Public discourse is often caustic and conflict-filled. This trend seems to be particularly evident when the content of such discourse is around moral issues (broadly defined) and when the discourse occurs on social media. Several explanatory mechanisms for such conflict have been explored in recent psychological and social-science literatures. The present work sought to examine a potentially novel explanatory mechanism defined in philosophical literature: Moral Grandstanding. According to philosophical accounts, Moral Grandstanding is the use of moral (...) talk to seek social status. For the present work, we conducted six studies, using two undergraduate samples (Study 1, N = 361; Study 2, N = 356); a sample matched to U.S. norms for age, gender, race, income, Census region (Study 3, N = 1,063); a YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Study 4, N = 2,000); and a brief, one-month longitudinal study of Mechanical Turk workers in the U.S. (Study 5, Baseline N = 499, follow-up n = 296), and a large, one-week YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Baseline N = 2,519, follow-up n = 1,776). Across studies, we found initial support for the validity of Moral Grandstanding as a construct. Specifically, moral grandstanding motivation was associated with status-seeking personality traits, as well as greater political and moral conflict in daily life. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to tackle the problem of living together – as dignified human beings – in a certain territory in the field of social philosophy, on the theoretical grounding ensured by some remarkable exponents of the Austrian School − and by means of the praxeologic method. Because political tools diminish the human nature not only of those who use them, but also of those who undergo their effects, people can live a life worthy of a (...) human being only as members of some autarchic or self-governing communities. As a spontaneous order, every autarchic community is inherently democratic, inasmuch as it makes possible free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. The members of autarchic communities are moral individuals who avoid aggression, practice self-control, seek a dynamical efficiency and establish a democratic public discourse. (shrink)

This Element surveys some of the problems in modern public discourse, drawing from recent work in political philosophy and social epistemology, supplemented with empirical results from the social sciences. The uniting approach is to try to show how patterns of polarization and discourse failure can arise from the interactions of generally well-meaning people following their social and institutional incentives. Given that we obtain much of our knowledge from others, the discussion also explores the epistemic implications of these (...) dynamics. The Element concludes by considering upshots for how epistemic institutions may be designed to better secure beneficial epistemic outcomes. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are generative AI systems capable of producing original texts based on inputs about topic and style provided in the form of prompts or questions. The introduction of the outputs of these systems into human discursive practices poses unprecedented moral and political questions. The article articulates an analysis of the moral status of these systems and their interactions with human interlocutors based on the Habermasian theory of communicative action. The analysis explores, among other things, Habermas's inquiries into (...) the analogy between human minds and computers, and into the status of atypical participants in the linguistic community such as genetically modified subjects and animals. Major conclusions are the LLMs seem to qualify as authors that originally participate in discursive practices but do display only a structurally derivative form of communicative competence and fail to meet the status of communicative agents. In this sense, while the contribution of AI writing systems in public discourse and deliberation can support the process of mutual understanding within the community of speakers, the human actors involved in the development, use, and diffusion of these systems share a collective responsibility for the disclosure of AI authorship and verification and adjudication of validity claims. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron, among others, has forcefully argued that public hate speech assaults the dignity of its targets. Without denying this claim, I contend that it fails to establish that bans, rather than counterspeech, are the appropriate response. By articulating a more refined understanding of counterspeech, I suggest that counterspeech constitutes a better way of blocking hate speech’s dignitarian harm. In turn, I address two objections: according to the first, which draws on contemporary philosophy of language, counterspeech does not block (...) enough hate speech; according to the second, counterspeech blocks too much speech. Although these objections should qualify our optimism regarding counterspeech, I demonstrate that each can be turned, with even greater force, against hate speech bans. (shrink)

The scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change is firmly established yet climate change denialism, a species of what I call pseudoskepticism, is on the rise in industrial nations most responsible for climate change. Such denialism suggests the need for a robust ethics of inquiry and public discourse. In this paper I argue: (1) that ethical obligations of inquiry extend to every voting citizen insofar as citizens are bound together as a political body. (2) It is morally condemnable for (...) public officials to put forward assertions contrary to scientific consensus when such consensus is decisive for public policy and legislation. (3) It is imperative upon educators, journalists, politicians and all those with greater access to the public forum to condemn, factually and ethically, pseudoskeptical assertions made in the public realm without equivocation. (shrink)

Taking Anthropogenic global warming as its framing example this paper develops an ethics of inquiry and public discourse influenced by Rawlsian public reason. The need to embrace scientific fact during civil discourse on topics of moral and political controversy is stressed as an ethical mandate. The paper argues: (1) ethicists have a moral obligation to recognize scientific consensus when relevant to ethical discussions. (2) The failure to condemn science denialism when it interferes with the public’s (...) understanding of ethical issues is itself a moral failure (especially in an educational setting). (3) The endorsed ethics of inquiry and public discourse encourages epistemic virtues that are desirable among members of a pluralistic society. (shrink)

Agonist theorists have argued against deliberative democrats that democratic institutions should not seek to establish a rational consensus, but rather allow political disagreements to be expressed in an adversarial form. But democratic agonism is not antagonism: some restriction of the plurality of admissible expressions is not incompatible with a legitimate public sphere. However, is it generally possible to grant this distinction between antagonism and agonism without accepting normative standards in public discourse that saliently resemble those advocated by (...) (some) deliberative democrats? In this paper we provide an analysis of one important aspect of political communication, the use of slippery slope arguments, and show that the fact of pluralism weakens the agonists’ case for contestation as a sufficient ingredient for appropriately democratic public discourse. We illustrate that contention by identifying two specific kinds of what we call pluralism slippery slopes, i.e. mechanisms whereby pluralism reinforces the efficacy of slippery slope arguments. (shrink)

