This contribution aims to outline the birth and development of the Unione Donne Italiane in regard to its relations with the Partito Comunista Italiano from 1944 to 1963.The present research has drawn mainly from archival sources.UDI was born as a multi-party women’s organization but the hegemony of the Communist women would de facto bring it under the influence of the PCI. The Italian Communist Party tried to perform a normative and normalizing task. By the logic of the Cold War, women (...) were relegated to deal mainly with the defence of peace, both nationally and internationally.From the international point of view, UDI was among the founding organizations of the Women’s International Democratic Federation. Gradually, the Unione began to accrue dissent even within the WIDF, leading to an internal struggle on the path to emancipation that the organization was already developing within its national context. (shrink)

Moral philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. As Socrates said, it's about "how we ought to live"-and why. It would be helpful if we could begin with a simple, uncontroversial definition of what morality is. Unfortunately, we cannot. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyond Socrates's simple formula-tion is bound to offend at least one of them. (...) This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter, I will describe the "minimum conception" of morality. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

What words we use, and what meanings they have, is important. We shouldn't use slurs; we should use 'rape' to include spousal rape (for centuries we didn’t); we should have a word which picks out the sexual harassment suffered by people in the workplace and elsewhere (for centuries we didn’t). Sometimes we need to change the word-meaning pairs in circulation, either by getting rid of the pair completely (slurs), changing the meaning (as we did with 'rape'), or adding brand new (...) word-meaning pairs (as with 'sexual harassment'). A problem, though, is how to do this. One might worry that any attempt to change language in this way will lead to widespread miscommunication and confusion. I argue that this is indeed so, but that's a feature, not a bug of attempting to change word-meaning pairs. The miscommunications and confusion such changes cause can lead us, via a process I call transformative communicative disruption, to reflect on our language and its use, and this can be further, rather than hinder, our goal of improving language. (shrink)

The logic DAI of demodalised analytic implication has been introduced by J.M. Dunn as a variation on a time-honoured logical system by C.I. Lewis’ student W.T. Parry. The main tenet underlying this logic is that no implication can be valid unless its consequent is “analytically contained” in its antecedent. DAI has been investigated both proof-theoretically and model-theoretically, but no study so far has focussed on DAI from the viewpoint of abstract algebraic logic. We provide several different algebraic semantics for DAI, (...) showing their equivalence with the known semantics by Dunn and Epstein. We also show that DAI is algebraisable and we identify its equivalent quasivariety semantics. This class turns out to be a linguistic and axiomatic expansion of involutive bisemilattices, a subquasivariety of which forms the algebraic counterpart of Paraconsistent Weak Kleene logic. This fact sheds further light on the relationship between containment logics and logics of nonsense. (shrink)

It is tempting to hold that guilt‐tripping is morally wrong, either because it is objectionably manipulative, or because it involves gratuitously aiming to make another person suffer, or both. In this article, I develop a picture of guilt according to which guilt is a type of pain that incorporates a commitment to its own justification on the basis of the subject's wrongdoing. This picture supports the hypothesis that feeling guilty is an especially efficient means for a wrongdoer to come to (...) more deeply understand why her behavior was wrong; it is precisely because guilt is painful and involves a self‐reflexive justificatory element that it is able to play this role. Such a picture, moreover, preserves the possibility that deliberately making others feel guilty needn't involve aiming gratuitously to harm them and needn't be objectionably manipulative. It follows that we should be surprisingly sanguine about the practice of inducing guilt in wrongdoers as a means of facilitating their moral edification. (shrink)

Scholars have critiqued mainstream economic approaches to environmental valuation for decades. These critiques have intensified with the increased prominence of environmental valuation in decision-making. This paper has three goals. First, we summarise prominent critiques of monetary valuation, drawing mostly on the work of Clive Spash, who worked extensively on cost–benefit analysis early in his career and then became one of monetary valuation's most thorough and ardent critics. Second, we, as a group of scholars who study relational values, describe how relational (...) values research engages with and addresses many of the critiques of monetary valuation. Third, we offer suggestions for relational values research that continues and deepens its ability to respond to critiques of monetary valuation and contributes to transformative change towards sustainability. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

We introduce a generalization of MV algebras motivated by the investigations into the structure of quantum logical gates. After laying down the foundations of the structure theory for such quasi-MV algebras, we show that every quasi-MV algebra is embeddable into the direct product of an MV algebra and a “flat” quasi-MV algebra, and prove a completeness result w.r.t. a standard quasi-MV algebra over the complex numbers.

