A Companion to Applied Philosophy E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1623

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Applied philosophy has been a growing area of research for the last 40 years. Until now, however, almost all of this research has been centered around the field of ethics. A Companion to Applied Philosophy breaks new ground, demonstrating that all areasof philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind, can be applied, and are relevant to questions of everyday life.

This perennial topic in philosophy provides an overview of these various applied philosophy developments, highlighting similarities and differences between various areas of applied philosophy, and examining the very nature of this topic. It is an area to which many of the towering figures in the history of philosophy have contributed, and this timely Companion demonstrates how various historical contributions are actually contributions within applied philosophy, even if they are not traditionally seen as such.

The Companion contains 42 essays covering major areas of philosophy; the articles themselves are all original contributions to the literature and represent the state of the art on this topic, as well as offering a map to the current debates.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Notes on Contributors

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Part I: Introductory Articles

1 The Nature of Applied Philosophy

Introduction

The Relevance Conception

The Specificity Conception

The Practical Conception

The Activist Conception

The Methodology Conception

The Empirical Facts Conception

The Audience Conception

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

2 The Methodology of Applied Philosophy

Introduction: What Is Applied Philosophy?

The Top‐Down Model

Bottom‐Up Models

Thought Experiments

Expertise

Concluding Thoughts

References

Further Reading

3 The Value of Applied Philosophy

Differing Views and Different Modes

Key Considerations and Assumptions

Dual Points of Reference

Challenges and Tensions

How Should Applied Philosophy Be Practically Relevant?

Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

Part II: Epistemology

4 Applied Epistemology

References

Further Reading

5 Gender and Feminist Epistemology

Feminist Philosophy as Activist: Doing Philosophy as a Feminist

Activist Feminist Epistemology: Changing Focus

Situated Knowers and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology

Feminist Epistemologies of Science

Redefining Objectivity

Testimonial Injustice, Ignorance, and Attention to Particulars

Conclusion

Acknowledgment

References

Further Reading

6 The Epistemology of Deliberative Democracy

Introduction

The Deliberative Conception of Democracy

Instrumental Arguments for Deliberative Democracy

Instrumental Arguments against Deliberative Democracy

Non‐instrumental Arguments for Deliberative Democracy

Non‐instrumental Arguments against Deliberative Democracy

Concluding Remarks

References

Further Reading

7 Information Markets

What Are Information Markets?

Information Markets and Expertise

Some Problems (and Solutions)

Information Markets and Applied Social Epistemology: Three Applications

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

8 Epistemology for (Real) People

Normativity

Belief Theories and Reasoning Theories

How to Evaluate Reasoning

Diagnostic Reasoning

Consilience and Mongrel Epistemology

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

9 Are Conspiracy Theorists Epistemically Vicious?

Introduction

Vice, Virtue, and the Intellect

Conspiracies, Elites, and the Open Society

On the Vices of Anti‐Conspiracism

References

Further Reading

10 Experts in the Climate Change Debate

Introduction

Expertise: Variations and Equivocations

Trust (and Its Exploitation) in Climate Debates

Climate Consensus and Credibility

Going Forward

References

Further Reading

11 Freedom of Expression, Diversity, and Truth

Deliberation and Diversity

Diversity and the Invisible Hand

Promoting Compliance with the Norms of Deliberation

Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgment

References

Further Reading

Part III: Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language

12 Applied Metaphysics

Introduction

Applying Metaphysics within Philosophy

Case Study I: Applied Ontology

Case Study II: Social Ontology

Case Study III: Natural Kinds in Psychiatry and Medicine

Further Examples

Conclusions?

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

13 Applied Philosophy of Language

What Are We Studying When We Study Language?

Philosophy of Language as Applied in Terms of Subject Matter

The Ontology and Methodology of Natural Language Inquiry

A Cognitively Real Semantic Theory and the Search for Evidence

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

14 Social Ontology and War

Introduction

Armed Forces, Waging War, and Joint Action

War, Collective Self‐Defense, and Collective Moral Responsibility

Individualism, Collectivism, and the Principles of Necessity, Proportionality, and Discrimination

References

Further Reading

15 The Metaphysics of Gender

Introduction

Philosophical Conceptions of Gender

Essentialism and Anti‐Essentialism

Realism and Nominalism

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

16 The Existence of the Dead

Being Dead

Being Alive

Being Neither Dead Nor Alive

Resurrection

Deathless Annihilation

Annihilationless Death

Death for Us

Applied Philosophy

Acknowledgment

References

Further Reading

17 Freedom of Expression and Derogatory Words

Introduction

Direct and Indirect Hate Speech

Five Models of Hate Speech

Hate Speech, Non‐persuasive Influence, and Harm

Regulating Vituperative Expression

Hate Speech and Silencing

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

Part IV: Ethics

18 Applied Moral Philosophy

Introduction

Results and Lessons of Following Reflective Equilibrium Methods: Opposed Views

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

19 Neuroethics and Responsibility

Introduction

Neuroethics and the Mental States of Actors

The Mental State of the Attributor

References

Further Reading

20 Non‐ideal Theory

What Is Non‐ideal Theory?