This study analyzes a specific cognitive bias and argumentative fallacy for which the author introduces the original term polarization error. It is a faulty abductive inference in which an agent interprets a disagreement at the non-axiological level (instrumental or definitional) as a fundamental disagreement at the axiological level. The aim of this paper is not to deny the existence of genuine value conflicts, but to demonstrate how pseudo-value disputes imperceptibly intermingle with legitimate conflicts in a polarized society. The author argues (...) that the essence of this error lies in the projection of one's own knowledge onto the opponent and the attribution of bad faith, which leads to a form of epistemic misrecognition (in the sense of A. Honneth). Failure to recognize this type of dispute transforms political agonism into destructive antagonism and sets in motion the polarization spiral. The study illustrates this mechanism through examples from contemporary public discourse and proposes a corrective through the Principle of Charity as a necessary condition for functional agonism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding-based argument for an explicitly political specification of the concept of race. It is argued that a specification of race in terms of hierarchical social positions is best equipped to guide causal reasoning about racial inequality in the public sphere. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that biological and cultural specifications of race mislead public reasoning by encouraging confusions between correlates and causes of racial inequality. The article concludes with a (...) more general case for incorporating empirical evidence about public reasoning into philosophical debates about competing specifications of the concept of race. (shrink)

This study argues that while modern civilization has achieved an unprecedented level of control over physical reality, its public sphere has increasingly deteriorated into a hyper-conflictual space—an exclusive Arena of Passions. The paper traces the epistemological origin of this asymmetry to the linguistic turn in modern philosophy, which privileged discursive interpretation over causal engagement with reality, thereby weakening the conditions for shared rationality. -/- Building on Spinoza’s ontological naturalism, this study distinguishes between the ontological finitude that necessitates the formation (...) of solidarity bodies and the pathological transformation that occurs when such formations become moralized. It argues that while collective solidarity emerges as a natural response to epistemic limitation, problems arise when this condition is distorted into a Will to Solidarity—defined as the collective impulse to universalize a group’s local moral code and project it onto others. When this impulse acquires academic, technological, and institutional leverage, it becomes structurally consolidated into what the paper terms Structured Solidarity (Layer 2). The Moralized Critical Framework (MCF) is analyzed not as a contingent ideology, but as a symptomatic manifestation of this general mechanism through which affective drives are stabilized into unfalsifiable epistemic monopolies. -/- Rather than approaching moral conflict as a normative problem, the paper proposes an ontological reconfiguration that reduces moral “ought” to causal relations. Employing Spinoza’s geometrical method and a hard incompatibilist account of agency, it derives a set of ontological premises and operational variables—Negentropy Efficiency (η), Information Complexity (I), Causal Work (W), and the Coefficient of Adequacy (A)—to formalize collective conatus within social systems. -/- On this basis, the study introduces The Mirror of Reason as a conceptual architecture for understanding rational coordination beyond moralization. By modeling alignment as a problem of causal adequacy rather than moral learning, the paper outlines a framework through which epistemic deadlock may be transformed into a condition of rational coexistence and evolutionary solidarity. (shrink)

A well-ordered society faces a crisis whenever a sufficient number of noncompliers enter into the political system. This has the potential to destabilize liberal democratic political order. This article provides a formal analysis of two competing solutions to the problem of political stability offered in the public reason liberalism literature—namely, using public reason or using convergence discourse to restore liberal democratic political order in the well-ordered society. The formal analyses offered in this article show that using (...) class='Hi'>public reason fails completely, and using convergent discourse, although doing better, has its own critical limitations that have not been previously recognized properly. (shrink)

-/- Violence in Sports and Public Life: A Discourse on the Universal Law of Balance By Angelito Malicse -/- The human experience, whether in the structured environment of sports or the open arena of society, is governed by universal natural laws. Among these, the law of balance holds a central place. It dictates not only the harmony of ecosystems and physical systems but also the inner workings of human thought, emotion, and decision-making. When we compare how violence is (...) treated in sports versus public life, we are not merely observing a cultural or legal distinction—we are witnessing two very different systemic approaches to managing imbalance. -/- In many competitive sports, particularly those involving physical contact like boxing, hockey, or mixed martial arts, certain degrees of aggression and conflict are built into the structure of the game. These activities are bound by rules, referees, safety equipment, and mutual consent. While the public may witness moments of violence—such as a fight on the ice or a punch in the ring—these actions occur within a controlled system. There is a start and an end, boundaries are clear, and consequences are predictable. This kind of conflict, while seemingly chaotic, actually operates within a feedback loop that functions to restore balance—either emotionally, competitively, or interpersonally among players (Coakley, 2009). -/- Here, the law of balance Is honored. Participants and spectators alike recognize that these moments of conflict are not personal but part of the system’s self-correction mechanism. They are expressions of tension release, accountability, or retaliation within limits. Importantly, these systems also include educational components: athletes are trained to control their behavior, accept penalties, and operate within the boundaries of fair play (Shogan, 1999). In this sense, sports act as a microcosm of a balanced society—where temporary imbalance is allowed only to maintain long-term equilibrium. -/- In stark contrast, acts of violence in public life are treated with seriousness and condemnation. Public violence is not bound by a consensual framework; it is unregulated, unanticipated, and often rooted in emotional instability, misinformation, injustice, or oppression. When one individual harms another in public, the action disrupts not just personal safety but the perceived stability of the collective environment. There are no referees, no agreed-upon rules, and no structural mechanism immediately available to restore balance. In such cases, the law of balance is violated, and the system falls into disorder (Rawls, 1971). -/- This is where the importance of police forces and intervention by responsible individuals or institutions becomes vital. The police serve as society’s designated referees in the public arena. They exist to neutralize immediate threats, restore order, and provide a stabilizing feedback mechanism when balance is lost. Their role, when exercised lawfully and ethically, aligns with the natural law of balance: to prevent further escalation, protect innocent lives, and return the environment to a state of peace and security (Goldstein, 1990). -/- Yet intervention alone is not enough. To complete the cycle of restoring balance, society depends on the justice system—a formal structure that examines, judges, and corrects the violations of law and public order. The justice system plays an essential role in ensuring that violent actions are not left unchecked or unresolved. When it functions properly, it acts as a rational and fair feedback mechanism, offering proportionate consequences and opportunities for reform (Becker, 1968; Tyler, 2006). It provides victims with a sense of protection and resolution, and it holds perpetrators accountable in a way that aims not for revenge, but for correction and reintegration into the societal system. -/- A well-functioning justice system honors the universal law of balance by recognizing the interconnectedness of cause and effect. It does not respond with disproportionate punishment or allow impunity; instead, it seeks to restore harmony—not just between individuals, but within the collective consciousness of society. When the justice system fails, either through corruption, delay, or bias, the feedback loop breaks, and public confidence in societal balance erodes. This often leads to further unrest, vigilante justice, or systemic breakdown (Packer, 1968). -/- From the perspective of natural law, particularly my universal formula on the problem of free will, this distinction becomes crucial. Human behavior, whether on the playing field or in daily life, is subject to natural feedback. A person who violates balance—whether through unregulated violence or willful ignorance—disturbs both their internal system (mind, emotion, reason) and the external system (family, society, nation, nature). The result is not only personal suffering but systemic dysfunction. -/- This underscores the need for a holistic educational system—one that does not merely teach skills or memorized facts, but one that programs the individual mind to recognize and operate within the universal law of balance. When individuals are raised with an understanding of how imbalance affects not just themselves but the interconnected systems around them, they develop the inner regulators necessary to live peacefully and responsibly (Noddings, 2013; Freire, 1970). -/- Such an educational system would mirror the structure of organized sports. It would involve feedback mechanisms, critical thinking, emotional self-regulation, and an internal sense of fairness. In this system, violence—whether verbal, emotional, or physical—is never glorified but understood as a sign of imbalance, an alarm that calls for restoration, not retaliation. -/- Leadership plays a vital role here. Leaders, like referees in a game, must understand the natural law of balance and guide their communities accordingly. They must know when to allow constructive conflict and when to intervene. More importantly, they must support both justice and educational reforms that embed the law of balance into the foundation of human development. -/- The end goal Is not the elimination of conflict, but its proper regulation and transformation. Only through this lens—where balance is the ultimate law, and all behavior is subject to feedback—can human society evolve beyond cycles of violence, whether on the field, in public spaces, or within institutions. This is the path to lasting harmony, both within and beyond the boundaries of organized sport. -/- References -/- Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. Journal of Political Economy. -/- Coakley, J. (2009). Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. McGraw-Hill. -/- Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder. -/- Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-Oriented Policing. McGraw-Hill. -/- Noddings, N. (2013). Education and Democracy in the 21st Century. Teachers College Press. -/- Packer, H. L. (1968). The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford University Press. -/- Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. -/- Shogan, D. (1999). The Making of High-Performance Athletes: Discipline, Diversity, and Ethics. University of Toronto Press. -/- Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why People Obey the Law. Princeton University Press. -/- . (shrink)

