I want to defend the answer to a question. The answer is "false consciousness." I will turn to th... more I want to defend the answer to a question. The answer is "false consciousness." I will turn to the question in a moment, but first I want to comment on why attributing false consciousness to people, a practice I seek here to defend as sometimes legitimate and appropriate, can seem highly objectionable. The concept of false consciousness is closely associated with others, notably that of "real" or "true" or "objective" interests, that is, of interests that false consciousness supposedly conceals from those whose interests they are. Those who object to this answer generally do so on two distinct, even opposite, grounds. The first, more traditional objection is that these concepts suggest an arrogant assumption of superior knowledge, an assumption notably embedded in the Marxist tradition-a claim to privileged access to what is "correct," a claim theorized by Georg Lukacs and well exemplified by Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, and Communist Party apparatchiks across the decades of the twentieth centuryand a corresponding disposition to treat people as cultural dupes. The second objection is more recent. The suggestion, commonly associated with postmodernist thinking, is that there cannot be false consciousness since there are multiple true consciousnesses-socially constructed "regimes of truth," generated and sustained by power. On this view, to impute false consciousness is mistakenly to believe that there even could be a correct view that is not itself imposed by power. So I want to defend the answer, separated, if that is possible, from the bad names it has acquired-and raise the question whether, thus defended, the answer is subject to either of these objections, or, worse still, both. So what is the question? It was, I think, first asked by Montaigne's friend Etienne de la Bo6tie, author of Discours de la ser
This question might seem absurd for either of two opposite reasons. On the one hand, one might co... more This question might seem absurd for either of two opposite reasons. On the one hand, one might counter with the question: Can anyone believe in human rights? This question might be asked from a utilitarian perspective, in the spirit of Bentham's view of natural rights as "simple nonsense" and of natural and imprescriptible rights as "nonsense upon stilts. " 1 It was in this spirit, for instance, that Sir George Cornewall Lewis saw expressions such as "original rights, natural rights, indefeasible rights, inalienable rights, imprescriptible rights, hereditary rights, indestructible rights, inherent rights, etc.," as having taken their origin from the theory of the state of nature and the social compact; but they are frequently used by persons who have never heard of this absurd and mischievous doctrine, and would perhaps reject it if they knew it. All that these persons mean is, that in their opinion, the claims which they call rights ought, in sound policy, to be sanctioned by law. It is the duty of such persons to show that sound policy requires what they require; but as this would require a process of reasoning, and as reasoning is often both hard to invent and to understand, they prefer begging the question at issue by employing some of the high sounding phrases just mentioned. 2
This chapter is evidence that we seem to be witnessing the re-birth of what is being labeled “the... more This chapter is evidence that we seem to be witnessing the re-birth of what is being labeled “the sociology of morality.” Why this re-birth should occur at all and why it is occurring just now are interesting questions into which I shall not enter here. Doubtless, it is due in part to the now flourishing studies of morality among both
ABSTRACT The ‘power debate’ raises hard questions to which the recent ‘domination debate’ among p... more ABSTRACT The ‘power debate’ raises hard questions to which the recent ‘domination debate’ among philosophers embracing neorepublicanism contributes. Concerning agents and structures, the neorepublican focus on dominators’ wills needs broadening, replacing intentions with interests, since their power can be routine and unconsidered, and extend across generations. Neorepublicans see domination as a potential rendering others vulnerable; here the view needs to be narrowed to specify which potential dangers are relevant. There is no convincing way of determining what counts as dominating power that does not derive from one or another moral and political standpoint. These hard questions are and must remain open.
The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individ... more The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individuals’ freedom to moral requirements. In this article, we consider James Laidlaw’s influential proposal that an anthropology of ethics makes freedom central to what is distinctively ethical in human life, but we argue that it unduly restricts the proposed scope of anthropology. This account of freedom is both overly cognitive, focusing on reflection, viewed as involving distance, decision, reasoning and doubt, and too individualistic, downplaying the importance of freedom’s normative background and excluding from consideration many documented forms of ethical experience. We propose instead an alternative, more open-ended conceptualization of freedom, distinguishing a concept of freedom that differs from its widely varying conceptions, and drawing on ethnographic material from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan and elsewhere to illustrate multiple ways in which the constitution of selve...
Abstract Does ‘noumenal power’ adequately represent ‘the real and general phenomenon of power,’ a... more Abstract Does ‘noumenal power’ adequately represent ‘the real and general phenomenon of power,’ as the capacity to secure the compliance of others? Does it include what is relevantly similar and exclude what is not? Forst’s concept is, appropriately, interagentive, but errs in insisting that power is intentionally ‘exercised’ thereby excluding countless ways in which compliance can be otherwise secured. Does ‘noumenal power’ offer the best explanation of how power functions? In claiming that it must involve the recognition of reasons to act differently than one otherwise would, it does not address the role of emotions, overstates the role of reasoning, and excludes various significant ways in which power bypasses conscious awareness: through unconscious intuitions and inferences and taken-for-granted cultural schemas, by occlusion, excluding thoughts from consideration, and by signaling, in ways that mimic reasons.
