What do we mean by theory in the arts, and what role does it play in that sense? Theory appears as an active, transformative, fluid, and communicative element of art practices, and research in the arts in particular. Theory is the fluid that perfuses and connects the territory of fine art and design, as well as other art forms such as music, architecture, writing, moving images, dance, and theatre. At the heart of this publication is the new field of research (...) in theory and the way the ArtEZ Theory in the Arts research group investigates its possibilities and extends its boundaries. Editor Peter Sonderen currently chairs the professorship Theory in the Arts at ArtEZ University of the Arts. (shrink)

This chapter explores the concept of knowing as a contested terrain within the education. It takes, as its starting point, the classical philosophical distinction between knowing how, knowing that and the lesser-attended-to notion of knowing by acquaintance. Charting key historical debates pertaining to knowing that and knowing how, the chapter considers the extent to which conceptions of these forms of knowing evident in educational policy and practice are often limited and reductive. The chapter then explores how contemporary work within the (...) philosophy of education has served to challenge too-stringent conceptions of propositional and practical knowledge – often by reference to the Aristotelian conception of phronesis. With a view to building on this literature and taking it in a new direction, the chapter ends by exploring what might need to be at stake in a richer conception of knowledge for education. In connection with this, it offers a sketch of a renewed account of knowing by acquaintance, developed in relation to the phenomenological philosophy of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

La loi 2002-304 du 4 mars 2002, entrée en application en 2005 et portant réforme du nom de famille, permet aux parents de choisir, lors de la déclaration de naissance, de transmettre à leurs enfants soit le nom du père, soit celui de la mère, soit encore un « double nom », c’est-à-dire un nom constitué des noms de chacun des parents « accolés dans l’ordre choisi par eux dans la limite toutefois d’un nom de famille pour chacun ». Ces (...) nouvelles dispositions modifient le régime de pérennité du nom des femmes. Issu d’une enquête qualitative auprès d’une cinquantaine de personnes ayant opté pour le dispositif du double nom, cet article montre comment l’usage de cette nouvelle loi permet aux femmes d’éviter, dans le cadre du mariage, de choisir entre abandon de l’usage de leur nom de naissance et communauté de nom avec leurs enfants à laquelle elles sont généralement attachées. L’article étudie cette double pérennité onomastique non pas sous l’angle d’une possibilité juridique mais à partir de la situation de femmes qui la mettent en œuvre. (shrink)

This chapter examines the way the two main philosophies of Heidegger and Derrida, come into critical contact with each other. Derrida represents his own thinking as a development of Heideggerian thought. The chapter discusses Derrida's engagement with Heidegger spanned nearly his entire philosophical career. Derrida's exploration of Heidegger's spiritual idiom, while somewhat unusual, is not unconnected with his other writings on Heidegger. Through tracing Heidegger's spiritual idiom, Derrida seeks to bring out what is at stake in those aspects of Heidegger's (...) thought he finds uncertain or, to put it more bluntly, questionable. In tracing Derrida's reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit, then, one shall in effect be crossing two pathways. One uses the medium of spirit to introduce certain critical questions for Heideggerian philosophy, specifically questions that relate to the political and geo political aspects of Heidegger's work. (shrink)

À Marseille, en 1943, des jeunes femmes catholiques, laïques, font le choix de vivre leur foi chrétienne en partageant les conditions de vie des ouvriers. Plutôt que d’intégrer une communauté religieuse, elles décident d’aller travailler en usine, dans l’industrie chimique ou alimentaire et deviennent souvent syndicalistes. Leur petite communauté, partie prenante du « front pionnier apostolique », fait le choix de la spiritualité ignacienne. En 1953, peu après l’interdiction des prêtres-ouvriers par Rome, elles quittent Marseille pour s’établir à Paris et (...) dix ans plus tard, elles envoient une équipe dans l’Algérie devenue indépendante. Volontairement autonomes par rapport à l’Église catholique, ces femmes construisent leur communauté à mi-chemin entre vie religieuse et vie laïque. Elles occupent un espace inédit qu’il convient de prendre en compte dans l’analyse de la place des femmes dans l’Église. (shrink)

