Islamic Democracy and Popular Sovereignty: A Critical Essay on Andrew March’s The Caliphate of Man

In this review of Andrew March’s book, The Caliphate of Man, I shall focus on one central concept and one central claim to be found in the book: the concept of Islamic democracy, and the claim that al-Ghannūshī’s vision of popular sovereignty “reflects a genuine intellectual revolution in modern Islamic thought.” I suggest that the concept of Islamic democracy is logically possible only on the assumption of a purely procedural, value-neutral conception of democracy, and that the vision of the umma [the demos, populus] to be found in al-Ghannūshī is not such as to make the notion of popular sovereignty desirable by modern standards. I will suggest further that liberal Islamist thinkers stand to offer a superior view of Islamic democracy, one toward which al-Ghannūshī himself seems to be moving in his post-Revolutionary political practice.

The Common Good and the Egalitarian Research Imperative

This chapter distinguishes two conceptions of the common good and argues that reluctance to embrace a research imperative grounded in the corporate conception of the common good is sound. In contrast, it is argued that the basic or generic interest conception of the common good grounds an imperative with two requirements: to carry out research that produces the information necessary to enable a community’s basic social systems to efficiently and equitably advance the basic interests of its members and to ensure that this activity is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects the moral claim of its constituent members to be treated as free and equal. A central claim of this chapter is that an imperative to improve the capacity of social institutions to secure the interests of community members can be reconciled with fundamental moral respect for the status of the individuals who make such progress possible.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s central claim: that in a free and open society, higher education ought to be a right. It argues that prevailing anxiety about the distributive unfairness of higher education systems shifts needed attention away from a serious consideration of this possibility. However, that chapter also shows how justifying higher education as a right faces conceptual challenges, as well. First, arguments that set out to establish the importance of higher education often end up looking more like an argument in favour of what should be offered to all citizens on a compulsory basis. Second, arguments that set out to establish the general value of a higher education can end up making paternalistic conclusions about what is in citizens’ best interests. Meeting these two challenges, argues the author, can point the way toward a better understanding of why liberal societies should treat higher education as a right as opposed to a mere privilege.

Political Communication and the Nigerian Democratic Experiment: Critical Insights from Yorùbá Philosophy

Nigeria’s political sphere is fraught with violence, electoral frauds, unfulfilled promises and negligence on the part of the ruling class, hence political communication in Nigeria have been faced with hostility from electorates spurred by public distrust of the mass media. This essay philosophically argues for a culture-bound understanding of political communication in a way that enables a strategic decolonization of communication concepts and ideologies. This cultural understanding advocates the need for the domestication of information prior to their application in a way that enable us to properly reflect on and engage with the existential complexities of Africa’s political landscapes. The central claim of the Yorùbá political communication is that local and national communicative principles in political discourses should be subsumed under epistemic, ontological, and ethical dimensions drawn from Yorùbá histories, cultures, and values. This essay therefore deploys Yorùbá philosophical insights underlying the creation, distribution, use and control of information as a political resource that could be adopted by governments, organizations, the media, and individuals in Nigeria.

Complementarity of Description and the Promise of Semiotics in Dealing with an Eluding Object

I emphasize the general character of the central claim made by Terrence Deacon about the necessity of complementary description of evolving cognitive systems. Next, I clarify and augment one of the claims made in the paper about the tools offered by information theory. Finally, I point to the need of further clarification of some central notions, which should help to make connections across discourses.

Does Abortion Harm the Fetus?

A central claim in abortion ethics is what might be called the Harm Claim – the claim that abortion harms the fetus. In this article, we put forward a simple and straightforward reason to reject the Harm Claim. Rather than invoking controversial assumptions about personal identity, or some nonstandard account of harm, as many other critics of the Harm Claim have done, we suggest that the aborted fetus cannot be harmed for the simple reason that it does not occupy any well-being level.

Selling Elysium: the political economy of radical game distribution

This paper explores Disco Elysium’s first major expansion, “Working Class Update” as emblematic of the potential fracture between the game’s themes and its politics of production and distribution. Our central claim is that in this update, the studio has reacted to the audience’s appreciation for the game’s labor themes within broader dissatisfaction with the industry’s otherwise exploitative practices, yet was constrained by the contemporary dynamics of said industry. First, we examine Disco Elysium’s radical political orientation and the platformized political economy of digital game distribution through ZA/UM’s origins within the Estonia-specific ICT scene. Second, we describe the current state of videogames distribution, in critical dialog with Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter’s concept of a “game of multitude.” We show the limits and contradictions of Disco Elysium to enact radical political stance in a grow-ingly consolidated and platform-dependent video games market. Finally, through a qualitative empirical analysis of the community’s responses to the Worker’s Class Update on Reddit and Steam, we examine the game’s fit into the above-mentioned framework through key themes of dissonant development, tactical games and software commons.