Varieties of Non‐ideal Theory

The Relationship between Ideal and Non‐ideal Theory

Non‐ideal Theory, Realism and Applied Philosophy

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

21 Death

Introduction

The Lucretian Problem

Psychological Relations

Maximization of Intrinsic Value

Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgment

References

Further Reading

Part V: Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Law

22 Applied Political and Legal Philosophy

Introduction

Standard Activist Approach

Extreme Activist Approach

Conceptual Activist Approach

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

23 Legal Human Rights Theory

Introduction

From Human Rights Practice to Human Rights Theory: Law as the Missing Link

The Law in “Political” and “Ethical” Human Rights Theories

Human Rights Theory qua Legal Theory

Legal Human Rights Theory as Applied Philosophy

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

24 Collectivism and Reductivism in the Ethics of War

The Ethics of War as Applied Philosophy

The Origins of the Just War Tradition

The Collectivist View

The Individualist View

Reductive Individualism: Implications and Objections

Legitimate Authority

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

25 Freedom of Association

Introduction

The Content of Freedom of Association

The Scope and Value of Freedom of Association

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

26 Neuroethics and Criminal Justice

Introduction

Neuroscience and the Criminal Justice System

Neuroethical Challenges

Neuroscience and Criminal Justice Ethics

Neuroscience, Criminal Justice, and Applied Philosophy

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

27 Deliberative Democracy

Introduction

The Moral Ideal of Deliberative Democracy

Cognitive Diversity in Deliberative Democracies

The Problem of Rational Ignorance

Inequality in Public Deliberation

The Problem of Group Polarization

References

Further Reading

28 Tax Ethics

Introduction

The Tax System?

Tax Justice and Horizontal Equity

Taxation and Liberty

Taxpayer Morality

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

29 Benefiting from Wrongdoing

Introduction

Benefiting from Wrongdoing as a Problem of Applied Philosophy

Two Versions of the Principle of Wrongful Benefits

Limiting the Principle

The Principle of Wrongful Benefits and Luck Egalitarianism

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

30 Freedom of Religion and Expression

Freedom of Religion

Freedom of Expression

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

Part VI: Philosophy of Science

31 Applied Philosophy of Social Science

Denying the Biological Reality of Race

Race as a Social Construction

Generalist Elements in the Construction of Race

Summary

References

Further Reading

32 Social Constructivism in Social Science and Science Wars

Introduction

Constructivism and Natural Science

The Science Wars

Discourse Analysis: Laclau and Mouffe

Social Constructivism in Feminist Philosophy

The Impact of Constructivist Arguments

References

Further Reading

33 Did Climate Change Cause That?

Increasing Probability

The “But‐For” Test: Causation as Counterfactual Dependence

The Fraction of Attributable Risk

The Butterfly Effect

Probability Raising and Causal Influence

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

Part VII: Aesthetics

34 Applied Aesthetics

On the Very Idea of “Applied Aesthetics”

The “Top‐down” Model of Applied Philosophy in Ethics

The Disciplinary Substructures of Ethics and Aesthetics Contrasted

The Disciplinary Substructure of Philosophy of Art

The Roles of Artistic Practice in Philosophical Thinking about the Arts

Conclusions

References

Further Reading

35 Thought Experiments in Aesthetics

A Theoretical Thought Experiment in Aesthetics

Assessing the Borges‐inspired Experimentation

Practical and Productive Thought Experiments

Coda

References

Further Reading

36 Aesthetic Value, Artistic Value, and Morality

Aesthetic, Artistic, and Moral Values

Autonomism

Art, Cognitive Value, and Moral Education

Ethicism

Contextualism

Art and Censorship

References

Further Reading

37 The Applied Philosophy of Humor

Introduction

The Philosophy of Humor

Comic Amusement is an Emotion

Bonding

Coping

Perspective Modification

Summary

References

Part VIII: Philosophy of Religion

38 Applied Philosophy of Religion

Preliminary Reflections on the Character of Applied Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Religion and the Practical Reality of Religion

