In periods of social crisis, policymakers become particularly vulnerable to interest groups mobilizing to compete for scarce funds. At this point, legislators are no longer able to address the specific needs of their primary constituency directly, but rather are forced to do so in pretext only. New, unfamiliar technologies provide ample ammunition for astute interest groups to take advantage of times of economic turmoil and maneuver for policy support through dramatic campaigns of “salesmanship.” By publicizing a crisis situation, dramatizing it (...) effectively, and advertising an innovation as the solution to the crisis, legislators may be effectively persuaded to give priority to interest group pressures above and beyond those of the local constituency. Iowa's attempts to address the farm crisis through economic development strategies relying on biotechnology is examined in this paper. The results of extensive surveys of Iowa's legislators and farmers are examined and the consequences for Iowa's policy process of using biotechnology under the auspices of economic development are discussed. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But the former (...) stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to demonstrate that moral responsibility theory produces, legitimates, and even magnifies the considerable social injustice that accrues to disabled people insofar as it implicitly and explicitly promotes a depoliticized ontology of disability that construes disability as a naturally disadvantageous personal characteristic or deleterious property of individuals rather than identifies it as an effect of power, an apparatus. In particular, I argue that the methodological tools of “analytic” philosophy that philosophers of moral responsibility theory employ to (...) establish the philosophical domain in which they engage have distinctly detrimental effects on disabled people. (shrink)

A pronatalist perspective on maternal bodies renders the adoptive maternal body queer. In this essay, I argue that the queerness of the adoptive maternal body makes it a useful epistemic standpoint from which to critique dominant views of mothering. In particular, exploring motherhood through the lens of adoption reveals the discursive mediation and social regulation of all maternal bodies, as well as the normalizing assumptions of heteronormativity, “reprosexuality,” and family homogeneity that frame a traditional view of the biological family. As (...) participants in motherhood who resist “repro-narrativity,”“reprosexuality,” and essentialism, adoptive maternal bodies have the potential to both queer our notions of normal mothering and normalize our notions of queer mothering. (shrink)

in their famous correspondence, Stillingfleet objects that Locke's definition of knowledge, by limiting certainty to the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, lessens the credibility of faith. Locke replies that his definition of knowledge does not affect the credibility of an article of faith at all, for faith and knowledge are entirely different cognitive acts: The truth of the matter of fact is in short this, that I have placed knowledge in the perception of the agreement or disagreement (...) of ideas. This definition of knowledge, your lordship said, "might be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith, which you have endeavored to defend." This I denied, and gave this reason for it, viz.... (shrink)

If, as Richard Wollheim says, the Acquaintance Principle is ‘a well-entrenched principle in aesthetics,’ it would be surprising if there were not something true at which those who have asserted it have been aiming. I argue that the Acquaintance Principle cannot be true on any traditional epistemic interpretation, nor on any usability interpretation of the sort Robert Hopkins has recently suggested. I then argue for an interpretation of the principle that treats acquaintance as the end to which judgments of aesthetic (...) value are the means as opposed to the other way around. (shrink)

Wellman argues that legitimate states have a presumptive right to close their borders, excluding all prospective immigrants. He maintains that this right is not outweighed by egalitarian considerations because societies can fulfill their duties to outsiders by transferring aid instead of opening borders. I argue that societies cannot discharge their egalitarian duties by providing aid in at least two cases: when opening borders is the only way to fulfill these duties, and when transferring aid is inconsistent with egalitarian commitments. I (...) also consider additional, non-egalitarian moral considerations that may justify a duty to maintain open borders. I conclude that Wellman fails to prove that states have an actual, all things considered right to close their borders. (shrink)

Wellman argues that legitimate states have a presumptive right to close their borders, excluding all prospective immigrants. He maintains that this right is not outweighed by egalitarian considerations because societies can fulfill their duties to outsiders by transferring aid instead of opening borders. I argue that societies cannot discharge their egalitarian duties by providing aid in at least two cases: when opening borders is the only way to fulfill these duties, and when transferring aid is inconsistent with egalitarian commitments. I (...) also consider additional, non-egalitarian moral considerations that may justify a duty to maintain open borders. I conclude that Wellman fails to prove that states have an actual, all things considered right to close their borders. (shrink)

