Critical feminist studies in religion seek to articulate a theoretical analytics not in terms of gender and feminine identity but in socio-political terms. They understand wo/men as socio-political subject-citizens who are producing cultural knowledges and religious discourses in situations of domination and alienation.

RESUMENEste artículo se acerca al papel público que las religiones desempeñan en las democracias. Para ello es necesario que cultiven un doble afán. El primero, que mira hacia el exterior y sitúa a la religión católica entre el resto de esferas que definen nuestras sociedades plurales. El artículo cuestiona la tarea ética que puede ejercer esta tradición religiosa y que ha de reforzar el marco democrático en el que todas estas esferas se incluyen. El segundo, que mira hacia el interior (...) de esta religión y ocupa la mayor parte de este artículo, gira en torno a la teología feminista desarrollada por Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Su sentido crítico está transformando la identidad de los y las creyentes, los horizontes comprensivos religiosos y puede ayudar así a reforzar el papel de las democracias.PALABRAS CLAVERELIGIÓN, ESPACIO PÚBLICO, DELIBERACIÓN, HERMENÉUTICA CRÍTICA Y TEOLOGÍA FEMINISTA CRÍTICA.ABSTRACTThis article approaches the public part religions play in democracies. On the one hand, the Catholic religion has to be set amidst the rest of the spheres, which define our plural societies. In this first part, we will try to evaluate how the Catholic religion helps reinforcing the democratic frame in which it evolves. On the other hand, the largest part of this article will be devoted to the Catholic feminist theology developed by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza not only as a means of changing the identity of believers and their understanding religious horizons, but also as a way of strengthening the role of democracies.KEYWORDSRELIGION, PUBLIC SPHERE, DELIBERATION, CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS AND CRITICAL FEMINIST THEOLOGY. (shrink)

A portrait of scholastic approaches to a qualified disagreement of opinions, focusing on the antagonism of scholastic probabilism and anti-probabilism in the early modern era.

Ten years ago, one of us proposed a dynamic hierarchical model of intentions that brought together philosophical work on intentions and empirical work on motor representations and motor control (Pacherie, 2008). The model distinguished among Distal intentions, Proximal intentions, and Motor intentions operating at different levels of action control (hence the name DPM model). This model specified the representational and functional profiles of each type of intention, as well their local and global dynamics, and the ways in which they interact. (...) A core insight of the model was that action control is the result of integrated, coordinated activity across these levels of intention. Since the proposal of the model, empirical and theoretical works in philosophy and cognitive science have emerged that would seem to support and expand on this central insight. In particular, an updated understanding of the nature of sensorimotor processing and motor representations, as well as of how the different levels of intention and control interface and interact, allows for the further specification and precisification of the original DPM model. (shrink)

Popper a passé sa licence sous la direction de Bühler en 1928. Affirmer que Popper a été profondément influencé, non seulement par la théorie du langage de Bühler, mais aussi par sa psychologie, ne correspond pas à l’opinion courante. Le deuxième chapitre de Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntis montre clairement que Karl Bühler a représenté l’un des points de départ les plus importants de la théorie de l’esprit de Popper. Selon Popper, dans l’épistémologie de Carnap, il y a un « (...) préjudice inductif » : afin de rétablir une opinion neutre et adopter une épistémologie qui soit indépendante de la psychologie, il est nécessaire de démontrer que, dans la psychologie aussi, le déductivisme est possible et concevable. Popper donne des exemples très clairs de psychologie déductive et cite la théorie de Kant, Johannes Mueller, l’École Wuerzburg et Ernst Mach. Le choix de tels exemples est significatif afin de comprendre la nature de la formation de Popper. En particulier, il est important de souligner l’absence de la « psychologie de la Gestalt » ou de ses penseurs, tels que Wertheimer, Koehler, Koffka, etc. En effet, Bühler s’opposait fortement à la psychologie de la Gestalt de l’École Wertheimer et, entre l’Institut Bühler de Vienne et les psychologues de la Gestalt à Berlin, il y avait une véritable rivalité. Popper — qui est normalement considéré, de façon simpliste, comme étant « un psychologue gestaltiste » — a tout à fait adopté l’idée de Bühler.Popper graduated under Bühler's direction in 1928. It's not part of the common view to say that Popper was strongly influenced, not only by Bühler's theory of language, but also by his psychology. The second chapter of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnis shows clearly that one of the fundamental starting points for Popper's theory of mind was Karl Bühler. According to Popper, an “inductive prejudice” is contained in Carnap's epistemology : to restore a neutral point of view and to adopt an epistemology independent of psychology, it is necessary to show that, within the psychology, the deductivism is also possible, or thinkable. Popper provides some clear examples of deductive psychology and cites Kant's outlook, Johannes Mueller, the Wuerzburg's school and Ernst Mach. The choice of such examples is very important for the understanding of the nature of Popper's training. It is significant, in particular, the absence of the Gestaltpsychology or of its exponents, such as Wertheimer, Koehler, Koffka etc. In fact, Bühler was in sharp contrast with the Gestaltpsychology of Wertheimer's school and between the Bühler's Vienna Institute and the Berlin Gestalt -psychologists there was a real rivalry. Popper — who by the standard view is simplistically considered “a gestaltist psychologist” — adopted completely the Bühler's point of view. (shrink)