Religious Epistemology and Religious Authority

Religion and Politics

The Interdisciplinary Aspect

Religious Experience and Religious Mysticism

Religious Ethics

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

39 Thinking about Reported Miracles

Introduction

Defining a Miracle

Miracles and Deities

Miracles and Evidence

Identifying a Miracle

When to Doubt a Miracle Report

Evidence for a Reported Miracle

References

Further Reading

40 Religion and Neuroscience

Introduction

The Cognitive Science of Religion

The Neuroscience of Meditation

References

Further Reading

Part IX: History of Applied Philosophy

41 Ancient Applied Philosophy

Introduction

Ancient Applied Philosophy and the Scope and Nature of Philosophy

Ancient Applied Philosophy and Method in Philosophy

Two Further Ways in Which Ancient Philosophy Is Applied

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

42 Modern Applied Philosophy

The Concepts of Theory and Practice, Especially in Right and Morality

Kant vs. Garve: Theory and Practice in Moral Motivation

Kant vs. Mendelssohn: Theory and Practice in the Moral Progress of Humanity

Kant vs. Hobbes: Theory and Practice in Politics

References

Further Reading

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 33

Table 33.1 How climate change increased the probability of various extreme events.

List of Illustrations

Chapter 08

Figure 8.1 Population, broken down by people with D and without D.

Figure 8.2 Hits and misses for the 100 people with D.

Figure 8.3 Hit and miss rates for those people testing positive.

Figure 8.4 Frequency format representing test sensitivity.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

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A Companion to Applied Philosophy

Edited by Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee, and David Coady

A Companion to Applied Philosophy

Edited by

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen,Kimberley Brownlee,and David Coady

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Names: Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kasper, 1964– editor. | Brownlee, Kimberley, editor. | Coady, David, 1965– editor.Title: A companion to applied philosophy / edited by Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee, and David Coady.Description: Chichester, UK ; Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016023733| ISBN 9781118869130 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118869116 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118869123 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Applied philosophy.Classification: LCC B831.3 .C66 2016 | DDC 100–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023733

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Notes on Contributors

Kristoffer Ahlstrom‐Vij is a former Fulbright and Templeton Foundation Fellow, and currently senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Kent, Canterbury. His research focuses on social epistemology and epistemic normativity, and has been published in, among other places, Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Episteme, Philosophical Quarterly, and Philosophical Studies.

Larry Alexander is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He is the author or co‐author of several books, the editor of several anthologies, and the author or co‐author of over 220 published articles, essays, and book chapters on legal and moral philosophy, criminal law theory, and constitutional theory.

Ben Almassi is an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Governors State University, Illinois, where he teaches practical and professional ethics, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. His recent publications in applied philosophy include “Medical Ghostwriting and Informed Consent” (2014) and “Climate Change, Epistemic Trust, and Expert Trustworthiness” (2012). He thanks the organizers of the 2011 Workshop on Climate Justice at the University of Alaska‐Anchorage and 2012 Summer Symposium on Science Communication at Iowa State University, where several aspects of his contribution to this volume were first developed.

David Archard is professor of philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast, having previously taught at the Universities of Ulster, St Andrews, and Lancaster. He is a past Honorary Chair of the Society for Applied Philosophy. His publications have addressed the philosophical issues of the child, family, and state, sexual consent, education, moral expertise, and the application of philosophy to public policy.

Richard Arneson has been a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego since 1973. He has published extensively on a wide number of topics in ethics, political philosophy, and applied ethics. His current research interests include the relation between distributive justice and responsibility and forms of consequentialist morality that are responsive to standard objections.

Sameer Bajaj is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Arizona. He works primarily in political philosophy, metaethics, and the philosophy of law. His current research develops an account of democratic justice that gives a central role to both the ideal of public reason – which requires that political activity is mutually acceptable – and epistemic considerations – which concern democracy’s ability to produce decisions that correspond to or track the procedure‐independent truth about justice.

Samantha Besson is professor of public international law and European law at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Her research focus and publications interests lie in the philosophy of international law and human rights. She is the co‐editor of The Philosophy of International Law (2010) and The Oxford Handbook on the Sources of International Law (forthcoming). She is currently completing a monograph entitled Human Rights as Law.

Michael Bishop is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He has authored or co‐authored articles on a wide range of issues in philosophy of science, ethics and epistemology. He is co‐author, with J.D. Trout, of Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (2005). His most recent book, The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well‐Being (2015), builds an empirically grounded and philosophically reflective theory of wellbeing.

Emma Borg is a professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, UK. Her main research interests lie in philosophy of language (where she defends a position known as “minimal semantics”) and philosophy of mind (where she is interested in issues around modularity, embodied/enactive cognition, mirror neurons, and animal cognition). She has published widely in these areas, including two monographs, Minimal Semantics (2004) and Pursuing Meaning (2012), and has held numerous research grants, including a Philip Leverhulme Prize award. Emma is currently Director of the Reading Centre for Cognition Research and an Associate Investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders.