: A pronatalist perspective on maternal bodies renders the adoptive maternal body queer. In this essay, I argue that the queerness of the adoptive maternal body makes it a useful epistemic standpoint from which to critique dominant views of mothering. In particular, exploring motherhood through the lens of adoption reveals the discursive mediation and social regulation of all maternal bodies, as well as the normalizing assumptions of heteronormativity, "reprosexuality," and family homogeneity that frame a traditional view of the biological family. (...) As participants in motherhood who resist "repro-narrativity," " reprosexuality," and essentialism, adoptive maternal bodies have the potential to both queer our notions of normal mothering and normalize our notions of queer mothering. (shrink)

This paper raises two objections to the freedom of movement argument from the perspective of nonideal philosophy: the argument cannot provide a means for establishing admissions priorities when all prospective immigrants cannot be admitted and it ignores alternative grounds for moral claims to admission in the context of histories of injustice. I develop an alternative admissions-guiding principle that assigns strong moral claims to admission to certain prospective immigrants based on a global extension of the no-harm principle. It claims that a (...) society must admit prospective immigrants if admission is necessary either to prevent that society from harming those immigrants or to compensate immigrants whom it has already harmed. States must fulfill these duties before they may legitimately use immigrant admissions policy in service of other national goals, including the advancement of economic interests. (shrink)

Arthur Danto argued from the premiss that artworks are essentially cognitive to the conclusion that they are incidentally aesthetic. I wonder why Danto, and the very many of us he persuaded, came to believe that the cognitive and the aesthetic oppose one another. I argue, contrary to Danto’s historical claims, that the cognitive and the aesthetic did not come into opposition until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they were brought into opposition for reasons of art-critical expediency (...) rather than philosophical necessity. I conclude that a robustly cognitive notion of the aesthetic remains an option for us. (shrink)

Locke has been accused of failing to have a coherent understanding of consciousness, since it can be identical neither to reflection nor to ordinary perception without contradicting other important commitments. I argue that the account of consciousness is coherent once we see that, for Locke, perceptions of ideas are complex mental acts and that consciousness can be seen as a special kind of self-referential mental state internal to any perception of an idea.

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the (...) discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability. (shrink)

