Collection of essays and lectures on Intellectuals, religious -- Arab countries -- Criticism, interpretation.

Farm to School (FTS) programs are increasingly popular as methods to teach students about food, nutrition, and agriculture by connecting students with the sources of the food that they eat. They may also provide opportunity for farmers seeking to diversify market channels. Food service buyers in FTS programs often choose to procure food for school meals directly from farmers. The distribution practices required for such direct procurement often bring significant transaction costs for both school food service professionals and farmers. Analysis (...) of data from a survey of Vermont farmers who sell directly to school food services explores farmers’ motivations and distribution practices in these partnerships. A two-step cluster analysis procedure characterizes farmers’ motivations along a continuum between market-based and socially embedded values. Further bivariate analysis shows that farmers who are motivated most by market-based values are significantly associated with distribution practices that facilitate sales to school food services. Implications for technical assistance to facilitate these sales are discussed. (shrink)

We often talk of people as being more or less imaginative than one another – as being better or worse at imagining – and we also compare various feats of imagination to one another in terms of how easy or hard they are. Facts such as these might be taken to suggest that imagination is often implicitly understood as a skill. This implicit understanding, however, has rarely (if ever) been made explicit in the philosophical literature. Such is the task of (...) this chapter. I first attempt to flesh out several conditions for an activity to count as a skill. I then attempt to show how imagination can meet such conditions. The chapter concludes with an attempt to answer various worries that might be raised to the claim that imagination should be thought of as a skill. (shrink)

The authors offer ways to encourage and educate Americans to participate in the public deliberations that make democracy work and lay out the principles of..

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School--Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst--have persistently defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures (...) critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resouce we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future. (shrink)

Bailey (2021) offers a clever argument for the compatibility of determinism and moral responsibility based on the nature of intrinsic intentions. The argument is mistaken on two counts. First, it is invalid. Second, even setting that first point aside, the argument proves too much: we would be blameworthy in paradigm cases of non-blameworthiness. I conclude that we cannot reason from intentions to responsibility solely from the “inside out”—our possessing a blameworthy intention cannot tell us whether this intention is also blameworthy (...) in deterministic worlds. (shrink)

While Roman Ingarden is well known for his work in aesthetics and studies in ontology, one of his most important and lasting contributions has been largely overlooked: his approach to a general ontology of social and cultural objects. Ingarden himself discusses cultural objects other than works of art directly in the first section of “The Architectural Work”1, where he develops a particularly penetrating view of the ontology of buildings, flags, and churches. This text provides the core insight into how his (...) more lengthy studies of the ontology of works of art in The Literary Work of Art and the rest of The Ontology of the Work of Art, combined with the ontological distinctions of Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, may be used to understand social and cultural objects. The view that results, I will argue, is based in foreseeing problems with the reductivist and projectivist views that remain popular, and is capable of resolving central problems still thought to plague those who would offer a theory of cultural objects. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion (...) for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life. (shrink)

Empathy has for a long time, at least since the eighteenth century, been seen as centrally important in relation to our capacity to gain a grasp of the content of other people's minds, and predict and explain what they will think, feel, and do; and in relation to our capacity to respond to others ethically. In addition, empathy is seen as having a central role in aesthetics, in the understanding of our engagement with works of art and with fictional characters. (...) A fuller understanding of empathy is now offered by the interaction of research in science and the humanities. This volume draws together nineteen original chapters by leading researchers across several disciplines, together with an extensive Introduction by the editors. The individual chapters reveal how important it is, in a wide range of fields of enquiry, to bring to bear an understanding of the role of empathy in its various guises. It offers the ideal starting-point for the exploration of this intriguing aspect of human life. (shrink)