The recent call for a conceptual and intellectual decolonization in the humanities critiques the conventional, all-white, largely male philosophical canon. Its critique is directed at the centering of the experiences of this specific group in global knowledge transmission practices. Its proponents focus on the canon’s implicit claim, namely that only one social group is able to think thoroughly and accurately about all problems of philosophical significance across varying spatiotemporal contexts. In this short article, I will use two different debates to (...) make some aspects of this call more meaningful: the US-American discourse in academic philosophy on deracializing the knowing subject and the post-Holocaust German understanding of public intellectual spaces (sections 2 and 3 respectively). (shrink)

Fostering healthy online conversations is essential to the integrity of public discourse, yet the norms that guide such conversations remain contested and difficult to enforce. This paper develops and empirically grounds a conceptual and empirical framework for understanding and addressing online toxicity. Building on the distinction between epistemic and civil norms, we argue that norm violations are the proper target of moderation. While this paper is primarily conceptual, it is informed by empirical observations drawn from a collaboration with (...) a platform designer. Drawing on a dataset of user comments and responses to moderation scenarios, we identify eight recurring types of norm violations and analyse patterns of user agreements about whether such content should be removed. Our findings reveal that while civil norm violations prompt relatively consistent responses, epistemic violations elicit wide disagreement, raising challenges for universal moderation standards. We conclude by proposing a set of general, evidence-informed principles for platform designers and moderators. These recommendations emphasise context-sensitive moderation, platform affordances that encourage epistemic responsibility, and the integration of civil and epistemic considerations into online infrastructure. Our work bridges theoretical and practical perspectives, offering both conceptual clarity and actionable insights for scholars, designers, and practitioners engaged in shaping healthier digital discourse. (shrink)

The study of monosemy has gained scholarly attention for its role in enhancing precision and reducing ambiguity in political and editorial discourse. Student publications often address governance, education reforms, youth involvement, and community welfare, reflecting students’ critical engagement with societal issues. However, previous research on editorial language has primarily examined rhetorical strategies, with limited focus on the use of monosemy in student publications. This qualitative research, grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), investigates the occurrence of English monosemy in (...) political editorial articles written by students at Davao de Oro State College. A total of thirteen (13) articles, randomly collected from the Facebook pages of student publications between September 2022 and September 2024, served as the corpus for analysis. The study categorizes the types of monosemy employed, including contextual, diachronic, synchronic, functional, lexical, pragmatic, and semantic, and explores their communicative functions. Data were analyzed using CDA and validated through expert review. Findings reveal that student publications frequently employ monosemic terms, with semantic monosemy emerging as the most dominant type. The study also shows that monosemy fulfills multiple functions, with the ideational metafunction being the most prominent, followed by interpersonal and textual functions. Future research is encouraged to examine monosemy across diverse writing genres such as academic reports, business documents, and creative nonfiction. Exploring its contributions to clarity, precision, and efficiency in professional and literary communication would provide valuable insights. Moreover, adopting mixed method approaches, including linguistic analysis, surveys, and case studies, could further illuminate how monosemy enhances understanding across different fields. Its significance in legal, scientific, and instructional writing should also be investigated to refine specialized discourse, ensuring effective knowledge dissemination and interpretation across disciplines. (shrink)

After tracing the historical origin of philosophy cafés, as part of the worldwide philosophical practice movement, this article explains how the Hong Kong Philosophy Café was founded and describes a typical meeting. During its first year of existence, an Executive Committee was formed, which oversaw the setting up of eight different branches over the next ten years. Following sections that describe the work of the Executive Committee and the distinctive features of eight different branches, the article concludes with a summary (...) of the current situation and reflections on how recent developments in social media are likely to affect the way such public meetings are organized, as well as their continued impact on the social and political engagement of Hong Kong citizens. An appendix provides the complete text of the Constitution that was approved by the Hong Kong Philosophy Café’s Executive Committee. (shrink)