: This article critically examines the constitution of impairment in prenatal testing and screening practices and various discourses that surround these technologies. While technologies to test and screen prenatally are claimed to enhance women's capacity to be self-determining, make informed reproductive choices, and, in effect, wrest control of their bodies from a patriarchal medical establishment, I contend that this emerging relation between pregnant women and reproductive technologies is a new strategy of a form of power that began to emerge in (...) the late eighteenth century. Indeed, my argument is that the constitution of prenatal impairment, by and through these practices and procedures, is a widening form of modern government that increasingly limits the field of possible conduct in response to pregnancy. Hence, the government of impairment in utero is inextricably intertwined with the government of the maternal body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Weight I Just Can’t LoseShelley Lynn MeyersI have always been a “fat person”. According to the medical definition though, I have not always been obese. I have spent most of my life on a journey from chubby to obese, finally ending at my current “overweight” status. After years of struggling with obesity I had gastric bypass surgery, finally losing enough weight to be “normal.” However, regardless of the (...) number on the scale or the BMI category into which I fell, I was still “fat”. I may have lost weight but I did not lose the experience and memories of life as an obese person. I was a fat girl on the inside.My earliest memories of childhood consist of feeling fat and awkward. I was the kid reading a book, watching other little girls practice their cartwheels and boys play tag. I was the kid who also hated gym class, especially the days we practiced tumbling or had to climb ropes. I heard the other kids laugh when I had difficulty doing these things. It’s no surprise that I was last or next to last when we had to choose teams for sports. At least when we played flag football I could play center and use my weight as an asset, blocking players from the other team.Certainly, taunts about my weight and even my own intrusive condemning thoughts were not constant, but they were frequent. Admittedly, I probably berated myself much more often than my peers did. I hated being different. What saddens me to this very day are promises I would make to God if I only I could be “like everyone else”. Oh the things that I would change, or give up for the gift of being a normal size. Even my good qualities, such as academic achievement, became another characteristic that made me stand out when all I wanted to do was hide amongst the crowd. I would have happily traded the high GPA for a lower number on the scale. [End Page E4]Some memories from that era seem to be forever etched into my mind. It has been more than thirty years since I was in the seventh grade, but I remember one particular incident very clearly. I went to my first school dance and was thrilled that I actually slow danced with a boy that I had liked since the fourth grade, Jeff1*. We danced to “How Much I Feel” by Ambrosia. Jeff wore a plaid flannel shirt, and I remember how soft it felt when I put my arms around his neck. The puppy love joy I felt that night was short-lived. At school the next day I read a note written by a female classmate. She wrote about the dance, saying that she had wanted to dance with Jeff, but “he was dancing with that fat pig”. She included my name as well, so there was no mistaking to whom she was referring. I felt nauseous. I decided that happiness was just a set-up for disappointment.Even though I thinned out somewhat during high school, I was still larger than most of my friends and saw myself as fat. I received few actual comments about my weight but I just knew they were thinking it. My best friends were exceptionally thin (one, I would later find out had an eating disorder), which added to my distorted body image. I also was the “friend”, rather than the “girlfriend”, with boys asking me to introduce them to my skinny friends. I was ecstatic when I had a horrible case of the flu and lost a lot of weight due to vomiting and the inability to keep food down. I remember hoping that I could get the flu every couple of months.I read fashion magazines and studied the latest, greatest ways to lose weight. Diet pills, fad soup diets and low calorie frozen dinners were popular and I tried most of them. Sadly, the very methods I tried to “get skinny” likely put me on the path to obesity. Starving myself just led to unhealthy eating, cravings and quite possibly, a metabolism that had no... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I indicate how the naturalized and individualized conception of disability that prevails in philosophy informs the indifference of philosophers to the predictable COVID-19 tragedy that has unfolded in nursing homes, supported living centers, psychiatric institutions, and other institutions in which elders and younger disabled people are placed. I maintain that, insofar as feminist and other discourses represent these institutions as sites of care and love, they enact structural gaslighting. I argue, therefore, that philosophers must engage in (...) conceptual engineering with respect to how disability and these institutions are understood and represented. To substantiate my argument, I trace the sequence of catastrophic events that have occurred in nursing homes in Canada and in the Canadian province of Ontario in particular during the pandemic, tying these events to other past and current eugenic practices produced in the Canadian context. The crux of the article is that the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into vivid relief the carceral character of nursing homes and other congregate settings in which elders and younger disabled people are confined. -/- KEYWORDS carceral, conceptual engineering, nursing home-industrial-complex, philosophy of disability, structural gaslighting. (shrink)

This paper argues that the behaviorist label yields a caricature of Ryle's position in The Concept of Mind that cannot be adequately fleshed out by reference to the larger corpus of Rylean texts. On the interpretation of Ryle that I offer here, he is best characterized as an "ontological agnostic." Ryle's aim, I believe, is to develop a nondenotational theory of meaning for mental-conduct terms--a theory of meaning which does not presuppose any metaphysical or ontological theory and, hence, does not (...) presuppose behaviorism. (shrink)

Locke defines knowledge as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. Nevertheless, he claims that we know particular things: the identity of our ideas, our own existence, and the existence of external objects. Although much has been done to reconcile the definition of knowledge with our knowledge of external objects, there is virtually nothing in the scholarship when it comes to knowing ideas or our own existence. I fill in this gap by arguing that perceptions of ideas are (...) complex mental states that convey propositional knowledge due to agreeing elements therein. (shrink)

Consider the following three propositions: (R) Artworks necessarily have aesthetic properties that are relevant to their appreciation as artworks. (S) Aesthetic properties necessarily depend, at least in part, on properties perceived by means of the five senses. (X) There exist artworks that need not be perceived by means of the five senses to be appreciated as artworks. The independent plausibility and apparent joint inconsistency of these three propositions give rise to what I refer to as ‘the problem of non-perceptual art’. (...) Assuming that the propositions are independently plausible and jointly inconsistent, there will be three ways of solving the problem: you may affirm (R) and (S) while denying (X); you may affirm (S) and (X) while denying (R); or you may affirm (R) and (X) while denying (S). The first of these, once the orthodox solution, has been displaced in recent years by the second. The third has never really been defended. I defend it here. If successful, my defence will have shown that there is reason to deny the existence of non-aesthetic art and no reason to believe that art is not essentially aesthetic. (shrink)

