This chapter contains sections titled: Autonomy versus Control The Psychology of Autonomy Questions Concerning Autonomy The Theory and Practice of Externally Controlled Learning The Theory and Practice of Autonomous Learning Classroom Management.

I J’ai grandi au milieu des collines bleues et des lacs cristallins des Appalaches, loin de l’artifice des grandes métropoles : je vivais dans des conditions plus primitives, moins compliquées que dans l’effervescence des zones très peuplées. La nature fut mon premier professeur et les animaux domestiques mes premiers compagnons. Ma jeunesse s’écoula dans ce cadre et c’est là que je conçus pour la première fois l’idée que les animaux parlent. Enfant, je croyais que tous les animaux d’une même..

Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy's beginning and end, while Heidegger argued it concluded with Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy's end, with some even calling for the advent of "postphilosophy." In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions—which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject—Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel undertakes the (...) first systematic treatment of "the end of philosophy," while also recasting the history of western thought itself. Thomas-Fogiel begins with postphilosophical claims such as scientism, which she reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. She discovers similar issues in Rorty's skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, Thomas-Fogiel finds both traditions followed the same path—the road of reference—which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Levinas and Habermas, Thomas-Fogiel reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference. Trained under the French philosopher Bernard Bourgeois, she remakes philosophy in exciting new ways for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 51-58, January/February 2022.

The central thesis of Foucault's Critical Ethics is that Foucault's account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault's analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, Richard A. Lynch shows how Foucault's ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged (...) practice in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethic practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community's response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethics—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom. (shrink)

This article brings out certain philosophical difficulties in Lacan’s account of the mirror stage, the initial moment of the subject’s development. For Lacan, the “original organization of the forms of the ego” is “precipitated” in an infant’s self-recognition in a mirror image; this event is explicitly prior to any social interactions. A Hegelian objection to the Lacanian account argues that social interaction and recognition of others by infants are necessary prerequisites for infants’ capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror image. (...) Thus mutual recognition with another, rather than self-recognition in a mirror, is what makes possible subsequent ego-formation and self-consciousness. This intersubjective critique suggests that many of the psychoanalytic consequences that Lacan derives from the mirror stage (e.g., alienation, narcissism, and aggressivity) may need to be rethought. (shrink)

The History of Sexuality, volume 1 (HS1): An Introduction may be the most widely read of Foucault's texts in English for many, to be sure, it is the first book by Foucault that one is likely to read. It is an indispensable text in Foucault's oeuvre –for a theoretically sophisticated understanding of the construction of sexuality and the exercise of power. This essay consists of two parts. The first part attempts to situate and assess HS1. Thus, HS1 constitutes a turning (...) point in Foucault's thought: it presents Foucault's mature articulation of disciplinary power while also opening up new analyses of biopower and bringing certain ethical problematics to the fore. As such, its reframing of sexuality has been profoundly inspirational for thinkers and activists alike. The much shorter second part briefly presents HS1's argument through analyses of each part and chapter. (shrink)

The heart of Richard Rorty's philosophy is his distinction between the private and the public. In the first part of this paper, I highlight the profound influence that the inherited vocabularies of Romanticism and Moralism have had on Rorty's understanding of both the distinction and the problems he intends to solve with it. I also suggest that Rorty shares with Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche philosophical habits that cause him to treat two importantly different problems as one. Once the moral (...) problem is disentangled from the political, it becomes clear that Rorty's distinction is unnecessary to the former and inadequate for the latter. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Rorty's non-foundationalist pragmatism supports the view that the political problem is best resolved by what I call a democratic mechanism of arbitration. It is the lingering influence of Romanticism and Moralism, I suggest, that is the cause of Rorty's reluctance to embrace fully the political priority of democratic consensus. Finally, I discuss why this analysis of Rorty's liberalism may have implications for the general question of how best to resolve political disputes in pluralist societies. (shrink)

In this paper, I make two points about Richard’s truth relativism. First, I argue his truth relativism is at odds with his account of truth-aptness. Second, I argue that his truth relativism commits him to a form of pluralism about truth.

What does truth have to do with freedom? That is, what is the relationship between our political and epistemic principles? In this paper, I grapple and reject Rorty's reasons for thinking that the former can't be based on the latter, but offer an alternative argument that supports his over-all conclusion that our epistemic and political values are ultimately intertwined.

Brian Lleiter : Leiter reports -- Jason Stanley : philosophy as the great naïveté -- Eric Schwitzgebel : the splintered skeptic -- Mark Rowlands : hour of the wolf -- Eric T. olson : the philosopher with no hands -- Craig Callender : time lord -- Kieran Setiya : what Anscombe intended and other puzzles -- Kit Fine : metaphysical kit -- Patricia Churchland : causal machines -- Valerie Tiberius : mostly elephant, ergo -- Peter Carruthers : mind reader -- (...) Joshua Knobe : indie rock virtues -- Alfred R. Mele : the four million dollar philosopher -- Graham Priest : logically speaking -- Ursula Renz: after Spinoza : wiser, freer, happier -- Cecile Fabre: on the intrinsic value of each of us -- Hilde Lindemann : no ethics without feminism -- Elizabeth S. Anderson : the new leveller -- Christine Korsgaard: treating people as end in themselves -- Michael Lynch : truth, reason and democracy -- Timothy Williamson : classical investigations -- Ernie Lepore : meaning, truth, language, reality -- Jerry Fodor : meaningful words without sense, and other revolutions -- Huw Price : without mirrors -- Gary Gutting : what philosophers know. (shrink)

