In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...) other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (shrink)

I argue that the debate between proponents of substance causation and proponents of causation by powers, as to whether substances or their powers are causes, hinges on whether or not powers are self-exemplifying or non-self-exemplifying properties. Substance causation is committed to powers being non-self-exemplifying properties while causation by powers is committed to powers being self-exemplifying properties. I then argue that powers are non-self-exemplifying properties, in support of substance causation.

To address what I call the “Uniformity”, “Capriciousness”, and “Reducibility” objections, recent agent-causation theories hold that agent-causation is a type of substance causation. Substance causation consists in substances producing effects by exercising or manifesting their powers. Importantly, these versions of agent-causation assume a realist metaphysics of powers, where powers are properties of substances that can exist unmanifested. However, the realist theories of powers that agent-causal theories have relied upon explicitly hold that powers—rather than their substances—are causes. Substances are merely derivative (...) causes, as the bearers of powers. Critics therefore argue that agent-causation is reducible to causation by the agent’s powers. In this paper, I argue that agent-causation is reducible to causation by the agent’s powers only if powers are self-exemplifying properties. I also offer reasons for why powers—especially agent-causal powers—are non-self-exemplifying properties, in support of the irreducibility of agent-causation. (shrink)

Leibniz argued that (i) substantial forms only begin to exist via Divine creation; (ii) created substances cannot transeuntly cause accidents in distinct substances; and yet (iii) created substances immanently produce their accidents. Some of Leibniz’s support for (i) came from his endorsement of a widely-made argument against the eduction of substantial forms. However, in defense of eduction, Suárez argued that if creatures cannot produce substantial forms, they also cannot produce accidents, threatening the consistency of (i) and (iii). In this paper, (...) I argue that Leibniz successfully defends the consistency of (i) and (iii) against Suárez’s argument, but at the expense of the consistency of (ii) and (iii). (shrink)

Leibniz argued that in natural world, only intra-substantial or immanent causation is possible— the causation that takes place within an individual, when an individual brings about a change in itself. In this dissertation, I address issues arising from Leibniz’s arguments against the rival view that posits a world of causally interacting substances and issues pertaining to Leibniz’s own positive metaphysics of immanent causation and change. -/- Chapter 1 is devoted to stage setting for the remainder of the dissertation. I first (...) offer a historically informed overview of efficient causation and change before introducing Leibniz’s novel views, including his criticisms of competing accounts and his own positive account. After presenting a detailed roadmap of my project, I articulate the idealistic interpretation of Leibniz assumed in this dissertation, where the only genuine substances are simple monads. Finally, I articulate the methodological approaches I employ. -/- In Chapters 2 and 3, I reconstruct and assess Leibniz’s most frequent argument against transeunt causation (the causation that occurs when a substance produces a property in a numerically distinct substance), what I call the “Transference Argument.” Leibniz argued that a created substance’s causing an accident in a numerically distinct substance is possible only if the agent transfers the accident from itself to the patient, where upon transference the agent no longer possesses the accident it transferred. Call the transeunt causal requirement that the agent transfer the accident produced from itself to the patient the “Transference Condition.” -/- Chapter 2 is devoted to two problems with Leibniz’s transference condition. First, Leibniz stated the transference condition throughout his career, but offered little argument for it. Second, God is a transeunt cause in Leibniz’s metaphysics yet God’s causation does not consist in transference. Thus, Leibniz needs a principled way to require transference for creaturely causation while denying that divine transeunt causation consists in transference. Finally, I close off chapter 2 by drawing attention to an important weakness with the transference condition that has not yet been recognized by Leibniz scholars. -/- In Chapter 3, I argue that there is nothing in Leibniz’s ontology that could be transferred from the cause to the recipient of the effect. I first argue that Leibniz’s ontology consists of simple non-corporeal substances and their modifications. Second, I present and articulate a number of important theses Leibniz affirmed about substances and their modifications, which entail that neither could be transferred. I also show that most of these theses were not unique to Leibniz, but were in fact widely endorsed by his predecessors who defended the possibility of creaturely transeunt causation. -/- In chapter 4, I continue the study of the nature of Leibnizian accidents, shifting the focus from their role in Leibniz’s critique of creaturely transeunt causation to their positive role in change and as causal relata, where such accidents are the effects of immanent causation. I shall argue that Leibniz’s thesis that accidents are modifications or limitations allowed him to posit mereologically simple substance that have a multitude of accidents at a time and change accidents over time. -/- In Chapter 5, I address an issue that has divided Leibniz scholars concerning the precise relata in Leibnizian immanent efficient causation. In many passages, Leibniz writes as if it is the substance or individual itself that efficiently causes its later properties or accidents. Call this the “Efficacious-substance” account. The efficacious-substance account is difficult to reconcile with Leibniz’s requirements that change be intelligible and deterministic. In plenty of other passages, he writes as if it is the substances earlier properties or accidents that cause its later accidents. Call this the “Efficacious-accident” account. The efficacious-accident account explains how change is intelligible and deterministic but it faces a “plurality of agents” objection. If a substance’s accidents are the efficient causes of later accidents, then prima facie there is a plurality of efficient causal agents in a substance. This view is incompatible with Leibniz’s requirement that substances be simple, unified entities. -/- Drawing upon a Scholastic distinction made between two kinds of efficient causes— principle quod efficient causes and principle quo efficient causes, I shall argue that for Leibniz, substances are principle quod efficient causes and their appetitions are principle quo efficient causes. This interpretation combines the strengths of the Efficacious-substance and Efficacious-accident accounts while overcoming their weaknesses. There is just one causal agent, the substance, but change is both intelligible and deterministic because as what an agent produces is explained by its appetitions. (shrink)