Imagination is celebrated as our vehicle for escape from the mundane here and now. It transports us to distant lands of magic and make-believe, and provides us with diversions during boring meetings or long bus rides. Yet the focus on imagination as a means of escape from the real world minimizes the fact that imagination seems also to furnish us with knowledge about it. Imagination seems an essential component in our endeavor to learn about the world in which we live--whether (...) we're planning for the future, aiming to understand other people, or figuring out whether two puzzle pieces fit together. But how can the same mental power that allows us to escape the world as it currently is also inform us about the world as it currently is? Ten original essays grapple with this neglected question; in doing so, they present a diverse array of positions ranging from cautious optimism to deep-seated pessimism. Blending perspectives from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics, Knowledge Through Imagination sheds new light on the epistemic role of imagination. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion sometimes hold that it is impermissible because fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. But miscarriage, which ends up to 89 % of pregnancies, is much deadlier than abortion. That means that if opponents of abortion are right, then miscarriage is the biggest public-health crisis of our time. Yet they pay hardly any attention to miscarriage, especially very early miscarriage. Attempts to resolve this inconsistency by adverting to the distinction between killing and letting die or to (...) the difficulty of preventing miscarriage fail, leaving a dilemma. Opponents of abortion should either advocate a substantial shift in our political and medical priorities or else give up the view that fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. (shrink)

To what extent are countability distinctions subject to systematic semantic variation? Could there be a language with no countability distinctions—in particular, one where all nouns are count? I argue that the answer is no: even in a language where all NPs have the core morphosyntactic properties of English count NPs, such as combining with numerals directly and showing singular/plural contrasts, countability distinctions still emerge on close inspection. I divide these distinctions into those related to sums and those related to parts. (...) In the Sahaptian language Nez Perce, evidence can be found for both types of distinction, in spite of the absence of anything like a traditional mass–count division in noun morphosyntax. I propose an extension of the Nez Perce analysis to Yudja, analyzed by Lima as lacking any countability distinctions. More generally, I suggest that at least one countability distinction may be universal and that languages without any countability distinctions may be unlearnable. (shrink)

This book showcases the best in modern medieval and religious scholarship, deploying spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. The volume explores excessive forms of desire and eroticism at play within Christian mystical texts and the historiographical, theological, and philosophical problems bound up in the interrogation of extraordinary experiences of the divine. Amy Hollywood examines how feminist and queer studies have changed the history of mysticism and how the study of religion in (...) general has altered our understanding of what is true, what is real, and what it means to research a historical subject. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, this volume models cutting-edge methods for the ethical study of divine embodiment and religious experience in the Middle Ages. It makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Derrida, Butler, Asad, and Chakrabarty this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it. (shrink)

The effective altruism movement (EA) is one of the most influential philosophically savvy movements to emerge in recent years. Effective Altruism has historically been dedicated to finding out what charitable giving is the most overall-effective, that is, the most effective at promoting or maximizing the impartial good. But some members of EA want the movement to be more inclusive, allowing its members to give in the way that most effectively promotes their values, even when doing so isn’t overall-effective. When we (...) examine what it means to give according to one’s values, I argue, we will see that this is both inconsistent with what EA is like now and inconsistent with its central philosophical commitment to an objective standard that can be used to critically analyze one’s giving. While EA is not merely synonymous with act utilitarianism, it cannot be much more inclusive than it is right now. (shrink)

In recent analytic metaphysics, the view that ‘ordinary inanimate objects such as sticks and stones, tables and chairs, simply do not exist’ has been defended by some noteworthy writers. Thomasson opposes such revisionary ontology in favour of an ontology that is conservative with respect to common sense. The book is written in a straightforward, methodical and down-to-earth style. It is also relatively non-specialized, enabling the author and her readers to approach problems that are often dealt with in isolation in a (...) more unified way.Thomasson's arguments are mainly counter-attacks on six ‘eliminativist’ arguments against ordinary objects. A causal redundancy argument espoused by Trenton Merricks holds that to suppose that there are ordinary objects is to suppose that these objects have distinctive causal powers. However, the casual efficacy of a baseball, for example, is exhausted by that of some suitably arranged …. (shrink)

