What's important about 'coming out'? Why do we wear business suits or Star Trek pins? Part of the answer, we think, has to do with what we call agential identity. Social metaphysics has given us tools for understanding what it is to be socially positioned as a member of a particular group and what it means to self-identify with a group. But there is little exploration of the general relationship between selfidentity and social position. We take up this exploration, developing an account of agential identity-the self-identities we make available to others. Agential identities are the bridge between what we take ourselves to be and what others take us to be. Understanding agential identity not only fills an important gap in the literature, but also helps us explain politically important phenomena concerning discrimination, malicious identities, passing, and code-switching. These phenomena, we argue, cannot be understood solely in terms of self-identity or social position.I n April 1997, Ellen DeGeneres officially 'came out' in Time magazine, the cover boldly stating, with characteristic nonchalance, "Yep, I'm Gay". In one sense, DeGeneres's coming out was not informative: it was widely known that DeGeneres was gay. But in another sense, it was hugely informative. It communicated to the world that DeGeneres wanted this knowledge to move outside people's heads and beyond closed doors, and to impact how she was treated in her public life.
Abstract. Since it was presented in 1963, Chisholm's paradox has attracted constant attention in the deontic logic literature, but without the emergence of any definitive solution. We claim this is due to its having no single solution. The paradox actually presents many challenges to the formalization of deontic statements, including (1) context sensitivity of unconditional oughts, (2) formalizing conditional oughts, and (3) distinguishing generic from nongeneric oughts. Using the practical interpretation of 'ought' as a guideline, we propose a linguistically motivated logical solution to each of these problems, and explain the relation of the solution to the problem of contrary-to-duty obligations.1 Chisholm's Paradox Although the language in (1a) and (1b) is somewhat stilted and unnatural, there is nothing uncommon about the situation it describes. Frequently a secondary obligation results from the violation of a primary obligation. This is only considered to be paradoxical because such examples are difficult to formalize.We begin with an unconditional version of the Chisholm quartet. Having shed some complication, we argue, it becomes clear that 'oughts' are context-sensitive. Bearing that in mind, we shift to conditional obligation in Section 5. There, we offer considerations in favor of factual, rather than deontic, detachment. In Section 5.3, we show that a narrow-scope deontic conditional is unsuitable for the formalization of reparational obligations unless the conditional is contextualized. This contextualization avoids the problematic inference. We then discuss how generic constructions may be used to recover deontic detachment for wide-scope conditional 'ought's where necessary. Finally, we return to Chisholm's paradox in Section 6, where we demonstrate our proposed solution.
Since it was presented in 1963, Chisholm's paradox has attracted constant attention in the deontic logic literature, but without the emergence of any definitive solution. We claim this is due to its having no single solution. The paradox actually presents many challenges to the formalization of deontic statements, including (1) context sensitivity of unconditional oughts, (2) formalizing conditional oughts, and (3) distinguishing generic from nongeneric oughts. Using the practical interpretation of 'ought' as a guideline, we propose a linguistically motivated logical solution to each of these problems, and explain the relation of the solution to the problem of contrary-to-duty obligations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.