Philosophy 365: Cognitive and Ethical Pluralisms

Topic List and Selected Bibliography

Main readings for the course are listed under each heading, often followed by one or more optional readings. Optional readings are primarily intended as resources to work from when you begin your research paper, though I may make reference to them during class discussion and you are welcome to do the same.

Much of the reading comes from the texts I've ordered at Atticus:

• Gibbard, Allan. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
• Krausz, Michael, ed. Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
• Krausz, Michael, and Jack Meiland, eds. Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation .
• Stout, Jeffrey. Ethics After Babel.
• Wong, David. Moral Relativity.

All other main readings are on reserve at Olin Library.

Cognitive Pluralisms

Strong Pluralisms

• Kuhn, Thomas S. "Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability." PSA 1982 vol. 2, (1983): 669-688.
  • -----. "Response to Commentaries." PSA 1982 vol. 2, (1983): 712-716.
  • -----. Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd Edition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1970.
  • Kitcher, Philip. "Theories, Theorists, and Theoretical Change." Philosophical Review vol. LXXXVII, no. 4 (October, 1978): 519-547.
  • -----. "Implications of Incommensurability." PSA 1982 vol. 2, (1983): 689-703.
• Swoyer, "True For," in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
• Whorf, "The Punctual and Segmentative Aspects of Verbs in Hopi," in Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge, M.I.T. Press: 1956.
• Barnes and Bloor, "Relativism, Rationalism, and the Sociology of Knowledge." in Rationality and Relativism.
  • Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd Edition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1991.

Strong Singularisms

• Hollis, "Reason and Ritual." in Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970.
  • -----. "The Limits of Irrationality." in Ibid.
  • Lukes, Steven. "Relativism in its Place." in Rationality and Relativism.
• Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
  • -----. "Belief and the Basis of Meaning." in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1984.
  • -----. "Thought and Talk." in Ibid.
  • Fodor, Jerry, and Ernest LePore. Holism: A ShopperÕs Guide. Cambridge, Blackwell: 1992. Ch. 3.

Moderate Pluralisms

• Hacking, Ian. "Language, Truth, and Reason." in Rationality and Relativism.
  • -----. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1983. Pt. II.
• Biagioli, Mario. "The Anthropology of Incommensurability." Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science vol. 21, no. 2 (1990): 183-209.

Ethical Pluralisms

Relativism

• Wong, David. Moral Relativity, Chs. 1, 4-5.
  • Drier, James. "Internalism and Speaker Relativism." Ethics no. 101 (October, 1990): 6-26.
  • Brandt, Richard B. "Ethical Relativism." in Ethical Theory, 271-294. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959.
• Lyons, David. "Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence." in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
• Williams. "An Inconsistent Form of Relativism." in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
  • -----. "The Truth in Relativism." in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
• Harman, "Moral Relativism Defended." in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral.
  • -----. The Nature of Morality. New York, Oxford University Press: 1977. Ch. 1.
  • -----. "Is there a Single, True Morality?" in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation.

Incommensurability

• MacIntyre, "Relativism, Power, and Philosophy." in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation.
• -----. "Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues." in Culture and Modernity, ed. Eliot Deutsch. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991
  • -----. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
• Stout, Jeffrey. Ethics After Babel. Pt. I
  • Geertz, Clifford. "The Uses of Diversity." Michigan Quarterly Review vol. 25, no. 1 (December, 1986): 105-123.
  • Rorty, Richard. "On Ethnocentrism: A Reply to Clifford Geertz." in Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1991. Vol. 1.
  • -----. "Cosmopolitanism Without Emancipation: A Reply to Jean-Francois Lyotard." in Ibid.

Expressivism

• Gibbard, Allan. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Pt. III.
  • Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic. New York, Dover Press: 1952, Ch. 6.
  • Stevenson, Charles L. "Relativism and Nonrelativism in the Theory of Value." in Facts and Values: Studies in Ethical Analysis, 71-93. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.
  • Blackburn, Simon. Spreading The Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
  • Wright, Crispin. "Realism, Anti-Realism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism." in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XII (Realism). Morris: Minnesota University Press, 1988, 25-49.