In this article we will focus our attention on the variety of distributive bisemilattices and some linguistic expansions thereof: bounded, De Morgan, and involutive bisemilattices. After extending Balbes’ representation theorem to bounded, De Morgan, and involutive bisemilattices, we make use of Hartonas–Dunn duality and introduce the categories of 2spaces and 2spaces\. The categories of 2spaces and 2spaces\ will play with respect to the categories of distributive bisemilattices and De Morgan bisemilattices, respectively, a role analogous to the category of Stone spaces (...) with respect to the category of Boolean algebras. Actually, the aim of this work is to show that these categories are, in fact, dually equivalent. (shrink)

Increasingly, metaphors are the target of political critique: Jewish groups condemn Holocaust imagery; mental health organizations, the metaphorical exploitation of psychosis; and feminists, “rape metaphors.” I develop a novel model for making sense of such critiques of metaphor.

Despite the increased prevalence of bioethics research that seeks to use empirical data to answer normative research questions, there is no consensus as to what an appropriate methodology for this would be. This review aims to search the literature, present and critically discuss published Empirical Bioethics methodologies.

Faultless disagreement and faultless retraction have been taken to motivate relativism for predicates of personal taste, like ‘tasty’. Less attention has been devoted to the question of what aspect of their meaning underlies this relativist behavior. This paper illustrates these same phenomena with a new category of expressions: appearance predicates, like ‘tastes vegan’ and ‘looks blue’. Appearance predicates and predicates of personal taste both fall into the broader category of experiential predicates. Approaching predicates of personal taste from this angle suggests (...) that their relativist behavior is due to their experience-sensitivity, rather than their evaluative meaning. Furthermore, appearance predicates hold interest beyond what they can teach us about predicates of personal taste. Examination of a variety of uses of appearance predicates reveals that they give rise to relativist behavior for a variety of reasons—including some that apply also to other types of expressions, such as epistemic modals and comparative terms. This paper thus serves both to probe the source of relativist behavior in discourse about personal taste, as well as to map out this kind of behavior in the rich and under-explored discourse about appearances. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

Hate speech and misinformation are rife. How to respond? Counterspeech proposals say: with more and better speech. This paper considers the treatment of counterspeech in Maxime Lepoutre’s Democratic Speech In Divided Times. Lepoutre provides a nuanced defence of counterspeech. Some counterspeech, he grants, is flawed. But, he says: counterspeech can be debugged. Once we understand why counterspeech fails – when fail it does – we can engineer more effective counterspeech strategies. Lepoutre argues that the failures of counterspeech can be theorised (...) using the ideology of salience. Negative counterspeech fails because it reinforces the salience of the very ideas or associations that it contests. His solution? Positive counterspeech – a form of counterspeech which avoids the salience trap. I argue that the salience paradigm is ill-suited to theorise the failures of counterspeech. I suggest some alternatives. Further, I show that these alternative paradigms make importantly different practical recommendations – recommendations concerning how we ought to engineer our counterspeech – from those issued by the salience paradigm. (shrink)

Simple claims with the verb ‘seem’, as well as the specific sensory verbs, ‘look’, ‘sound’, etc., require the speaker to have some relevant kind of perceptual acquaintance (Pearson, 2013; Ninan, 2014). But different forms of these reports differ in their perceptual requirements. For example, the copy raising (CR) report, ‘Tom seems like he’s cooking’ requires the speaker to have seen Tom, while its expletive subject (ES) variant, ‘It seems like Tom is cooking’, does not (Rogers, 1972; Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012). (...) This contrast has led some theorists to hold that the matrix subject in CR constructions is uniformly interpreted as the perceptual source (p-source) (Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012; Rett and Hyams, 2014). Others, based on examples of CR reports that seem not to require perception of the referent of the matrix subject, have taken the p-source interpretation instead to be non-uniform across CR reports (Landau, 2011; Doran, 2015). We reconsider these theoretical approaches to copy raising in light of new experimental work probing the sensitivity of these requirements to the matrix verb, the embedded ‘like’-clause, and the context. While we find some motivation for a non-uniform p-source analysis, it comes from importantly different cases than those others have relied on. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt on the prevalent assumption that the perceptual requirements of CR reports are to be captured solely by the presence or absence of the p-source interpretation. We suggest that the data motivating a non-uniform p-source view are better captured by an alternative approach, which makes use of a more minimal evidential source role, in place of the perceptual source role. We close by considering the relationship between English copy raising and evidential constructions cross-linguistically. (shrink)

