Located in a settler-Australian tertiary education institution we develop a worldly or mundane approach to working in and between institutions enacting two distinct world philosophies. We engage with the epistemics embedded and expressed in the functioning of modern institutions committed to a naturalistic scientific world. And albeit to a more limited extent we engage with epistemics embedded in and expressed by institutions framed and ordered by collectively enacting intentions of Eternal World-Making Beings of Yolngu Aboriginal Australian lands and peoples.

In his youth, John Stuart Mill followed his father’s philosophy of persuasion but, in 1830, Mill adopted a new philosophy of persuasion, trying to lead people incrementally towards the truth from their original stand-points rather than engage them antagonistically. Understanding this change helps us understand apparent contradictions in Mill’s cannon, as he disguises some of his more radical ideas in order to bring his audience to re-assess and authentically change their opinions. It also suggests a way of re-assessing the relationship (...) between Mill’s public and private works, to which we should look if we are attempting to understand his thought. (shrink)

In this captivating book, Helen Verran addresses precisely that question by looking at how science, mathematics, and logic come to life in Yoruba primary schools.

This essay is one of three published in response to Casper Bruun Jensen's article “Experiments in Good Faith and Hopefulness: Toward a Postcritical Social Science”, which concerns the “postcritical” work of Helen Verran, Richard Rottenburg, and Hirokazu Miyazaki. Verran's response clarifies the stance that she takes in her work, and especially in her book Science and an African Logic, toward critique. Here she argues that critique involves grasping the difference between entities in the here-and-now, while conventional analysis (...) in the social sciences explains away difference in the here-and-now by relocating it to an ideal realm. She explains that the method she has developed is a form of infra critique — a way of “doing difference” that keeps it present, particular, and localized. Her essay concludes that the shift to infra critique requires that the “good faith analyst” make her own ontological commitments explicit and accept responsibility for making judgments. (shrink)

The essay analyses the hermeneutics of civilizational dialogue and identifies four basic principles, or requirements: recognition of the equality of the “lifeworlds;” awareness of the “dialectics” of cultural self-comprehension; acknowledgement of formal “metanorms” such as the principle of mutuality; and transcending the circle of “civilizational self-affirmation.” On the basis of these criteria, the essay investigates how politics will have to be reshaped – domestically, regionally and globally – to enable a genuine dialogue of cultures and civilizations that can also serve (...) as a cornerstone of peaceful coexistence among states. Addressing today’s multicultural reality and its impact on the traditional nation-state, the essay underlines the importance of intercultural openness and “civilizational curiosity” – instead of “civilizational nostalgia” – and suggests a redefinition of “co-existence” in the sense of active mutual engagement. The paper further undertakes a critical assessment of the role of “dialogue” as a fashionable decorum of international politics and questions the instrumentalization of the civilizational paradigm in the context of international politics. (shrink)

This comment argues that Isabelle Stengers, in her article “Comparison as a Matter of Concern,” is justifiably concerned about the future of science in an imperium of commerce where epistemology has no clout. Agreeing with Stengers that we should focus attention on comparison-as-participant, this comment relates Stengers's argument to Verran's own work in contexts where the epistemic practices of science are challenged—in science lessons in Nigeria (case 1) and in episodes where environmental scientists try to work with Aboriginal Australian (...) landowners (case 2). Drawing inspiration from her African and Aboriginal colleagues, Verran disagrees with Stengers that the only option for science is to make the terms of its defeat explicit. This comment suggests that the sciences might learn from other knowledge traditions in finding the places and the means to develop divergent practices through which resistance is possible. Verran identifies temporal disjunctions as possible sites of innovation, suggesting that contemporary sciences should forego their backward-looking traditional epistemic practices and learn to focus instead on equipping their participant-comparisons for an uncertain future. (shrink)

What happens when a gallery space dedicated to exhibiting European art is interrupted by introducing African art objects? This essay reviews a temporary exhibition that introduced works of art from Africa, the property of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum, into the exhibition space of the Bode Museum, whose collection consists of European art objects from the Classical to the Baroque periods. I offer a reading that is quite different than the curators’, proposing art museums as institutions where philosophies are expressed in the (...) form of art objects. (shrink)