Motivated by Supervised Opinion Analysis, we propose a novel framework devoted to Structured Outp... more Motivated by Supervised Opinion Analysis, we propose a novel framework devoted to Structured Output Learning with Abstention (SOLA). The structure prediction model is able to abstain from predicting some labels in the structured output at a cost chosen by the user in a flexible way. For that purpose, we decompose the problem into the learning of a pair of predictors, one devoted to structured abstention and the other, to structured output prediction. To compare fully labeled training data with predictions potentially containing abstentions, we define a wide class of asymmetric abstention-aware losses. Learning is achieved by surrogate regression in an appropriate feature space while prediction with abstention is performed by solving a new pre-image problem. Thus, SOLA extends recent ideas about Structured Output Prediction via surrogate problems and calibration theory and enjoys statistical guarantees on the resulting excess risk. Instantiated on a hierarchical abstention-aware loss, SOLA is shown to be relevant for fine-grained opinion mining and gives state-of-the-art results on this task. Moreover, the abstention-aware representations can be used to competitively predict user-review ratings based on a sentence-level opinion predictor.
Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, 1982
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though p... more A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.
Power and economics are not often put together as a topic. Economists—although they regularly dep... more Power and economics are not often put together as a topic. Economists—although they regularly deploy notions such as market power and bargaining power—do so unreflectively: they have little, and usually nothing, to say about the concept of power, about what power is, and how to study it. It is, it would seem, either uninteresting or difficult for economists, and in particular mainstream economics, to deal with this notion. There is little about it in the literature of economics; if you look for articles and books about power in economics, you will find very few. There are two interesting books, one by John Kenneth Galbraith and another by Kenneth Boulding, but they were maverick economists.
Dworkin: I’m going to talk in a rather general and abstract way at the beginning about liberalism... more Dworkin: I’m going to talk in a rather general and abstract way at the beginning about liberalism as a kind of political thought, a kind of approach to the central problems of politics. I think of liberalism as a very general abstract set of impulses and I think of particular liberal theories as conceptions detailing interpretations of that general impulse. So there are many different liberal philosophers, and some of them have very different theories from others, but I want to suggest to you that each of them, in spite of the differences, is offering us an interpretation of a few central, important ideas.
I effrey Goldfarb asks a very challenging questionor rather two: "Are there any longer signi... more I effrey Goldfarb asks a very challenging questionor rather two: "Are there any longer significant differences between left and right, and between socialism and capitalism?" He rightly sees these questions as having been raised, or rendered more acute, by the revolutions of 1989 and the current transformations taking place in the Soviet Union, and by the collapse of communism and anticommunism. I shall first comment on his way of posing the questions and his answers to them; and then I shall try to offer some answers of my own. Goldfarb offers a "new end-of-ideology thesis," which records, welcomes, and supports the rejection of "a totalitarian culture, with ideological politics, scientistic Utopias, and complete resolutions to complex societal problems," of "veils of ignorance and illusion" which "rationalized political actions, but had little to do with solving human problems or promoting human creativity." Essential to ideology, thus understood, were its "easy dichotomies" that have "defined a great deal of our political, economic, and sociological expert opinion and common sense." We must, says Goldfarb, "struggle to overcome them" and discard the old "either/or ideological map" according to which "a country is either free or it is totalitarian; it is either a democracy or a dictatorship; it is either capitalist or socialist (or 'communistic')." Now, it is striking that, for Goldfarb, these are the dichotomies characteristic of the now-anachronistic ideologies
This article considers Cohen’s claim that the economic structure or base can be conceived indepen... more This article considers Cohen’s claim that the economic structure or base can be conceived independently of the superstructure by adressing his attempt to identify “a rechtsfrei (moralitätsfrei, etc.) economic structure to explain law (morals, etc.)”. It examines his programme of presenting relations of production as a set of (non-normative) powers and constraints that ‘match’ the rights and obligations of property relations. It is argued that, first, Cohen does not carry through this programme rigorously but, second, he could not do so, since it cannot be carried out at all. Three arguments are advanced, the first two against the possibility of a determinate ‘objective’ account of such powers and constraints, the third against the possibility of abstracting norms (constitutive and regulative, formal and informal) from contractual relationships: it is argued that one cannot identify the powers and constraints embodied in norm-governed economic relationships independently of the norms...
