It is no accident that white privilege designed to be both be invisible and weightless to white people. Alison Bailey’s “On White Privilege and Anesthesia: Why Does Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack Feel Weightless?” extends a weighty invitation white readers to complete the unpacking task McIntosh (1988) began when she compared white privilege to an “invisible and weightless knapsack.” McIntosh focuses primarily making white privilege visible to white people. Bailey’s project continues the conversation by extending a ‘weighty (...) invitation’ to white readers to explore why the metaphorical knapsack, despite the weight of its contents, feels weightless. Here’s the short answer. The knapsack only feels weightless because white people have become anesthetized us to our own brokenness. We are more comfortable considering what white privilege does for us than what it does to us. People of color feel the weight of whiteness every day. The weighty invitation invites white readers to become sensitive to our own insensitivity. To do this Bailey (1) explores white resistance to unpacking the weight; (2) people of color’s testimonies to the daily impact of the weight on their bodies; and (3) how the anesthesia of white privilege distorts our humanity. The article concludes with a McIntosh style list of that the anesthesia of privilege distorts white people’s humanity. (shrink)

Alison Bailey’s The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance examines how whiteness misshapes our humanity, measuring the weight of whiteness in terms of its costs and losses to collective humanity. People of color feel the weight of whiteness daily. The resistant habits of whiteness and its attendant privileges, however, make it difficult for white people to feel the damage. White people are more comfortable thinking about white supremacy in terms of what privilege does (...) for them, rather than feeling what it does to them. The first half of the book focuses on the overexposed side of white privilege, the side that works to make the invisible and intangible structures of power more visible and tangible. Bailey discusses the importance of understanding privileges intersectionally, the ignorance-preserving habits of “white talk,” and how privilege and ignorance circulate in educational settings. The second part invites white readers to explore the underexposed side of white dominance, the weightless side that they would rather not feel. The final chapters are powerfully autobiographical. Bailey engages readers with a deeply personal account of what it means to hold space with the painful weight of whiteness in her own life. She also offers a moving account of medicinal genealogies, which helps to engage the weight she inherits from her settler colonial ancestors. The book illustrates how the gravitational pull of white ignorance and comfort are stronger than the clean pain required for collective liberation. The stakes are high: Failure to hold the weight of whiteness ensures that white people will continue to blow the weight of historical trauma through communities of color. -/- All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. -/- -/- . (shrink)