Nanda's irresponsible book carelessly prescribes for the U.S a return to Cold-War science politics; and for India, nothing less than a cultural revolution which would install science as the arbiter. She sees this as smashing the backwards looking metaphysics of Hindu thought. I argue that her iconoclasm carries with it a purist fetishism deriving from science's denied metaphysics. The metaphysics embedded in Nanda's secularist critique is no more innocent than that she wishes to smash, yet being denied is more tricky (...) to deal with. I claim Nanda's book is irresponsible both in the context of India's contesting social imaginaries, but also in the USA where she seeks to intervene in the so-called science wars. Taking seriously the neo-Buddhist Dalit resistance waged by those occupying the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste system, as Nanda prescribes, requires a refusal of metaphysics and positivist thought generally. Being unaware of the metaphysical ladeness of her critique, the ontological move that is necessary to achieve a shift to generative mode of thought that characterises Dalit Buddhism is invisible to Nanda. (shrink)

Nurse engagement, empowerment and strong relationships among staff, residents and families, are essential to attract and retain a suitably qualified and skilled nursing workforce for safe, quality care. There is, however, limited research that explores engagement, empowerment and relational coordination in long‐term care (LTC). Nurses from an older persons’ mental health and dementia LTC unit in Australia participated in this study. Forty‐one nurses completed a survey measuring psychological empowerment, work engagement and relational coordination. Twenty‐nine nurses participated in individual interviews to (...) further explore these concepts. Although nurses reported high psychological empowerment and work engagement, their relationships with key stakeholders varied. Our findings suggest that nurses in LTC require both supports and opportunities to contribute as active members of the multiprofessional care team that includes tailored education, professional development and positive interactions within the care team. Regular support is needed to enable nurses to feel empowered, foster relationships and communication, and facilitate work engagement. Based on these findings, we suggest that it is important to find ways to ensure that all who provide care perceive that they are part of the whole care team and able to contribute to the care and well‐being of people in LTC. (shrink)

This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled “Comparative Relativism” outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usually involves the assumption that contexts exhibit, or may exhibit, radically different, incomparable, or incommensurable traits. Comparative studies are required to (...) treat their objects as alike, at least in some crucial respects; relativism indicates the limits of this practice. Jensen argues that this seeming paradox is productive, as he moves across contexts, from Lévi-Strauss's analysis of comparison as an anthropological method to Peter Galison's history of physics, and on to the anthropological, philosophical, and historical examples offered in symposium contributions by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marilyn Strathern, and Isabelle Stengers. Comparative relativism is understood by some to imply that relativism comes in various kinds and that these have multiple uses, functions, and effects, varying widely in different personal, historical, and institutional contexts that can be compared and contrasted. Comparative relativism is taken by others to encourage a “comparison of comparisons,” in order to relativize what different peoples—say, Western academics and Amerindian shamans—compare things “for.” Jensen concludes that what is compared and relativized in this symposium are the methods of comparison and relativization themselves. He ventures that the contributors all hope that treating these terms in juxtaposition may allow for new configurations of inquiry. (shrink)

Carl Mika claims in the symposium’s lead essay that we need more myth today. In fact, an “unscientific” attitude can potentially reorient the alienation from the world. For Mika, a philosophical mātauranga Māori incorporates such a way of being in the world. Through it, an unmediated and co-existent relationship with the world can be built up. Some of Mika’s co-symposiasts invite Mika to substantiate aspects about this bold claim. Carwyn Jones nudges Mika to discuss the parallels between tikanga Māori—a system (...) that seeks to incorporate Māori law—and the common-law tradition that is adopted in New Zealand today. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz agrees with Mika that to understand the world through an indifferent “scientific” investigation is to understand the world only partially, while the Māori scientist Ocean Ripeka Mercier illustrates how she seeks to develop a third space in her work that reconciles the fear of the unknown with the propensity to control the world through knowing. Helen Verran invites Mika to think about whether, and how, his understanding of a philosophical mātauranga Māori can help to facilitate the cultivation of a naturalism that is able to generate a cosmopolitics in New Zealand. (shrink)

