In Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, I provide a novel conceptual and normative theory of informal political representatives (IPRs), who speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. IPRs are everywhere. Some are internationally recognized leaders of social movements. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. informally represented Black Montgomerians during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Black Americans generally throughout the course of the civil rights movement. Me Too movement leader Tarana Burke informally represents survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment. Greta Thunberg informally represents Generation Z or, as she has put it, “we who have to live with the consequences” of climate change. Others are just our neighbors and friends. But when they go to the city council meeting to give voice to our neighborhood’s shared interests, they become our representatives, too. Despite IPRs’ ubiquity and significance to our political lives, their role is conceptually puzzling, morally troubling, and markedly undertheorized. The central ethical challenge of informal political representation is that IPRs can provide valuable political goods to those they represent; yet they are neither institutionally nor procedurally constrained in the ways formal political representatives (FPRs) like legislators are. Moreover, IPRs are often the only political actors working to advance the interests of oppressed and marginalized groups, meaning these groups rely on their IPRs. As a result, relationships between represented groups and their IPRs can be inegalitarian and oppressive. How may IPRs permissibly undertake activities central to their roles without thereby wronging those they represent? This is the question that drives my book.
In this essay, I respond to both David Estlund’s “But Do They Speak for Black People?” (this issue, 211–215) and Anne Iavarone-Turcotte’s “Speaking for Others Beyond Representation” (this issue, 217–228), commentaries on my book, Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation (2024). Estlund asks whether my definitions of “representation” and “speaking for” stretch the meanings of these terms too far beyond their ordinary uses. In reply, I explain the senses of “speaking for,” “representation,” and “representative” I use in Speaking for Others and show that my use is not novel. I further introduce what I call “the speaking for spectrum,” which accommodates a variety of related phenomena. I conclude by restating the main aim of Speaking for Others: to understand better the familiar but undertheorized social practice of informal political representation, whereby people speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. Iavarone-Turcotte explores how the “novel principles and criteria” I introduce in Speaking for Others apply to contexts “outside the core of” the book’s central focus (217–218). She does so by raising questions concerning the relationship between representation and speaking for, self-appointed spokespersons, intragroup marginalization, and two principles I introduce and examine in Speaking for Others: the descriptive preference principle and the nonmember deference principle. In answering these questions, I reaffirm the scope of the argument advanced in Speaking for Others and welcome the application of my theory to novel contexts beyond that scope.
Spinoza scholarship is riddled with questions about distinctions. Recent scholarship suggests that Spinoza might be using a particular kind of distinction whose exact understanding is a (if not the) key to many of the tantalizing but obscure claims that Spinoza seems to hold. Let’s call this distinction “Spinoza’s special distinction.” I argue that Spinoza uses not one but three kinds of special distinctions because he understands attributes as cognitions without idea. I first discuss the Scotistic and Suárezian models of Spinoza’s distinctions presented in recent years. I then argue that the attributes derive from an activity of substance and not from an activity of an intellect. They are therefore cognitions without idea. Attributes are the same as substance, but in relation to an intellect—not unlike to Spinoza, the idea of the circle is the circle (E2p7s, PUF 46/26–27) in relation to an intellect. The perception of the attributes in fact is divine action, seen from the receptive end, which is why it is receptive and not passive. Spinoza’s special distinctions, then, are necessitated by substance itself. The attribute/attribute distinction fits Spinoza’s definition of real distinctions, which I call real perceptions. The substance/attribute distinction cannot count as a real distinction—I call it a real perception. Furthermore, Spinozistic versions of the distinctions of reasoned reason are really distinctions as adequate conceptions. I conclude that Spinoza uses distinctions of reasoned reason, perceptual distinctions and real perceptions, each with a particularly Spinozistic flavour.
This paper argues that there is a general problem for the application of a broadly abductive methodology in logical theory choice. According to the Generalized Quinean Challenge, logical disagreement is not genuinely possible because rival logics do not share the meanings of their respective logical constants and the meanings of the metalogical predicates such as “is valid.” I argue that the Generalized Quinean Challenge is a serious problem for anti-exceptionalists about logic who want to maintain the validity of a broadly abductive methodology in the epistemology of logic.
Can an individual change their race? To answer in the affirmative is to endorse transracialism. Spencer Case has recently objected to transracialism on the grounds that it seems to raise the unwelcome prospect of accepting "trans-ability" and "trans-species" identity claims, which refer, respectively, to an able-bodied person identifying as disabled and a human being identifying as an animal. According to Case, this prospect not only reduces transracialism to absurdity, it reveals shortcomings with prevailing theories of transgender acceptance. I defend transracialism from Case's critique. Once we recognize what accepting "trans-ability" identity claims involves, doing so ceases to be absurd. As for "trans-species" identity claims, they are too disanalogous from transracial ones for a common standard of acceptance to apply to both. Regarding transgender identity claims, even if Case is right that one basis for accepting them is not well-defended, other frameworks of trans acceptance will remain available. Case's argument against accepting transracialism per se amounts to the idea that accepting transracialism would empty racial terms of meaning. I retort that this will not be true of theories of transracialism whose standard for accepting a transracial identity claim include a social component. Case therefore fails to show transracialism is an absurd idea.
This paper tries to establish the epistemic status of the intuition that love must arise naturally rather than artificially to be genuine in order to determine the ramifications for love's nature and our metaphysical theories of love. After discussing some hypothetical cases where love seems to arise artificially along with some where it seems to arise naturally in order to clarify the difference between love arising "naturally" versus "artificially" and shed further light on what the intuition claims, I then mount and defend an argument from cases against the intuition, which strongly suggests that love can arise naturally or artificially, and thus that the intuition is false.