This paper responds to discussions of my book When Truth Gives Out by Michael Lynch, Nenad Miščević, and Isidora Stojanović. Among the topics discussed are: whether relativism is incoherent (because it requires one to think that certain of one’s views are and are not epistemically superior to views one denies); whether and when sentences in which one slurs an individual or group are truth valued; whether relativism about matters of taste gives an account of “faultless disagreement” superior to certain (...) “absolutist” accounts of the matter. (shrink)

In “The Epidemiology of ‘Regrettable Kinship’: Gender, Epidemic, and Community in Todd Haynes' [Safe] and Richard Powers' Gain,” the author analyzes two contemporary cultural texts about women and environmentally-linked illnesses to rethink commonplace understandings of the relationship between gender, disease, and community formation. By reading these narratives side by side, Lynch is able to address difficult issues about gendered subjectivity and the fragile construction of collective political identity. While the female protagonists in the texts Lynch examines relate (...) differently to their illnesses, both portray the ways in which women negotiate the potential and limitations of “illness communities.”. (shrink)

At first glance, Mark Richard's recent book When Truth Gives Out appears, in the most commendable sense of the word, ‘old-fashioned’. Its central thesis is that truth is sometimes the wrong standard to use when assessing the judgements we make about the world. Not all correct judgements are true, and not all incorrect ones are false. They can all be measured, but they cannot all be measured in the same way. -/- Many of the heroes of old, ensconced in (...) philosophical Valhalla, are no doubt blowing their trumpets in approval. The heroes did not see truth as easy to come by. Far from it. Truth, like wealth, was to be earned, the product of hard epistemological work and stern semantic discipline. Much of what we say and think did not live up to their exacting standards for truth. Morality, literature, poetry, politics, philosophy, psychology and much else besides were often judged lacking. Consequently either we were to believe that all opinions in these matters were equally mistaken, or we were to look for explanations of why we say and think what we do about such things other than the desire to know the truth. We were expressing our sentiments, or prescribing, or commending, or manipulating. But in making such judgements, we were not judging what was true or false. Such were our choices. Grim, surely, but heroic choices often are. -/- So, like the heroes of old, Richard thinks that truth does not live everywhere. In this respect, he is aligned with such worthies as Hume, Russell, Ayer, and one or other of the Wittgensteins. But it is there that the resemblance stops. For in point of fact, Richard's way of approaching these matters is importantly new. This is an outstanding and original work of analytic philosophy, one that manages to be both deep and sensible; it rewards careful study, and defies easy categorization. -/- In what follows, I shall illustrate the distinctiveness of Richard's approach, and the problems it consequently faces, by asking two questions about some of its key elements. The first question concerns what his picture tells us about what remains when (absolute) truth gives way. The second concerns what it tells us about truth. These are hardly the only important aspects of his view – I shall be ignoring, for example, his discussion of emotivism, and a stellar discussion of the semantics of epithet – but they are some of the most fundamental. (shrink)

This here snake skin jacket is a symbol of my individuality and belief in freedom.—Sailor Ripley, in Wild at Heart (dir. David Lynch, 1990)Like Sailor Ripley’s manic odyssey down the American yello...

This article examines Richard Lynch’s metaphysics and finds that he ultimately resolves his account of being in terms of essens—that which denotes the essential structure that a being (ens) has apart from existence. For Lynch, unlike many of his Jesuit contemporaries, existence is accidental to being. Yet, even if essens is distinct from existence, it is not altogether lacking being, but is accorded a certain kind of “essential being,” which is identified with the possible. Lynch thus (...) seems to re-appropriate an essentialist metaphysics that has antecedents in Avicenna and Henry of Ghent’s notion of esse essentiae. More proximate to Lynch is the Jesuit thinker Francesco Albertini, who takes Henry’s metaphysics and conveys it to Baroque Scholasticism. Lynch continues down that metaphysical path which, as we shall see, generated fierce controversy among late seventeenth-century Scholastics regarding the nature of creaturely possibility. (shrink)

Research on gender and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) beyond women’s biological susceptibility is limited. A gender and equity lens in AMR research is necessary to promote gender equality and support the effectiveness, uptake, and sustainability of real-world AMR solutions. We argue that it is an ethical and social justice imperative to include gender and related intersectional issues in AMR research and implementation. An intersectional exploration of the interplay between people’s diverse identities and experiences, including their gender, socio-economic status, race, disability, age, (...) and sexuality, may help us understand how these factors reinforce AMR risk and vulnerability and ensure that interventions to reduce the risk of AMR do not impact unevenly. This paper reports on the findings of a systematic scoping review on the interlinkages between AMR, gender and other socio-behavioural characteristics to identify priority knowledge gaps in human and animal health in LMICs. The review focused on peer-reviewed and grey literature published between 2017 and 2022. Three overarching themes were gendered division of caregiving roles and responsibilities, gender power relations in decision-making, and interactions between gender norms and health-seeking behaviours. Research that fails to account for gender and its intersections with other lines of disadvantage, such as race, class and ability, risks being irrelevant and will have little impact on the continued and dangerous spread of AMR. We provide recommendations for integrating an intersectional gender lens in AMR research, policy and practice. (shrink)

"The ancient and modern question of what is the nature of man and his activity and what ought to be the directions pursued in this activity is once again being ...

From the Introduction: This inquiry is concerned with the themes of praxis and action in four philosophic movements: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. It is rare that these four movements are considered in a single inquiry, for there are profound differences of emphasis, focus, terminology, and approach represented by these styles of thought. Many philosophers believe that similarities among these movements are superficial and that a close examination of them will reveal only hopelessly unbridgeable cleavages. While respecting the genuine (...) fundamental differences of these movements, this inquiry is undertaken in the spirit of showing that there are important common themes and motifs in what first appears to be a chaotic babble of voices. I intend to show that the concern with man as an agent has been a primary focal point of each of these movements and further that each contributes something permanent and important to our understanding of the nature and context of human activity. (shrink)