Review of Naomi Oreskes’s why trust science?

La menzogna è irrinunciabile per vincere in politica? Davi ci spiega quali sono i meccanismi di persuasione a cui ricorrono taluni politici per farsi eleggere e quali le responsabilità di quegli elettori che scelgono comunque di votare chi sostiene anche ciò che non può essere vero. È indubbio che la comunicazione politica si rifaccia al simbolismo e al linguaggio delle favole; non necessariamente per occultare la realtà, ma più direttamente per esprimere con maggiore efficacia il suo messaggio. Alle celebri favole (...) di 'Biancaneve', 'Cenerentola', 'Il brutto anatroccolo' sono ricorsi infatti uomini politici del calibro di Berlusconi, Prodi, Nixon, Carter, Mitterrand e partiti quali la Democrazia Cristiana; l'hanno fatto per conquistare voti ma anche per attivare ampi meccanismi di consenso che attingessero direttamente dall'inconscio collettivo. Le conseguenze - ammonisce l'autore - possono essere molto serie, come nel caso dell'attuale politica americana che ha portato la manipolazione e l'inganno a essere riconosciuti come tratti identitari della presidenza di George W. Bush. (shrink)

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, _Thing Knowledge _demands that (...) we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more. (shrink)

It is assumed that bipolarity in happiness and sadness requires mutual exclusion. However, we present psychometric research to show how coendorsements of happiness and sadness do not necessarily constitute evidence against bipolarity. Because individuals have a tendency to endorse emotion terms close to their current state, individuals whose current state is close to the middle of a bipolar continuum would report both happiness and sadness, despite their current state being best represented by a single point. As such, endorsements of happiness (...) and sadness are theoretically expected when individuals’ current state is in the middle of the continuum. Bipolarity however would be violated if endorsements of extreme levels of happiness and sadness can be demonstrated, which has yet to be shown. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has an apparent pedigree when it comes to animal welfare. It supports the view that animal welfare matters just as much as human welfare. And many utilitarians support and oppose various practices in line with more mainstream concern over animal welfare, such as that we should not kill animals for food or other uses, and that we ought not to torture animals for fun. This relationship has come under tension from many directions. The aim of this article is to (...) add further considerations in support of that tension. I suggest three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. First, utilitarianism opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain; while this may be true of eating animal products, it is not obviously true of other abuses. Second, utilitarianism faces a familiar problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; I consider a common response to this worry, and offer further concerns. Finally, the common utilitarian argument against animal cruelty ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers. (shrink)

“Sorcerer Love” is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. E.K. (shrink)

"Sorcerer Love" is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. E.K. (shrink)

This article explores various analytical issues involved in conceptualizing the interrelationships of gender, class, race and ethnicity and other social divisions. It compares the debate on these issues that took place in Britain in the 1980s and around the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. It examines issues such as the relative helpfulness of additive or mutually constitutive models of intersectional social divisions; the different analytical levels at which social divisions need to be studied, their ontological base and their relations (...) to each other. The final section of the article attempts critically to assess a specific intersectional methodological approach for engaging in aid and human rights work in the South. (shrink)

“Public Trust in Expert Knowledge: Narrative, Ethics, and Engagement” examines the social, cultural, and ethical ramifications of changing public trust in the expert biomedical knowledge systems of emergent and complex global societies. This symposium was conceived as an interdisciplinary project, drawing on bioethics, the social sciences, and the medical humanities. We settled on public trust as a topic for our work together because its problematization cuts across our fields and substantive research interests. For us, trust is simultaneously a matter of (...) ethics, social relations, and the cultural organization of meaning. We share a commitment to narrative inquiry across our fields of expertise in the bioethics of transformative health technologies, public communications on health threats, and narrative medicine. The contributions to this symposium have applied, in different ways and with different effects, this interdisciplinary mode of inquiry, supplying new reflections on public trust, expertise, and biomedical knowledge. (shrink)

A critical analysis of Diana Fuss's Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference (1989a) and Elizabeth Grosz's Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (1989).

