings of 6th-5th century BCEPythagorean women philosophers and 19th century domestic scientists to claim them as moral philosophers of the hestian domain.

This essay argues that there is no obvious reason not to make money doing philosophy. Whether philosophical counselling is justified, however, dependson the practitioners of this service defining the benefit of that service.

This article raises the question of whether or not a "neutral" stance can be found from which to engage in philosophical counseling. By drawing on the debate between absolutism and relativism, it is argued that no such neutral ground exists. The foundational premises of the transcendentalist tradition involve different assumptions than those of the materialist and relativist traditions. Such a distinction goes back to the earliest days of philosophy and today the new profession of philosophical counseling must address the multiplicity of assumptions upon which philosophic discourse can be built. The paper concludes with a call for philosophical counseling to move beyond the focus on Socrates, and to embrace a wide variety of different positions within its domain.

Philosophical counseling recommends to its clients the activity of philosophical dialogue. The process of thought in dialogue differs from private thought in the greater physical constraints placed upon dialogue. We as yet do not have an understanding of the embodied activity of philosophy sufficient to make viable the marketing of philosophical counseling as a service. The paper is a contribution to such an understanding. The paper considers the notion of a philosophical life and criticizes the possibility of a profession of philosophical counseling. It ends with a tentative defense of philosophical counseling as a marketable service.

This paper claims that the edifice of philosophical practice bears prima facie resemblance to other counseling-dispensing professions—e.g. medicine, law, psychology, accountancy. It defends virtues of professionalism in philosophical practice against accusations of sophism, and also rejects social constructivism as a politically extreme form of sophistry. It concludes that, notwithstanding prima facie resemblance to other counseling professions, philosophical practice is foundationally distinct from them. When elaborated, this distinction complicates the notion of inculcating virtue in philosophical practice.

The market seems to have substituted politics as a coordination model in modern societies. While philosophy's complementarity to politics is well-acknowledged, its importance for economic markets can be questioned. Economics deals with optimization, but as markets are constituted by real persons with individual beliefs and normative values the economic tool box is not sufficient to describe market behavior. This is especially true whenever technologicalinnovations challenge established market rules. Philosophy supplies analytical instruments for a better, more complete description of markets including theirnormative aspects. For this complementary function philosophy should be placed at the core of any theory of markets.

It is often supposed that the example of Socrates makes the taking of payment for philosophical services problematic. This supposition is examined on the basis of the evidence available in Plato's Apology and Xenophon's Memorabilia. These texts suggest that Socrates certainly had reservations about the desirability of receiving payment in return for philosophical services. However, these reservations do not amount to an outright and unconditional condemnation. Furthermore, some of the reservations derive from the particular values of the culture in which Socrates lived and should not be seen as binding on all. Similarly, whatever specific objections Socrates may have had to the activities of the Sophists should not be seen as applicable to all philosophers who accept payment in return for their services.

For Plato, one mark of the difference between sophistry and philosophy is that the sophist takes fees for service. His Socrates does not. However, this paper points out that Socrates' attitude to money reflects his unique indifference to things bodily, and a more satisfactory understanding of Plato on money needs to turn to his discussion of the love of money or avarice, especially in the Republic. Plato locates money-loving in appetitive soul along with physical cravings like hunger and lust; why he should do so is explained if avarice is seen as a primary instance of a more pervasive possessiveness that is ultimately somatic in nature. I argue that though his remedies are too severe, Plato is right to warn against avarice and its possible effects upon the practice of philosophy. And following Plato I conclude that philosophy is best understood as enquiry unconstrained by the interests of the market and carried out in the context of academic freedom.

Hume and Rousseau argue that “feeling with and/or for others” is natural and basic to us as human persons. but Royce claims that merely feeling the fleeting impulse of sympathy is not the moral insight itself. Compassion must be both felt and acted upon for it to play the role in morality ascribed by Hume and Rousseau. Why is it so often the case that we fail to feel compassion for others and, even when we do, why do we often fail to act on this basis? There are multiple socially constructed barriers to feeling and acting on compassion, three of which are discussed: null curriculum. stereotyping and privileges. Finally, the Dalai Lama maintains that it is in every person’s own self-interest to develop compassion for others because it is the source of both inner and external peace.