Value empiricists in aesthetics claim that we can explain the value of artworks by appeal to the value of the experiences they afford. I raise the question of the value of those experiences. I argue that while there are many values that such experiences might have, none is adequate to explaining the value of the works that afford the experiences. I then turn to defending the alternative to value empiricism, which I dub the object theory . I argue that if (...) there is some problem attending the object theory, commensurate with the problems attending empiricism, no one seems to have any idea what it is. I close by urging that the object theory be granted a fresh hearing. (shrink)

In Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock develops a promising, original account of migration justice. In her view, states have a robust (though conditional) right to self-determination, which includes a reasonably strong right to regulate migration. However, in order for these rights to be justified, three legitimacy requirements must be met. Most obviously, states must respect the human rights of their own citizens and the international state system itself must be legitimate. This latter condition also requires states to (...) do their part in sustaining a justified state system, which includes helping to alleviate “legitimacy gaps,” including significant human rights violations in other states. Brock uses this framework to address several pressing migration-related policy issues, including Muslim bans, the deportation of unauthorized migrants, temporary labor migration, and refugee protection. However, one topic is notably absent from her analysis: climate-related displacement. Some theorists insist that climate change migrants should not be considered refugees because they do not fit the standard definition of a refugee. In particular, climate migrants were displaced by droughts, floods, storms, or sea level rise rather than by war or persecution, and many are able to remain in their homes at present but will be forced to relocate at some point in the future. This paper explores the implications of Brock’s theory of migration justice for climate migration. I suggest that although her approach to refugee protection may initially appear to exclude climate migrants, her understanding of right to self-determination yields strong obligations to assist them. I take this to be a strength of her framework, which makes an important, albeit indirect, contribution to current debates on climate change migration. (shrink)

Malcolm Budd speaks for many when he locates the "principal weakness" of Hume's account of the standard of taste in Hume's "blithe optimism about the uniformity of response of his true judges of artistic value". I argue that Hume's optimism is not blithe. I argue, in particular, that it follows from Hume's definition of a true judge that true judges will never disagree, and that it follows from his appeal to the test of time that true judges will agree often (...) enough to support the kind of standard Hume has in mind. (shrink)

In this article, I offer an account of what one of the short-term political aims of proponents of greater equality ought to be. I claim that the strengthening of reflective capacity—citizens’ ability to impose a temporary level of distance from their commitments, to consider alternatives to them, and to evaluate their origins and validity—ought to be one key aim of egalitarian politics under present political conditions. I then propose activist-led education programs as one desirable means to deliver this end of (...) strengthened reflective capacity. Where activist-led education provides plentiful informational resources and opportunities to practice deploying one’s reflective capacity, and also emphasizes and encourages intellectual humility, it seems well placed to help bring about this aim. Activist-led education programs are commonly subject to what I term the indoctrination worry, but I try to show that there are not good grounds for concluding in advance of further study that the delicate balancing of ends that permissible activist-led education requires is either categorically unachievable, or avoidable in the way these objectors often press. The argument thus provides presumptive grounds for considering the proliferation of suitably organized activist-led education programs an important component of a broader strategy of egalitarian social change. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the increased involvement of local police in facilitating the deportation of undocumented migrants has played a central role in creating a record-breaking volume of deportations from the United States. In response to this so-called deportation crisis, nearly 600 localities have enacted sanctuary policies that limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters. This paper explores three moral justifications for sanctuary policies: the public safety, civil disobedience, and collective resistance arguments. Specifically, it addresses two questions: Which (...) justifications are available for which types of sanctuary policies? What must these justifications accomplish in order to be successful? I argue that although common public safety considerations can justify some sanctuary policies, others are best understood as a form of legitimate collective resistance. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: With this article, I advance a historicist and relativist feminist philosophy of disability. I argue that Foucault’s insights offer the most astute tools with which to engage in this intellectual enterprise. Genealogy, the technique of investigation that Friedrich Nietzsche famously introduced and that Foucault took up and adapted in his own work, demonstrates that Foucault’s historicist approach has greater explanatory power and transgressive potential for analyses of disability than his critics in disability studies have thus far recognized. I show (...) how a feminist philosophy of disability that employs Foucault’s technique of genealogy avoids ahistorical, teleological, and transcultural assumptions that beleaguer much work in disability studies. The article also situates feminist philosophical work on disability squarely in age-old debates in (Eurocentric) Western philosophy about universalism vs. relativism, materialism vs. idealism, realism vs. nominalism, and freewill vs. determinism, as well as contributes to ongoing discussions in (Western) feminist philosophy and theory about (among other things) essentialism vs. constructivism, identity, race, sexuality, agency, and experience. (shrink)