Geoffrey Brennan is an economist by training who works increasingly at the interface between economics and political and moral philosophy. He is author of six books and over 250 articles and book chapters. He was a collaborator on two books, The Power to Tax and The Reason of Rules, with Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. His most recent book is co‐authored with Nicholas Southwood, Lina Eriksson, and Bob Goodin, entitled Explaining Norms.

Kimberley Brownlee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on the ethics of sociability, social rights, social virtues, and freedom of association. She is the author of Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience (2012) and co‐editor of Disability and Disadvantage (2009).

Noël Carroll is distinguished professor of philosophy at City University of New York. He specializes in philosophy of art and aesthetics in the United States.

Monima Chadha is senior lecturer in philosophy at Monash University Australia. Her main research interests are in Buddhist philosophy of mind and Indian philosophy more generally. She has published extensively in journals such as Philosophy East and West, Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, and Asian Philosophy.

Thomas Christiano is professor of philosophy and law at the University of Arizona. He has written The Rule of the Many (1996) and The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits (2008). He has edited a number of books on political philosophy and written articles on the theory of democratic deliberation in large societies and on distributive justice and international institutions. He is co‐editor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

C.A.J. (Tony) Coady is a prominent Australian philosopher well known for his writings on epistemology and on issues concerning political morality. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, and was Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His publications include Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992), Morality and Political Violence (2008), and Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (2008). A current research project concerns the role of religion in politics.

David Coady is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has published on many topics in applied epistemology, including expertise, conspiracy theory, rumor, and the blogosphere. He is the editor of Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate (2006), the author of What To Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues (2012), and the co‐author of The Climate Change Debate: An Epistemic and Ethical Enquiry (2013). He has also published on metaphysics, philosophy of law, police ethics, the ethics of horror films, and the ethics of cricket.

Finn Collin holds a PhD degree from University of California Berkeley (1978) and a DPhil degree from the University of Copenhagen (1985), where he is currently a professor of philosophy. His writings are mainly in the philosophy of science, focusing upon the social sciences and the humanities. Chief titles in English are Theory and Understanding (1985), Social Reality (1993), and Science Studies as Naturalized Philosophy (2011).

Richard Corry is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has published on numerous topics in the metaphysics of science and causation. He is author, with David Coady, of The Climate Change Debate: An Epistemic and Ethical Enquiry (2013), and editor, with Huw Price, of Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality (2007). He has also published on ethics and on the philosophy of ESP.

Nancy Daukas is a professor of philosophy and contributing faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. Publications include Epistemic Trust and Social Location (2006) and Altogether Now: A Virtue‐Theoretic Approach to Pluralism in Feminist Epistemology (2011).

David Davies is professor of philosophy at McGill University. He is the author of Art as Performance (2004), Aesthetics and Literature (2007), and Philosophy of the Performing Arts (2011); editor of The Thin Red Line (2008); and co‐editor of Blade Runner (2015). He has published widely on philosophical issues relating to film, photography, performance, music, literature, and visual art, and on issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

Michelle Madden Dempsey (JD, LLM, DPhil) is a professor of law at Villanova University School of Law in Pennsylvania, USA, and was tutorial fellow and CUF lecturer in law at the University of Oxford (2006–2009). She is an associate editor of Criminal Law and Philosophy, member of the American Law Institute, former Chair of the American Association of Law Schools’ Scholarship and Jurisprudence Sections, and member of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Law and Philosophy.

Helen Frowe is professor of practical philosophy and Wallenberg Academy research fellow at Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. She is the author of Defensive Killing (2014), The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction (2011), and co‐editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War (2015) and How We Fight: Ethics in War (2014).

Bjørn Hallsson is a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen. He has a background in psychology and is doing research on the epistemology of disagreement.

Katherine Hawley is professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of How Things Persist (2001), Trust: A Very Short Introduction (2012), and articles on parts and wholes, identity, natural kinds, and practical knowledge.

Jens Johansson is associate professor of practical philosophy at Uppsala University. He is the author of a number of essays on the philosophy of death and related issues (including personal identity and wellbeing), and co‐edited the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death (2013, with Ben Bradley and Fred Feldman).

Klemens Kappel is associate professor in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. His research interests include social epistemology, political philosophy, and bioethics.

Neil Levy is professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney and Director of Research at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He has published widely in neuroethics, philosophy of mind, and applied ethics. His most recent book is Consciousness and Moral Responsibility (2014).

Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Aarhus and Professor II in Philosophy at the University of Tromsø. Recent publications include Born Free and Equal? (2013) and Luck Egalitarianism (2015). He is an associate editor of Ethics and was Chair of the Society for Applied Philosophy from 2012 to 2014.