That a constitution should express the will of 'the people' is a long-standing principle, but the identity of 'the people' has historically been narrow. Women, in particular, were not included. A shift, however, has recently occurred. Women's participation in constitution-making is now recognised as a democratic right. Women's demands to have their voices heard in both the processes of constitution-making and the text of their country's constitution, are gaining recognition. Campaigning for inclusion in their country's constitution-making, women have adopted innovative (...) strategies to express their constitutional aspirations. This collection offers, for the first time, comprehensive case studies of women's campaigns for constitutional equality in nine different countries that have undergone constitutional transformations in the 'participatory era'. Against a richly-contextualised historical and political background, each charts the actions and strategies of women participants, both formal and informal, and records their successes, failures and continuing hopes for constitutional equality. (shrink)

Individuals’ spatial position is affected by social factors. The majority of studies correlating spatial position and social factors have used methods with drawbacks. A more complete method was developed by Dolado & Beltran (2011) in captive animals. The present study aimed to apply a modified version of this method in two semi-free-ranging macaque groups. The proposed method divides group’s surroundings into different subareas, selecting different points in each subarea and calculating the coordinates of these points. We filmed each group and (...) analyzed the videos using an activated time transition recording to determine the individuals’ coordinates. With these data, we calculated spatial variables, allowing us to obtain groups’ spatial patterns. The current method improves on previous procedures and could be applied to larger study areas and groups than the method of Dolado & Beltran (2011), thus representing a viable option for studying spatial distribution patterns in semi-free-ranging macaque groups. (shrink)

This study examined three main issues among 364 primary school children: (1) self?reported levels of perceived safety in classroom and playground, and relationship with teacher, (2) associations between perceived safety in the two contexts and peer reported levels of being bullied, and (3) if relationship with teacher moderated the associations between peer reported levels of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground. Data were collected in individual and small group interviews. Overall, while most participants reported positive relationships with (...) their class teacher, and felt safe in their classroom and in the playground, a substantial minority did not. The correlations between level of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground were significant but of modest size. Relationship with teacher did moderate the correlation for perceived safety in the classroom, but did not do so for perceived safety in the playground. No significant age or sex differences were obtained. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed. (shrink)

This essay introduces and discusses four musical works that extensively treat Ruth and Naomi's relationship: two late nineteenth-century oratorios, and two twentieth-century operas. Both music and librettos are treated as midrash—a creative retelling through both altered text and in the language of music.

This article considers two arguments that purport to show that inductive reasoning is unjustified: the argument adduced by Sextus Empiricus and the (better known and more formidable) argument given by Hume in the Treatise. While Sextus’ argument can quite easily be rebutted, a close examination of the premises of Hume’s argument shows that they are seemingly cogent. Because the sceptical claim is very unintuitive, the sceptical argument constitutes a paradox. And since attributions of justification are theoretical, and the claim that (...) they are never (or seldom) true isn’t preposterous, the correct response to the paradox may well be to admit that the sceptic has exposed our error in making them. (shrink)

The term “value of life” can refer to life’s intrinsic dignity: something nonincremental and time-unaffected in contrast to the fluctuating, incremental “value” of our lives, as they are longer or shorter and more or less flourishing. Human beings are equal in their basic moral importance: the moral indignities we condemn in the treatment of e.g. those with dementia reflect the ongoing human dignity that is being violated. Indignities licensed by the person in advance remain indignities, as when people might volunteer (...) their living, unconscious bodies for surrogacy or training in amputation techniques. Respect for someone’s dignity is significantly impacted by a failure to value that person’s very existence, whatever genuine respect and good will is shown by wanting the person’s life to go well. Valuing and respecting life is not, however, vitalism: there can be good and compelling reasons for eschewing some means of prolonging life. (shrink)