Creations of the Mind: Essays on Artifacts and their Representation, ed. Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 23-47 [Access article in PDF] Suárez' Doctrine of Eternal Truths Amy D. Karofsky 1. Introduction The primary aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Suárez' doctrine of eternal truths as found in Metaphysical Disputation XXXI, chapter XII, sections 38-47. There, following the typical scholastic style, Suárez considers and rejects several theories before developing his own. Because it is (...) somewhat difficult to determine what view Suárez ultimately adopts, interpretations of this passage tend to vary. For example, Norman Wells suggests that the necessity and eternality of essential propositions is grounded in the intellect of the divine being. 1 Armand Maurer and John P. Doyle maintain that eternal truths are not grounded in the being of God, but rather in the real being of the essences themselves. 2 I will argue that none of these interpretations adequately expresses Suárez' project, for Suárez wants a solution to the problem of eternal truths that does not depend upon the will of the divine being and one that avoids any ontological commitment to unactualized, possible essences. 3 2. Explanation of the Problem of Eternal Truths Suárez begins the thirty-first disputation with a proof of the identity of essence and existence in finite creatures. The key premise in his argument is the claim that, lacking existence, an unactualized essence is not a being, but absolutely [End Page 23] nothing. 4 By 'being' Suárez means existing being, or a being that is created by God. 5 Unlike the essence of God, the essence of a creature is dependent for its being on the efficient causality of God. Prior to the creative act of God, then, the essence of a creature is not an existing being, hence not a being at all; the unactualized, possible essence is a non-being or nothing.From the claim that a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, the following problem arises:... si, ablata existentia, perit essentia, ergo propositiones illae in quibus praedicata essentialia de re praedicantur, non sunt necessariae, neque perpetuae veritatis... 6An essential proposition of the form "X is f" is a proposition in which an essential property f is attributed to an object X. If there are no X's in existence, then there is nothing of which f can be predicated. It would seem, then, that the proposition, "X is f" must be false. One might maintain, however, that even though there are no X's in existence, there is an essence (of) X that has the property f. And in this way, "X is f" remains true, even if there are no X's in existence.However, if one holds, as Suárez does, that the unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, then this solution will not work. For if there are no X's in existence, and if a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, then there is nothing of which the essential attribute can be predicated. Thus it appears that any proposition that purports to attribute a property to a nonexistent object must be false and so clearly it can be neither necessarily nor eternally true. Therefore, because Suárez believes that an unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, he seems to be committed to the claim that essential propositions are neither necessarily, nor eternally, true. I will refer to this problem as the Problem of Eternal Truths.Another way to illustrate the Problem of Eternal Truths is to see that there are two seemingly inconsistent propositions: AN: An unactualized, possible essence is absolutely nothing, and NE: True essential propositions are necessarily and eternally true. [End Page 24]Given that a proposition in which a property is attributed to an unactualized essence is false, if Suárez wants to assert the truth of AN, it would appear that he must deny the truth of NE, and, in so doing, reject the possibility of any science of creatures that deals only with necessary truths.Suárez considers three different solutions to this problem: (What I will call) the Aristotelian Solution, the Divine... (shrink)

Introduction : the politics of our selves -- Foucault, subjectivity, and the enlightenment : a critical reappraisal -- The impurity of practical reason : power and autonomy in Foucault -- Dependency, subordination, and recognition : Butler on subjection -- Empowering the lifeworld? autonomy and power in Habermas -- Contextualizing critical theory -- Engendering critical theory.

Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, (...) and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique. (shrink)

Narrativists about well-being claim that our lives go better for us if they make good stories—if they exhibit cohesion, thematic consistency, and narrative arc. Yet narrativism leads to mistaken assessments of well-being: prioritizing narrative makes it harder to balance and change pursuits, pushes us toward one-dimensionality, and can’t make sense of the diversity of good lives. Some ways of softening key narrativist claims mean that the view can’t tell us very much about how to live a good life that we (...) can’t find in other theories of well-being; while there are smaller-scale ways we can incorporate narrativist insights into our views of well-being, narrativism should not be a universal organizing principle for our lives. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

A longstanding problem with the study of empathy is the lack of a clear and agreed upon definition. A trend in the recent literature is to respond to this problem by advancing a broad and all-encompassing view of empathy that applies to myriad processes ranging from mimicry and imitation to high-level perspective taking. I argue that this response takes us in the wrong direction and that what we need in order to better understand empathy is a narrower conceptualization, not a (...) broader one. I propose that empathy be conceptualized as a complex, imaginative process through which an observer simulates another person's situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other differentiation. I defend my view through an examination of three processes: emotional contagion, a process of self-oriented perspective taking that I call “pseudo-empathy,” and empathy proper. Drawing on recent findings in social neuroscience, I highlight the differences among these processes and discuss conceptual, empirical, and normative reasons for keeping them theoretically and conceptually distinct. (shrink)