Matthew Lister (JD, PhD) is a visiting assistant professor of legal studies at the Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania. He has previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Villanova Law School, and the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. He is the current chair of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Law and Philosophy.

Paisley Livingston is chair professor of philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has published books and papers on various topics in aesthetics.

Steven Luper is Murchison term professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Trinity University, Texas. Among his publications are The Philosophy of Death (2009) and The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death (2014).

Ron Mallon is an associate professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis and Director of the Philosophy‐Neuroscience‐Psychology Program. His research interests are at the intersection of culture and the mind. He is currently working on a book on the social and psychological construction of human categories.

Timothy McGrew is professor and chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. He specializes in the theory of knowledge, probability theory, the history and philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion. He has published in numerous journals including Mind, The Monist, Analysis, Erkenntnis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and Philosophia Christi. His recent publications include the article “Evidence” in The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, co‐authorship of The Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology, co‐authorship (with Lydia McGrew) of the article “The Argument from Miracles” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, and the article “Miracles” for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Chris Megone is professor of inter‐disciplinary applied ethics, and director of Inter‐Disciplinary Ethics Applied, a national Centre of Excellence (the IDEA CETL) at the University of Leeds. He has wide‐ranging publications – in Aristotelian ethics, in applied ethics, especially in medical ethics and business and professional ethics, and in the area of moral psychology and rationality. He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2006.

Seumas Miller is a professorial fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University (Canberra) and the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology at Delft University of Technology (The Hague). He is the author or co‐author of over 200 academic articles and 15 books, including Terrorism and Counter‐terrorism (2009) and Moral Foundations of Social Institutions (2010).

Emil F.L. Møller is a former postdoctoral student in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.

Avia Pasternak is a senior lecturer in global ethics at the School of Public Policy, University College London. She is interested in questions of collective responsibility and political obligations in the face of unjust state policies. She co‐edited a special issue in the Journal of Applied Philosophy (2014, 31(4)) on benefiting from injustice.

Fabienne Peter is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. She specializes in social epistemology and moral and political philosophy. Currently, she is editor of Economics and Philosophy.

Mikael Pettersson is assistant professor of philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has published papers on depiction and the philosophy of photography.

Charles R. Pigden has taught at the University of Otago since 1988. He has published on a wide range of topics from the analytic/synthetic distinction through truthmaker theory to Jane Austen’s Mr Elliot. He has edited Russell on Ethics (1999), Hume on Motivation and Virtue (2009), and Hume on Is and Ought (2010).

Jesper Ryberg is professor of ethics and philosophy of law at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the head of the Research Group for Criminal Justice Ethics and is currently the head of a research project on neuroscience and criminal justice. Recent publications include Punishment and Ethics (ed. with A. Corlett) Palgrave Macmillan 2010 and Popular Punishment (ed. with J. Roberts) Oxford University Press 2014.

Andrea Sauchelli is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His areas of current interest include personal identity and applied ethics; and aesthetics and philosophy of art (art and ethics).

Thomas Søbirk Petersen is professor (MSO) of practical philosophy, Roskilde University, Denmark.

Zofia Stemplowska is associate professor of political theory and Asa Briggs fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford. She writes on domestic, global, and historical injustice and is the co‐editor (with Carl Knight) of Responsibility and Distributive Justice (2011).

Natalie Stoljar is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University, Canada. She is co‐editor (with Catriona Mackenzie) of Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self (2000) and author of many articles on autonomy, feminist metaphysics, and legal philosophy.

J.D. Trout is professor of philosophy and psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. He has authored or co‐authored articles on a wide range of issues in philosophy of science, epistemology, psychology, and policy. He is co‐author, with Michal Bishop, of Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (2005). His most recent book, Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science, argues that scientific realism is supported by contingencies in history and by good explanations whose truth is independent of their audience.

George Tsai is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii. He works primarily in moral and political philosophy. He has published or forthcoming work in venues including Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, and Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility.

Suzanne Uniacke is director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Her publications address philosophical issues of biomedicine, interpersonal and political conflict, and criminal law, and aspects of normative moral theory.

Caroline West is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney. Her research spans topics in metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, political philosophy, and feminism, including personal identity, free speech, and happiness. Relevant publications include “Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game” (with Rae Langton), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, “The Free Speech Argument Against Pornography,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and “What is Free Speech?” (with David Braddon‐Mitchell), Journal of Political Philosophy.