Mix & Stir', this book's aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up ways to approach art from a global perspective. Analogous (...) to a cookery book filled with recipes and instruction, Mix & Stir explores new outlooks on contemporary art from global perspectives. It intends to encourage studying art beyond national constraints, cultural dominances, and hierarchies: a voyage similar to that of culinary discovery. The book brings a variety of tastes and flavours to the table, and breaks new ground by allowing innovative, contrary, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods, and concerns to access art in its global dimensions. Researchers, curators and artists with a special interest in this topical issue were invited to present, develop, outline, and contemplate compelling frames of reference, both theoretical and artistic, in order to arrive at a true 'world art studies'. Their contributions are structured in seven thematic fields: Undecidability and Spectatorship, Collectives, Circulations, Exhibitions, Artists at Work, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Deep Art History. The reader is invited to explore the vast supply of dishes, to taste and test the aromas and to feast. (shrink)

Ruth Garrett Millikan presents a strikingly original account of how we get to grips with the world in thought. Her question is Kant's 'How is knowledge possible?', answered from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. We begin with an understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, then develop a theory of cognition within that world.

This chapter considers the ways in which whiteness as a skin color and ideology becomes a dominant level that sets the background against which all things, people and relations appear. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, it takes up a series of films by Bruce Nauman and Marlon Riggs to consider ways in which this level is phenomenally challenged providing insights into the embodiment of racialization.

" Biosemantics " was the title of a paper on mental representation originally printed in The Journal of Philosophy in 1989. It contained a much abbreviated version of the work on mental representation in Language Thought and Other Biological Categories. There I had presented a naturalist theory of intentional signs generally, including linguistic representations, graphs, charts and diagrams, road sign symbols, animal communications, the "chemical signals" that regulate the function of glands, and so forth. But the term " biosemantics " (...) has usually been applied only to the theory of mental representation. Let me first characterize a more general class of theories called "teleological theories of mental content" of which biosemantics is an example. Then I will discuss the details that distinguish biosemantics from other naturalistic teleological theories. (shrink)

Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.

A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to conform to the representation: if the list does not match what is in the grocery bag, it is what is in the bag that is at fault. But if used as an inventory list, the (...) representation is supposed to conform to the world: if the list does not match what is in the bag, it is the list that is at fault. The first kind of representation, where the world is supposed to conform to the list, can be called "directive"; it represents or directs what is to be done. The second, where the list is supposed to conform to the world, can be called "descriptive"; it represents or describes what is the case. I wish to propose that there exist representations that face both these ways at once. With apologies to Dr. Doolittle, I call them pushmi-pullyu representations or PPRs. (shrink)

In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one’s individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential (...) communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships—even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing (...) them to biological norms that emerge from natural selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is one of the most influential and prolific philosophers in the English-speaking world today. The breadth of his writings is unique, ranging from reflections on artificial intelligence to analyses of contemporary multicultural societies. This thought-provoking introduction to Taylor's work outlines his ideas in a coherent and accessible way without reducing their richness and depth. His contribution to many of the enduring debates within Western philosophy is examined and the arguments of his critics assessed. Taylor's reflections on the topics (...) of moral theory, selfhood, political theory and epistemology form the core chapters within the book. Ruth Abbey engages with the secondary literature on Taylor's work and suggests that some criticisms by contemporaries have been based on misinterpretations and suggests ways in which a better understanding of Taylor's work leads to different criticisms of it. The book serves as an ideal companion to Taylor's ideas for students of philosophy and political theory, and will be welcomed by the non-specialist looking for an authoritative guide to Taylor's large and challenging body of work. (shrink)

A leading scholar in the psychology of thinking and reasoning argues that the counterfactual imagination—the creation of "if only" alternatives to ...

Helen Steward puts forward a radical critique of the foundations of contemporary philosophy of mind, arguing that it relies too heavily on insecure assumptions about the sorts of things there are in the mind--events, processes, and states. She offers a fresh investigation of these three categories, clarifying the distinctions between them, and argues that the category of state has been very widely and seriously misunderstood.