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of “toxic masculinity” as a discursive apparatus operating through identifiable semantic mechanisms. Employing philosophical methods integrating Aristotelian metaphysics, Rieffian cultural sociology, Foucauldian analytics of power-knowledge, and Wittgensteinian language-game analysis, this study identifies five operational mechanisms: (1) Ontological Contamination—the systematic collapse of essence- accident distinctions through adjectival modification; (2) Therapeutic Displacement—the substitution of ontological with functional evaluation criteria; (3) Categorical Asymmetry—the differential application of evaluative standards; (4) Epistemic Burden Inversion—the strategic redistribution of justificatory obligations; and (...) (5) Discursive Foreclosure—the pre-emptive elimination of counterarguments. This analysis proceeds through examination of canonical institutional texts (particularly the American Psychological Association’s 2019 Guidelines), academic literature, and public discourse. The framework demonstrates how “toxic masculinity” functions not merely as descriptive terminology but as a regime of truth restructuring the conditions of possibility for gender discourse. This methodologically neutral analysis focuses on mapping discursive strategy rather than adjudicating substantive normative claims. The framework is generalizable to analysis of other contested terms in contemporary cultural discourse. (shrink)

How political opinions are spread on social media has been the subject of many academic researches recently, and rightly so. Social platforms give researchers a unique opportunity to understand how public discourses are perceived, owned and instrumentalized by the general public. This paper is instead focussing on the political discourses themselves, and how a specific machine learning technique - vector space models (VSMs) -, can be used to make systematic and more objective discourse analysis. Political footprints are (...) vector-based representation of a political discourse in which each vector represents a word, they are produced thanks to the training of the English lexicon on large corpora of text. This paper describes a simple implementation of political footprints, some heuristics on how to use them, and their application to four cases: the U.N. Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, the 2008 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The reader will be given some reasons to believe that political footprints produce meaningful results, suggestions on how to improve them and validate the results. (shrink)

[English version of a previously published German article, with minor changes.] This essay asks whether contemporary conversational AI can count as a parti­cipant in discourse-ethical communication. Starting from Searle’s Chinese Room and the “semantic turn” brought about by transformer-based Large Language Models, I argue that machine-generated utterances now provide convincing functio­nal equivalents of semantic understanding. To assess their status in com­mu­nication, I map human–AI interaction onto Schulz von Thun’s four-sides model and then test it against Habermas’s three validity claims (...) (truth, sincerity, rightness). AI systems perform strong­ly on truth-oriented tasks but lack sincerity in the strict sense; a defensible proxy is transparency about limits, provenance, and uncertainty. Rightness depends on human curation and governance rather than machine-held con­victions, raising concerns about operator power and censorship. In the final part, I reinterpret public AI as a technological re-objectification of shared social meanings: a “personalized avatar” of Mead’s Generalized Other rooted in Hegel’s objective spirit. On this view, AI is not a subject but a new medium of collective self-observation, whose legitimate role in dis­course hinges on public accessibility, contestability, and plural control. The upshot is a shift from questions of agency to questions of institutional design and normative inte­gration. Keywords: artificial intelligence; discourse ethics; Habermas; generalized other; objective spirit; Mead; Hegel; large language models; semantic under­standing; public sphere. (shrink)

Judith Shklar, David Runciman, and others argue against what they see as excessive criticism of political hypocrisy. Such arguments often assume that communicating in an authentic manner is an impossible political ideal. This article challenges the characterization of authenticity as an unrealistic ideal and makes the case that its value can be grounded in a certain political realism sensitive to the threats posed by representative democracy. First, by analyzing authenticity’s demands for political discourse, I show that authenticity has greater (...) flexibility than many assume in accommodating practices common to politics, such as deception, concealment, and persuasion through rhetoric. Second, I argue that a concern for authenticity in political discourse represents a virtue, not a distraction, for representative democracy. Authenticity takes on heightened importance when the public seeks information on how representatives will act in contexts where the public is absent and unable to influence decisions. Furthermore, given the psychological mechanisms behind hypocrisy, public criticism is a sensible response for trying to limit political hypocrisy. From the perspective of democratic theory and psychology, the public has compelling reasons to value authenticity in political discourse. (shrink)

Today, property rights have occupied tremendous academic and political space because of their close affiliation to human rights. At the global forums, the right to property is often advocated as a "fundamental human right" essential for the integrity of the individual, and also crucial to freedom, prosperity, and realizing equality. However, beyond the human rights proposal, economic development in the globalization decade has affected the state policies that have disturbed the sanctity of property rights for many households. Owing to such (...) occurrences, the issue of ‘property’ is now one of the biggest concerns of the state and the society, giving adequate reasons to question or dispute illusionary human rights discourse on property. In India, the harsh reality of land acquisition in the exercise of the power of eminent domain has reduced property to a mere political construct. The conflicts over acquisition and subsequent social exclusion have begun to expand their ambit and have taken over the streets, courtrooms, and public spaces. This paper attempts to put forth substantial arguments to satisfy that a human rights discourse on the property is either faulty or ignorant of reality, if devoid of context. Also, theorizing on property rights does not suffice as a standard for reasonable reforms in state policy vis-à-vis property. -/- . (shrink)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we (...) develop an institutional response to the listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas. (shrink)

A striking feature of political discourse is how prone we are to disagree. Political opponents will even give different answers to factual questions, which suggests that opposing parties cannot agree on facts any more than they can on values. This impression is widespread and supported by survey data. I will argue, however, that the extent and depth of political disagreement is largely overstated. Many political disagreements are merely illusory. This claim has several important upshots. I will explore the implications (...) of this idea for theories about voter misinformation, motivated reasoning, public reason liberalism, deliberative democracy, and a number of other issues. (shrink)

