This book examines the central role that language plays in understanding and human flourishing. The book begins by exploring Heidegger's idea that language is an essential element of how we dwell in the world and is, for the most part, ready-to-hand for us. With Gadamer, I then begin to explore phenomena where language is not ready-to-hand but calls for interpretation. The latter half of the book explores distinct ways in which language can become unready-to-hand for individuals (e.g., in cases of (...) trauma, depression, and social subordination) and examines the way that such situations have been analyzed by twentieth-century Continental thinkers (e.g., Blanchot, Kristeva, Derrida). (shrink)

This chapter presents Gadamer’s conception of language and of its role in the process of understanding. The chapter begins by explaining what Gadamer means when he says that language is characterized by an essential “self-forgetfulness” [Selbstvergessenheit] and how this relates to his account of the fore-structure of the understanding. Next, it explains what it means to conceive of a linguistic presentation (e.g., a poem or a lecture) as a hermeneutic event and how this conceptualization is essential to Gadamer’s account of (...) understanding and of the dialectical unity between language and being. The chapter ends by considering how Gadamer’s analysis of conversation further clarifies what it means to be open to the event of language. (shrink)

There are two attitudes regarding the historical situation of understanding commonly held today. On the one hand, we believe that we only achieve a real, worthwhile understanding of a topic when our thinking manages to break free from the dogmas of the past. We believe that this transcendence of the historical situation of thought is both possible and desirable. We applaud those whose thought appears to us to proceed unhinged by traditional dogmas, whether those dogmas be old habits of scientific (...) thought or traditional ideas about social life. We celebrate as epistemic heroes those who discover their own way of thinking. On the other hand, many are quick to accept as a general rule that one’s understanding is inevitably bound to one’s particular historical and cultural situation. Nobody understands things in a historical vacuum. Accordingly, we believe that there is no transcending the historicity of the understanding and thus no epistemic heroes to applaud. This chapter examines Gadamer's argument in “The Elevation of the Historicity of Understanding" (a central section in "Truth and Method") as a critique of both of these alternatives -- alternatives that can be traced back to the historical epochs of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. I argue that, for Gadamer, both of these historical models of understanding misconstrue the way that understanding is grounded in historical consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter presents a conception of understanding where understanding emerges out of the joint experience of conversation. On this conception, understanding requires more than the pre-reflective acquisition of shared social meanings – a conception of understanding historically highlighted by existential phenomenologists. Beyond this, it requires what occurs in genuine conversation, namely, that one put one’s pre-reflective social meanings at risk in the process of critical self-reflection. Drawing from the hermeneutic phenomenology of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I argue that conversation is that joint (...) experience that gives rise to such critical self-reflection and that it is conversation’s play-structure in particular that makes it a source of understanding in this sense. (shrink)

Explores Gadamer's hermeneutic theory of understanding and puts this theory into conversation with a number of social epistemologies, including feminist epistemology.

This article takes up the work of Judith Butler in order to present a vision of ethics that avoids two common yet problematic positions: on the one hand, the skeptical position that ethical norms are so constitutive of who we are that they are ultimately impossible to assess and, on the other hand, the notion that we are justified in our commitment to any ethical norm that appears foundational to our identity. With particular attention to the trajectory of Butler’s project (...) from The Psychic Life of Power to Giving an Account of Oneself, the article discusses the shortcomings of these two positions and the virtues of the alternative account that Butler develops during this period. (shrink)

This article examines the meaningful intervention that Gert-Jan Van der Heiden’s recent book, The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony, makes in the developing field of the philosophy of testimony. I argue that this intervention is accomplished through a phenomenological investigation into the nature of the testimonial object and of the demand that it makes upon one who bears witness. In taking such an approach, I argue, Van der Heiden initiates an ontological turn in the field of testimonial (...) theory, shifting the conversation away from a debate about the conditions in which belief in testimony is justified – a debate that has in many ways defined the field for philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. I suggest that Van der Heiden’s account is helpful in demonstrating that, in many cases, doing justice to a testimonial object requires an epistemic-ethical attitude other than belief. The article concludes by developing a few questions for Van der Heiden based on my interpretation of his project, including to what extent his phenomenology of testimony can account for how often our receptivity to testimony depends on the default trust that we have in others by virtue of our fundamental immersion in social life. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 7-18.