Hume is plausibly interpreted as asserting that an artwork is beautiful if and only if it pleases ideal critics. Jerrold Levinson maintains that Hume's commitment to this biconditional gives rise to a problem that occurs neither to Hume nor to his any of his interpreters—the problem of explaining why you should care what pleases ideal critics if you are not one yourself. I argue that this problem arises only if you hold an empiricist theory of aesthetic value—that is, a theory (...) that reduces the aesthetic value of a work to the value of the experience it affords—as Levinson does. I argue that Levinson's own attempted solution to the problem cannot succeed. And I argue that the problem never arises for Hume because his commitment to the biconditional is not a commitment to an empiricist theory of aesthetic value, but to an empiricist theory of aesthetic evaluation. (shrink)

The accumulation and advancement of gender scholarship over past decades has led us to the point where gender scholars today can leverage our deep understanding of the reproduction of gender inequality to develop and test models of change. In this lecture, I present one such model designed to reduce the negative effects of stereotypic biases on women’s workplace outcomes. After synthesizing the literature on stereotyping and bias and showing the limits of past change efforts, I develop a “small wins” model (...) of change. Key to this model is that researchers work with teams of managers to produce concrete, implementable actions that produce visible results. I argue that small wins motivate further action and are the building blocks to larger organizational transformation. Preliminary results from several case studies show that this approach can produce important changes in the short run, such as reducing gender biases in workplace evaluations, and that these small wins can inspire longer run change, such as increases in the rate of hiring women. (shrink)

This commentary responds to Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal’s call for further investigations of the whiteness of AI. My response focuses on three overlapping projects needed to more fully understand racial bias in the construction of AI and its representations in pop culture: unpacking the intersections of gender and other variables with whiteness in AI’s construction, marketing, and intended functions; observing the many different ways in which whiteness is scripted, and noting how white racial framing exceeds white casting and thus (...) cannot be undone by more diverse and inclusive hiring. Our techno-utopian fantasies, I conclude, are morally suspect in ways that go beneath and beyond the white plastic covering on robotic bodies. (shrink)

This essay seeks to unsettle feminist philosophy through an encounter with Aboriginal artist Tracey Moffatt, whose perspectives on intergenerational relationships between white women and Indigenous women are shaped by her experiences as the Aboriginal child of a white foster mother growing up in Brisbane, Australia during the 1960s. Moffatt's short experimental film Night Cries provides an important glimpse into the violent intersections of gender, race, and power in intimate life and, in so doing, invites us to see how colonial and (...) neocolonial policies are carried out through women's domestic labor. Seeing cross-generational and cross-racial intimacy through Moffatt's lens, I suggest, helps us to unsettle both feminist theories of motherhood and feminist practices of mentoring. (shrink)

In response to the concern that ethnically diverse immigrants are not being sufficiently integrated into receiving liberal democratic societies, liberal nationalists have offered two specific naturalization policy proposals. The first would require naturalizing immigrants to assimilate the national culture of the receiving society; the second would encourage newcomers to adopt the prevailing civic national identity. This paper rejects these proposals. In contrast to liberal nationalists, I deny that good citizenship presupposes a common culture or civic national identity and I develop (...) a non-nationalist naturalization model that would encourage immigrants to become integrated into liberal democratic societies by participating in their major socio-economic and political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Social robots are marketed as human tools promising us a better life. This marketing strategy commodifies not only the labor of care but the caregiver as well, conjuring a fantasy of technoliberal futurism that echoes a colonial past. Against techno-utopian fantasies of a good life as one involving engineered domestic help, I draw here on the techno-dystopian television show Humans (stylized HUMⱯNS) to suggest that we should find our desires for such help unsettling. At the core of my argument is (...) a return of the “uncanny valley” problem, from its reformulation as an engineering/design problem to its origins as a psychosocial symptom of an unresolved, traumatic past. I conclude that our sense of the uncanny may be best understood as a moral capacity that should be honed rather than evaded. (shrink)