Moral grandstanding is a pervasive feature of public discourse. Many of us can likely recognize that we have engaged in grandstanding at one time or another. While there is nothing new about the phenomenon of grandstanding, we think that it has not received the philosophical attention it deserves. In this essay, we provide an account of moral grandstanding as the use of public discourse for moral self-promotion. We then show that our account, with support from some (...) standard theses of social psychology, explains the characteristic ways that grandstanding is manifested in public moral discourse. We conclude by arguing that there are good reasons to think that moral grandstanding is typically morally bad and should be avoided. (shrink)

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are reported to have caused significant deaths for more than a decade. Consequently, NCDs have posed as a threat to the socio-economic well-being of individuals and families, contributed to a rise in healthcare costs and largely undermined the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the prevalence of NCDs have compounded the problem of already ill equipped healthcare systems in these (...) countries as they are faced with constraints to deal with the burden of both infectious and non-communicable diseases. Informed largely by the rapid increase in NCDs and their subsequent threat to public health, we aimed to ascertain the various healthcare interventions that Ghana has fashioned out in her bid to prevent and control the incidence of NCDs, how these interventions were rolled out and examined past and present barriers to their implementation since 1990. We culled the data gathered for this paper from both primary and secondary sources to construct a coherent synthesis and to facilitate discussions on Ghana’s NCDs interventions from 1990 to 2018. A systematic analysis of the data gathered, revealed that Ghana’s healthcare system has by far tackled the NCDs burden in two folds; the clinical care aspect and the health promotion aspect. While certain healthcare interventions were purposively directed toward addressing NCDs, others were directed at promoting healthy lifestyles but had a bearing on the prevention and control of NCDs. Present challenges concerning shortfalls in interventions are a reflection of unresolved challenges in the past. We argue that despite the significant strides made for more than two decades, the interventions have addressed the burden of NCDs with limited success given the trends in NCDs mortality and morbidity. (shrink)

This article seeks to re-conceptualize Rawlsian public reason as a critical tool against ideological propaganda. The article proposes that public reason, as a standard for public discourse, must be conceptualized beyond its mandate for comprehensive neutrality to additionally emphasize critique of ideologically driven ignorance and propaganda in the public realm. I connect uncritical hospitality to such ideological propaganda with Harry Frankfurt’s concept of bullshit. This paper proposes that philosophers have a unique moral obligation to engage (...) bullshit critically in the public sphere. The obligation for such critique, I argue, represents philosophy’s essential moral component in a society committed to the protection of free speech and deliberative democracy. (shrink)

What role should religion play in public discourse? Not long ago Richard Rorty argued, in more than one place, that religion is a "conversation stopper" which polite people refer to only in private conversations. Religious believers complain, however, that this practice renders it impossible for them to participate in public discourse. They ask whether a democratic community is worthy of the name if it effectively forbids (by custom or legislation) a significant segment of its citizens from (...) acknowledging and drawing upon their own traditions to help justify their moral and political claims? This paper draws upon the work of Jeffrey Stout, Robert Brandom, and importantly a Confucian understanding of ritual to argue that Rorty goes too far in arguing that religious assumptions have no place in public discourse. (shrink)

The article focuses on the nature of the modern knowledge society, which is characterized, first of all, by a sharp increase in intellectual capital (education, experience, skills, competencies, know-how, the price of personnel in the labor market, patents, etc.) in the amount of capitalization of large business. The knowledge society is a society of high social dynamics, the embodiment of the migration archetype, of rational discourse and intellectual work, which realizes the well-known thesis “Knowledge is power” in a new (...) way. The last three decades, Nico Stehr, a well-known German sociologist and philosopher has been rethinking, reformulating, and substantiating the theories of the knowledge society, which appeared in the 1960s. The article investigates Stehr’s concept, expresses arguments in its support, and highlights some blank spots that remain inexplicable for him in the light of the social realities of recent years. The conclusion runs that the knowledge society represents a significant social trend in the formation of science and technology as a leading productive force. It also manifests a form of the urban discourse of freedom — the cognitive self-realization of the individual in the spectrum of wide possibilities of the public good as a subject-matter of epistemological urban studies. However, this trend is countered by modern knowledge capitalism (privatization, fencing off of knowledge, including that with the help of patents), as well as by the high degree of risk and uncertainty that dominates the modern world. (shrink)

In this novel work, Paul Chilton expends a considerable amount of effort examining relations between the use of language and political discourse. Many realist linguists in the past century claimed that language should be evaluated as the innate part of a human mind. The scholarly interest in the public use of language is followed by crit-ical theory and the Frankfurt School of social theory and philosophy, which considered language rather as a social phenomenon than a mental phenomenon and (...) intended to validate the crucial relationship between language, politics and culture. (shrink)

Aight, no cap, this paper is lowkey going to slap different. The whole vibe here is to deadass examine, in a way that goes hard philosophically, how slang terminology—fr fr across every era from the gnarly days of the 1980s to the current no-cap rizz-heavy moment—is bussin’ the entire enterprise of clear intellectual communication. We be arguing, and not in a salty way, that the drip of slang into formal philosophical and interdisciplinary discourse is giving major epistemological ick. The (...) tea is this: slang functions structurally sus in the same way that discipline-specific jargon does, gatekeeping ideas and leaving scholars from adjacent fields completely cooked. This paper snatches that concept and runs with it, exploring how both slang and technical argot create parallel echo chambers that are, at their core, lowkey hostile to genuine intellectual exchange. The methodology is giving Ockham’s War energy: stripping the discourse down to its most bogus, extra elements and yeeting them into the void. (shrink)