A definition of virtual or virtuality is not an easy task. Both words are of recent application in Philosophy, even if the concept of virtual comes from a respectable Latin tradition. Today’s meaning brings together the notions of potentiality, latency, imaginary representations, VR, and the forms of communication in digital media. This contagious, and spontaneous synonymy fails to identify a common vein and erases memory as a central notion. In the present essay, I’ll try to explain essential features of the (...) concept of virtual, taking the investigation of memory troubles in Pierre Janet’s work as an exemplification. Pierre Janet’s work represents a rare combination of medical observation and description of symptoms of mental illnesses, therapeutic guidance in hypnosis and philosophical writing about the main psychological themes of an epoch in transition from a Metaphysics of the Soul to the modern Experimental Psychology. Pierre Janet’s intellectual evolution since the 1880s until the end of his life is dominated by the philosophical project of a theory of the psychic system supported by three basic pillars: a concept of personality, a theory of memory and a sketch of a general theory of conduct. Such complex endeavour cannot be abstracted from the initial connections with Jean-Martin Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière which meant a turning point in the tradition of the “animal magnetism” concerning the treatment of epileptic-hysterical symptoms along with the contributions of Hyppolite Bernheim’s “Nancy School” of hypnotism. J.-M. Charcot’s or H. Bernheim’s theorising about the organic and psychological aspects of the hypnotic treatment of the hysterical symptoms was already aware of the difficulty in dealing with the extent of the dissimulation of the patients regarding the symptoms of the illness, under hypnotic suggestion, even if Charcot insisted in the identification and cataloguing of the organic expressions, such as contractures or the posture of the body in arc during the attacks. The precise location of the “great hysteria” in the organic-psychic corridor was itself a riddle. If a symptom is a special type of sign, in the case of the “great hysteria” nobody knew for sure what it stood for. The clinical symptom of the attack stood for an organic trouble with cerebral causes, a psychological interruption of the normal sensorial and muscular movements or a disguise of the female desire? Pierre Janet described many hysterical patients, somnambulism and multiple personality since his articles in La Revue Philosophique de la France et l’ Étranger, a Journal founded by the philosopher, experimental psychologist and his intellectual predecessor Théodule-Armand Ribot. The description of the case of the “great hysterical” Lucie, treated by him, is an example of a theoretical hypothesising on multiple personality and discontinuity of memories fragments. There are more cases revealing the same relation between hysteria, somnambulism, personality dissociation and “alternating memory”. Decisively inspired by and corroborating P. Janet’s ideas, S. Freud conceived also the essential of the hysterical sicknesses as disorders of memory. The theme of memory came even more to the foreground in the dissertation L’Automatisme Psychologique. Here, the strange world of somnambulism was scrutinised along with hysterical contractures and convulsions, anaesthesia, the compulsion to repetition, obsessions, “automatic writing” in hysterical patients, multiple personality and “alternating memories”. In the depicted cases memory could not be taken as a homogenous series of remembrances or as a stock of disposable information but as a variable of the depth of the personalities’ inner formation. The so-called “seconde existence” of some somnambulists referred not only unconscious representations and unconscious thoughts but complete or inceptive latent personalities provided with multiple virtual existences and multiple memories. Hypnosis was the privileged technique to access to such multiple memories ignored by the official personality. Later and after the writing of his M.D. Dissertation, Contribution à l’ Étude des Accidents Mentaux chez les Hystériques, P. Janet addressed again the themes of memory and alternating memories in a series of lectures at the Collège de France but now according to the larger framework of a general theory of conduct which included a description of the social actions participating in the narrative construction of personal memories, and the role of social memory. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of evidence for Puccetti's hypothesis of normal dual consciousness, i.e., the hypothesis that a stream of consciousness flows in each cerebral hemisphere when both are functioning normally in intact, healthy people. Evidence counts as supportive only if it is not explainable by a certain close alternative hypothesis that holds consciousness to proceed in the nondominant hemisphere only when the dominant hemisphere is unable to inhibit it . From this perspective, I discuss two experiments involving (...) class='Hi'>anesthesia of the dominant hemisphere that were proposed, respectively, by Wilson and Puccetti, an actual experiment on normal, unanesthetized subjects reported by Landis, Graves, and Goodglass, as well as a further kind of experiment which, I suggest, may discriminate between the hypotheses. Assuming Puccetti is right, this experiment should yield a distinct pattern of reports from the dominant hemisphere about its experiences of acting as the individual deals with different kinds of tasks . Also considered is the common introspective evidence to the effect that we have only a single stream, never two distinct experiences at the same time. I argue, in support of Puccetti, that this is as it should be because introspection-at-a-distance is impossible; privileged access is internal to a stream, never occurs between streams. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical discourse on oppression and liberation (with a particular focus on white privilege and antiracism in the USA). In order to fulfill the rhetorical aims of liberation, concepts for privilege must meet what I term the ‘boundary condition’, which demarcates the boundary between a privileged elite and the rest of society, and the ‘ignorance condition’, which establishes that the elite status and the (...) advantages it confers are not publicly recognised or affirmed. I argue that the dominant use of the concept of privilege cannot fulfill these conditions. As a result, while I do not advocate for the complete abandonment of the rhetoric of privilege, I conclude that it obscures as much as it illuminates, and that the critical theoretical discourse on liberation and oppression should be suspicious of its use. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In order to make strategic decisions and improve their firm’s performance, top management teams must have information on the competitive context in general, and the firm’s competitors in particular. During the decision-making process, top managers can have access to “privileged information”—i.e., information of a confidential and potentially strategic nature that could ultimately confer a decisional advantage over competing parties. However, obtaining and using privileged information in a business context is often illegal—and if not, is usually deemed unethical or “against the (...) rules.” Using a quasi-experimental design, this study explores the reasons why an individual might engage in such unethical behavior. We assess the extent to which managers use privileged information with respect to perceived team cohesion and peers’ ethicality. More specifically, our results show that the use of privileged information is predicted by the decision-maker’s perceptions of their team cohesion and their peers’ ethicality. Moreover, we find that team performance, as a group-level nonself-reported factor, moderates the relationship between cohesion and the use of privileged information. The relationship between cohesion, ethical behavior, and team performance is also discussed. We draw on these findings to make some practical suggestions on how to incorporate practices that could better prevent the unethical use of privileged information in strategic decision-making processes. (shrink)