Critical diversity studies (CDS) can be found within “traditional,” or “established,” university disciplines, such as philosophy, as well as in relatively newer departments of the university, such as African studies departments, women’s and gender studies departments, and disability studies departments. In this article, therefore, I explain why philosophy of disability, an emerging subfield in the discipline of philosophy, should be recognized as an emerging area of CDS also. My discussion in the article situates philosophy of disability in CDS by both (...) distinguishing this new subfield’s claims about disability from the arguments about disability that mainstream philosophers make and identifying the assumptions about social construction and antiessentialism that philosophy of disability shares with other areas of CDS. The discussion is designed to show that a (feminist) philosophy of disability that draws upon the work of Michel Foucault will transform how philosophers understand the situation of disabled people. By drawing upon Foucault, that is, I offer philosophers of disability and other practitioners of CDS a new understanding of disability as an apparatus of power relations. -/- . (shrink)

This paper critically examines the ways in which dominant poly discourses position polyamorists among other queer and feminist-friendly practices while setting polygamists outside of those practices as the heteronormative and hyper-patriarchal antithesis to queer kinship. I begin by examining the interlocking liberal discourses of freedom, secularism and egalitarianism that frame the putative distinction between polyamory and polygamy. I then argue that the discursive antinomies of polyamory/polygamy demarcate a distinction that has greater affective resonance than logical validity—an affective resonance, moreover, that (...) is built on neocolonial framings of polygamy as barbaric and idealizations of polyamory that whitewash its practices. (shrink)

The logical empiricists held that an analogical hypothesis does not gain any acceptability from the analogy on which it is founded. On this view, the acceptability of a hypothesis cannot be discounted by criticizing the foundational analogy. Yet scientists commonly appear to level exactly this sort of criticism. If scientists are able to discount the acceptability of analogical hypotheses in this way, then the logical empiricist view is mistaken. I analyze four forms of analogy counterargument, disanalogy, misanalogy, counteranalogy, and false (...) analogy, with examples from the debate over the asteroid impact hypothesis. These counterarguments do address the acceptability of analogical hypotheses, indicating that analogies can confer acceptability, confirmation notwithstanding. 1 Introduction 2 The asteroid impact hypothesis 3 Analogy counterarguments 3.1 Disanalogy 3.2 Misanalogy 3.3 Counteranalogy 3.4 False analogy 4 Acceptability 5 Conclusions. (shrink)

Critics of animal modeling have advanced a variety of arguments against the validity of the practice. The point of one such form of argument is to establish that animal modeling is pointless and therefore immoral. In this article, critical arguments of this form are divided into three types, the pseudoscience argument, the disanalogy argument, and the predictive validity argument. I contend that none of these criticisms currently succeed, nor are they likely to. However, the connection between validity and morality is (...) important, suggesting that critical efforts would be instructive if they addressed it in a more nuanced way. (shrink)

Locke seems to have conflicting commitments: we know individual ideas and all knowledge is propositional. This paper shows the conflict to be only apparent. Looking at Locke’s philosophy of language in relation to the Port Royal logic, I argue, first, that Locke allows that we have non-ideational mental content that is signified only at the linguistic level. Second, I argue that this non-ideational content plays a role in what we know when we know an idea. As a result, we can (...) see our knowledge of an idea as a form of knowledge by acquaintance: there is a direct epistemic relation between a mental object and a knowing subject. But owing to Locke’s logic, that knowledge has a tacit propositional structure expressing the truth of the idea, which gains full signification only linguistically. (shrink)

I attempt to make sense of Hume's enigmatic characterization of the standard of taste as "a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another." In particular, I take up the questions (a) how the standard could be both a rule and a decision, (b) why it is at least a decision if not a rule, and (c) why, if a rule, it may reconcile various sentiments rather (...) than merely confirm one and condemn another. (shrink)

Critics of so-called ideal theory argue that prevailing liberal egalitarian principles were constructed under idealized assumptions and thus are ill suited to real-world circumstances where such assumptions do not apply. Specifically, they raise three related objections: ideal theory cannot help us understand current injustices in the actual, nonideal world, ideal principles are not sufficiently action-guiding, and ideal theory tends to reflect and perpetuate unjust group privilege. This chapter explores recent philosophical work on immigration in light of these criticisms. I argue (...) that prominent arguments on both sides of the open borders debate are subject to the standard criticisms of ideal theory and thus that a nonideal approach to migration justice is urgently needed. I suggest several methodological desiderata for such an approach. (shrink)

This chapter critiques neonativist ideologies and immigration legislation through the intersecting lenses of gender, ethnicity and race, class, and immigration status. I argue that neonativist immigration legislation is persistently, though covertly, biased again women immigrants, and arguments in defense of such exclusionary legislation rest on insupportable normative assumptions concerning the proper aims of immigration policy and the rights of resident noncitizens.

