The transparency of perceptual experience has been invoked in support of many views about perception. I argue that it supports a form of enactivism—the view that capacities for perceptual experience and for intentional agency are essentially interdependent. I clarify the perceptual phenomenon at issue, and argue that enactivists should expect to find a parallel instance of transparency in our agentive experience, and that the two forms of transparency are constitutively interdependent. I then argue that i) we do indeed find such (...) parallels: the way in which an action is directed towards its goal through our bodily movements parallels the way in which an experience is directed towards its object through our perceptual sensation, and ii) reflecting on sensorimotor skills shows why the two instances of transparency are constitutively interdependent. Section 4 gives reasons for generalizing beyond the cases considered so far by applying the enactive view to Kohler's landmark studies of perceptual adaptation. The final section clarifies the form of enactivism to which the previous sections point. The view that emerges is one whereby our perceptual and practical skills are interrelated aspects of a single capacity to have one's mind intentionally directed upon the world. The transparency of experience, on this view, is achieved in virtue of our capacities as agents as much as it is given in virtue of our capacities as perceivers. (shrink)

Upshot: In our target article we claimed that, at least since Weber and Varela, enactivism has incorporated a theoretical commitment to one important aspect of Jonas’s philosophical biology, namely its anthropomorphism, which is at odds with the methodological commitments of modern science. In this general reply we want to clarify what we mean by anthropomorphism, and explain why we think it is incompatible with science. We do this by spelling out what we call the “Jonasian inference,” i.e., the idea that (...) we are entitled, based on our first-person experience of teleology, to take the appearance of teleology in other living beings at face value. (shrink)

In both popular and scholarly discussions, sexual consent is gaining traction as the central moral consideration in how people should treat one another in sexual encounters. However, while the concept of consent has been indispensable to oppose many forms of sexual violence, consent-based sexual ethics struggle to account for the phenomenological complexity of sexual intimacy and the social and structural pressures that often surround sexual communication and behavior. Feminist structural critique and social research on the prevalence of violation even within (...) consensual sex suggest that consent is insufficient to ground responsibility; a more fundamental orientation toward the value of sexual agency provides a better foundation for sexual ethics. Using feminist critical theory, phenomenology, and black feminist thought, this dissertation develops a socially situated and relational notion of sexual agency and diagnoses how such agency is neglected in prevailing discussions of consent in moral philosophy and legal theory. I argue that the ethical question of responsibility to another in a sexual encounter—apart from juridical considerations—should be reframed around the value of each person’s socially situated practices of agency. Preceding and extending beyond the obligation to gain valid consent for an action, responsibility demands adapting one’s intentions and behaviors in response to the wider range of another’s communicative expressions of agency. However, communicative expressions can be ambiguous or overdetermined by social context and cultural norms; they often offer only provisional traces of agency. To address this inherent uncertainty in intimacy, I propose drawing on insights from Emmanuel Levinas about the dynamic, open-ended nature of relationality, responsibility, and communication. Responsibility toward another does not depend on securing certainty about their “yes” or “no,” but requires responding continuously under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, adapting behaviors and intentions to make room for another’s agency despite its opacity. (shrink)

In EN II.1, Aristotle claims that our nature is inadequate for moral virtue. We are not, he says, in the same relation to virtue as a stone falling to earth; moral excellence is neither by nature nor contrary to our nature but reached by habituation . Other texts such as Pol. I.13 and Pol. VII.12 about natural capacities, as well as those like Phys. II.1 and Meta. V.4 about physis in general, complicate the picture concerning the bases for moral excellence (...) in EN. This essay considers the range of applications of physis, focusing on the practical works, so as to examine the extent to which Aristotle thinks moral and political nature is amenable to external determinants such as cultural education. (shrink)

Three acclaimed literary critics ask: Do women construct and write fiction differently from men? They explore theoretical aspects of the feminist agenda as well as analyze their own creative procedures. Sue Roe, Susan Sellers, Nicole Ward Jouve.