Isaac Wiegman is a lecturer at Texas State University. His research interests are in the philosophy of psychology and moral psychology. One of his papers, “The Evolution of Retribution,” is forthcoming in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Allen Wood is Ruth Norman Halls Professor at Indiana University and Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods professor emeritus at Stanford University. He has also held professorships at Cornell and Yale University and was Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor at Oxford University in 2005. He is author of 10 books, editor or translator of a dozen more, mainly in the areas of eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century German philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy. His most recent book is The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (2014). His forthcoming book is Fichte’s Ethical Thought (2016).

Foreword

I am delighted to have this opportunity, as the current Chief Editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, to contribute a foreword celebrating the publication of the Blackwell Companion to Applied Philosophy. The editors and contributors are to be warmly congratulated for their achievement and thanked for their efforts. This is a milestone collection. The chapters collected here capture the breadth and vibrancy of the many ways in which philosophers bring their distinctive skills and outlook to bear on applied issues. Judging by this Companion – as well as by the articles being published by the Journal of Applied Philosophy and other journals like it – applied philosophy has a bright future ahead of it.

The Society of Applied Philosophy was founded in 1982 with the aim of “promoting philosophical study and research that has a direct bearing on areas of practical concern.” The first issues of the Journal of Applied Philosophy appeared in 1984. Of course, applied philosophy did not begin with the founding of a society or journal with “applied philosophy” in the title. But these innovations, as with the founding of Philosophy and Public Affairs a decade earlier, testified to the appetite of philosophers to engage qua philosophers with the political and personal issues being raised by the rapidly changing societies around them. They helped to crystallize and provide a conduit for two lines of thought: first, that many actually existing social, political, and personal controversies had a basis in claims, counter‐claims, and confusions of a philosophical nature, and hence that clear, incisive philosophical reasoning could bring some benefit to those who wrestle with such controversies (among whom, often, are philosophers themselves in their life outside the seminar room); and second, that the skills in which philosophers become highly adept represent a great reservoir of intellectual power, and that these tools should sometimes be placed in the service not just of the intrinsic goods of philosophical understanding itself – important though that is – but of ends connected with the development of the individual and society. Given the opportunity, many philosophers have chosen to turn their minds to applied issues in some way or other, and their work is increasingly influential within academia and beyond.

If that tells us something about the “why” of applied philosophy, we can also ask what it is or how we would go about it. The first thing to say is – to echo a thought expressed by a number of authors in the Companion – that applied philosophy is far broader than applied ethics. Applied epistemology, applied philosophy of language, applied metaphysics, as well as simply applied conceptual analysis, can bring illumination to practical issues. Take the question of life after death: What would it mean to live on after death? One cannot come to an answer without stepping on philosophical issues regarding identity and persistence through time. Is pure evil intelligible? Is the type of freedom of the will that we can realistically ascribe to ourselves sufficient for moral or legal responsibility? What goes on when we forgive? What kind of speech act is pornography? These are applied philosophical questions, but their answers take us beyond applied ethics. Furthermore, important questions regarding the nature of knowledge arise when we start to reflect on the extent to which we depend on the opinion of experts in our increasingly complex, technology‐reliant societies, facing as we do major challenges as a result on ongoing specialization and industrialization. What should we believe about climate change? What is the proper role of experts and expert knowledge in democratic society? What is the role of trust in knowledge? What is the role of expert consensus in providing warrant for the beliefs of non‐experts? Are there non‐epistemic marks of epistemic authority? Are our existing epistemic practices in line with our best models of knowledge creation and transmission?

The term “applied philosophy” can suggest one‐way traffic, where the philosophy is largely done prior to the application, and the concern with practice involves showing what the theory suggests regarding this particular issue. This would still be important, of course, as long as it is true that philosophical theorizing can illuminate practical issues. However, one might draw the conclusion from this suggestion that the serious philosophical work is being done elsewhere. This impression might be compounded if we assume philosophy ideally to be of the “hedgehog” rather than the “fox” variety – to use the contrast made popular in our profession by Isaiah Berlin and, more recently, by Ronald Dworkin (where the fox knows many small things, the hedgehog one big thing). That is, if we assume philosophy ideally to be highly systematic and in some way “pure,” then the worry might emerge that its application can only be – from a purely philosophical point of view, at least – a second‐tier and in some way grubbier, inferior product (though – to be clear – this is not a worry that a reading of Dworkin’s hedgehog‐ism would encourage). In which case, although there might be plenty of interest among practitioners – so the picture goes – in what philosophers have to tell them, there would be little for philosophers to learn from reading applied philosophy rather than its purer versions.