Climate Change and Non-Identity

What is the practical relevance of the Non-Identity Problem (NIP) for our climate change-related duties? Climate change and the NIP are often discussed together, but there is surprisingly little work on the practical relevance of the NIP for the ethics of climate change. The central claim of this article is that the NIP makes a relatively minor difference to our climate change-related duties even if we pursue what has become known as the ‘bite the bullet’ strategy: endorse a person-affecting view threatened by the NIP and not modify it in such a way as to evade the NIP. In particular I will argue that a harm-based view can justify the big-picture call for action emerging from the field of climate ethics. The key to reaching this conclusion is pointing out the consequences of our climate change-related decisions for people whose existence does not depend on these very decisions.

Quasi-Empirical Fictionalism as an Approach to the Philosophy of Geometry

<p>The central claim of this thesis is that geometry is a quasi-empirical science based on the idealisation of the elementary physical operations that we actually perform with pen and paper. This conclusion is arrived at after searching for a theory of geometry that will not only explain the epistemology and ontology of mathematics, but will also fit with the best practices of working mathematicians and, more importantly, explain why geometry gives us knowledge that is relevant to physical reality. We will be considering all the major schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics. Firstly, from the epistemological side, we will consider apriorism, empiricism and quasi-empiricism, finding a Kitcherian style of quasi-empiricism to be the most attractive. Then, from the ontological side, we will consider Platonism, formalism, Kitcherian ontology, and fictionalism. Our conclusion will be to take a Kitcherian epistemology and a fictionalist ontology. This will give us a kind of quasiempirical-fictionalist approach to mathematics. The key feature of Kitcher's thesis is that he placed importance on the operations rather than the entities of arithmetic. However, because he only dealt with arithmetic, we are left with the task of developing a theory of geometry along Kitcherian lines. I will present a theory of geometry that parallels Kitcher's theory of arithmetic using the drawing of straight lines as the most primitive operation. We will thereby develop a theory of geometry that is founded upon our operations of drawing lines. Because this theory is based on our line drawing operations carried out in physical reality, and is the idealisation of those activities, we will have a connection between mathematical geometry and physical reality that explains the predictive power of geometry in the real world. Where Kitcher uses the Peano postulates to develop his theory of arithmetic, I will use the postulates of projective geometry to form the foundations of operational geometry. The reason for choosing projective geometry is due to the fact that by taking it as the foundation, we may apply Klein's Erlanger programme and build a theory of geometry that encompasses Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic geometries. The final question we will consider is the problem of conventionalism. We will discover that investigations into conventionalism give us further reason to accept the Kitcherian quasi-empirical-fictionalist approach as the most appealing philosophy of geometry available.</p>

Quasi-Empirical Fictionalism as an Approach to the Philosophy of Geometry

<p>The central claim of this thesis is that geometry is a quasi-empirical science based on the idealisation of the elementary physical operations that we actually perform with pen and paper. This conclusion is arrived at after searching for a theory of geometry that will not only explain the epistemology and ontology of mathematics, but will also fit with the best practices of working mathematicians and, more importantly, explain why geometry gives us knowledge that is relevant to physical reality. We will be considering all the major schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics. Firstly, from the epistemological side, we will consider apriorism, empiricism and quasi-empiricism, finding a Kitcherian style of quasi-empiricism to be the most attractive. Then, from the ontological side, we will consider Platonism, formalism, Kitcherian ontology, and fictionalism. Our conclusion will be to take a Kitcherian epistemology and a fictionalist ontology. This will give us a kind of quasiempirical-fictionalist approach to mathematics. The key feature of Kitcher's thesis is that he placed importance on the operations rather than the entities of arithmetic. However, because he only dealt with arithmetic, we are left with the task of developing a theory of geometry along Kitcherian lines. I will present a theory of geometry that parallels Kitcher's theory of arithmetic using the drawing of straight lines as the most primitive operation. We will thereby develop a theory of geometry that is founded upon our operations of drawing lines. Because this theory is based on our line drawing operations carried out in physical reality, and is the idealisation of those activities, we will have a connection between mathematical geometry and physical reality that explains the predictive power of geometry in the real world. Where Kitcher uses the Peano postulates to develop his theory of arithmetic, I will use the postulates of projective geometry to form the foundations of operational geometry. The reason for choosing projective geometry is due to the fact that by taking it as the foundation, we may apply Klein's Erlanger programme and build a theory of geometry that encompasses Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic geometries. The final question we will consider is the problem of conventionalism. We will discover that investigations into conventionalism give us further reason to accept the Kitcherian quasi-empirical-fictionalist approach as the most appealing philosophy of geometry available.</p>