This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

This paper critiques the biological race realism of Quayshawn Spencer. Spencer's recent embrace of “radical race pluralism” (RRP) is welcome but incomplete, because it needs methods that distinguish different communicative contexts for how American English speakers use “race” and related terms. I offer a pragmatic approach to identifying such contexts that combines pragmatic argumentation theory, rhetorical polysemy, and a pragmatic approach to definition. One consequence of embracing RRP is that Spencer's theory of “OMB race talk” is unsupportable because it collapses (...) three distinct communicative contexts: genomic research, legal and regulatory governance, and ordinary talk. By so doing, OMB race talk blocks attempts to fight racism and violates ethical standards that should allow people the agency to define their own identities. (shrink)

Philosophical defenses of cognitive/evolutionary psychological accounts of racialism claim that classification based on phenotypical features of humans was common historically and is evidence for a species-typical, cognitive mechanism for essentializing. They conclude that social constructionist accounts of racialism must be supplemented by cognitive/evolutionary psychology. This article argues that phenotypical classifications were uncommon historically until such classifications were socially constructed. Moreover, some philosophers equivocate between two different meanings of “racial thinking.” The article concludes that social constructionist accounts are far more robust (...) than psychological accounts for the origins of racialism. (shrink)

This essay examines how the American Jewish Congress (AJC) designed a legal attack on discrimination based on social science. This campaign led to the creation in 1945 of two new AJC commissions, t...

What importance does “race” have as a meaningful category in the study of literature and the shaping of critical theory? If we attempt to answer this question by examining the history of Western literature and its criticism, our initial response would probably be “nothing” or, at the very least, “nothing explicitly.” Indeed, until the past decade or so, even the most subtle and sensitive literary critics would most likely have argued that, except for aberrant moments in the history of criticism, (...) race has not been brought to bear upon the study of literature in any apparent way. Since T. S. Eliot, after all, the canonical texts of the Western literary tradition have been defined as a more or less closed set of works that somehow speak to, or respond to, “the human condition” and to each other in formal patterns of repetition and revision. And while most critics acknowledge that judgment is not absolute and indeed reflects historically conditioned presuppositions, certain canonical works do seem to transcend value judgments of the moment, speaking irresistibly to the human condition. The question of the place of texts written by the Other in the proper study of “literature,” “Western literature,” or “comparative literature” has, until recently, remained an unasked question, suspended or silenced by a discourse in which the canonical and the noncanonical stand as the ultimate opposition. In much of the thinking about the proper study of literature in this century, race has been an invisible quantity, a persistent yet implicit presence.This was not always the case, we know. By mid-nineteenth century, “national spirit” and “historical period” had become widely accepted categories within theories of the nature and function of literature which argued that the principal value in a great work of literary art resided in the extent to which these categories were reflected in that work of art Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois considered a culture’s formal social institution as the repository of its “guiding spirit,” while Giambattista Vico’s principi di una scienza nuova read literature against a complex pattern of historical cycles. Friedrich and August von Schlegel managed rather deftly to bring “both national spirit and historical period” to bear upon the interpretation of literature, as W. Jackson Bate has shown. But it was Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine who made the implicit explicit by postulating “race, moment, and milieu” as positivistic criteria through which any work could be read and which, by definition, any work reflected. Taine’s History of English Literature was the great foundation upon which subsequent nineteenth-century notions of “national literatures” would be constructed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is professor of English, comparative literature, and African studies at Cornell University. He has edited several books and has written Figures in Blood and The Signifying Monkey. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Tommy Shelby and Brandon M. Terry, eds. To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., 463 pages./ To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Harvard professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry have produced a masterful reappraisal of King’s legacy, specifically as a political philosopher. More importantly, the book can be read as a mirror through which we can see King’s struggles and resistance, that led him down (...) a “dangerous road,” having strong parallels with the dangerous road we face with current political and social upheavals. Negative reactions against globalization have heightened the sentiments of fear, paranoia, and partisanship. Racial tensions are reaching a boiling-point in the U.S. after the 2017 Charlottesville protests and a pattern of discrimination and senseless killings from the privileged campus of Yale to the country roads of Minnesota or Georgia, by law enforcement and civilians alike. One of the tendencies growing in this distressing hour of world history entails the rise of personality and celebrity cults forming around “strong” leaders. A mobocracy mentality is forming the way we think about politicians, judges, or even health specialists like chief U.S. immunologist Anthony Fauci. Celebrity fetishizing has infected Americans’ sense of reality, including the ways in which politics are practiced and interpreted. Engulfed in the quagmires of identity politics, our attempts to legitimate who has the right to fight for social justice have been paralyzed by these performative gestures of social change and action. It could be argued that the aesthetic presentation and the skills of rebranding have, in a certain sense, replaced the philosophical and moral concerns explored in the sections on “Traditions,” “Ideals,” “Justice,” and “Conscience,” respectively. What King teaches us philosophically has, more often than not, been glossed over by a superficial publicity or aesthetics of infotainment destined for the tabloids. For this reason, King’s iconic image is both a blessing and curse. In order to appreciate the full thrust of King’s thinking, we have to go deeper morally and philosophically to supplement our aesthetic religious values and interests, and that is what these fifteen essays deliver. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent (...) are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational person, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think. (shrink)