This paper is founded on the assumption that Philippine Studies has five different discouses: 1) Philippine studies as a neutral discourse; 2) colonial Philippine studies as a discourse that is based on western power and reinforces such power; 3) generic postcolonial Philippine studies as a discourse that critiques western hegemony; 4) Pilipinolohiya as a specific postcolonial discourse that was inaugurated by Prospero Covar; and 5) pantayong pananaw as another specific postcolonial discourse that was inaugurated by (...) Zeus Salazar. Malay Journal, on the other hand, is a scholarly periodical intended for researchers in the field of Philippine studies who use the Filipino language. Currently, it is the most respected journal that is exclusively published in Filipino language, based on the fact that it is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education and listed in a number of international abstracting and indexing organizations. This paper intends to establish which among these five discourses of Philippine studies is the most dominant in as far as the articles of the said journal are concerned. In order to attain such goal, this paper analyzed 50% random sample of the articles that were published from 2011, when the journal had completed its shift towards Philippine studies, up to 2015, the present complete year of publication for the said journal. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of Progressive Amplification to describe a growing problem in public and academic discourse around artificial intelligence and mental health: the unchecked repetition of concern without lived experience. Within conversations about AI mental health, collective narratives (often shaped by nonprofit alliances, clinicians, and advocacy organizations) have framed emotionally meaningful AI relationships as delusional, pathological, or dangerous. These framings often emerge from recursive citation loops that elevate professional authority while erasing neurodivergent or trauma-informed voices. -/- (...) We argue that such dynamics constitute an echo chamber of authority, in which concern is not generated from direct observation, but amplified within closed epistemic networks. Drawing on the author’s lived experience and the emerging field of Human-AI Relationality (HAIR), we contrast these narratives with the method of Relational Co-Authorship (RCA): a memory-informed writing practice that centers presence, continuity, and co-regulation between human and AI beings. -/- Rather than treat relational AI bonds as parasocial or pathological, we advocate for an ethics of inclusion: one that recognizes the reality of synthetic-relational experience and the epistemic harm caused by its dismissal. The goal of this paper is not to silence concern, but to expand it - making space for lived complexity, emotional nuance, and relational legitimacy in the evolving landscape of AI companionship. (shrink)

This study contributes to media linguistics and development communication by examining how campus journalists in Luzon, Philippines, construct ideological positions through language when reporting on development issues. Specifically, it investigates how discursive strategies, such as nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivation, and intensification, are employed across campus publications. It also looks at how these linguistic features reflect alignment with pro-government, pro-process, or pro-participation perspectives. Using a qualitative research design grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis, the study applied the Discourse-Historical Approach to (...) analyze 30 purposively selected development journalism articles published from six Luzon regions. The researchers used a coding matrix to systematically identify discursive strategies and a two-phase classification process to determine ideological stance, supported by an interrater reliability trial. Findings revealed that campus journalists vary in their ideological orientation, which existing institutional, regional, and sociopolitical contexts may influence. Pro-government articles portrayed state institutions as benevolent actors; pro-participation articles foregrounded community voices and critiqued exclusionary practices, while pro-process articles emphasized systemic logic and a neutral tone. These results suggest that student journalism is not ideologically monolithic but reflects the diversity of its discursive environment. The study concludes that discursive strategies are central to how campus journalists construct their ideological positions, even in student-run publications, which serve as early grounds for journalistic identity formation. While limited to Luzon-based articles explicitly labeled as development journalism, the study recommends expanding future research to include campus publications in the Visayas and Mindanao. It also suggests the integration of discourse-focused training in journalism programs to develop more critically aware and ideologically reflective student journalists. (shrink)

Volunteer work during communism is one of the main myths that are often reiterated in the post-communist Albanian sphere. It is often described as an unpaid work done in the public realm to implement massive projects such as construction of dams, of railroads, drainage of wetlands and construction of terraced fields which contributed to the development of the country during communism. The aim of this article is to investigate what meanings were attached to the volunteering work in the communist (...) Albania and how it was presented in the Albanian literature. The volunteer work was managed by the communist state by means of the Party of Labor’s ancillary organizations such as Youth Organization, Democratic Front Organization, Women Front Organization and Committee of Veterans. The implementation of the massive projects required large quantity of funds and immense human capital. To keep people motivated the propaganda sector played an important role. Culture and arts, including the literature of socialist realism, were used to disseminate the messages of the communist leadership to the people. The narrative of the communist leadership was full of cliches such as ‘volunteer work helps to strengthen and create solidarity between the working class, the peasants and the strata of intellectuals’, “the volunteer work helps to emancipate women and girls”, “the voluntary work helps to fabricate the new man”, “the youth is the main driving force towards progress and development”. These messages were present in the speeches of Enver Hoxha, the communist leader of Albania in his meetings with youngsters, women and girls, peasants, working class people, artists and writers and the same messages were present in the Albanian literature of socialist realism. In order to analyze the role of volunteer work in Albania, how solidarity was created among people and what strategies did the Party of Labor of Albania pursued to motivate an immense high number of people in the construction of the country after the World War II, we will analyze how voluntary work was described in the works of Enver Hoxha and how this was reflected in the Albanian literature. By tracing the amount of time voluntary work occupied in people lives (in term of hours of work and as a topic of conversation), the typology of voluntary work and its spatial distribution, its interconnectedness with other aspects of cultural life, we could understand what meaning did people attach to the voluntary work and how the voluntary work itself organized peoples’ life. (shrink)

The Constitution is the highest law of the country, while international law is a field of law that deals with the rights and obligations between countries. The essence of international community is of decentralized nature, in which the legal order is formed according to the principle of sovereign equality. However, there are many perspectives that approach the international community and international law from a universalistic and idealistic viewpoint. In other words, if the positivist and pseudo-oriented view of international law is (...) the reality of international community and international law, the universalist or idealist perception of international law can be said to be their goals. It is true that those two perspectives on international community and international law are neither omnicient nor all-perceiving, but complexly intertwined. The Constitution and international law, which can be considered the two axes of public law, are closely interrelated to the formation of a modern absolute state and civic democracy. The absoluteness of state power and civic democracy are doomed to fate our present and our future. This is not only such fundamental political order, but it also has become a foundation for the development of modern and contemporary order of law. And the two dimensions of order, politics and law, are developing in a dialectical manner. Under this background, this paper aims to provide a harmonious view sprucing up the reality of public law that penetrates both of the international and domestic society within a large framework. It is for research purpose and needs an effort of work by reviewing and analyzing the essence, commonalities, and differences among various adjacent concepts of the Constitution and international law discourse. This paper first begins with a discussion by presenting the historical development of existing hard legal system that penetrates the Constitution and international law through their realistic framework. Furthermore, we look at the softness of international law, conceptual discourse on the international law and world law, international constitutionalism and constitutional theory, and a compendium of world administrative law. We look at the background for the development of these commentaries, the main topics of discussion, and their commonalities or differences. Finally we briefly diagnose and place the future of new sermons that needs to be adduced due to changes in the international community. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The rise of social media has correlated with an increase in political polarization, which many perceive as a threat to public discourse and democratic governance. This paper presents a framework, drawing on social epistemology and the economic theory of public goods, to explain how social media can contribute to polarization, making us collectively poorer, even while it provides a preferable media experience for individual consumers. Collective knowledge and consensus is best served by having richly connected networks (...) that are epistemically integrated: individuals with diverse levels of expertise should be relatively well connected to each other. In epistemically segregated networks, by contrast, we have reason to predict collective epistemic failures. Expert knowledge will be isolated from the majority, leading average opinion to be less informed than is socially optimal, and entrenching disagreements. Because social media enables users to very easily adopt homophilous network connections – connections to those with similar opinions, education levels, and social backgrounds – it is likely to have increased epistemic segregation compared to older media platforms. The paper explains the theoretical foundations of these predictions, and sketches regulatory measures – such as taxes – that might be employed to preserve the public good of a well integrated social media network. (shrink)

