Is There Anti-Fittingness?
The permissible and the forbidden are privative opposites: each is a lack of the other. The good and the bad are, by contrast, polar opposites: badness is anti-goodness, not non-goodness. What about the fitting and the unfitting, the appropriate and the inappropriate, the apt and the inapt, the warr...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Michigan Publishing
2024-11-01
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| Series: | Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| Online Access: | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/6916/ |
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| author | Selim Berker |
| author_facet | Selim Berker |
| author_sort | Selim Berker |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The permissible and the forbidden are privative opposites: each is a lack of the other. The good and the bad are, by contrast, polar opposites: badness is anti-goodness, not non-goodness. What about the fitting and the unfitting, the appropriate and the inappropriate, the apt and the inapt, the warranted and the unwarranted? Is unfittingness non-fittingness or anti-fittingness, inappropriateness non-appropriateness or anti-appropriateness? This essay argues that each of these “aptic” categories stands in a privative rather than a polar relation to its opposite. More generally, there is no coherent notion of anti-fittingness, no inversely charged flipside to aptness, to be found. In order to establish these claims, a taxonomy of different types of oppositeness is proposed, and several tests for distinguishing distinct varieties of opposites are developed. What emerges is a better appreciation of the structural characteristics of fittingness and the other aptic categories, as well as an argument for taking up the nature of oppositeness as a serious philosophical topic that is ripe for further exploration. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-1684d8311df74a0fb8238f3e39dbf095 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2330-4014 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-11-01 |
| publisher | Michigan Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| spelling | doaj-art-1684d8311df74a0fb8238f3e39dbf0952025-08-20T02:13:24ZengMichigan PublishingErgo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy2330-40142024-11-0111010.3998/ergo.6916Is There Anti-Fittingness?Selim BerkerThe permissible and the forbidden are privative opposites: each is a lack of the other. The good and the bad are, by contrast, polar opposites: badness is anti-goodness, not non-goodness. What about the fitting and the unfitting, the appropriate and the inappropriate, the apt and the inapt, the warranted and the unwarranted? Is unfittingness non-fittingness or anti-fittingness, inappropriateness non-appropriateness or anti-appropriateness? This essay argues that each of these “aptic” categories stands in a privative rather than a polar relation to its opposite. More generally, there is no coherent notion of anti-fittingness, no inversely charged flipside to aptness, to be found. In order to establish these claims, a taxonomy of different types of oppositeness is proposed, and several tests for distinguishing distinct varieties of opposites are developed. What emerges is a better appreciation of the structural characteristics of fittingness and the other aptic categories, as well as an argument for taking up the nature of oppositeness as a serious philosophical topic that is ripe for further exploration.https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/6916/ |
| spellingShingle | Selim Berker Is There Anti-Fittingness? Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| title | Is There Anti-Fittingness? |
| title_full | Is There Anti-Fittingness? |
| title_fullStr | Is There Anti-Fittingness? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Is There Anti-Fittingness? |
| title_short | Is There Anti-Fittingness? |
| title_sort | is there anti fittingness |
| url | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/6916/ |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT selimberker isthereantifittingness |