In this paper we build a prey–predator model with discrete weight structure for the predator. This model will conserve the number of individuals and the biomass and both growth and reproduction of the predator will depend on the food ingested. Moreover the model allows cannibalism which means that the predator can eat the prey but also other predators. We will focus on a simple version with two weight classes or stage and present some general mathematical results. In the last part, (...) we will assume that the dynamics of the prey is fast compared to the predator’s one to go further in the results and eventually conclude that under some conditions, cannibalism can stabilize the system: more precisely, an unstable equilibrium without cannibalism will become almost globally stable with some cannibalism. Some numerical simulations are done to illustrate this result. (shrink)

In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as reflecting disagreements (...) over these principles. Finally, we shift our attention away from traditional discussions of distributive justice, highlighting the importance of concerns about risk imposition, special duties, and social roles in explaining debates over the COVID-19 vaccine. We conclude that the normative complexity this article highlights deepens the need for decision-making bodies to be sensitive to public input. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

Scientists, philosophers, and policymakers disagree about how to define microaggression. Here, we offer a taxonomy of existing definitions, clustering around (a) the psychological motives of perpetrators, (b) the experience of victims, and (c) the functional role of microaggression in oppressive social structures. We consider conceptual and epistemic challenges to each and suggest that progress may come from developing novel hybrid accounts of microaggression, combining empirically tractable features with sensitivity to the testimony of victims.

This paper examines the concept of medical necessity as it relates to mental health care rationing, arguing that the normal functioning model of medical necessity is insufficient because it fails to cohere with an important aim and function of mental health care, which is to provide support for individuals in abusive or otherwise difficult personal relationships.

This chapter offers a brief analysis of the problems facing Bonnett's attempt to articulate a richer conception of thinking. Bonnett states, authentic thinking and understanding require that one become the originators and authors of their own thinking, as against merely reflecting the thoughts of others. In order to deflect the criticism that the account is promoting a self‐centred view of thinking, Bonnett introduces the concept of self referencing, which he describes as the determination to understand what one learns in terms (...) of one's own experiences. Bonnett states, the discipline and rigour of poetic thinking are rooted in the underlying sense of personal responsibility. One of the main flaws with Bonnett's account is that he simply does not engage in a careful enough reading of the philosophical accounts of thinking he draws upon, especially the Heideggerian accounts of being in the world and truth. (shrink)

This chapter explores the similarities that exist between two accounts of thinking presented by philosophers who are usually held to belong to differing, even conflicting, philosophical traditions. These are the accounts of Gilbert Ryle and Martin Heidegger. By situating Ryle in relation to Heidegger, the chapter seeks to show that there is an alternative reading of Ryle and one that problematises any straightforward understanding of him as a partisan of the rationalistic account. Ryle's first criticism takes issue with the way (...) Heidegger turns knowledge into a derivative mode of experience through his account of being in the world. According to Ryle, Heidegger is fundamentally mistaken in doing so, quite simply because knowledge is in fact a precondition for having a relation to things in the world in the first place. Heidegger draws a distinction between two differing conceptions of truth: aletheia and adequatio. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates how Heidegger's philosophy works to disrupt in a radical sense, the assumptions of traditional philosophy. It seeks to attend to the way Heidegger's later thought (that is, his writings from 1930 onwards) works to develop the reconceptualization of thinking and human existence that was instigated by his early philosophy. The more direct attention Heidegger gives to the nature of language allows a concrete and robust account of the conditions of thought to come to the fore and one (...) that moves us more radically beyond the model of the active, towards a conception of human existence. The duality of concealing, revealing, and the historical nature of language, is a condition of language doing the work it does in the first place. Through Heidegger's account of language, then, one can able to understand something important about the conditionality of human experience that Heidegger gestures towards in his earlier work. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the predominant picture of thinking in education, rationalistic conception. It combines the author's practical analysis of current thinking education with the philosophical account. Certain standards for thinking education are set on the basis of a certain understanding of thinking‐ hence; the two mutually reinforce each other. In questioning the rationalistic account of thinking one can question the current aims of thinking education and many of the educational discourses that go hand in glove with such aims. The rationalistic (...) account is rooted in the assumption that the self‐sufficient, autonomous human being who independently ‘deals’ with problems is both possible and desirable. The particular reason for invoking Derrida was that, he was a thinker profoundly influenced by Heideggerian thought and its attempt to think outside metaphysics and the conceptual categories of the ‘thinking subject’. (shrink)