This paper aims to show that the skeptical realist interpretation of Hume's theory of the mind is misguided. This claim is based on the following argument: Hume's treatment of the mind shows that while it is not unreasonable to contend that some of Hume's usage of the term "essence" may be construed as positing a transcendental self or core to the mind that can be regarded as something over and above succession of perceptions, it is not clear that they always should be so construed. Hume uses the term "essence" in three distinct senses: (a) in the Cartesian-Spinozistic sense as a simple substance in which perceptions inhere; (b) to refer to ultimate principles or secret powers; and (c) to refer to the most striking of several features essential to an entity or effect. An examination of the texts shows that (c) dominates Hume's usage. The philosophical outcome of distinguishing these senses is to show that if (c) dominates Hume's usage, then Hume 's reference to "essence" might commonly refer to salient features of the mind rather than affirming its existence as a distinct and independent entity.
In this essay, I respond to both David Estlund's "But Do They Speak for Black People?" (this issue, 211-215) andAnne Iavarone-Turcotte's "Speaking for Others Beyond Representation" (this issue, 217-228), commentaries on my book, Speaking for Others: The Ethics ofInformal Political Representation (2024). Estlund asks whether my definitions of "representation" and "speaking for" stretch the meanings of these terms too far beyond their ordinary uses. In reply, I explain the senses of "speaking for," "representation," and "representative" I use in Speaking for Others and show that my use is not novel. I further introduce what I call "the speaking for spectrum," which accommodates a variety of related phenomena. I conclude by restating the main aim of Speaking for Others: to understand better the familiar but undertheorized social practice of informal political representation, whereby people speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. Iavarone-Turcotte explores how the "novel principles and criteria" I introduce in Speaking for Others apply to contexts "outside the core of" the book's central focus (217-218). She does so by raising questions concerning the relationship between representation and speaking for, self-appointed spokespersons, intragroup marginalization, and two principles I introduce and examine in Speaking for Others: the descriptive preference principle and the nonmember deference principle. In answering these questions, I reaffirm the scope of the argument advanced in Speaking for Others and welcome the application of my theory to novel contexts beyond that scope.
Spinoza scholarship is riddled with questions about distinctions. Recent scholarship suggests that Spinoza might be using a particular kind of distinction whose exact understanding is a (if not the) key to many of the tantalizing but obscure claims that Spinoza seems to hold. Let's call this distinction "Spinoza's special distinction." I argue that Spinoza uses not one but three kinds of special distinctions because he understands attributes as cognitions without idea. I first discuss the Scotistic and Suarezian models of Spinoza's distinctions presented in recent years. I then argue that the attributes derive from an activity of substance and not from an activity of an intellect. They are therefore cognitions without idea. Attributes are the same as substance, but in relation to an intellect-not unlike to Spinoza, the idea of the circle is the circle (E2p7s, PUF 46/26-27) in relation to an intellect. The perception of the attributes in fact is divine action, seen from the receptive end, which is why it is receptive and not passive. Spinoza's special distinctions, then, are necessitated by substance itself. The attribute/attribute distinction fits Spinoza's definition of real distinctions, which I call real perceptions. The substance/attribute distinction cannot count as a real distinction-I call it a real perception. Furthermore, Spinozistic versions of the distinctions of reasoned reason are really distinctions as adequate conceptions. I conclude that Spinoza uses distinctions of reasoned reason, perceptual distinctions and real perceptions, each with a particularly Spinozistic flavour.
I argue for a new way to present the different objections that have been raised against ethical hedonism, the view that only pleasure and displeasure have final value. The typology of objections that I propose departs from existing categorizations in three distinct ways. In doing this, I also highlight some neglected strands of critique stemming from the analysis of the nature of (dis)pleasure, which suggest promising avenues for future research.
Drawing on examples from Salkin's account of "informal political representation" (IPR) as well as Linda Alcoff s classic take on the problem of "speaking for others," I argue that we can and should distinguish "speaking for" from representation-treating the former as a problem in its own right. This distinction allows us to ascribe ethical duties to speakers who cannot be recognized as IPRs. It also enables us to impose such duties-and to recognize the problem itself-when the IPR status is undisputed and indisputable, yet something still feels "wrong." I further argue that when Salkin does address the problem of speaking for others directly, she does so in a way that introduces some confusion and leaves residual questions-especially in the hypothetical case of John, a legal scholar and lawyer acting for the LGBTQIA+ community. Nonetheless, in this case and more broadly, Salkin introduces genuinely novel principles and criteria, which will undoubtedly stimulate further developments in the literature.
This paper argues that there is a general problem for the application of a broadly abductive methodology in logical theory choice. According to the Generalized Quinean Challenge, logical disagreement is not genuinely possible because rival logics do not share the meanings of their respective logical constants and the meanings of the metalogical predicates such as "is valid." I argue that the Generalized Quinean Challenge is a serious problem for anti-exceptionalists about logic who want to maintain the validity of a broadly abductive methodology in the epistemology of logic.
I discuss two ways of understanding (moral) rights from the perspective of practical deliberation: specificationism and generalism. After rejecting prominent objections to specificationism made from the practical angle, I argue that the specificationist approach to rights is problematic since it denies the intermediate role that rights usually have in practical reasoning, without giving strong reasons to dismiss an intuitive way of thinking about these normative standards. Even though generalism does take into account such an intermediate role, it needs to avoid the charge that it reduces rights to ordinary moral reasons, depriving these normative standards of their special normative force. I suggest that understanding rights as exclusionary reasons is a promising way to avoid this significant charge. I defend this possibility from possible objections.