A Christian theology that is orientated towards understanding incarnation must be interested in the nature of embodiment. As the experience of those involved in sports centres on the body and its attunement to the situation and environment in which it finds itself, so we can compare the states of immersion in the material world in the athlete’s experience and the experience of Christian piety. This essay offers a comparative phenomenology of two forms of embodiment: the athlete’s entry into ‘the zone’ (...) and the contemplative’s centring of the embodied soul in Christ. In doing so it opens up areas of both similarity and difference that are coming to be explored by neuropsychology and neurophysiology. and points to the development of a radical account of incarnation that takes embodiment and affectivity seriously. (shrink)

What I wish to argue for in this essay is the theological advantage of turning from the stasis of analogy and symbol to the dynamism and semiosis of allegory. The move from static, atemporal discussions of analogy and symbol to allegory will lend itself to a rather different model for the hermeneutical task. It is one that is founded upon narrative, mimesis and participation, and one that presents a more dynamic view of the relationship between revelation , disclosure , representation (...) and knowledge. I begin by examining a constellation of inter‐related ideas—narrative, participation in an unfolding tradition, knowledge and discipleship—in what is often read as an appeal in the Lukan Preface to historical facts. I then return to Aristotle, to develop the rich association between mimesis and phronesis, rhetoric and knowledge, and to point out the ambiguous nature of analogy to ontology. The practice of living, for Aristotle, I suggest, is allegorical. It is with Gregory of Nyssa's work on allegory that I put together the Lukan emphasis upon participation and discipleship with an account of reading creation allegorically. With Gregory, we learn how to read the world in the light of its Christic watermark and in the power of a Trinitarian desire. In modernity such allegorical reading fell out of favour, and it is a recapitulation of that theologically informed, allegorical reading that this essay finally exhorts. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Both Zora Neale Hurston's "Seraph on the Suwanee" (1948) and Carolyn Chute's "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" (1985) feature white working-class women negotiating class hierarchies in rural communities. Despite contemporary critics' putative concern with class and demonstrated concern with Hurston's other works, particularly "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937), both novels have been largely ignored by the critical establishment, in part because readers find it difficult to identify with the main characters. Comparing the critical reception of Seraph, The Beans, and (...) Their Eyes reveals the mechanism by which readers identify with imaginary characters is constituted by middle-class reading practices. While a sympathetic audience emerged for Their Eyes, one is not likely to appear for the other two novels, which expose the class-bound roots of the literary construction of identity, meaning and reality. In addition, Seraph and The Beans point, however obliquely, toward a vernacular notion of home that resists middle-class commodification. (shrink)

Why Plato was not a world-hating totalitarian -- Why Aquinas' "five ways" are not so bad after all -- Why does everybody hate Cartesian dualism? -- Why kicking stones cannot refute Bishop Berkeley -- Why David Hume is odder than you think -- David Hume's un-natural theology -- How Kant did not undermine all possible arguments for God -- Whatever happened to Hegel? -- Why Schopenhauer was not quite an Atheist -- Was Nietzsche a bad thing? -- Materialism and its (...) discontents. (shrink)

Kavanagh, Aengus Review(s) of: Our fathers: What Australian Catholic priests really think about their lives and their Church, Chris McGillion and John Carroll, Mulgrave: John Garratt Publishing, 2011, pp.200, $29.95.

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the experience (...) of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

An important volume connecting classical studies with feminism, Feminism and Ancient Philosophy provides an even-handed assessment of the ancient philosophers' discussions of women and explains which ancient views can be fruitful for feminist theorizing today. The papers in this anthology range from classical Greek philosophy through the Hellenistic period, with the predominance of essays focusing on topics such as the relation of reason and the emotions, the nature of emotions and desire, and related issues in moral psychology. The volume contains (...) some new, ground-breaking essays on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, as well as previously published pieces by established scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Julia Annas. It promises to be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including those working in classics, ancient philosophy, and feminist theory. (shrink)

Arguing for a new direction in postmodern theological thinking, away from the liberalism and nihilism of those who name themselves postmodern theologians, the ...