This chapter considers a thinker Jacques Derrida, who in some ways inherits the Heideggerian legacy and yet also problematises and puts it to work in new ways. Like Heidegger, the insights raised by Derrida's philosophy in respect to the nature of human thinking come by way of his exploration of the relation between thought and language. Derrida in many ways comes close to one of the key accounts of language afforded by Ordinary Language philosophy, namely that of John Austin. The (...) chapter shows how Derrida's own account of language enables such a surpassing and demonstrates that this is not by way of any bizarre, farfetched man oeuvres but is rather the result of a commitment to remaining faithful and attentive to the actual workings of language. It explores Derrida's account of signification as it develops from his critical confrontation with structuralism and De Saussure. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the kind of thinking that is currently being fore grounded in education, the rationalistic conception. It also examines some of the recent ways in which thinking education has been approached in the British curriculum. To be more specific, one might say that the predominant view of thinking has arisen as a result of the foregrounding of a particular type of thinking, which has in turn been made possible on the basis of a certain representation of both thinking (...) and the thinking subject. The chapter provides some indicative examples from three of the main sources contributing to the theory of thinking education which includes the philosophical literature on critical thinking, thinking skills, and philosophy for children. One of the major areas of theoretical work on thinking education has come from the critical thinking movement. (shrink)

This chapter considers certain key features of Austin's philosophy. It discusses the under recognised affinities that exist between the work of Derrida and Austin, particularly concerning their philosophical methods and their respective attempts to work against the traditional, representation list account of language. The chapter exemplifies the manner in which Derrida nevertheless presents himself as going beyond Austin's philosophy in certain crucial ways, by attending to the criticisms he levels at Austin in his paper ‘Signature Event Context’. It describes Derrida's (...) account by assessing whether his critique of Austin holds, a task that is aided by an exploration of Stanley Cavell's critique of Derrida's reading of Austin. Finally, through appraising Cavell and Derrida's readings of Austin, the chapter argues that Derrida's critique can in fact be defended and in a manner that serves understand Derrida's account of language and thought in certain significant ways. (shrink)

Understanding in Epistemology Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship … Continue reading Understanding in Epistemology →.

In Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy, David Estlund defends against utopophobia in political philosophy. Estlund claims that it is no defect in a theory of justice if it sets a high standard that has little chance of being achieved by any society. The book does not, however, give similar permission to argue for unrealistically optimistic political proposals. Going beyond Estlund, I consider the possibility that some utopian thinking is warranted not just in the context of formulating (...) a theory of justice, but in the practical context, too. Sometimes theorizers ought to argue for and pursue political proposals that seem unrealistically optimistic. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

In this study, we analyzed the academic integrity policies of colleges in Ontario, Canada, casting a specific lens on contract cheating. We extracted data from 28 individual documents from 22-publicly-funded colleges including policies and procedures (n = 27) and code of conduct (n = 1). We analyzed the characteristics of the documents from three perspectives: (a) document type and titles; (b) policy language; and (c) policy principles. Then we examined five core elements of the documentation including (a) access; (b) approach; (...) (c) responsibility; (d) detail; and (e) support. Key findings revealed that specific and direct language pertaining to contract cheating was largely absent from the policy documents, that underlying policy principles lacked clear definition, and that exemplary policy has yet to be developed in this context. We conclude with recommendations for increased policy research in the area of academic integrity and a call for policy revision in Canadian higher education institutions to more explicitly address the issue of contract cheating, as well as provide more support to students and other campus stakeholders to better understand how contract cheating impacts and impedes teaching and learning. (shrink)