This paper offers three objections to Leslie’s recent and already influential theory of generics :375–403, 2007a, Philos Rev 117:1–47, 2008): her proposed metaphysical truth-conditions are subject to systematic counter-examples, the proposed disquotational semantics fails, and there is evidence that generics do not express cognitively primitive generalisations.

By examining first-person descriptions of thought insertion I show that thought insertion is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. People experiencing this phenomenon have huge difficulty explaining what it is like due to the bizarre nature of the experience. Through careful analysis of first-person descriptions I identify some of the characteristics of thought insertion. I then briefly examine some of the philosophical literature regarding agency, ownership and thought insertion and conclude that the standard account of the basic characteristics of thought insertion (...) is inadequate when we consider the phenomenon as it is experienced. First person descriptions suggest that thought insertion is characterised by a lack of personal ownership and not simply by a loss of agency or authorship. This is an important factor that should inform research and therapeutic intervention. We cannot hope to arrive at appropriate therapeutic intervention or identify underlying neuronal mechanisms for the experience if we cannot say what the experience actually is. I further suggest that more analysis of first-person description is required for an improved account of the phenomenology of thought insertion. (shrink)

This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the concept of the 'model organism' in contemporary biology. Thinking about model organisms enables us to examine how living organisms have been brought into the laboratory and used to gain a better understanding of biology, and to explore the research practices, commitments, and norms underlying this understanding. We contend that model organisms are key components of a distinctive way of doing research. We focus on what makes model organisms an important type of model, (...) and how the use of these models has shaped biological knowledge, including how model organisms represent, how they are used as tools for intervention, and how the representational commitments linked to their use as models affect the research practices associated with them. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

Paradigmatically, natural kinds are the kinds of thing or stuff that are classified by the natural sciences. The periodic table provides perhaps the best example of the potential importance of natural kinds for science. In the philosophy of psychiatry, debates over whether mental disorders can be natural kinds emerge because kinds of mental disorder are manifestly different from chemical kinds in various ways. While chemical kinds are precise, psychiatric kinds are fuzzy. While chemical kinds are objective, the identification of psychiatric (...) kinds is value-laden. Psychiatric classification involves classifying people, and unlike chemical elements, those people can respond to being classified in various ways. This chapter goes through these differences, one-by-one, and argues that despite them, mental disorders may be natural kinds. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in love and its general role in morality. This volume focuses on and explores the complex relation between love and justice as it appears within loving relationships, between lovers and their wider social context, and the broader political realm. Special attention is paid to the ensuing challenge of understanding and respecting the lovers’ personal autonomy in all three contexts. Accordingly, the essays in this volume are divided into three thematic sections. Section I aims at shedding (...) further light on conceptual and practical issues concerning the compatibility or incompatibility of love and justice within relationships of love. For example, are loving relations inherently unjust? Might love require justice? Or do love and justice belong to distinct moral domains? The essays in Section II consider the relation between the lovers on the one hand and their broader societal environment on the other. Specifically, how exactly are love and impartiality related? Are they compatible or not? Is it unjust to favor one’s beloved? Finally, Section III looks at the political dimensions of love and justice. How, for instance, do various accounts of love inform how we are to relate to our fellow citizens? If love is taken to play an important role in fostering or hindering the development of personal autonomy, what are the political implications that need to be addressed, and how? In addressing these questions, this book engenders a better understanding both of conceptual and practical issues regarding the relation between love, justice, and autonomy as well as their broader societal and political implications. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars working on the philosophy of love from ethical, political, and psychological angles. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

