Suicide is a public health problem which will require an integrated cross-sector approach to help reduce prevalence rates. One strategy is to include the legal system in a more integrated way with suicide prevention efforts. Caine explored a public health approach to suicide prevention, depicting risk factors across the socio-ecological model. The purpose of this paper is to examine laws that impact suicide prevention at the individual, relational, community, and societal levels. These levels are fluid, and some interventions will fall (...) between two, such as a community-level approach to training that enhances provider-patient relationships. At the individual level, we will review laws to improve screening requirements across systems. At the relational level, we note interventions with couples having conflict, such as protection orders and access to attorney consultations, which have been known to be injury prevention mechanisms. At the community level, we discuss legislation that recommends suicide prevention efforts for key individuals working as frontline providers in the medical and educational systems. At the societal level, we explore public awareness campaigns that target stigma reduction for those suffering from mental health burden and enhance linkage to care. The article closes with the discussion that laws are good, but their implementation is essential. (shrink)

Although pragmatism and phenomenology have both contributed significantly to the genealogy of so-called “4E” – embodied, embedded, enactive and extended – cognition, there is benefit to be had from a systematic comparative study of these roots. As existing 4E cognition literature has tended to emphasise one or the other tradition, issues remain to be addressed concerning their commonalities – and possible incompatibilities. We begin by exploring pragmatism and phenomenology’s shared focus on contesting intellectualism, and its key assumption of mindedness as (...) representation. We then outline distinctive insights from both traditions regarding the nature and role of habits, in order to put forward a habit-based epistemology as an alternative to the Cartesian idea-based epistemology that has dominated modern philosophy. We pay particular attention to the work of classical pragmatist C.S. Peirce, arguing that his semiotics, which analyses sign-use as habit, shows how theorists of embodied cognition can break a certain false dichotomy between embodiment and logical or intellectual structure which has prevented them from fully theorising propositional knowledge. In this way, our work both augments and challenges the Dewey/Merleau-Ponty connection that has been much more extensively explored by the field. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Catherine Malabou : “Unbind Me” Judith Butler : What Kind of Shape Is Hegel's Body in? Catherine Malabou : What Is Shaping the Body? Judith Butler : A Chiasm between Us, but No Chasm.

But in this book, Catherine Malabou proposes a more radical meaning for plasticity, one that not only adapts itself to existing circumstances, but forms a ...

This paper argues that social contexts of inequality are crucial to understanding the ethics of gestational harm and responsibility. Recent debates on gestational harm have largely ignored the social context of gestators, including contexts of inequality and injustice. This can reinforce existing social injustices arising from colonialism, socio‐economic inequality and racism, for example, through increased regulation of maternal behaviour. To demonstrate this, I focus on the related notions of the ‘future child’ and an obligation of easy rescue, which have been (...) used to discuss the ethics of gestational harm in the context of alcohol consumption during gestation and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). I use a feminist perspective to evaluate these ideas and conclude that anyone concerned with remediation of social injustice has good reason to be suspicious of the notion of the future child in the context of gestational harm. (shrink)

This paper argues that we can acknowledge the existence of moral truths and moral progress without being committed to moral realism. Rather than defending this claim through the more familiar route of the attempted analysis of the ontological commitments of moral claims, I show how moral belief change for the better shares certain features with theoretical progress in the natural sciences. Proponents of the better theory are able to convince their peers that it is formally and empirically superior to its (...) rivals, and the better theory may be promoted to the status of the truth. Yet there is no 'decision-procedure' for ethics any more than there is for molecular biology. The betterness of true theories can be grasped through what I term 'undirectional narratives' of progress. And while there are true moral claims and perhaps numerous moral truths yet to be discovered, we should reject currently popular forms of moral realism with bivalence. Some moral claims lend themselves to the construction of fully reversible, bi-directional narratives and are likely neither true nor false. (shrink)

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by 'right' and 'wrong.' Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their (...) understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual's reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about 'oughts' and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming. Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Continuing her reflections on destructive plasticity, split identities and the psychic consequences experienced by those who have suffered brain injury or have been traumatised by war and other catastrophes, Catherine Malabou invites us to join her in a philosophic and literary adventure.