In cases of depression where linguistic meaning has collapsed, there is good reason to believe that a long-term strategy for recovery must include rehabilitating the depressive person's capacity for meaningful speech. This requires that the patient participate actively in interpreting her own pain. In this essay, I argue that medical diagnosis can tempt patients, particularly women, to circumvent this process of interpretation. To explain this danger, I draw on Julia Kristeva's clinical analyses of depression and recent studies on the correlation (...) between depression and self-silencing. (shrink)

Language is often conceived of today as providing a person with a worldview and a set of communicative norms that one accepts unambiguously. However, in his 1992 lecture, “Monolingualism of the Other,” Jacques Derrida insists that his mother tongue is for him “not a natural element, not the transparency of the ether, but an absolute habitat.” In other words, while French is an intimate part of his existence, his relationship to it is nevertheless ambiguous. Derrida claims that his situation is (...) not exceptional though, since for no person is language simply a “natural element.” In this essay, I examine first the phenomenological basis for this controversial claim, drawing from Derrida’s lecture as well as earlier explorations by Martin Heidegger to elucidate the point. Later I turn to address the ethical-political dimensions of Derrida’s claim, explaining how it serves to protest against a problematic process of consolidating power. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature of authenticity through a comparison of Martin Heidegger and the classical Buddhist text, the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate). As Stanley Cavell's interpretations of Heidegger have developed, the peculiarity of Heidegger's sense of authenticity lies in the fact that it requires us, not to negate the inauthentic everydayness into which we are fallen, but to learn to inhabit this everydayness in a new way. The task of authenticity, Cavell argues, involves a recovery and a transformation of (...) this original condition. But just what this transformation involves is tricky. To what extent does authenticity involve taking particular, concrete actions in the world? And insofar as we are never in complete mastery of our actions, how can we ensure that they are authentic? Through a comparison with the Mumonkan, this essay considers how the task of authenticity can be understood as a gateless gate, a way of dwelling in the everyday which affirms our thrownness into a plurality of ways. The essay, thus, argues for different roots than those Cavell finds manifest in Heidegger's philosophy (the traditions of early American transcendentalism and Anglo-American ordinary language philosophy) and thus contributes to the current conversation on the under-appreciated convergences between Heidegger and the Buddhist tradition. (shrink)

In his theoretical essays on language, Walker Percy criticizes contemporary linguistics for overlooking the deep, existential impact that language acquisition has on human life. This acquisition, for Percy, radically transforms the human being’s mode of existence. With the acquisition of language, the world and our role in it change. The meaning of the world comes to be revealed through the ongoing life of human discourse: through books, conversations, philosophical inquiry, and so on. This chapter clarifies and elaborates on Percy’s critique (...) by showing how it arises as a central insight in twentieth-century German phenomenology, particularly in the later work of Martin Heidegger and in the hermeneutic phenomenology of Heidegger’s student, Hans-Georg Gadamer. (shrink)

On May 18, 1958, Martin Heidegger led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking” together with Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, the Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar. The protocol of the colloquium, published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, presents a conversation among the colloquium participants about art in the East Asian world. In this conversation, Heidegger is particularly interested in hearing from Hisamatsu about the conception of art present in the East Asian world prior to the introduction (...) of Western aesthetic concepts and about the relationship between form and formlessness in East Asian aesthetics. The conversation allows Hisamatsu to clarify for the participants what he takes to be the most essential features of Zen art and how these features compare with those found in modern Western abstract art. (shrink)

On May 19th, 1958, the day after Martin Heidegger and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking,” the two men came together to discuss the success of the colloquium. The conversation soon turned to the work of Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, and from there to the newest developments in Heidegger’s thinking about language. Heidegger had just presented some of this new thinking during his lecture on Stefan George’s poem “Das Wort” in (...) Vienna a week earlier. Having attended the lecture in Vienna, Hisamatsu used the opportunity of the conversation to ask Heidegger for elaboration on this new thinking and to clarify connections between it and language in the Zen tradition. The conversation was transcribed and later published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe. (shrink)

On May 19th, 1958, the day after Martin Heidegger and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking,” the two men came together to discuss the success of the colloquium. The conversation soon turned to the work of Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, and from there to the newest developments in Heidegger’s thinking about language. Heidegger had just presented some of this new thinking during his lecture on Stefan George’s poem “Das Wort” in (...) Vienna a week earlier. Having attended the lecture in Vienna, Hisamatsu used the opportunity of the conversation to ask Heidegger for elaboration on this new thinking and to clarify connections between it and language in the Zen tradition. The conversation was transcribed and later published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe. (shrink)