The so-called March of Progress depicts human evolution as a linear progression from mohkey to man. Shelley (1996) analyzed this image as a visual argument proceeding through "rhetorical" and "demonstrative" modes of visual logic. In this paper, I confirm and extend this view of visual logic by examining variations of the original March image. These variations show that each mode of visual logic can be altered or isolated in support of new conclusions. Furthermore, the March can be included in (...) a visual "frame" to produce new arguments, much as a verbal argument can be made a component of a new and larger argument. (shrink)

This paper advances the somewhat unphilosophical thesis that “Trump is gross” to draw attention to the need to take matters of taste seriously in politics. I begin by exploring the slipperiness of distinctions between aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics, subsequently suggesting that we may need to pivot toward the aesthetic to understand and respond to the historical moment we inhabit. More specically, I suggest that, in order to understand how Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and in order (...) to stem the damage that preceded this and will ensue from it, we need to understand the power of political taste (and distaste, including disgust) as both a force of resistance and as a force of normalization. (shrink)

This paper examines the possibility of parenting as a queer practice. Examining definitions of “queer” as resistant to presumptions and practices of reprosexuality and repro-narrativity (Michael Warner), bourgeouis norms of domestic space and family time (Judith Halberstam), and policies of reproductive futurism (Lee Edelman), I argue that queer parenting is possible. Indeed, parenting that resists practices of normalization are, in part, realized by certain types of postmodern families. However, fully actualizing the possibility of parenting queerly—and thus teaching our children the (...) values of non-normativity--requires engaging political struggles for distributive justice. These are, thus, the struggles that should be at the center of queer politics, rather than the current struggles for gay marriage and homoparental rights. (shrink)

In 2008, over 400 children living on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a rural Texas polygamist community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS), were forcibly removed from their mothers’ care by State troopers responding to allegations of child abuse. This essay examines the role of neoliberal ideologies and, more specifically, what some queer theorists have identified as ‘metronormativity’ in solidifying a widespread caricature of FLDS mothers as ‘bad’ mothers. The intersections of these ideologies (...) with neocolonialist discourses, I argue, positions the FLDS mother as a subaltern subject unable to effectively speak in her own defense. (shrink)

Canada has an enviable record of relatively progressive and egalitarian legislation and policy in relation to Canadian family forms. The country’s constitutional guarantees of equality and multiculturalism provide the legal foundation for this record. In particular, Canada’s leadership in the recognition of and support for same-sex relationships in family law and social policy is widely acknowledged. This is, however, also deeply contested terrain: Feminist legal scholars informed by critical political economy argue that recent family law advances in Canada sit compatibly (...) with neo-liberal social policy and restructuring of the welfare state; the neo-conservative and religious right assert that the fundamental nature of family has been undermined by the recognition of same-sex marriage, facilitating the legal recognition of polygamous relationships, among others. Still others take the view that despite a liberal, progressive and formally egalitarian approach to family, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Canada reflects and reinforces a historically patriarchal, heterosexual institution that should be jettisoned rather than embraced. These arguments raise issues and illustrate more generally the tensions in state and legal construction and regulation of familial relations — historically and in the current context. In this Article, I re-theorize the significance of patriarchy and the relationship between patriarchal relations and the discourse of privatization in critical family law. Using the experience of women from the “outskirts” — lesbian spouses, welfare mothers, and women in polygamous relationships — I demonstrate the limits of any theory of “privatization” that does not theorize patriarchal relations. In particular, I identify and analyze the impediments to equality posed by increasingly invisible, but no less enduring, patriarchal familial ideologies in order to envision forms of family law reform and state social policy that might actually improve gendered and generational familial relations and transform the social landscape more generally. (shrink)

Isenbergian particularism is the view that we make no appeal to general principles in criticism. Sibleyan generalism is the view that we do make appeal to general reasons in criticism. I argue that Isenbergian particularism and Sibleyan generalism are compatible one with another. I refer to their conjunction as "critical compatibilism" and argue that we ought to accept it over its rivals: strong particularism (the view that we make appeal neither to general principles nor to general reasons in criticism) and (...) strong generalism (the view that we make appeal both to general principles and to general reasons in criticism). (shrink)