Bioconservative bioethicists (e.g., Kass, 2002, Human Dignity and Bioethics, 297–331, 2008; Sandel, 2007; Fukuyama, 2003) offer various kinds of philosophical arguments against cognitive enhancement—i.e., the use of medicine and technology to make ourselves “better than well” as opposed to merely treating pathologies. Two notable such bioconservative arguments appeal to ideas about (1) the value of achievement, and (2) authenticity. It is shown here that even if these arguments from achievement and authenticity cut ice against specifically pharmacologically driven cognitive enhancement, they (...) do not extend over to an increasingly viable form of technological cognitive enhancement – namely, cognitive enhancement via augmented reality. An important result is that AR-driven cognitive enhancement aimed at boosting performance in certain cognitive tasks might offer an interesting kind of “sweet spot” for proponents of cognitive enhancement, allowing us to pursue many of the goals of enhancement advocates without running into some of the most prominent objections from bioconservative philosophers. (shrink)

Political theory as a discipline has long been skeptical of computational methods. In this paper, I argue that it is time for theory to make a perspectival shift on these methods. Specifically, we should consider integrating recently developed generative large language models like GPT-4 as tools to support our creative work as theorists. Ultimately, I suggest that political theorists should embrace this technology as a method of supporting our capacity for creativity—but that we should do so in a way that (...) is mindful of the content and value of theorizing, the technical constraints of the models, and the ethical questions that the technology raises. (shrink)

In her account of scientific objectivity, feminist philosopher of science Helen Longino shows how scientific objectivity is not so much of individual practice, but rather a social commitment practiced by a scientific community, provided by the necessary accommodations for critical discourse. However, is this conception of scientific objectivity truly capable of living up to the social realities of critical discourse and deliberation within a scientific community? Drawing from Dutilh Novaes’ social epistemological account of argumentation, this paper highlights the challenges Longino’s (...) scientific objectivity faces on a prescriptive and descriptive level, specifically in overcoming the various epistemic injustices Longino’s proposed structural accommodations for objectivity are still sensitive to. Dutilh Novaes’ social epistemological model of argumentation illustrates how the realities of critical debate too often don’t consist of true epistemic or knowledge exchange, even though such exchanges are essential to achieve Longino’s primary goal when redefining scientific objectivity: to wield out and address idiosyncratic background assumptions and individual bigotry that possibly influence a researcher’s scientific conduct. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 74-89, March 2021.

Psychedelics have been recognized as model interventions for studying altered states of consciousness. However, few empirical studies of the shamanic state of consciousness, which is anecdotally similar to the psychedelic state, exist. We investigated the neural correlates of shamanic trance using high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in 24 shamanic practitioners and 24 healthy controls during rest, shamanic drumming, and classical music listening, followed by an assessment of altered states of consciousness. EEG data were used to assess changes in absolute power, connectivity, signal (...) diversity, and criticality, which were correlated with assessment measures. We also compared assessment scores to those of individuals in a previous study under the influence of psychedelics. Shamanic practitioners were significantly different from controls in several domains of altered states of consciousness, with scores comparable to or exceeding that of healthy volunteers under the influence of psychedelics. Practitioners also displayed increased gamma power during drumming that positively correlated with elementary visual alterations. Furthermore, shamanic practitioners had decreased low alpha and increased low beta connectivity during drumming and classical music and decreased neural signal diversity in the gamma band during drumming that inversely correlated with insightfulness. Finally, criticality in practitioners was increased during drumming in the low and high beta and gamma bands, with increases in the low beta band correlating with complex imagery and elementary visual alterations. These findings suggest that psychedelic drug-induced and non-pharmacologic alterations in consciousness have overlapping phenomenal traits but are distinct states of consciousness, as reflected by the unique brain-related changes during shamanic trance compared to previous literature investigating the psychedelic state. (shrink)

