¿Es posible decidir en qué creer? Respondiendo desde Franz Brentano a la discusión Williams-Cottingham

Bernard Williams, en su artículo “Deciding to believe”, caracteriza la creencia como estructuralmente dirigida hacia la verdad, i.e., no está en nuestras manos la decisión de creer, justamente porque nosotros no somos quienes generamos la verdad. John Cottingham, en cambio, responde años después a este artículo exhibiendo que, en el pensamiento de Descartes, es posible conjugar tanto la libertad de elegir qué creer, como una cierta prescripción que hace tender a la voluntad hacia lo claro y distinto, la que viene dada en tanto el espíritu es un ens creatum. En el marco de esta discusión se pretende, frente a Descartes, afirmar que en la doctrina de Brentano las nociones de “objeto secundario” y “objeto primario” permiten pensar las exigencias expuestas por Williams, ya no recurriendo al argumento de la divinidad, sino encontrando esa tensión en la estructura íntima de la propia conciencia.

Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy: How To Think Realistically About Public Debt

To what extent are questions of sovereign debt a matter for political rather than scientific or moral adjudication? We answer that question by defending three claims. We argue that (i) moral and technocratic takes on sovereign debt tend to be ideological in a pejorative sense of the term, and that therefore (ii) sovereign debt should be politicised all the way down. We then show that this sort of politicisation need not boil down to the crude Realpolitik of debtor-creditor power relations—a conclusion that would leave no room for normative theory, among other problems. Rather, we argue that (iii) in a democratic context, a realist approach to politics centred on what Bernard Williams calls ‘The Basic Legitimation Demand’ affords a deliberative approach to the normative evaluation of public debt policy options.

Realism and Real Politics. The gap between promise and practice in Bernard Williams’ realism

This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams’ approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams’ realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the paper considers how compatible Williams’ commitments to diagnosis and interpretation are, with how he spells out his realist thought. The second section argues that making good on Williams’ commitments requires realist political theorists to rethink the sources of their insights and the basis of their claims, and sketches pragmatist and ethnographic approaches as promising examples of how realists could match theoretical commitments in practice.

Introduction

This chapter sets out the topic and structure of the book. Metameleia is the ancient Greek term for ‘regret’ in the sense close to the modern notion of ‘agent regret’. It is a painful self-reflexive emotion based on a revised assessment of a past action. Understanding regret is important as a way of understanding the nature of virtue, ethical improvement, and the possibility of moral dilemmas. Modern accounts of agent regret, including for example the account offered by Bernard Williams, share some characteristics of the accounts of metameleia offered by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. But there are also important differences which we should note and try to explain.

Meaning in Lives Nearing Their End

In this paper, I consider the idea of meaning in life as I believe it has arisen in some discussions of ageing and death. I critically examine and compare the views of Atul Gawande and Ezekiel Emanuel, connecting their views to the idea of meaning in life. I further consider the relation of meaning in life to both the dignity of the person and the reasonableness of continuing or not continuing to live. In considering these issues, I evaluate and draw on Bernard Williams’ distinction between categorical and conditional desires, Susan Wolf's work on meaning in life, and Jeremy Waldron's views on dignity in old age.

When Death Comes Too Late: Radical Life Extension and the Makropulos Case

Famously, Bernard Williams has argued that although death is an evil if it occurs when we still have something to live for, we have no good reason to desire that our lives be radically extended because any such life would at some point reach a stage when we become indifferent to the world and ourselves. This is supposed to be so bad for us that it would be better if we died before that happens. Most critics have rejected Williams’ arguments on the grounds that it is far from certain that we will run out of things to live for, and I don't contest these objections. Instead, I am trying to show that they do not affect the persuasiveness of Williams’ argument, which in my reading does not rely on the claim that we will inevitably run out of things to live for, but on the far less contentious claim that it is not unthinkable we will do so and the largely ignored claim that if that happens, we will have died too late.

Desirability without Desire: Life Extension, Boredom and Spiritual Experience

In response to Bernard Williams’ suspicion that we would inevitably become bored with immortal life, John Martin Fischer has argued that we could continue to enjoy repeatable pleasures such as fine wine, beautiful music, and spiritual experiences. In more recent work on near-death experiences, Fischer has also explored the non-religious meaning of spiritual experiences in more depth. I join this deeper exploration of spiritual experience, and I also join Williams’ critics who question his view that character and desire are needed to explain the desirability of life, while providing additional reason for concern that Williams’ way of valuing life may itself actually be a cause of boredom with life. With an eye to spiritual experience, I indicate how we can distance ourselves even further from Williams’ view, and I suggest how the attitude that life is good but death is not bad emerges from spiritual experience, as expressed in numerous religious and secular spiritual traditions. This lends support to the conclusion that radically extended life is desirable even if not actively desired.

Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios

In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reconstruction, namely the historiographical method pioneered by Foucault and the hybrid method of pragmatic genealogy as practiced by Bernard Williams, arguing that they both ensure an increase in critical distance while preserving contextualism’s distinctiveness. I also show, however, that only the latter provides normative action-guidance and can thus assist the contextualist theorist in the crucial task of discerning how far certain contextual facts deserve their justificatory role. I prove this point by showing how a pragmatic genealogy of the practice of punishment can inform the contextualist’s reflection about the role this practice should play in a transitional scenario, i.e. in the set of circumstances societies go through in the aftermath of large-scale violence and human rights violations.

McDowell, Williams, and Intuitionism

This paper is concerned with a disagreement between Bernard Williams and John McDowell. It starts by asking what form a dispositional account of value should take. A no-priority view could hold that value is a disposition to elicit a certain response, and the response is to the object as disposed to elicit just that response. But a different no-priority view could talk of meriting a response and responding in the way merited. The response is explained as an instance of things being as they rationally ought to be. The paper debates the merits of such a view, and then turns to ask how much truth there is in the common claim that McDowell is an intuitionist.

George the Chemist

The present paper is an attempt to answer Bernard Williams' classical dilemma of George the chemist, who is asked by a senior colleague to partake in a CBW research program. Both George and the colleague oppose the research, and George is advised not to publicize his attitude for George to get the job instead of someone more eager. On the one hand, George does not want to be involved in the research, yet on the other hand, he does not want to allow it to be completed faster. The author views George's potential actions as sabotage and argues that since the existing ethical codes demand putting safety ahead of the pressures of the employers, sabotage should not be out of the question. CBW endangers entire communities, and thus secretly sabotaging its research amounts to disaster prevention and should be considered a professional duty by consequentialists and deontologists alike, even if it may involve deception and furthermore deception about deception.