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or (...) on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

Au paragraphe 27 de la Critique de la raison pure, Kant affirme que la présence des catégories dans l'esprit est a priori, terme qu'il faut bien distinguer de l'inné. Innées, les catégories seraient contingentes, implantées en nous par le Créateur, simples dispositions subjectives dont nul ne pourrait prouver la nécessité. C'est là la thèse de Hume. Quelle est toutefois la différence avec l'a priori? Il faut comprendre que ce dernier en quelque sorte s'engendre, se produit, selon, pour ainsi dire, une (...) " épigenèse ", le mouvement graduel et différencié d'un développement embryonnaire. Le livre développe tous les paradoxes contenus dans cette analogie, laquelle sert de fil directeur à la discussion : Kant parvient-il vraiment, grâce à l'épigenèse, à distinguer entre a priori et inné, à contredire le scepticisme et à conférer une valeur fondatrice au transcendantal? Adversaires et défenseurs du kantisme s'affrontent. De Meillassoux au cognitivisme en passant par l'évolutionnisme mental, de Heidegger à Foucault, Kant est sommé de répondre et de prendre position sur trois questions centrales qui sont celles du temps, de la contingence et de la différence entre raison et cerveau. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to 'collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena' (first resolution of the society in April 1869). The Society was a private dining and debate club that gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian (...) intellectual spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. (shrink)

Our homes are where we live and play, and for those making positive vegan choices, it's important for our domestic spaces to be environmentally friendly and cruelty-free. This book provides practical advice and inspiration to everyone who is building or renovating and wants a home that both supports their lifestyle and benefits the planet. Topics include making intelligent choices on appliances and creating butterfly-friendly gardens. With ideas, tips, and guidelines for every aspect of home design, readers will see how easy (...) it is to make smart choices and create a beautiful, safe space for living. (shrink)

This paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactivism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (_Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,_ _13_(3), 461–475, 2014 ), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this attempt, and (...) argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit _the same world_. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s _manipulation-based_ enactivist realism to a richer, _inquiry-based_ enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism. (shrink)

A career-spanning collection of published and unpublished writings from one of today's leading French philosophers 25 essays showcase Malabou's rounded philosophical project: 17 previously published and 8 brand newDemonstrates the interdisciplinary range and expansive applicative scope of her concept of plasticity Presents a full portrait of Malabou's philosophy which shows her project as a coherent conceptual problem rather than a collection of disparate topics and themesIncludes a critical introduction by Malabou expert Ian JamesCatherine Malabou is one of the foremost, most (...) innovative intelligences working in contemporary French philosophy today. Her work articulates a coherent conceptualisation of 'plasticity' by merging recent neurobiology and medicinal sciences with the history of philosophy and political theory.Across the essays gathered in Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, Malabou carves a philosophical space between structuralism, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and speculative realism. By demonstrating the plastic transformability at the heart of these disciplines, a change that always promises future explosion, Malabou, as a female philosopher, also articulates the need to 'change difference' within patriarchal concepts of tradition itself.The collection is divided into four thematic parts, each of which showcases a major aspect of Malabou's conceptualisation of plasticity. In his introduction, Ian James situates Malabou's work within contemporary philosophy and navigates the contours of her unique work.--Back cover. (shrink)

Even though The Medium Place is overshadowed by the dramatic events that unfold in the fake Good Place neighborhood, it is more significant to The Good Place. The Medium Place is described as an individually tailored “eternal mediocrity,” a place of neutrality and compromise. One of the most prominent contemporary cultural theorists, Homi K. Bhabha, calls this space of becoming, where contradictions and differences are explored rather than resolved, a “Third Space”. Bhabha claims that despite its importance, being “in‐between” is (...) usually “unrepresentable,” and Roland Barthes too refers to his idea of the “third possibility” as having “no place” of its own. But the writers of The Good Place have proved them wrong—they have found a way to represent this middle “in‐between” space it as a geographical neighborhood. The morality of The Medium Place is the most human and realistic of all The Good Place neighborhoods. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Start Line Lap One, Where Cycling Practice Meets Feminist Ethics Lap Two, Words from Our Teammates or The Dirt Documentaries Lap Three, Different Lines, Same Course Last Lap, How Women Cyclists Transform Cycling.