A defense of material implication as implication.

Many evidentialists are impermissivists. But there’s no in-principle reason for this. In this paper, I examine and motivate permissivist evidentialism. Not only are permissivism and evidentialism compatible but there are unique benefits that arise for this combination of views. In particular, permissivist evidentialism respects the importance of evidence while capturing its limitations and provides a plausible and attractive explanation of the relationship between the epistemic and non-epistemic. Permissivist evidentialism is thus an attractive option in logical space that hasn’t received enough (...) attention. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to the (...) empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is (...) regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

One way to challenge the substantiveness of a particular philosophical issue is to argue that those who debate the issue are engaged in a merely verbal dispute. For example, it has been maintained that the apparent disagreement over the mind/brain identity thesis is a merely verbal dispute, and thus that there is no substantive question of whether or not mental properties are identical to neurological properties. The goal of this paper is to help clarify the relationship between mere verbalness and (...) substantiveness. I first argue that we should see mere verbalness as a certain kind of discourse defect that arises when the parties differ as to what each takes to be the immediate question under discussion. I then argue that mere verbalness, so understood, does not imply that the question either party is attempting to address is a non-substantive one. Even if it turns out that the parties to the mind/brain dispute are addressing subtly different questions, these might both be substantive questions to which their respective metaphysical views provide substantive answers. One reason it is tempting to reach deflationary conclusions from the charge of mere verbalness is that we fail to distinguish it from the claim that a sentence under dispute is, in a certain sense, indisputable. Another reason is that we fail to distinguish mere verbalness from a certain sort of indeterminacy. While indisputability and indeterminacy plausibly capture forms of nonsubstantiveness, I argue that mere verbalness is insufficient to establish either indisputability or indeterminacy. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue (...) that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief—belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, bringing in (...) faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. (shrink)

I explain why, from the perspective of knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology, objective act consequentialist theories of ethics imply skepticism about the moral status of our prospective actions and also tend to be self-defeating, undermining the justification of consequentialist theories themselves. For according to knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology there are modal anti-luck demands on both knowledge and justification, and it turns out that our beliefs about the moral status of our prospective actions are almost never able to satisfy these demands if objective act (...) consequentialism is true. This kind of applied moral skepticism introduces problematic limits on our ability to use objective act consequentialism’s explanatory power as evidence for its truth. This is, in part, a product of higher-order defeat as I explain in the final section. There is, however, a silver lining for objective act consequentialists. For there is at least one type of objective act consequentialism, prior existence consequentialism, that is poised to avoid at least some of the epistemic problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes two facets of mindfulness for servant leadership of B-Corporations, which is an emerging form of social enterprise. One facet concerns inner states and motivations for leading business for non-instrumental reasons. This facet encompasses an ethics-in-practice dimension alongside of merely theoretical approaches, a dimension well suited for leadership of B-Corps, whose governance structure places ethics and sustainability at the center of the non-instrumental quest for the creation of social value and respect for human rights by business enterprises. The (...) motivation for care of the mindful servant leader matches the investors’ expectations of social impact for the firm. The other facet concerns leadership decisions and actions fulfilling the mission of B-Corporations in creating social value alongside of economic value for a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Concerning this second facet, mindfulness is vitally involved in that servant leaders pay attention to the whole business and its explicit social benefit, not just this or that element of the firm’s operations. The chapter advances two arguments. The first argument—tied to the first facet—posits that the virtue of mindfulness contributes a key element of non-instrumental motivation for leadership generally missing from extant leadership approaches. The second argument—tied to the second facet—addresses the decision-making side of mindfulness. It asserts that the virtue of mindfulness is especially poised to equip servant leadership for the B-Corporation movement for two vital challenges: balancing demands from multiple stakeholders; and assimilating multiple criteria and values—both financial and non-financial. (shrink)