This paper highlights how a small group of minority students worked to take advantage of the privileges available once they were admitted to an elite school. The argument proposed is that, unlike their more privileged peers, minority students who have made it through the gateways of elite schools have to work out a salvation of privilege to level up their chances and aspirations of success. A grounded theory based on ‘working out the salvation of privilege’ is derived to (...) examine the ways in which minority students in elite schools seize individual ways of self-saving their variegated disadvantages. The study tracked three students over a five-year period to explore the development of their aspirations and individual trajectories two years after they exited their schools. Despite the students’ efforts in self-saving, their ‘envisioned future’ became limited over time. All had to modify their options and expectations because their non-privileged background hindered their aspirations. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept a “privileged access” thesis concerning our own present mental states and mental events. According to these philosophers, if I am in mental state (or undergoing mental event) M, then – at least in many cases – I have privileged access to the fact that I am in (or undergoing) M. For instance, if I now believe that my cat is sitting on my lap, then (in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that I now (...) believe that my cat is sitting on my lap. Similarly, if I now imagine a parade coming down Main Street, then (again, in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that I am now imagining a parade coming down Main Street. And again, if it now visually appears to me as if there is a cloud in the sky, then (again, in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that it now visually appears to me as if there is a cloud in the sky. In each of these aforementioned cases, if circumstances are normal, then, these philosophers say, I have a distinctive kind of privileged epistemic access to facts about my own mental states or events. Of course, I don’t have privileged epistemic access to all facts about my own mental states or events. For instance, I don’t have privileged epistemic access to facts about which unconscious mental states or events I have. But I do have privileged epistemic access to many facts about my own mental states or events, and in particular to the various facts listed above. (shrink)

How should socially privileged white feminists address their privilege? Often, individuals are urged to overcome their own personal racism through a politics of self-transformation. The paper argues that this strategy may be problematic, since it rests on an over-autonomous conception of the self. The paper turns to Simone de Beauvoir for an alternative account of the self, as “situated,” and explores what this means for a politics of privilege.

Who or what counts as a feminist subject? This article considers the place of the child, in particular, within the framework of feminist theories of the subject. Locating these theories in a framework of ‘oppositional’ theory, the article asks how and when the child appears in this field of theory. Although children’s oppression and representations of the child in culture have been continuously addressed in contemporary feminism at least since the 1970s, it is simultaneously the case that the child appears (...) in feminism as well as other theories of the subject as the other to the presumed adult subject, even – and sometimes especially – when that subject is being retheorized in oppositional terms, that is, against a hegemonic order of things. The article focuses on instances of the child’s appearance as a resource in feminist theories of the subject, and particularly in feminist uses of psychoanalysis. After considering male poststructuralist or postmodern uses of the child, this article contrasts their generic use of the child with feminist uses of psychoanalysis in the work of Valerie Walkerdine, Judith Butler and Teresa de Lauretis. Psychoanalysis, even in its feminist guises, emerges as a technology of childhood that figures the child as the adult’s ontological origin, and as such an origin that the adult theorist can claim to know by way of psychoanalysis itself. Frequently constituted as a not-yet subject, the child stands in for this ontological origin, from which theorists of the subject, both feminist and not, refashion theories of subjective resistance to the very forms of power that make us subjects in the first place. Working both with and against feminist and other appropriations of the child by way of its ontological positioning, this article attempts to offer an alternative theorization of subjects that accounts for the differences between children and adults. While undercutting the claims to knowledge of the child as the site of human ontology, this alternative theorization also makes a claim to the transformative possibilities that have been located in ontology itself. In addressing feminist uses of the child together with theories of the feminist subject, this article speaks not only to questions of the child, but to the possibility of a feminist politics that begins from a position of privilege – that is, one that does not require subordination as a condition of its own possibility. (shrink)

Northern researchers and service providers espousing modernist theories of development in order to understand and aid countries and peoples of the South ignore their own non-universal starting points of knowledge and their own vested interests. Universal ethics are rejected in favor of situated ethics, while a modified empowerment development model for aiding women in the South based on poststructuralism requires building a bridge identity politics to promote participatory democracy and challenge Northern power knowledges.

: How should socially privileged white feminists (and others) address their privilege? Often, individuals are urged to overcome their own personal racism through a politics of self-transformation. The paper argues that this strategy may be problematic, since it rests on an over-autonomous conception of the self. The paper turns to Simone de Beauvoir for an alternative account of the self, as "situated," and explores what this means for a politics of privilege.

By the time this essay is published, it will be a matter of weeks before doctors and nurse practitioners in Canada can legally end the lives (by medical assistance in dying, or MAID) of non-dying p...