I want to defend the answer to a question. The answer is "false consciousness." I will turn to th... more I want to defend the answer to a question. The answer is "false consciousness." I will turn to the question in a moment, but first I want to comment on why attributing false consciousness to people, a practice I seek here to defend as sometimes legitimate and appropriate, can seem highly objectionable. The concept of false consciousness is closely associated with others, notably that of "real" or "true" or "objective" interests, that is, of interests that false consciousness supposedly conceals from those whose interests they are. Those who object to this answer generally do so on two distinct, even opposite, grounds. The first, more traditional objection is that these concepts suggest an arrogant assumption of superior knowledge, an assumption notably embedded in the Marxist tradition-a claim to privileged access to what is "correct," a claim theorized by Georg Lukacs and well exemplified by Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, and Communist Party apparatchiks across the decades of the twentieth centuryand a corresponding disposition to treat people as cultural dupes. The second objection is more recent. The suggestion, commonly associated with postmodernist thinking, is that there cannot be false consciousness since there are multiple true consciousnesses-socially constructed "regimes of truth," generated and sustained by power. On this view, to impute false consciousness is mistakenly to believe that there even could be a correct view that is not itself imposed by power. So I want to defend the answer, separated, if that is possible, from the bad names it has acquired-and raise the question whether, thus defended, the answer is subject to either of these objections, or, worse still, both. So what is the question? It was, I think, first asked by Montaigne's friend Etienne de la Bo6tie, author of Discours de la ser
This question might seem absurd for either of two opposite reasons. On the one hand, one might co... more This question might seem absurd for either of two opposite reasons. On the one hand, one might counter with the question: Can anyone believe in human rights? This question might be asked from a utilitarian perspective, in the spirit of Bentham's view of natural rights as "simple nonsense" and of natural and imprescriptible rights as "nonsense upon stilts. " 1 It was in this spirit, for instance, that Sir George Cornewall Lewis saw expressions such as "original rights, natural rights, indefeasible rights, inalienable rights, imprescriptible rights, hereditary rights, indestructible rights, inherent rights, etc.," as having taken their origin from the theory of the state of nature and the social compact; but they are frequently used by persons who have never heard of this absurd and mischievous doctrine, and would perhaps reject it if they knew it. All that these persons mean is, that in their opinion, the claims which they call rights ought, in sound policy, to be sanctioned by law. It is the duty of such persons to show that sound policy requires what they require; but as this would require a process of reasoning, and as reasoning is often both hard to invent and to understand, they prefer begging the question at issue by employing some of the high sounding phrases just mentioned. 2
This chapter is evidence that we seem to be witnessing the re-birth of what is being labeled “the... more This chapter is evidence that we seem to be witnessing the re-birth of what is being labeled “the sociology of morality.” Why this re-birth should occur at all and why it is occurring just now are interesting questions into which I shall not enter here. Doubtless, it is due in part to the now flourishing studies of morality among both
ABSTRACT The ‘power debate’ raises hard questions to which the recent ‘domination debate’ among p... more ABSTRACT The ‘power debate’ raises hard questions to which the recent ‘domination debate’ among philosophers embracing neorepublicanism contributes. Concerning agents and structures, the neorepublican focus on dominators’ wills needs broadening, replacing intentions with interests, since their power can be routine and unconsidered, and extend across generations. Neorepublicans see domination as a potential rendering others vulnerable; here the view needs to be narrowed to specify which potential dangers are relevant. There is no convincing way of determining what counts as dominating power that does not derive from one or another moral and political standpoint. These hard questions are and must remain open.
The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individ... more The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individuals’ freedom to moral requirements. In this article, we consider James Laidlaw’s influential proposal that an anthropology of ethics makes freedom central to what is distinctively ethical in human life, but we argue that it unduly restricts the proposed scope of anthropology. This account of freedom is both overly cognitive, focusing on reflection, viewed as involving distance, decision, reasoning and doubt, and too individualistic, downplaying the importance of freedom’s normative background and excluding from consideration many documented forms of ethical experience. We propose instead an alternative, more open-ended conceptualization of freedom, distinguishing a concept of freedom that differs from its widely varying conceptions, and drawing on ethnographic material from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan and elsewhere to illustrate multiple ways in which the constitution of selve...
Abstract Does ‘noumenal power’ adequately represent ‘the real and general phenomenon of power,’ a... more Abstract Does ‘noumenal power’ adequately represent ‘the real and general phenomenon of power,’ as the capacity to secure the compliance of others? Does it include what is relevantly similar and exclude what is not? Forst’s concept is, appropriately, interagentive, but errs in insisting that power is intentionally ‘exercised’ thereby excluding countless ways in which compliance can be otherwise secured. Does ‘noumenal power’ offer the best explanation of how power functions? In claiming that it must involve the recognition of reasons to act differently than one otherwise would, it does not address the role of emotions, overstates the role of reasoning, and excludes various significant ways in which power bypasses conscious awareness: through unconscious intuitions and inferences and taken-for-granted cultural schemas, by occlusion, excluding thoughts from consideration, and by signaling, in ways that mimic reasons.