Humanism offers students a clear and lucid introductory guide to the complexities of Humanism, one of the most contentious and divisive of artistic or literary concepts. Showing how the concept has evolved since the Renaissance period, Davies discusses humanism in the context of the rise of Fascism, the onset of World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. Humanism provides basic definitions and concepts, a critique of the religion of humanity, and necessary background on religious, sexual and political themes of (...) modern life and thought, while enlightening the debate between humanism, modernism and antihumanism through the writings and works of such key figures as Pico Erasmus, Milton, Nietzsche, and Foucault. (shrink)

"Sorcerer Love" is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. (shrink)

The nonvisual self-touch rubber hand paradigm elicits the compelling illusion that one is touching one’s own hand even though the two hands are not in contact. In four experiments, we investigated spatial limits of distance and alignment on the nonvisual self-touch illusion and the well-known visual rubber hand illusion. Common procedures and common assessment methods were used. Subjective experience of the illusion was assessed by agreement ratings for statements on a questionnaire and time of illusion onset. The nonvisual self-touch illusion (...) was diminished though never abolished by distance and alignment manipulations, whereas the visual rubber hand illusion was more robust against these manipulations. We assessed proprioceptive drift, and implications of a double dissociation between subjective experience of the illusion and proprioceptive drift are discussed. (shrink)

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is (...) not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication. (shrink)

By a close examination of changes in analytical chemistry between the years 1920 and 1950, I document the case that natural science has undergone and continues to undergo a major revolution. The central feature of this transformation is the rise in importance of scientific instrumentation. Prior to 1920, analytical chemists determined the chemical constitution of some unknown by treating it with a series of known compounds and observing the kind of reactions it underwent. After 1950, analytical chemists determined the chemical (...) constitution of an unknown by using a variety of instruments which allow one to discriminate chemicals in terms of their physical properties. This transformation involved changes in the practice of analytical chemistry. It involved the development of a new family of scientific instrument-making companies, and a new level of capital expenditure necessary to do analytical chemistry. It involved the development of new means to disseminate information about scientific instruments. While I do not document the broader case, these changes have been widespread throughout the natural sciences. It is the rise in the importance of instrumentation which is the key conceptual change in what has been identified as the fourth big scientific revolution. (shrink)

The article discusses some of the major issues which need to be examined in a gendered reading of citizenship. However, its basic claim is that a comparative study of citizenship should consider the issue of women's citizenship not only by contrast to that of men, but also in relation to women's affiliation to dominant or subordinate groups, their ethnicity, origin and urban or rural residence. It should also take into consideration global and transnational positionings of these citizenships. The article challenges (...) the gender-blind and Westocentric character of many of the most hegemonic theorizations of citizenship, focusing in particular on the questions of membership in ‘the community’, group rights and social difference and the ways binaries of public/private and active/passive have been constructed to differentiate between different kinds of citizenships. The article argues that in order to be able to analyse adequately people's citizenship, especially in this era of ethnicization on the one hand and globalization on the other hand, and with the rapid pace at which relationships between states and their civil societies are changing, citizenship should best be analysed as a multi-tiered construct which applies, at the same time to people's membership in sub-, cross- and supra-national collectivities as well as in states. (shrink)

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is a powerful examination of current metaphors for and synonyms of teaching. It offers an account of the varied and conflicting influences and conceptual commitments that have contributed to contemporary vocabularies--and that are in some ways maintained by those vocabularies, in spite of inconsistencies and incompatibilities among popular terms. The concern that frames the book is how speakers of English invented (in the original sense of the word, "came upon") our current vocabularies for teaching. Conceptually, (...) this book is unique in the educational literature. As a whole, it presents an overview of the major underlying philosophical and ideological concepts and traditions related to knowledge, learning, and teaching in the Western world, concisely introducing readers to the central historical and contemporary discourses that shape current discussions and beliefs in the field. Because the organization of historical, philosophical, theoretical, and etymological information is around key conceptual divergences in Western thought rather than any sort of chronology, this text is not a linear history, but several histories--or, more precisely, it is a genealogy. Specifically, it is developed around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged and moments at which they froze into literalness. The book is composed of two sorts of chapters, "branching" and "teaching." Branching chapters include an opening treatment of the break in opinion, separate discussions of each branch, and a summary of the common assumptions and shared histories of the two branches. Teaching chapters offer brief etymological histories and some of the practical implications of the terms for teaching that were coined, co-opted, or redefined within the various traditions. Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an essential text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching and is highly relevant as well for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education. (shrink)