Reflexivity is a well-established theoretical and methodological concept in the human sciences, and yet it is used in a confusing variety of ways. The meaning of `reflexivity' and the virtues ascribed to the concept are relative to particular theoretical and methodological commitments. This article examines several versions of the concept, and critically focuses on treatments of reflexivity as a mark of distinction or source of methodological advantage. Although reflexivity often is associated with radical epistemologies, social scientists with more conventional leanings (...) often speak of reflexivity as a methodological tool, substantive property of social systems, or source of individual enlightenment. Radical and conventional social scientists alike tend to stress the importance of being reflexive, as opposed to being unreflexive, but they do not share a coherent conception of what `being reflexive' means or entails. As an alternative to reflexive self-privileging, I recommend an ethnomethodological conception of reflexivity as an ordinary, unremarkable and unavoidable feature of action. The ethnomethodological conception does not support a particular theoretical or methodological standpoint by contrasting it to an `unreflexive' counterpart. It has little value as a critical weapon or source of epistemological advantage, which, in the present context, can have advantages of its own for promoting peace and epistemic democracy. (shrink)

I address the problem of how to locate "traitorous" subjects, or those who belong to dominant groups yet resist the usual assumptions and practices of those groups. I argue that Sandra Harding's description of traitors as insiders, who "become marginal" is misleading. Crafting a distinction between "privilege-cognizant" and "privilege-evasive" white scripts, I offer an alternative account of race traitors as privilege-cognizant whites who refuse to animate expected whitely scripts, and who are unfaithful to worldviews whites are expected (...) to hold. (shrink)

Empirical work is reviewed which correlates the presence or absence of various parts of the auditory evoked potential with the disappearance and reemergence of auditory sensation during induction of and recovery from anesthesia. As a result, the hypothesis is generated that the electrophysiological correlate of auditory sensation is whatever neural activity generates the middle latency waves of the auditory evoked potential. This activity occurs from 20 to 80 ms poststimulus in the primary and secondary areas of the auditory cortex. (...) Evidence is presented suggesting that earlier or later waves in the auditory evoked potential do not covary with auditory sensation (as opposed to auditory perception) and it is therefore suggested that they are possibly not the electrophysiological correlates of sensation. (shrink)

The chapter offers a sustained comparison between American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist philosopher Dignaga and argues that while their views are prima facie inconsistent with one another, there are important areas of agreement worthy of exploration.

This paper presents research regarding the monitoring of the brain and the adequacy of anesthesia during surgery. Particular variables are derived from EEG and ECG signals and are correlated to anesthetic gas (sevoflurane) concentration, in pediatric anesthesia. The methods used for parameter extraction are based on change detection theory and time-frequency representation. Preliminary results show that the expired anesthetic gas concentration modulates both the heart rate variability and the duration of the burst suppression. Monitors of the central nervous (...) system and autonomic nervous system activities can be expected to be based on these variables. (shrink)

This article analyses problem situations in the context of anaesthesia care. It considers what it means for nurse anaesthetists to be in problematic situations in the anaesthesia care of older patients. Benner’s interpretive phenomenological approach proved useful for this purpose. Paradigm cases are used to aid the analysis of individual nurses’ experiences. Thirty narrated problematic anaesthesia care situations derived from seven interviews were studied. These show that experienced nurse anaesthetists perceive anaesthesia care as problematic and highly demanding when involving older (...) patients. To be in problematic anaesthesia care situations means becoming morally distressed, which arises from the experience or from being prevented from acting according to one’s legal and moral duty of care. An important issue that emerged from this study was the need for an ethical forum to discuss and articulate moral issues, so that moral stress of the kind experienced by these nurse anaesthetists can be dealt with and hopefully reduced. (shrink)

Discussions of “privilege” have become increasingly common, but it’s often unclear what exactly people mean by “privilege.” Even well-known writings about privilege rarely take the time to define the word and explain what it means. The confusion this creates is one reason why debates about privilege are often contentious and unproductive. This essay aims to demystify privilege, presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy. With a clear definition, it is easier to discuss some of the main (...) debates about privilege: Is there such a thing as “white privilege”? What about “male privilege”? And what’s the point of talking about privilege, anyway? (shrink)

IntroductionPreoperative neurocognitive disorder is a common condition affecting 14–51. 7% of the elderly population. General anesthesia has already been associated with the one-year post-operative neurocognitive disorder, specifically, a deficit in executive function, measured by the Trail Making Test B, but its long-term effects on cognitive function have not been investigated. We aimed to detect preO-NCD prevalence in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery and further investigate the possible role of previous general anesthesia in general preoperative cognitive status [measured via (...) the Montreal Cognitive Assessment ] and/or in executive functioning.MethodsIn this observational, prospective study, 151 adult patients scheduled for elective cardiac surgery underwent MoCA and TMT-B. Data on age, education, pGA, comorbidities, and laboratory results were collected.ResultsWe discovered a general cognitive function impairment of 79.5% and an executive function impairment of 22%. Aging is associated with an increased likelihood and education with a decreased likelihood of general cognitive impairment, but only education was significantly associated with a decreased likelihood of executive function impairment. While pGA did not significantly affect preO-NCD, a noteworthy interaction between aging and pGA was found, resulting in a synergistic effect, increasing the likelihood of executive function impairment.ConclusionWe found a high prevalence of preO-NCD in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery. General cognitive function impairment is highly associated with advancing age. However, older patients with at least one pGA appeared to be at an increased risk of preO-NCD, especially executive function impairment, suggesting that TMT-B should be associated with MoCA in the preoperative cognitive evaluation in this population. (shrink)