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme parks (...) and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

Much recent research has sought to uncover the neural basis of moral judgment. However, it has remained unclear whether "moral judgments" are sufficiently homogenous to be studied scientifically as a unified category. We tested this assumption by using fMRI to examine the neural correlates of moral judgments within three moral areas: (physical) harm, dishonesty, and (sexual) disgust. We found that the judgment ofmoral wrongness was subserved by distinct neural systems for each of the different moral areas and that these differences (...) were much more robust than differences in wrongness judgments within a moral area. Dishonest, disgusting, and harmful moral transgression recruited networks of brain regions associated with mentalizing, affective processing, and action understanding, respectively. Dorsal medial pFC was the only region activated by all scenarios judged to be morally wrong in comparison with neutral scenarios. However, this region was also activated by dishonest and harmful scenarios judged not to be morally wrong, suggestive of a domain-general role that is neither peculiar to nor predictive of moral decisions. These results suggest that moral judgment is not a wholly unified faculty in the human brain, but rather, instantiated in dissociable neural systems that are engaged differentially depending on the type of transgression being judged. (shrink)

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

Indigenous knowledge and work in social science demonstrates the importance for well-being of people’s relationships with places, but western moral theorists have said little on this topic. This paper argues that there is a neo-Aristotelian virtue associated with forming a relationship with a place or places; that is, human beings can form relationships with places that affect their perceptions, emotions, desires and actions, and such dispositions, when properly developed, increase the chance that people will flourish. As well as discussing the (...) virtue, the paper considers related vices and briefly outlines implications of this virtue for dispossession, pro-environmental action, and education. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 3, March 2022.

John Earman and John Norton have argued that substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within local spacetime theories. I compare their argument to more traditional arguments typical in the Relationist/Substantivalist dispute and show that they all fail for the same reason. All these arguments ascribe to the substantivalist a particular way of talking about possibility. I argue that the substantivalist is not committed to the modal claims required for the arguments to have any force, and show that this (...) naturally leads to an alteration in the way determinism is characterized for local spacetime theories. (shrink)

The process of adopting a child is “not for the faint of heart.” This is what we were told the first time we, as a couple, began this process. Part of the challenge lies in fulfilling the licensing requirements for adoption, which, beyond the usual home study, can include mandatory participation in parenting classes. The question naturally arises for many people who are subjected to these requirements whether they are morally justified. We tackle this question in this paper. In our (...) view, while strong reasons exist in favour of licensing adoptive parents, these reasons support the licensing not only of adoptive parents, but of all or some subset of so-called “natural” parents as well. We therefore conclude that the status quo with respect to parental licensing, according to which only adoptive parents need to be licensed, is morally unjustified. (shrink)

The authors of these essays--including Judith Butler, Elizabeth Weed, and Rosi Braidotti--shed new light on the relationship of Irigaray to many of the philosophers she has "romanced," from Aristotle to Deleuze.

Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. In Making Sense of Taste, Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of (...) greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating. (shrink)

A summary of the philosophical literature on trust.

In this adventurous contribution to the project of combining philosophy and biology to understand the mind, Carolyn Price investigates what it means to say that mental states--like thoughts, wishes, and perceptual experiences--are about things in the natural world. Her insight into this deep philosophical problem offers a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. Along the way she defends her view from recent objections to teleological theories and indicates how (...) it might be applied to notable problems in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Reveals how the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changed our view of the earth and argues that the advance of science set back the cause of women.

Currently, the preferred accommodation for conscientious objection to abortion in medicine is to allow the objector to refuse to accede to the patient’s request so long as the objector refers the patient to a physician who performs abortions. The referral part of this arrangement is controversial, however. Pro-life advocates claim that referrals make objectors complicit in the performance of acts that they, the objectors, find morally offensive. I argue that the referral requirement is justifiable, although not in the way that (...) people usually assume that it is. (shrink)