This paper explores in detail Gorgias' defense of rhetoric in Plato 's Gorgias, noting its connections to earlier and later texts such as Aristophanes' Clouds, Gorgias' Helen, Isocrates' Nicocles and Antidosis, and Aristotle's Rhetoric. The defense as Plato presents it is transparently inadequate; it reveals a deep inconsistency in Gorgias' conception of rhetoric and functions as a satirical precursor to his refutation by Socrates. Yet Gorgias' defense is appropriated, in a streamlined form, by later defenders of rhetoric such as Isocrates (...) and Aristotle. They present it as an effective reductio against a critique of rhetoric that depends on the "harm criterion." This is puzzling, since Plato 's own critique of rhetoric does not depend on the harm criterion. On the other hand, Plato does seem to embrace the harm criterion as a more general principle—as if pre-emptively embracing the reductio —in his arguments about the good in the Meno and Euthydemus. Nonetheless, Isocrates and Aristotle seem to be deliberately misreading Plato on rhetoric: where he intends to criticize its intrinsic nature, they respond as if he were merely complaining about its contingent effects. (shrink)

This paper examines what it is for a condition to be a disease. It falls into two sections. In the first I examine the best existing account of disease (as proposed by Christopher Boorse) and argue that it must be rejected. In the second I outline a more acceptable account of disease. According to this account, by disease we mean a condition that it is a bad thing to have, that is such that we consider the afflicted person to have (...) been unlucky, and that can potentially be medically treated. All three criteria must be fulfilled for a condition to be a disease. The criterion that for a condition to be a disease it must be a bad thing is required to distinguish the biologically different from the diseased. The claim that the sufferer must be unlucky is needed to distinguish diseases from conditions that are unpleasant but normal, for example teething. Finally, the claim that for a condition to be a disease it must be potentially medically treatable is needed to distinguish diseases from other types of misfortune, for example economic problems and legal problems. (shrink)

Rachel Cohon offers an original interpretation of the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas.

Classifying Madness (Springer, 2005) concerns philosophical problems with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, more commonly known as the D.S.M. The D.S.M. is published by the American Psychiatric Association and aims to list and describe all mental disorders. The first half of Classifying Madness asks whether the project of constructing a classification of mental disorders that reflects natural distinctions makes sense. Chapters examine the nature of mental illness, and also consider whether mental disorders fall into natural kinds. The (...) second half of the book addresses epistemic worries. Even supposing a natural classification system to be possible in principle, there may be reasons to be suspicious of the categories included in the D.S.M. I examine the extent to which the D.S.M. depends on psychiatric theory, and look at how it has been shaped by social and financial factors. I aim to be critical of the D.S.M. without being antagonistic towards it. Ultimately, however, I am forced to conclude that although the D.S.M. is of immense practical importance, it is unlikely to come to reflect the natural structure of mental disorders. (shrink)

We investigate some properties of two varieties of algebras arising from quantum computation - quasi-MV algebras and $\sqrt{^{\prime }}$ quasi-MV algebras - first introduced in \cite{Ledda et al. 2006}, \cite{Giuntini et al. 200+} and tightly connected with fuzzy logic. We establish the finite model property and the congruence extension property for both varieties; we characterize the quasi-MV reducts and subreducts of $\sqrt{^{\prime }}$ quasi-MV algebras; we give a representation of semisimple $\sqrt{^{\prime }}$ quasi-MV algebras in terms of algebras of (...) functions; finally, we describe the structure of free algebras with one generator in both varieties. (shrink)

Quasi-MV algebras are generalisations of MV algebras arising in quantum computational logic. Although a reasonably complete description of the lattice of subvarieties of quasi-MV algebras has already been provided, the problem of extending this description to the setting of quasivarieties has so far remained open. Given its apparent logical repercussions, we tackle the issue in the present paper. We especially focus on quasivarieties whose generators either are subalgebras of the standard square quasi-MV algebra S , or can be obtained therefrom (...) through the addition of some fixpoints for the inverse. (shrink)

We investigate certain Brouwer-Zadeh lattices that serve as abstract counterparts of lattices of effects in Hilbert spaces under the spectral ordering. These algebras, called PBZ*-lattices, can also be seen as generalisations of orthomodular lattices and are remarkable for the collapse of three notions of “sharpness” that are distinct in general Brouwer-Zadeh lattices. We investigate the structure theory of PBZ*-lattices and their reducts; in particular, we prove some embedding results for PBZ*-lattices and provide an initial description of the lattice of PBZ*-varieties.