The Human Mind undertakes two tasks. One is to demonstrate that centuries of debate over how to state correctly the nature of the human mind and its relation to the human body arise from muddled thinking. By attending with care to ordinary, everyday language, this bogus thinking is exposed. The traditional distinction between the human mind and the human body is revealed as misbegotten. For that reason it is to be junked, along with centuries of misguided competing theories. The second (...) task is to draw attention to an alternative distinction we already make in everyday language. It is the distinction between a person and that person’s body. A previously undetected set of arrangements in everyday language is teased into full view to expose the character of a person’s physical and mental capacities. This set of arrangements applies to talk of all human capacities, such as the capacities to think, make a promise, dislike, be annoyed, turn left or reach for a banana. There is one simple pattern or formula that personal capacities have in common. To understand this arrangement in everyday language is to have the key to authentic understanding of the human mind and its place in the universe. (shrink)

Biases and misunderstanding stemming from pre-training in Generative Pre-Trained Transformers are more likely for users of underrepresented English varieties, since the training dataset favors dominant Englishes (e.g., American English). We investigate (potential) bias in GPT-4 when it interacts with Trinidadian English Creole (TEC), a non-hegemonic English variety that partially overlaps with standardized English (SE) but still contains distinctive characteristics. (1) Comparable responses: we asked GPT-4 18 questions in TEC and SE and compared the content and detail of the responses. (2) (...) Accurate translation: we assessed how accurate and authentic 29 TEC and 34 SE translations were. (3) Language knowledge and attitudes: we asked what language the prompts were written in and categorized the responses and examined any language attitudes that were exhibited. Content and detail in prompts were comparable. The model was proficient at translating TEC pronouns and many grammatical categories. It was weaker at processing spelling and vocabulary items. In addition, it produced several inauthentic features. Only 39% of TEC-generated sentences were fully grammatical. While GPT-4 was perfect at identifying SE, it was 21% accurate at identifying TEC, which it sometimes classified as English with “errors” and “corrected”. GPT-4’s scope of use is limited for non-hegemonic English users. It is problematic that some of its analyses perpetuate bias against underrepresented Englishes. Increased research on lesser-documented Englishes is necessary and we anticipate that this problem affects dialects of other languages. We intend to partner with Trinidadian stakeholders to train GPT-4 in the future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Attis at Large CATULLUS (Translated by Anna Jackson) And so Attis, seasick, heart sore, having left so terribly fast, with a pause, a leap, a landing, galliambically arrived in the shady regions, wood-clothed, in the goddessy depths of dark in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, having come so terribly far, and himself, still him, he tore off, with a flint, all his manly parts— so that (...) she (now she) when she saw she was all a a a a girl, even while still bleeding fresh blood, a new stain on that shagpile earth, in a flash, a leap, with no pause, she took up here a tambourine— tambourine of yours, your symbol, sign of Cybele’s syllables— with a clash, a strike, a ringing, her soft fingers on the stretched skin, she began to sing this whole song, in a tremble to, to the throng: All of us, not cis, but sisters—with a leap of nothing but faith let’s take off, let’s rush, let’s stampede, like a herd on the, the, the loose— you are lost, you’re all in exile, with a past you have left behind you have only me, your one hope, here to lead, if you’ll follow me, after all that we have been through, salty seas of masculinity we will sail no more, no, not we—let us now be all spiritual, that’s to say, let’s sing, and sing loud, with a clash of the tambourine and with tossing heads and wild leaps, we must throw ourselves into this, as if in to fire, with no fear—a religious sort of a pounce! And in need of no persuading, the stampede, if it was that, starts— all of them, not cis, but sisters, taking off with a lightness of heart like a sisterhood, a herd loosed, with a clash of the tambourine. And so Attis, no true woman, was swept along with the rest, in the lead, but led, herself led, the clash of the tambourine a resounding beat in her head, fa-la-LA, la la la la LA, like a heifer still unbroken, a disorder of flailing flight. And the sisterhood, a herd loose, kept the beat of the tambourine. And the sisters, having found peace, could all sleep when the ringing ceased, having come so far, so hard won, they were restless no more but at peace, after all that they had been through, having come so terribly far. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Yes but when the sun with eyes bright looked out at the whole airy sky, and the whole expanse of hard earth, and the whole wilderness of sea, yes and when the sunlight drove forth all the shadows of the long night, and when sleep itself was sent off, or took flight, as Attis awoke, well then sleep, not Attis, found rest; it was sleep that would rest at last. Not so Attis: sleep departed, and his madness departed too; not so Attis, who reviewed all he had done, and all in his heart, and could see the lie it had been, and see all that the lie had cost, and with surging mind and heart sore made return to shallowing shore. And there Attis, seasick, heart sore, with sore eyes salty as the sea now addressed her country, grief struck, with this song, or more of a speech: Oh my country, nation, homeland, oh my country where I was born! Like a truant out of bounds—bounds like a palace, a place of peace— in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, did I take myself off to here, here to live in lairs of wild beasts, here to live in shivering snow, to inhabit my own madness, my insanity the worst lair of them all. Oh where can I now understand my country to be? My sore eyes both long to be fixed in a gaze shiverless on you, for a pause, a space, to come clear, and to clear what’s left of my mind. Do I have to leave, to have left, my own home, and live in the wild? Do I have to... (shrink)

