Does laïcité translate to the American classroom?

This essay reflects on the relevance of French laïcité for the American college classroom. It begins with a discussion of philosopher Catherine Kintzler’s radical interpretation of laïcité as a theory of political association that takes the classroom as its model. According to this view, the autonomous learning contingent on doubt and self-correction that ideally occurs there is the basis for an egalitarian and collaborative production of knowledge, a model of a res publica. The essay then turns to legal scholar and philosopher Anthony Kronman’s analysis of classroom conversation and the “ethics of depersonalization.” It considers the extent to which these notions can be viewed as American translations of Kintzler’s laïcité. The essay concludes with a reading of American essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates’s bestselling 2015 memoir as an endorsement of the autonomous abstract individual, the linchpin of republican universalism, laïcité, and liberal education.

The Open Future

In The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False, Patrick Todd launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future, one according to which all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false. Todd argues that this theory is metaphysically more parsimonious than its rivals, and that objections to its logical and practical coherence are much overblown. Todd shows how proponents of this view can maintain classical logic, and argues that the view has substantial advantages over Ockhamist, supervaluationist, and relativist alternatives. Todd draws inspiration from theories of “neg-raising” in linguistics, from debates about omniscience within the philosophy of religion, and defends a crucial comparison between his account of future contingents and certain more familiar theories of counterfactuals. Further, Todd defends his theory of the open future from the charges that it cannot make sense of our practices of betting, makes our credences regarding future contingents unintelligible, and is at odds with proper norms of assertion. In the end, in Todd’s classical open future, we have a compelling new solution to the longstanding “problem of future contingents”.

Consciousness Meets Lewisian Interpretation Theory

In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. I will agree with friends of phenomenal intentionality that reductive externalists neglect the role of our internally determined conscious experiences in grounding intentionality, but I will fault them for not adequately explaining intentionality. They cannot just say “conscious experience explains it” and leave it at that. However, I will sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. In particular, by appealing to Lewisian ideas, we can explain how Karl’s conscious experiences help to ground the contents of his other mental states.

Radical interpretation and decision theory

This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empirical information. One of the most compelling arguments for the possibility of radical interpretation, associated most closely with David Lewis and Donald Davidson, gives a central role to decision theoretic representation theorems, which demonstrate that if an agent’s preferences satisfy certain constraints, it is possible to deduce probability and utility functions that represent her beliefs and desires. We argue that an interpretationist who wants to rely on existing representation theorems in defence of the possibility of radical interpretation faces a trilemma, each horn of which is incompatible with the possibility of radical interpretation.

A New Paradigm: “The Middle Ages without Catharism” and the Testimony of the Inquisitional Sources

The article discusses the radical interpretation of Catharism which is getting more and more popular in the recent years. It’s adherents assume, that this heresy never existed for real in the regions of contemporary southern France, but was only a construct of the Catholic clergymen. In their opinion the image of well-organized and doctrinally consistent heresy was created by the Catho­lic polemists, basing on the ancient anti-heretical writings (mainly anti-man­ichaean scriptures of St. Augustine) and than it was imposed on the innocent people questioned during an inquisitorial procedure. The adherents of this interpretation (based on the interpretation of inquisitorial sources) propose a total change in the perception of Catharism, and writing it’s history anew, to fit a new paradigm—“Middle-Ages without Catharism.” The main aim of this article is to verify these revolutionary claims, basing on the analysis of the inquisitorial sources and to answer the following questions: Can we really say, that the image of Catharism in the inquisitorial sources is identical as in the Catholic polemics? Can we assume, that it was imposed on the interro­gated people by the inquisitors? And finally—is it really an image of the well‑organized counter-church?

The ECCC’s Contribution to Substantive ICL

In this short essay, I will argue that the ‘civilian population’ requirement in crimes against humanity (CAH) provisions (e.g. Article 7(1) ICC Statute) must either be radically restricted by way of a teleological (purpose-based) interpretation or — even better — abolished in future CAH provisions. While the traditional International Humanitarian Law approach certainly needs to be adjusted with regard to CAH, such an adjustment does not resolve the considerable limitation of the protective scope of CAH due to the ‘civilian population’ requirement. The contribution of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to the debate is to be welcomed and serves as a useful starting point for the more radical interpretation and necessary reform of CAH.

General Character of the Opposition

This introductory chapter presents the opposition of rhythm and meter as a contrast of (1) rhythm as variegated pattern and meter as periodic repetition; and (2) rhythmic and metric accent or, more broadly, rhythm as event and meter as a measurement of the duration of that event. These oppositions are sufficiently commonplace that it has not been necessary to invoke the work of specific theorists except to document the most radical interpretation of metrical accent as durationless. In one form or another, these two interpretations can be found in most current writing on rhythm and meter. Although these interpretations need not be seen as incompatible, there has been a tendency in more systematic treatments to posit one or the other as fundamental. Ultimately, it is in the opposition of meter and rhythm that one encounters most poignantly the opposition of law versus freedom, mechanical versus organic, general versus particular, or constant repetition of the same versus spontaneous creation of the ever new.

Reducing Mental Representation?

This chapter evaluates whether Radical Interpretation as it has been articulated in this book can be a reduction or foundational metaphysics of mental representation. One can be worried about this from two angles: first, whether it really qualifies as foundational metaphysics; second, whether what it targets is the whole of mental representation. Both challenges are addressed here. The chapter defends a reductive, foundational construal of Radical Interpretation against charges of circularity, while acknowledging a more modest fallback construal of what it achieves. It also shows how to extend the metaphysics of reference and truth conditions of the previous chapters to a metaphysics of Fregean sense.

Linguistic Convention and Shared Mental Content

This chapter is the second of three that sets out a metaphysics of linguistic representation, and here I turn to the key ingredient of linguistic convention. The focus is on a tension between the apparently individualistic character of the metaphysics of mental representation given by Radical Interpretation, and the presupposition of shared mental content apparently presupposed by appeals to linguistic convention. By considering the way in which beliefs about others’ beliefs influence the metaphysics of mental representation, the apparent tension is resolved. Either belief-attributions characterize others’ mental states indirectly, as having content somehow related to the contents used to characterize them, or they don’t. In the first case, there is no presupposition of shared mental content in the characterization of conventions. In the second case, there is such a presupposition, but Radical Interpretation will predict that there is metasemantic pressure to attribute shared content.