However, in my experience as a writer and reader of applied philosophy, the process is beneficial in both directions: the philosophically informed engagement with practical issues is a fertile source of philosophical understanding as well as of practical illumination. Applied philosophy, in other words, can and should be philosophically interesting in its own right. In part, this is because of the importance of the method of reflective equilibrium to philosophical theorizing: the mutual adjustment of intuitions and principles, or of practical and theoretical understanding. Even with the increasing popularity and influence of naturalistic and “experimental” philosophy, it is often hard to see how philosophical reasoning can avoid resting at some level on “how things strike us.” However, in addition, paying attention to practice can aid philosophical understanding because, as Wittgenstein has it, sometimes making philosophical progress requires us to vary our diet of examples. Philosophy works with models and metaphors, the appropriateness of which are often derived from taking certain practical examples as paradigmatic. Looking at the rich resources of human life, and the varied ways in which people have reflected on its philosophical basis in forms other than academic philosophy, can sometimes help us to see the limited presuppositions of philosophical debate and suggest new paradigms and models. Furthermore, one does not have to be a Wittgensteinian quietist about the ambitions of philosophy to be humbled by the wisdom of highly skilled practitioners in government, law, medicine, and so forth in dealing with urgent and complex issues on a day‐to‐day basis. In the face of the efforts of such practitioners to make sense of challenges and to act for the best, it is not an abandonment of the critical potential of our discipline to conclude that sometimes all philosophy can do is to seek to give a theoretical articulation to such wisdom, putting it into a wider philosophical context rather than attempting to second guess or even to refine it. Applied philosophy, then, can – and should – involve many different approaches to the relation between philosophy and practice.

As the contents of this Companion indicate, philosophers have always been interested in the application of their theories and their skills to issues of practical concern. Plato, Aquinas, and Hegel represent some of the systematizers; Aristotle perhaps stands at the head of the opposing tradition of placing the appearances first. Indeed, one might argue that the idea that there is a distinction between pure and applied philosophy is itself a historical development, one that requires a certain degree of academic specialization, but which is not at all universal in the history of philosophy. This is not itself to cast doubt on the validity of the distinction. But thinkers like Plato and Aristotle arguably did not think of themselves as developing their philosophy first and applying it after. Rather they thought of themselves as answering questions, constructing theories, developing a method for thinking through problems, that would apply to what we might now call applied and pure topics as a whole rather than differently. Another way of thinking about applied philosophy, we might say, is as the application of a set of skills in which philosophers are highly trained, rather than the application of pre‐formed theories or doctrines.

Whatever applied philosophy amounts to – and largely we should let a thousand flowers bloom, judging the worth of a method by its results – this collection shows that it is in fine fettle. Nevertheless, the practice of applied philosophy is to some extent fragile, at the mercy of political context and trends in academic specialization. Within living memory it has not always been a sure route to credibility in philosophy to devote oneself to real‐world issues. Philosophers in the Anglo‐American tradition have sometimes taken pride in their isolation from what other – particularly Continental – thinkers have taken to be “relevance” (even while the claim that philosophy concerns itself with timeless truths rather than transient matters has had fewer and fewer defenders). This Companion is testament to the fact that this is rapidly changing, and we should celebrate that fact. There really is a lot for philosophers to turn their attention to.

Christopher Bennett

Chief Editor, Journal of Applied Philosophy

Acknowledgments

We wish to express our gratitude to Fay Niker for her assistance in preparing the manuscript and to Clare Hymer for assistance with the index. We thank the editors at Wiley with whom we have worked: Natarajan Bhargavi, Liam Cooper, Sally Cooper, Jeff Dean, Allison Kostka, Manish Luthra, and Roshna Mohan. We are grateful to Christopher Bennett for his excellent Foreword and to the 51 authors for their sterling contributions to this Companion.

We also wish to thank the many reviewers who provided prompt and valuable feedback on Companion chapters including: Kristoffer Ahlmstrom‐Vij, Ben Almassi, David Archard, Christian Barry, Helen Beebee, Corine Besson, David Birks, David Braddon‐Mitchell, Noel Carroll, Finn Collin, Richard Corry, Roger Crisp, Rowan Cruft, Jake Davis, Tom Douglas, James Edwards, Patrick Emerton, Sarah Fine, Helen Frowe, Heidi Grasswick, Alan Hamlin, Lisa Herzog, Nils Holtug, Jens Johansson, Klemens Kappel, Matthew Kramer, Bruce Langtry, Seth Lazar, Paisley Livingston, Steven Luper, Ron Mallon, Neil Manson, Graham Oppy, Fabienne Peter, Lucy Tatman, Jens Timmermann, Graham Twelftree, Suzanne Uniacke, Alison Wylie, and Lea Ypi.