This essay explains the prevalence of egalitarian beliefs among academic philosophers, individuals who enjoy significant wealth and privilege. I argue that their egalitarianism does not present a “paradox of conviction,” as G. A. Cohen contends, but follows logically from the institutional structure of academic philosophy. This structure creates a “veil of insignificance” wherein philosophy is a moral performance that incentivizes the adoption of egalitarian beliefs. Philosophers also view the world from behind what is termed a “veil of privilege” (...) that incentivizes a public commitment to egalitarianism as a means of distancing themselves from the role of privilege in their life and encourages the hubristic assumption that the practical problems of socialism can be easily overcome with effort or ingenuity. Identity-protective motivated reasoning means that evidence conflicting with egalitarian beliefs is avoided, ignored, or dismissed. These dynamics are reinforced by established actors who gatekeep the profession. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that a belief to the effect that the believer is currently in some conscious state is "self-Warranted," in the sense that what warrants it is simply its being a belief of that sort. This position is compared with other views as to the epistemic status of such beliefs--That they are warranted by their truth and that they are warranted by an immediate awareness of their object. In the course of the discussion, Various modes of immediate (...) justification and various types of "epistemic immunities" are distinguished. It is contended that principles of justification are to be evaluated in terms of whether the beliefs they approve are likely to be correct. (shrink)

By exploiting a concept called ways of believing, I offer a plausible reformulation of the doctrine of privileged access. This reformulation will provide us with a defense of compatibilism, the view that content externalism and privileged access are compatible.

Consciousness, Awareness, and Anesthesia is a multidisciplinary approach to both the scientific problem of consciousness and the clinical problem of awareness during general anesthesia.

I argue that Kotzee’s model of meta- debate succeeds in identifying illegitimate or fallacious charges of bias but has the unintended consequence of classifying some legitimate and non-fallacious charges as fallacious. This makes the model, in some important cases, counter-productive. In particular, cases where the call for a meta- debate is prompted by the participant with epistemic privilege and a charge of bias is denied by the participant with social advantage, the impasse will put the epistemically advantaged at far (...) greater risk. Therefore, I propose treating epistemic privilege as a variety of expert opinion specifically in cases where meta- debate participants come to an impasse in deliberation. My proposal exposes the problem of interpreting debate contexts as both adversarial and free from social power differentials. (shrink)

We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this explicit (...) via two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories. (shrink)

Chapter: WHITE PRIVILEGE AND THE COLOR OF FEAR This chapter focuses on the role that power, innocence and ignorance play in maintaining the position of white privilege. There are times when white people use their privilege in ways that overtly attempt to put and keep people of color in their places, but more often white privilege is less obvious. White privilege does not stand out in white peoples’ behavior at all times. When white behavior is (...) normalized, it is masked. At these times, white privilege and power hide behind the masks of innocence and the masks of ignorance. White people can mask from themselves and others their location with relations to power. In the film, The Color of Fear, David C. hides his power. As he hides his power, he keeps his privilege invisible, that is, behind a mask. In this chapter, we focus on the masking and unmasking of innocence and ignorance to get a better look at how the process of normalization of these masks makes whiteness powerful and consequently hides white privilege. The logic of power and privilege is reflected in the following relationship: -/- innocence + ignorance = Invisibility (of White Privilege) -/- . (shrink)

Uncorrected Proof; please cite published version.

When read as demands for justification, these questions seem absurd. We don’t normally ask people to substantiate assertions like “I think it will rain tomorrow” or “I have a headache”. There is, at the very least, a strong presumption that sincere self-attributions about one’s thoughts and feelings are true. In fact, some philosophers believe that such self-attributions are less susceptible to doubt than any other claims. Even those who reject that extreme view generally acknowledge that there is some salient epistemic (...) difference between (a) one’s belief that she thinks it will rain tomorrow, or that she has a headache, and (b) her belief that it is raining, or that another person has a headache. (shrink)