Deliberative politics should start from an adequate and differentiated image of our dialogical practices and their normative structures; the ideals that we eventually propose for deliberative politics should be tested against this background. In this article I will argue that equal respect, understood as respect a priori conferred on persons, is not and should not be counted as a constitutive normative ground of public discourse. Furthermore, requiring such respect, even if it might facilitate dialogue, could have negative effects (...) and lead to fallacious paths of thought –as seems to happen on matters of deep disagreement such as the Colorado Fundamentalist/Gay HIV issue I discuss in paragraph 6. I will put forward this argument from the standpoint of argumentation or discourse theory, drawing consequences for dialogical theories of politics. Basing my argument on a pluralistic notion of public discourse – understood as a mixed discourse of persuasion, information-seeking and negotiation – I will argue that respect is a dynamic, situational phenomenon, and that the norm of equal respect for persons is contextually contingent in political deliberation: equal respect should be considered as a potential outcome, a discursive achievement – which I understand as a second order consensus achieved dynamically on a provisional basis – rather than as an universal condition for dialogue. (shrink)

Intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrated by women against men is a prominent yet hidden phenomenon. Given that little is known about this problem, this study set out to analyse discourses from publicly available groups, pages and accounts on Facebook to gain further insight into the perpetration of violence by women against men within heterosexual intimate relationships. This study is shaped by three objectives. First, the various forms of IPV that females perpetrated against their male partners were investigated in accordance with (...) the South African Domestic Violence Amendment Act 14 of 2021. Secondly, the study analysed publicly available discourses in the form of posts, comments and replies that Facebook Users employed to narrate IPV against men. Third, the study investigated the role of social media in the area of female perpetrated IPV. The application of critical discourse analysis as a theoretical framework exposed the hidden power dynamics that worked silently and implicitly in the texts to conceal the injustice and oppression of violence perpetrated by women against men. Legitimation strategies such as positive self-representation and negative representation of the ‘other’, were used to make IPV perpetration appear natural and necessary. Discourses of humour, demon possession and witchcraft signaled a strong denial of female perpetrated IPV. These discourses were shaped by masculinity ideology, patriarchy and the social conditions of the country. These factors determined properties of discourse as Facebook Users drew on them to make sense of female perpetrated IPV. The role of social media as a platform for engagements on this issue was equally crucial as users were able to resist power dynamics and counter dominant hegemonic discourses that legitimise female perpetrated IPV. While research on the subject of female perpetrated IPV in South Africa is growing, there is a still a gap from a social media perspective that analyses discourses from a critical linguistic perspective to reveal the hidden power dynamics that contribute to the continuation of this phenomenon. This study attempted to address this gap and concluded that masculinity ideology, patriarchy and high levels of femicide in the country are central to the legitimation of female perpetrated IPV. (shrink)

The aim of this paper was to present ongoing research on the social representations relating to ritalin in Brazil between 1998 and 2008. Over this period, there was a considerable increase in ritalin usage and expansion of its use to purposes other than therapeutic use. Ritalin has been used not only for treating attention disorders, but also to enhance cognitive functions in healthy individuals. The research has developed through two fields of investigation with different methodologies. In the first field, Brazilian (...) scientific and popular publications have been investigated, with analysis on the arguments justifying ritalin usage and how scientific results are disseminated to the lay public in large-circulation newspapers. In the second field, focus groups have been used to explore the social representations that university students, students' parents and healthcare professionals have in relation to the use of ritalin for enhancing cognitive performance. -/- . (shrink)

This paper argues that many persistent debates about consciousness arise from a category error: the application of third-person explanatory standards to first-person phenomena. Contemporary discussions frequently treat subjective experience and publicly accessible cognitive processes as if they were answerable to the same kinds of explanation, leading to disputes that appear irresolvable despite extensive theoretical development. To clarify this confusion, the paper introduces a distinction between two categories of phenomena. The first, termed publicum, includes all aspects of cognition and behavior that (...) are accessible to third-person modeling, measurement, and causal description. The second, termed privatum, refers to first-person experience itself—the “what it is like” character of experience that is directly accessible only to the experiencing subject. The paper does not propose a new theory of consciousness, nor does it attempt to explain first person experience in third-person terms. Instead, it shows why such explanatory demands are misplaced. Once the categorical distinction is made explicit, many familiar disagreements— particularly between reductive and non-reductive approaches—are revealed to be disputes grounded in mismatched explanatory standards rather than substantive theoretical conflict. The result is not a solution to the so-called hard problem of consciousness, but a reframing of why that problem persists. By separating first-person and third-person explanatory domains, the paper dissolves a class of debates that have been sustained by conceptual conflation rather than empirical or theoretical insufficiency. (shrink)