In The Veiled God, Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft offers a detailed portrait of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s early life, ethics, and theology in its historical and social context, and critically reflects on the enduring relevance of his work for the study of religion.

Michael Jackson has spent much of his career elaborating his rich conception of lifeworlds, mining his ethnographic and personal experience for insights into how our subjective and social lives are mutually constituted. In How Lifeworlds Work, Jackson draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa to highlight the dynamic quality of human relationships and reinvigorate the study of kinship and ritual. How, he asks, do we manage the perpetual process of accommodation between social norms and personal emotions, (...) impulses, and desires? How are these two dimensions of lived reality joined, and how are the dual imperatives of individual expression and collective viability managed? Drawing on the pragmatist tradition, psychology, and phenomenology, Jackson offers an unforgettable, beautifully written account of how we make, unmake, and remake, our lifeworlds. (shrink)

Charles Griswold has written a comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the Enlightenment and relates it to current discussions in moral and political philosophy. Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of ancient philosophy, and his carefully balanced defence of a liberal and humane moral and political outlook, are also explored. This 1999 book is a major philosophical and historical reassessment of a key figure in the Enlightenment that will be (...) of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, rhetoric, and political economy. (shrink)

The A-theory of time is plagued by certain standard armchair problems: the presentism–eternalism dilemma, the problem of truth-makers, the alleged impossibility of cross-temporal relations, and the problem of temporary intrinsics. These challenges supposedly force A-theories to make incredible claims. I argue that these challenges are not deep antinomies in common sense, but rest on avoidable mistakes. Then I present a new A-theory that shows what’s possible once we move past the old problems. On this proposal, time’s passing is a metaphysically (...) fundamental aspect of reality. I take this to mean that there are fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. This A-theory also posits fundamental facts about the state of the universe at a time, and about cross-temporal relationships. The proposed metaphysical package attractively articulates our common sense, pre-relativistic conception of time. (shrink)