Experimental philosophers advocate expansion of philosophical methods to include empirical investigation into the concepts used by ordinary people in reasoning and action. We propose also including methods of qualitative social science, which we argue serve both moral and epistemic goals. Philosophical analytical tools applied to interdisciplinary research designs can provide ways to extract rich contextual information from subjects. We argue that this approach has important implications for bioethics; it provides both epistemic and moral reasons to use the experiences and perspectives (...) of diverse populations to better identify underlying concepts as well as to develop effective interventions within particular communities. (shrink)

Quelle est l'intention de Platon lorsqu'il fait de Socrate un virtuose de l'étymologie dans le Cratyle? Préciser les rapports entre la " science des lettres " qui se constitue en son siècle et la nouvelle théorie des Idées qu'il élabore. Socrate s'entretient avec le jeune Hermogène puis avec l'énigmatique Cratyle des rapports entre les mots et les choses. La rectitude des noms est-elle affaire de convention, ainsi que le soutient Hermogène? Ou s'agit-il d'un accord " naturel ", comme le prétend (...) Cratyle? Découvre-t-on cet accord par science ou par inspiration? Au terme du débat, après avoir mis à l'épreuve toutes les ressources de la " science des lettres ", Socrate propose une nouvelle théorie du nom, instrument faillible construit pour faire voir la réalité en la minant. Il dessine aussi un ordre des priorités : il faut d'abord connaître les êtres, puis les noms. " Savoir comment il faut apprendre ou découvrir les êtres, peut-être est-ce là trop lourde tâche pour toi et moi! C'est déjà beau de reconnaître qu'il ne faut pas partir des noms. ". (shrink)

Diversity is often announced as a solution to ethical problems in artificial intelligence (AI), but what exactly is meant by diversity and how it can solve those problems is seldom spelled out. This lack of clarity is one hurdle to motivating diversity in AI. Another hurdle is that while the most common perceptions about what diversity is are too weak to do the work set out for them, stronger notions of diversity are often defended on normative grounds that fail to (...) connect to the values that are important to decision-makers in AI. However, there is a long history of research in feminist philosophy of science and a recent body of work in social epistemology that taken together provide the foundation for a notion of diversity that is both strong enough to do the work demanded of it, and can be defended on epistemic grounds that connect with the values that are important to decision-makers in AI. We clarify and defend that notion here by introducing emergent expertise as a network phenomenon wherein groups of workers with expertise of different types can gain knowledge not available to any individual alone, as long as they have ways of communicating across types of expertise. We illustrate the connected epistemic and ethical benefits of designing technology with diverse groups of workers using the examples of an infamous racist soap dispenser, and the millimeter wave scanners used in US airport security. (shrink)

Relevance Theory is a cognitively oriented theory of pragmatics, i.e., a theory of language use. It builds on the seminal work of H.P. Grice1 to develop a pragmatic theory which is at once philosophically sensitive and empirically plausible (in both psychological and evolutionary terms). This entry reviews the central commitments and chief contributions of Relevance Theory, including its Gricean commitment to the centrality of intention-reading and inference in communication; the cognitively grounded notion of relevance which provides the mechanism for explaining (...) pragmatic interpretation as an intention-driven, inferential process; and several key applications of the theory (lexical pragmatics, metaphor and irony, procedural meaning). Relevance Theory is an important contribution to our understanding of the pragmatics of communication. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