This comprehensive volume marks a new standard in scholarship in the still emerging field of the philosophy of chemistry. With selections drawn from a wide range of scholarly disciplines, philosophers, chemists, and historians of science here converge to ask some of the most fundamental questions about the relationship between philosophy and chemistry. What can chemistry teach us about longstanding disputes in the philosophy of science over such issues as reductionism, autonomy, and supervenience? And what new issues may chemistry bring to (...) the forefront now that it has joined physics and biology as a serious topic for philosophical reflection? This newest addition to the prestigious Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series marks the true arrival of philosophy of chemistry within the corpus of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Abstract The article criticizes the trend of reformulating the traditional just-war criterion of Proper Authority, which was designed to de-legitimize force by non-state actors, into a requirement that decisions to resort to force be multilateral. The article illustrates several shortcomings of the judgment processes of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the World Court, and states? populations, and argues among other things that reformulating Proper Authority would render other criteria meaningless, especially Just Cause. Finally, the article rebuts the strongest (...) objection to a system in which states judge their own causes for war: the problem of invincible ignorance. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to further assess and develop feminist standpoint theory by introducing the notion of the `situated imagination' as constituting an important part of this theory as well as that of `situated knowledge'. The article argues that the faculty of the imagination constructs as well as transforms, challenges and supersedes both existing knowledge and social reality. However, like knowledge, it is crucial to theorize the imagination as situated, that is, as shaped and conditioned (although not determined) (...) by social positioning. (shrink)

Read this excellent collection of informative papers in the field to stimulate your ow the field and readers interested in the nature of the discipline of ...

According to Peter Galison , science has a highly fractionated structure with multiple sub-sub-disciplines, each with its own agenda. Cooperative trading between groups is necessary for most scientific work to move forward, and it is this trading that preserves the stability of science. We argue that it is not trading per se, but trading in a gift economy that guarantees stability. We support our claims with an examination of contemporary work on magnetic resonance imaging instrumentation. Specifically, we consider: How a (...) feature improvement, intended to reduce scan time, led to substantial medical mis-diagnosis; How a technical error, when corrected, created a consumer crisis in which radiologists preferred technically flawed instruments; How new magnetic resonance theory radically altered the physical interpretation of MRI images; How the MRI instrument at first was financially supported by, and--ironically--ultimately invalidated, the accepted understanding of the nature, source and management of chronic back pain. Ultimately there are three reasons stability requires gifting. First, without a general sense of shared purpose traders will not be committed to mutual engagement; profit does not provide an adequate shared purpose for the MRI community. Second, stability requires trust, and profits are not an adequate foundation for trust. Finally, knowledge is a gift that will not keep on giving if treated simply as a source of profit. (shrink)

This Australian text provides students with accessible coverage of the central areas of the jurisprudence course. It examines: asking the law question; common law theory; positivism and natural law; legal service; critical legal studies; feminism; post-modernism; and deconstruction.

Andrew Davis; 7. Matching, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 32, Issue 1, 7 March 2003, Pages 107–121, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00080.

A fundamental cognitive function found across a wide range of species and necessary for survival is the ability to navigate complex environments. It has been suggested that mobility may play an important role in the development of spatial skills. Despite evolutionary arguments offering logical explanations for why sex/gender differences in spatial abilities and mobility might exist, thus far there has been limited sampling from nonindustrialized and subsistence-based societies. This lack of sampling diversity has left many unanswered questions regarding the effects (...) that environmental variation and cultural norms may have in shaping mobility patterns during childhood and the development of spatial competencies that may be associated with it. Here we examine variation in mobility, performance on large-scale spatial skills, and performance on small-scale spatial skills among Twa forager/pastoralist children whose daily lives have been dramatically altered since settlement and the introduction of government-funded boarding schools. Unlike in previous findings among Twa adults, boys and girls show similar patterns of travel on all measures of mobility. We also find no significant differences in spatial task performance by gender for large- or small-scale spatial skills. Further, children performed as well as adults did on mental rotation, and they outperformed adults on the water-level task. We discuss how children’s early learning environments may influence the development of both large- and small-scale spatial skills. (shrink)

In this paper we elucidate a particular type of instrument. Striking-phenomenon instruments assume their striking profile against the shifting backdrop of theoretical uncertainties. While technologically stable, the phenomena produced by these instruments are linguistically fuzzy, subject to a variety of conceptual representations. But in virtue of their technological stability alone, they can provide a foundation for further technological as well as conceptual development. Sometimes, as in the case of the pulse glass, the phenomenon is taken to confirm conflicting theoretical views; (...) sometimes, as in the case of the Lichtenberg-figures, it holds out the false promise of crucial theoretical importance; sometimes, as in the case of the airpump in the 18th century, it emphatically short-circuits theory and human ingenuity, giving a voice to nature herself; and sometimes, finally, as in the case of the quincunx, the phenomenon stands in for theoretical accounts. We propose and develop the salient features of these instruments demonstrating their importance to our understanding of science. (shrink)