The power of new medical technologies, the cultural authority of physicians, and the gendered power dynamics of many patient-physician relationships can all inhibit women's reproductive freedom. Often these factors interfere with women's ability to trust themselves to choose and act in ways that are consistent with their own goals and values. In this book Carolyn McLeod introduces to the reproductive ethics literature the idea that in reproductive health care women's self-trust can be undermined in ways that threaten their autonomy. (...) Understanding the importance of self-trust for autonomy, McLeod argues, is crucial to understanding the limits on women's reproductive freedom. -/- McLeod brings feminist insights in philosophical moral psychology to reproductive ethics, and to health-care ethics more broadly. She identifies the social environments in which self-trust is formed and encouraged. She also shows how women's experiences of reproductive health care can enrich our understanding of self-trust and autonomy as philosophical concepts. The book's theoretical components are grounded in women's concrete experiences. The cases discussed, which involve miscarriage, infertility treatment, and prenatal diagnosis, show that what many women feel toward themselves in reproductive contexts is analogous to what we feel toward others when we trust or distrust them. -/- McLeod also discusses what health-care providers can do to minimize the barriers to women's self-trust in reproductive health care, and why they have a duty to do so as part of their larger duty to respect patient autonomy. (shrink)

New techniques for the genetic modification of organisms are creating new strategies for addressing persistent public health challenges. For example, the company Oxitec has conducted field trials internationally—and has attempted to conduct field trials in the United States—of a genetically modified mosquito that can be used to control dengue, Zika, and some other mosquito-borne diseases. In 2016, a report commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine discussed the potential benefits and risks of another strategy, using gene drives. (...) Driving a desired genotype through a population of wild animals or insects could lead to irreversible genetic modification of an entire species. The NASEM report recommends community, stakeholder, and public engagement about potential uses of the technology, and it argues that the engagement should occur as research advances, well before gene drives are deployed. Yet what “engagement” means in practice is unclear. This article seeks clarity on this problem by offering a justification for community engagement and drawing out implications of this argument for the implementation and desired outcomes of community engagement. Community engagement is essential when it comes to research that would release genetically modified insects or animals into the environment. By contrast, obtaining informed consent from people who live near such a proposed field trial is neither necessary nor sufficient. Drawing on the epistemic and moral arguments for deliberative democracy, I propose two discrete mechanisms of community engagement: community advisory boards and deliberative forums, neither of which has been systematically incorporated into research governance. The proposed mechanisms would engender respect for persons who live near field trials, even when the results of deliberation override some individuals’ preferences. Community engagement foregrounds the community in our thinking about humans’ relationship to nature, and it implies that deciding to release genetically modified insects or animals into the wild ought to be a collective decision, not one made by product developers, policy-makers, private companies, research funders, or scientists alone. (shrink)

In late 2021, tennis star Chris Evert learned new genetic information about her sister, who died from ovarian cancer in January 2020. As Evert has explained in posts published by ESPN, her sister had a variant in the BRCA1 gene that was reclassified—upgraded—from a variant of uncertain significance (VUS) to pathogenic. Hearing about the variant’s reclassification likely saved Evert’s life. After getting genetic testing that showed she also carried the variant, Evert underwent prophylactic surgery. Clinical testing associated with the procedure (...) revealed she already had stage 1c ovarian cancer. The Wall Street Journal reported on a different variant reclassification story in 2019. Seven female relatives had prophylactic surgeries after cascade genetic testing indicated they each carried the same pathogenic variant in BRCA2. However, there was significant distress and confusion when one of the women received notice that the variant had been downgraded from pathogenic to a VUS. As these cases illustrate, reclassification of the clinical significance of genetic variants—which ranges from pathogenic, likely pathogenic, uncertain, likely benign and benign—can have profound impacts on individuals and families. Although genetic testing often provides valuable information, many identified variants are of uncertain significance, even in genes associated with disease. Many of these VUS will be reclassified as genomic data …. (shrink)

In this paper, I interrogate an ethical obligation to participate in genomics research on the basis of solidarity. I explore two different ways in which solidarity is used to motivate participation in genomics research: as an appeal to participate in genomic research because it cultivates solidarity and as an appeal to participate in genomic research because it expresses solidarity. I critique those appeals and draw lessons from them for how we ought to understand solidarity. The working definition of solidarity that (...) I defend is that solidarity involves recognizing another creature, person, or persons as, like ourselves, vulnerable to injustice and entails acting in ways that contribute to creating, reforming, and participating in institutions that are aimed at enhancing their flourishing. I argue that participating in genomics research is not an expression of solidarity. Participation in research may be praiseworthy, a “good thing to do,” but actually cultivating and expressing solidarity requires much more of us. (shrink)