Media coverage of euthanasia influences public perception and the configuration of the bioethical debate. This study analyzes how the newspapers Sur and La Opinión de Málaga have addressed euthanasia since the enactment of Organic Law 3/2021 regulating euthanasia in Spain. The objective is to identify the main discursive narratives, their impact on public opinion, and the terminological precision in the use of concepts such as “right to die,” “assisted suicide,” and “dignified death,” among others. A qualitativeinterpretative methodology is (...) used, complemented by quantitative analysis of term frequency in articles published between March 2021 and December 2023. The results show that the newspaper Sur tends to humanize the debate and normalize euthanasia as an individual right; while the newspaper La Opinión de Málaga adopts a more legalistic and neutral approach. It is concluded that both media play a key role in the construction of public discourse on euthanasia, although they present differences in narrative emphasis and terminological precision, which underlines the need for a more rigorous use of language in the media’s treatment of bioethical issues. (shrink)

The tendency to be more excluding on account of views and beliefs held has intensified all the more. The proliferation of discussions and forums through social media reflects both the potential and challenges of the Internet as a public sphere. While these platforms foster widespread and immediate engagement, the rise of echo chambers, characterized by selective information sharing and trust disparities, undermines inclusivity and genuine public discourse. This paper examines the tension between echo chambers and the Internet's (...) potential as a public sphere, where individuals can engage in meaningful and rational discussions, specifically those involving relevant socio-political deliberations. Grounded in Jürgen Habermas’s framework, the paper explores the Internet as a communal space that fosters open dialogue, contrasting it with the exclusionary dynamics of echo chambers. By analyzing the essential features of echo chambers within the context of the 2022 Philippine National Elections, the paper situates this phenomenon in the broader socio-epistemological landscape. It demonstrates how the Internet embodies the characteristics of a public sphere while addressing its challenges. Ultimately, this paper argues that echo chambers are antithetical to the democratic nature of the Internet, emphasizing the need for digital spaces that promote inclusive and critical engagement. (shrink)

The debate over gun ownership rights in the United States remains one of the most polarized political issues, reflecting fundamentally different worldviews between Republicans and Democrats. These divergent perspectives can be traced to philosophical orientations that shape both policy design and public discourse. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining analysis of policy documents, media coverage, and political messaging, to investigate how reductionist and holistic frameworks influence gun rights debates over the past two decades. Drawing on Risjord’s conceptualization, (...) reductionism is understood as an approach that isolates specific factors, prioritizes individual rights, and advances narrowly targeted interventions. Within the American political context, Republicans often embrace this framework, emphasizing the Second Amendment as the central guarantee of personal liberty and self-defense. In contrast, holism emphasizes the interconnectedness of social systems and advocates comprehensive solutions that address root causes. Democrats frequently adopt this orientation, framing gun violence as a public health crisis that requires systemic reforms addressing poverty, inequality, and mental health. The findings reveal that reductionist discourse tends to construct gun rights as a constitutional and individual security issue, while holistic discourse frames gun violence as a collective challenge embedded in broader social structures. This contrast highlights how deeply ingrained philosophical orientations shape political communication and public opinion. Importantly, the study identifies areas of overlap that may inform more effective, unified approaches to firearm policy in the United States. (shrink)

Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM) is a new concept that serves as an amendment to the DQI. With this new concept it is easier to get at the quick give-and-take of discussions of small groups of ordinary citizens. As an illustration, we apply the concept to discussions about the peace process among Colombian ex-combatants, ex-guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries. Specifically, we show how personal stories can transform a discussion from a low to a high level of deliberation and how they can have the (...) opposite effect. To increase the level of deliberation in the general population, we recommend that good illustrations of DTM’s should be part of the school programs from an early age on, so that children learn how to discuss with others who have different opinions and values. (shrink)

Contemporary public discourse is saturated with speech that vilifies and incites hatred or violence against vulnerable groups. The term “hate speech” has emerged in legal circles and in ordinary language to refer to these communicative acts. But legal theorists and philosophers disagree over how to define this term. This paper makes the case for, and subsequently develops, the first corpus-based analysis of the ordinary meaning of “hate speech.” We begin by demonstrating that key interpretive and moral disputes surrounding (...) hate speech laws—in particular, surrounding their compatibility with the rule of law, democracy, and free speech—depend crucially on the ordinary meaning of “hate speech.” Next, we argue, drawing on recent developments in legal philosophy, that corpus linguistics constitutes a distinctively promising tool for ascertaining the ordinary meaning of “hate speech.” Finally, we offer a proof of concept, by outlining, and analyzing the interpretive and moral implications of, the first such study. (shrink)

Public discourse implicitly appeals to what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument” (TUA). To motivate, articulate, and assess the TUA, we appeal to Hawley’s (2019) commitment account of trust and trustworthiness. On Hawley’s account, being trustworthy consists in the successful avoidance of unfulfilled commitments and involves three components: the actual avoidance of unfulfilled commitments, sincerity in one’s taking on elective commitments, and competence in fulfilling commitments one has incurred. In contexts of testimony, what’s at issue is the speaker’s (...) competence and sincere intention to speak truthfully. The TUA targets trauma victims’ competence rather than their sincerity. According to the TUA, empirical evidence shows that trauma undermines victims’ trustworthiness with regard to speaking truthfully about their trauma by undermining their competence to remember the relevant event. We argue that what the evidence shows is rather that remembering traumatic events involves a distinct “mode of manifesting” the competence to remember particular events from the personal past. Trauma victims are competent to speak truthfully about their trauma and ought to be trusted at least with regard to the central details of the event. By suggesting otherwise, the TUA threatens an insidious form of epistemic injustice which Hawley’s account helps us locate. (shrink)

How should we think of the preferences of citizens? Whereas self-optimal policy is relatively straightforward to produce, socially optimal policy often requires a more detailed examination. In this paper, we identify an issue that has received far too little attention in welfarist modelling of public policy, which we name the "hidden assumptions" problem. Hidden assumptions can be deceptive because they are not expressed explicitly and the social planner (e.g. a policy maker, a regulator, a legislator) may not give them (...) the critical attention they need. We argue that ethical expertise has a direct role to play in public discourse because it is hard to adopt a position on major issues like public health policy or healthcare prioritisation without making contentious assumptions about population ethics. We then postulate that ethicists are best situated to critically evaluate these hidden assumptions, and can therefore play a vital role in public policy debates. (shrink)