Motivated by Supervised Opinion Analysis, we propose a novel framework devoted to Structured Outp... more Motivated by Supervised Opinion Analysis, we propose a novel framework devoted to Structured Output Learning with Abstention (SOLA). The structure prediction model is able to abstain from predicting some labels in the structured output at a cost chosen by the user in a flexible way. For that purpose, we decompose the problem into the learning of a pair of predictors, one devoted to structured abstention and the other, to structured output prediction. To compare fully labeled training data with predictions potentially containing abstentions, we define a wide class of asymmetric abstention-aware losses. Learning is achieved by surrogate regression in an appropriate feature space while prediction with abstention is performed by solving a new pre-image problem. Thus, SOLA extends recent ideas about Structured Output Prediction via surrogate problems and calibration theory and enjoys statistical guarantees on the resulting excess risk. Instantiated on a hierarchical abstention-aware loss, SOLA is shown to be relevant for fine-grained opinion mining and gives state-of-the-art results on this task. Moreover, the abstention-aware representations can be used to competitively predict user-review ratings based on a sentence-level opinion predictor.
Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, 1982
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though p... more A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.
Power and economics are not often put together as a topic. Economists—although they regularly dep... more Power and economics are not often put together as a topic. Economists—although they regularly deploy notions such as market power and bargaining power—do so unreflectively: they have little, and usually nothing, to say about the concept of power, about what power is, and how to study it. It is, it would seem, either uninteresting or difficult for economists, and in particular mainstream economics, to deal with this notion. There is little about it in the literature of economics; if you look for articles and books about power in economics, you will find very few. There are two interesting books, one by John Kenneth Galbraith and another by Kenneth Boulding, but they were maverick economists.
Dworkin: I’m going to talk in a rather general and abstract way at the beginning about liberalism... more Dworkin: I’m going to talk in a rather general and abstract way at the beginning about liberalism as a kind of political thought, a kind of approach to the central problems of politics. I think of liberalism as a very general abstract set of impulses and I think of particular liberal theories as conceptions detailing interpretations of that general impulse. So there are many different liberal philosophers, and some of them have very different theories from others, but I want to suggest to you that each of them, in spite of the differences, is offering us an interpretation of a few central, important ideas.
I effrey Goldfarb asks a very challenging questionor rather two: "Are there any longer signi... more I effrey Goldfarb asks a very challenging questionor rather two: "Are there any longer significant differences between left and right, and between socialism and capitalism?" He rightly sees these questions as having been raised, or rendered more acute, by the revolutions of 1989 and the current transformations taking place in the Soviet Union, and by the collapse of communism and anticommunism. I shall first comment on his way of posing the questions and his answers to them; and then I shall try to offer some answers of my own. Goldfarb offers a "new end-of-ideology thesis," which records, welcomes, and supports the rejection of "a totalitarian culture, with ideological politics, scientistic Utopias, and complete resolutions to complex societal problems," of "veils of ignorance and illusion" which "rationalized political actions, but had little to do with solving human problems or promoting human creativity." Essential to ideology, thus understood, were its "easy dichotomies" that have "defined a great deal of our political, economic, and sociological expert opinion and common sense." We must, says Goldfarb, "struggle to overcome them" and discard the old "either/or ideological map" according to which "a country is either free or it is totalitarian; it is either a democracy or a dictatorship; it is either capitalist or socialist (or 'communistic')." Now, it is striking that, for Goldfarb, these are the dichotomies characteristic of the now-anachronistic ideologies
This article considers Cohen’s claim that the economic structure or base can be conceived indepen... more This article considers Cohen’s claim that the economic structure or base can be conceived independently of the superstructure by adressing his attempt to identify “a rechtsfrei (moralitätsfrei, etc.) economic structure to explain law (morals, etc.)”. It examines his programme of presenting relations of production as a set of (non-normative) powers and constraints that ‘match’ the rights and obligations of property relations. It is argued that, first, Cohen does not carry through this programme rigorously but, second, he could not do so, since it cannot be carried out at all. Three arguments are advanced, the first two against the possibility of a determinate ‘objective’ account of such powers and constraints, the third against the possibility of abstracting norms (constitutive and regulative, formal and informal) from contractual relationships: it is argued that one cannot identify the powers and constraints embodied in norm-governed economic relationships independently of the norms...
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