Part IIntroductory Articles

1The Nature of Applied Philosophy

KASPER LIPPERT‐RASMUSSEN

Introduction

Applied philosophy is a form of philosophy, albeit one that differs from non‐applied or, as some put it, “pure philosophy.” Presumably, the distinction between applied and pure philosophy is exhaustive and mutually exclusive, though there might be borderline cases. What distinguishes the two?

Here is one way to approach the question: When we apply philosophy, we apply it to something. If I say that I am working on a piece of applied philosophy and if, in response to the question what I apply philosophy to, I say “Oh, nothing. I am just writing a piece in applied philosophy,” I show myself to be conceptually and/or grammatically confused. “To apply” is a verb that takes an object.

On the assumption that applied and non‐applied philosophy are mutually exclusive, this suggests that pure philosophy has no object. But, non‐grammatically speaking, this is not so. Work in a field of philosophy outside applied philosophy, such as general metaphysics, has an object – for example, the nature of properties. Hence, applied philosophy does not distinguish itself from pure philosophy in that the former is philosophy applied to an object, whereas pure philosophy is not. Pure philosophy being applied philosophy in this sense is not marked by the use of the term “applied.” This is because the problems it addresses are ones that are normally considered philosophical problems in a narrow sense. Metaphorically, pure philosophy is philosophy applied to itself – that is, to philosophical problems such as the fundamental nature of reality, knowledge, morality, and so on – whereas applied philosophy is philosophy applied to non‐philosophical problems broadly construed.

There are many views on which problems belong to the narrow set of philosophical problems. These differences we can set aside and instead focus on the fact there are also a number of different conceptions of applied philosophy. One reason for this multiplicity is that there are different views regarding what philosophy is. For example, is it a special approach to addressing problems, or is it a set of substantive principles that one can apply outside philosophy itself (or both)? On the former view, at its core applying philosophy is a matter of, say, approaching a particular question through meticulous conceptual analysis, making explicit how one’s conclusions follow from one’s premises, and so forth. On the latter view, applying philosophy is a matter of applying substantive philosophical principles. Often, doing so will consist in carefully identifying the relevant empirical facts of the matter and then feeding them into the relevant principles. For instance, applied ethicists who discuss capital punishment and believe that deterrence effects may justify punishment will look into whether capital punishment, as a matter of empirical fact, reduces overall crime rates.

Another reason why there are different conceptions of applied philosophy is that there are different views regarding what it is to apply something. For instance, some think that the notion of application differs across different philosophical disciplines; for example, it differs across ethics and aesthetics because the latter embodies “only in a limited manner a tacit imperative toward the kind of hierarchical taxonomy that we find expressed in ethics as traditionally conceived” (see Chapter 34, Applied Aesthetics).

In this chapter, I introduce seven conceptions of applied philosophy and clarify the differences between them. Along the way I will draw on examples from the contributions to this Companion. One core claim in this chapter – one that underpins the entire Companion – is that while applied ethics forms an important part of applied philosophy, applied philosophy is much more than applied ethics. This might seem odd, since applied ethics is a more established, self‐conscious applied philosophy discipline than others. However, there are historical reasons why this is so, which are compatible with the fact that any philosophical discipline – for example, epistemology or metaphysics – has an applied sub‐ or co‐discipline. This non‐applied ethics‐centered conception of applied philosophy is a consequence of all of the seven conceptions of applied philosophy discussed below. The editors of this Companion hope that the Companion in its entirety constitutes an even more effective argument for this broad construal of applied philosophy.

The Relevance Conception

In an article from 1970, Leslie Stevenson made a plea for applied philosophy. In his view, most of what went on in philosophy departments reflected “legitimately specialized concerns” with little or no “wider relevance” outside the various subdisciplines of “pure philosophy” such as “mathematical and philosophical logic, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and most of the questions now discussed by professional philosophers about ethics, politics, and aesthetics (e.g., the validity of the fact‐value distinction)” (Stevenson 1970: 259). By “applied philosophy” he meant philosophy that is “relevant to ‘the important questions of everyday life’” (Stevenson 1970: 258). These are a mix of quite different questions ranging from existential ones such as why death is bad to political questions such as what we should do about global warming. On what I shall refer to as the relevance conception of applied philosophy,

(1) Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it is relevant to important questions of everyday life.

As examples of questions in applied philosophy so construed, Stevenson mentions:

rational discussion of particular controversial moral questions, such as sexual morality, the Catholic ban on contraception, the use of hallucinogenic drugs, abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, the definition of death, and many other medico‐ethical‐legal problems raised or soon to be raised by the coming “biological revolution”; also certain aspects of various difficult and social political problems, such as educational policy (comprehensive schools? religious education?), the need for public participation in planning (Do people know what they want twenty years from now, and is it identical with what they need