This paper aims to identify the key characteristics of model organisms that make them a specific type of model within the contemporary life sciences: in particular, we argue that the term “model organism” does not apply to all organisms used for the purposes of experimental research. We explore the differences between experimental and model organisms in terms of their material and epistemic features, and argue that it is essential to distinguish between their representational scope and representational target. We also examine (...) the characteristics of the communities who use these two types of models, including their research goals, disciplinary affiliations, and preferred practices to show how these have contributed to the conceptualization of a model organism. We conclude that model organisms are a specific subgroup of organisms that have been standardized to fit an integrative and comparative mode of research, and that it must be clearly distinguished from the broader class of experimental organisms. In addition, we argue that model organisms are the key components of a unique and distinctively biological way of doing research using models.Keywords: Experimental organism; Genetics; Model organism; Modeling; Philosophy of biology; Representation. (shrink)

This study offers a ckomprehensive new interpretation of one of Plato's dialogues, the _Cratylus_. Throughout, the book combines analysis of Plato's arguments with attentiveness to his philosophical method.

In this volume, Rachel Giora explores how the salient meanings of words - the meanings that stand out as most prominent and accessible in our minds - shape how we think and how we speak. For Giora, salient meanings display interesting effects in both figurative and literal language. In both domains, speakers and writers creatively exploit the possibilities inherent in the fact that, while words have multiple meanings, some meanings are more accessible than others. Of the various meanings weencode in (...) our mental lexicon for a given word or expression, we ascribe greater cognitive priority to some over others. Interestingly, the most salient meaning is not always the literal meaning. Giora argues that it is cognitively prominent salient meanings, rather than literal meanings, that play the most important role in the comprehension and production of language. She shows that even though context begins to affect comprehension immediately, it does so without obstructing the early accessing of salient meanings. Thus, the meaning we first attend to is the salient word meaning, regardless of contextual bias. Knowledge of salient meanings turns out to play a major role, perhaps the most important role, in the process of using and understanding of language. Going beyond the familiar effects of literal meaning and context, the Graded Salience Hypothesis presents the most comprehensive explanation for how we use language for meaning. In this volume, Giora presents her new model for the first time in a book-length treatment, with original and illuminating perspectives that will be of interest to linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and all who want to know more about just how we understand what we mean. (shrink)

Comparison between different animal species is omnipresent in the history of science and medicine but rarely subject to focussed historical analysis. The articles in the “Working Across Species” topical collection address this deficit by looking directly at the practical and epistemic work of cross-species comparison. Drawn from papers presented at a Wellcome-Trust-funded workshop in 2016, these papers investigate various ways that comparison has been made persuasive and successful, in multiple locations, by diverse disciplines, over the course of two centuries. They (...) explore the many different animal features that have been considered to be comparable, and the ways that animals have shaped science and medicine through the use of comparison. Authors demonstrate that comparison between species often transcended the range of practices typically employed with experimental animal models, where standardised practises and apparatus were applied to standardised bodies to produce generalizable, objective data; instead, comparison across species has often engaged diverse groups of non-standard species, made use of subjective inferences about phenomena that cannot be directly observed, and inspired analogies that linked physiological and behavioural characteristics with the apparent affective state of non-human animals. Moreover, such comparative practices have also provided unusually fruitful opportunities for collaborative connections between different research traditions and disciplines. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains. She argues that on Kant's view, human beings demonstrate a distinctive cognitive ability in appreciating beauty and understanding organic life: an ability to anticipate a whole that we do not completely understand according to preconceived categories. This ability is necessary, moreover, for human (...) beings to gain knowledge of nature in its empirical character as it is, not as we might assume it to be. Her wide-ranging and original study will be valuable for readers in all areas of Kant's philosophy. (shrink)