In a familiar interpretation, the Non-Identity Problem claims that persons whose existence depends on a seemingly harmful action cannot in fact be harmed through such an action. It is often objected that the persons in question can nevertheless be wronged through a violation of their rights. However, this objection seems to fail because these persons would readily waive any violated right in order to come into existence. The present article will analyze this Waiver Counter Argument in detail and show why (...) it does not succeed. First, it is necessary to distinguish between a prospective and a retrospective waiver scenario. In the prospective scenario an imagined person must consider whether she wants to waive a right in order to come into existence. In the retrospective scenario a person is asked whether she would prefer a wronged existence to never having been born. In both scenarios the conditions of a legitimate waiver of rights are not met, but for different reasons. On this basis, an argument against NIP can be developed. (shrink)

L’Economico di Senofonte contiene un interessante trattato sulla vita matrimoniale: al centro di questo trattato si colloca la figura della moglie di Iscomaco, così come viene delineata da quanto quest’ultimo narra a Socrate. Una figura in parte innovativa, in quanto viene associata alla gestione dell’oikos come responsabile di quanto si svolge all’interno della casa: un ruolo diverso da quello del marito, che si occupa e dirige ciò che si svolge all’esterno: i compiti di moglie e marito risultano quindi diversi ma (...) complementari. Questa differenza di attitudini e quindi di ruoli è presentata come voluta sia dalla divinità, sia dalla natura sia dalla consuetudine. La moglie di Iscomaco viene quindi a configurarsi come una collaboratrice e una compagna per il marito. Tuttavia questa moglie non intrattiene con il marito una relazione paritaria: infatti gestisce attività e persone all’interno della casa secondo le direttive impartite dal marito; anche nella sfera della vita sessuale deve adeguarsi ai desideri e alle convinzioni di Iscomaco; il suo stesso status di moglie sarà mantenuto soltanto se lei risponderà alle sue aspettative: paradossalmente la sua stessa autonomia è in realtà eterodiretta. Se pure può considerarsi una “maîtresse de la maison”, tuttavia, come ha sottolineato con una formula efficacissima Foucault, si tratta comunque di una “maîtresse obéissante de la maison”. (shrink)

Xenophon’s Oeconomicusincludes an interesting treatise on married life, at the hearth of which is the figure of Ischomachus’ wife, such as she is described by Ischomachus’ words to Socrates. It is an almost innovative figure, because she shares the management of the oikosas being responsible for what is carried out within the oikos: her role is different from her husband’s, who runs and manages what is carried out outside of the oikos. Therefore husband’s and wife’s tasks are different, though complementary. (...) The difference in inclinations and, therefore, roles is shown as established by god, nature and custom. So Ischomachus’ wife is a collaborator and companion of her husband, even though she does not have an equal relation with her him: she manages the activities and people within the oikosaccording to her husband’s directives. Also in the sphere of sexual life she has to conform to his desires and convictions; her own status as a wife will be preserved only if she meets his expectations: paradoxically her own autonomy is other-directed. Even if she may be considered a “maîtresse de la maison”, nevertheless, as Foucault outlined with a very incisive expression, she is anyway the “maîtresse obéissante de la maison”. (shrink)

What impact should sufficientarianism have on the measurement of inequality? Like other theories of justice, sufficientarianism influences how economic inequality is conceived. For the purpose of measurement, its standards of justice can be approximated by income-based thresholds of sufficiency. At which income level could a threshold of having enough be pegged in OECD countries? What would it imply for standard indicators of inequality, such as decile comparisons of cumulated income, income spreads, or the Gini coefficient? This paper suggests some answers (...) to these questions, showing that sufficientarian ideas could make a difference with respect to the measurement of inequality in a society. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Elisabeth Porter's guide to the development of feminist thought on ethics & moral agency surveys feminist debates on the nature of feminist ethics, intimate relationships, professional ethics, politics, sexual politics, abortion and reproductive choices.

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

The comment focusses on O'Neill's advocacy of Classical Institutionalism (CI) and the problems of the ideal-regarding approach to the construction of institutions. It maintains that CI shows no signs of progress which would justify a renewed exclusive interest in this paradigm and that the ideal-regarding approach needs some consequentialist balancing to avoid obvious risks of totalitarian denaturation.

I take up three puzzles about our emotional and evaluative responses to fiction. First, how can we even have emotional responses to characters and events that we know not to exist, if emotions are as intimately connected to belief and action as they seem to be? One solution to this puzzle claims that we merely imagine having such emotional responses. But this raises the puzzle of why we would ever refuse to follow an author’s instructions to imagine such responses, since (...) we happily imagine many other implausible things. A natural response to this second puzzle is that our responses to fiction are real, and so can’t just be conjured up in response to an author’s demands. However, this simple response is inadequate, because we often respond differently to people and events in fiction than we would if we encountered them in real life. Solving these three puzzles in a consistent way requires the notion of a “perspective” on a fictional world. I sketch an account of this intuitive but frustratingly amorphous notion: perspectives are tools for organizing our thinking, which can in turn alter our emotional and evaluative responses. Cultivating a perspective can be illuminating, entertaining, or corrupting — or all three at once. (shrink)