ABSTRACT With a particular focus on the experience of young people in higher education, this paper turns to the philosophical work of Cora Diamond to open up new ways of conceptualising mental health. We claim that Diamond offers a compelling insight into that experience of human difficulty so often subsumed by a medicalised vocabulary. We propose that she offers philosophically astute perceptions of the related human attempts at deflection. And we situate this reading of Diamond against a broader understanding of (...) the contemporary university as a place of institutional darkness. In developing this general discussion, we place ourselves within a very particular context. We draw on the narratives of a number of third-level students in Ireland, who shared their experiences as part of a hermeneutic phenomenological study into the lived experience of mental health difficulties. (shrink)

"[N]o matter how much of a coalition space this is, it ain't nothing like the coalescing you've got to do tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday."This essay is a critical reflection on the centrality of coalitional politics for decolonial feminist philosophy. Decolonial feminisms emerge from multisited struggles with colonization and, as a result, are rich and heterogeneous.1 Thus, the starting point for decolonial feminists must be one that centers on coalitional politics. Women of color have long emphasized the importance of coalition (...) to collective struggle against a matrix of systems of oppression.2 However, the work of forging coalitions is just that, work. Indeed, the work of coalition building, as Bernice... (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and diplomacy (...) were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

Microaggressions are seemingly negligible slights that can cause significant damage to frequently targeted members of marginalized groups. Recently, Scott O. Lilienfeld challenged a key platform of the microaggression research project: what’s aggressive about microaggressions? To answer this challenge, Derald Wing Sue, the psychologist who has spearheaded the research on microaggressions, needs to theorize a spectrum of aggression that ranges from intentional assault to unintentional microaggressions. I suggest turning to Bonnie Mann’s “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies” for inspiration. Building from Mann’s (...) richer theoretical framework will allow Sue to answer Lilienfeld’s objection and defend the legitimacy of the concept, ‘microaggression’. (shrink)

At first glance, hate speech and microaggressions seem to have little overlap beyond being communicated verbally or in written form. Hate speech seems clearly macro-aggressive: an intentional, obviously harmful act lacking the ambiguity (and plausible deniability) of microaggressions. If we look back at historical discussions of hate speech, however, many of these assumed differences turn out to be points of similarity. The harmfulness of hate speech only became widely acknowledged after a concerted effort by critical race theorists, feminists, and other (...) activists. Before the 1990s, slurs were widely considered socially acceptable behavior: mere jokes that weren’t intended to be harmful. Authors like Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, and Charles Lawrence pushed back against this dismissal. In this chapter, I show that their arguments for the serious harmfulness of hate speech prefigure and provide support for current debates about the serious harmfulness of microaggressions. Exploring resonances with the 1980s hate speech debate will allow us to explain why microaggressions fall below the cutoff for legal liability but remain apt targets for moral blame. (shrink)

Literature in epistemology tends to suppose that there are three main types of understanding – propositional, atomistic, and objectual. By showing that all apparent instances of propositional understanding can be more plausibly explained as featuring one of several other epistemic states, this paper argues that talk of propositional understanding is unhelpful and misleading. The upshot is that epistemologists can do without the notion of propositional understanding.

In Searle’s social ontology, collective intentionality is an essential component of all institutional facts. This is because the latter involve the assignment of functions, namely "status functions," on entities whose physical features do not guarantee their performance, therefore requiring our acceptance that it be performed. One counter-example to that claim can be found in Carl Menger’s individualistic account of the money system. Menger’s commitment to the self-interest assumption, however, prevents him from accounting for the deontic dimensions of institutional facts.