This volume will be the starting point for future discussion and research.

This encyclopedia entry provides an overview of the field of public health ethics. It focuses on what distinguishes public health ethics from other nearby subfields—especially biomedical ethics. It also frames the problems of public health ethics in terms of the concepts of justice and political legitimacy.

Robert Alexy develops his influential theory of legal reasoning exploring the nature of legal argumentation and its relation to practical reasoning. In doing so he sheds light on fundamental questions of law and rationality, which are as crucial to practising lawyers and law students as they are to scholars of legal theory.

This Element offers the first detailed study of Catharine Trotter Cockburn's philosophy and covers her contributions to philosophical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of religion. It examines not only Cockburn's view that sensation and reflection are the sources of knowledge, but also how she draws attention to the limitations of human understanding and how she approaches metaphysical debates through this lens. In the area of moral philosophy, this Element argues that it is helpful to take seriously Cockburn's (...) distinction between questions concerning the metaphysical foundation of morality and questions concerning the practice of morality. Moreover, this Element examines Cockburn's religious views and considers her understanding of the relation between morality and religion and her religious views concerning the resurrection and the afterlife. (shrink)

This book provides a clear, simple account of techniques involved in assisted reproduction and embryo research. It thoughtfully and provocatively explores controversies raised by developments in reproductive technology since the first IVF baby in 1978, such as 'saviour siblings', designer babies, reproductive cloning and embryo research.

In this article, I provide a philosophical analysis of the nature and role of perceived identity threats in the genesis and maintenance of fanaticism. First, I offer a preliminary definition of fanaticism as the social identity-defining devotion to a sacred value that demands universal recognition and is complemented by a hostile antagonism toward people who dissent from one’s group’s values. The fanatic’s hostility toward dissent thereby takes the threefold form of outgroup hostility, ingroup hostility, and self-hostility. Second, I provide a (...) detailed analysis of the fears of fanaticism, arguing that each of the three aforementioned forms of hostile antagonism corresponds to one form of fear or anxiety: the fanatic’s fear of the outgroup, renegade members of the ingroup, and problematic aspects of themselves. In each of these three forms of fear, the fanatic experiences both their sacred values and their individual and social identity as being threatened. Finally, I turn to a fourth form of fear or anxiety connected to fanaticism, namely the fanatic’s anxiety of and flight from the existential condition of uncertainty itself, which, at least in some cases, ground the fanatic’s fearfulness. (shrink)

Offers an analysis of three strongly contrasting primitive civilizations, showing how behavior is influenced by custom and tradition.

In this interview, Ruth Groff discusses how she came to be a realist, her role as a community organizer, her relationship to critical realism, and various issues arising from her published work over the years. Discussion ranges across the nature of positivism and its legacy, the concept of falsehood, realism about causal powers, mind-independent reality, the history of philosophy, and the underlying interest in ideology-critique that runs through her thinking.

Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in (...) ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers. (shrink)

This article uses philosopher Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice to shed light on the legal concept of the fiduciary, alongside demonstrating the wider contribution Fricker’s work can make to business ethics. Fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūcia, meaning “trust,” plays a fundamental role in all financial and business organisations: it acts as a moral safeguard of the relationship between trustee and beneficiary. The article focuses on the ethics of the fiduciary, but from a unique historical perspective, referring back to the (...) original formulation of the fiduciary within a familial context to investigate presuppositions regarding agential capabilities, whilst also paying attention to the power mechanism embedded in the trustee–beneficiary relationship. Using Fricker’s theory of pre-emptive testimonial injustice, the analysis elucidates the impact of cumulative beneficiary silencing in contemporary contexts, and the article uncovers ethical issues of an epistemological kind at the core of the fiduciary—of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Exploitation locates what it is we recognize as bad when we judge a situation to be exploitative. Ideal for courses in social and political philosophy, public policy, or political science.