L'oeuvre de Pierre Bourdieu a exercé une influence profonde sur la recherche scientifique, bien au-delà de la sociologie. Du fait de sa formation de philosophe, de ses incursions en anthropologie et en linguistique, de son souci constant d'analyser la dimension historique des faits sociaux, de son regard critique sur la science politique et le droit, de ses emprunts au vocabulaire économique, ainsi que de son intérêt marqué pour l'art et la littérature, Bourdieu n'a cessé de dialoguer mais aussi parfois de (...) "ferrailler" avec différentes disciplines des sciences sociales. Cet ouvrage collectif rend compte de manière inédite de l'étendue des réceptions et appropriations des travaux de Pierre Bourdieu dans les diverses sciences sociales. Il propose un éclairage original sur les usages du travail de Bourdieu en sociologie, anthropologie, histoire, philosophie, science politique, économie, droit, études littéraires et sciences de l'information et de la communication. Il permet ainsi d'entrer dans le laboratoire des sciences sociales qui font usage de Bourdieu et donne à voir la manière dont ses concepts et ses méthodes peuvent être déplacés et employés au-delà de l'univers disciplinaire dans lequel ils ont été forgés ; les luttes autour des frontières disciplinaires ; les obstacles à la réception de Bourdieu ou au contraire les conditions qui la favorisent. Fenêtre ouverte sur le renouvellement des études bourdieusiennes, I'ouvrage fait également dialoguer plusieurs générations de chercheurs, au-delà du premier cercle des "héritiers". Il permet ainsi de mieux connaître ou de découvrir des recherches contemporaines qui, dans le sillage de celles de Pierre Bourdieu, contribuent à la construction d'une connaissance décloisonnée, réflexive et critique du monde social. (shrink)

Confronting fundamentalism: the dangerous God of "control and condemn" -- 1967: What the cake said -- God-talk 101: The art that is Christianity -- The Copernican turn of Christian humanism -- Quantum theology: the symbolic character of God-talk -- Theological weirdness (1): the symbolic claim that God is a person -- Poets as theologians: the moral imagination of Christian Humanist tradition -- Moses debates with a burning bush -- I AM v. I WILL BE: translation and the authority of theologians (...) -- Theological weirdness (2): the symbolic claim that God is necessarily impersonal -- What, then, can be said about God? (shrink)

Struck by the absence of love affairs, adventures, travels, and political engagement in Immanuel Kant's life, a noted commentator describes him as unformed, to a degree surpassing all other philosophers, by challenging life events. Declaring that Kant 'can be understood only through his work in which he immerses himself with unwavering discipline,' the writer evokes the image of a body of writing demanding to be understood through text-internal analytical methods alone. The theme of the enclosed Kantian text is virtually irresistible. (...) It dominates in teaching practice and in a large percentage of the expository literature, where Kant's ideas are paraphrased in more, or even less transparent prose. It is attributable to the fact that Kant is a difficult author, a fact that, despite his scorn for popular philosophy, he knew and to some extent regretted. The commentator too is apt to immerse him or herself in Kant's writings with unwavering discipline, leaving little time and energy for a study of Kant's surrounding context. Like Wordsworth's Isaac Newton, whose innate powers enable him to teach the truth to himself, Kant is seen as a walled-off genius whose innovations nevertheless reached to the whole world. But Kant's famous domesticity and addiction to routine did not preclude contact with an external world. His mind was formed--as was Newton's, as is that of any one of us-- by his encounters with books and essays, by his exchanges with correspondents and dinner guests, from whom he learned and by whom he was provoked and challenged. The name index of the Academy Edition of Kant's works and the range of authors in the catalogue of Kant's library books published by Arthur Warda in 1922 leave no doubt as to the breadth of his personal and literary acquaintances. (shrink)

When Artificial Intelligence (AI) is applied in decision-making that affects people’s lives, it is now well established that the outcomes can be biased or discriminatory. The question of whether algorithms themselves can be among the sources of bias has been the subject of recent debate among Artificial Intelligence researchers, and scholars who study the social impact of technology. There has been a tendency to focus on examples, where the data set used to train the AI is biased, and denial on (...) the part of some researchers that algorithms can also be biased. Here we illustrate the point that algorithms themselves can be the source of bias with the example of collaborative filtering algorithms for recommendation and search. These algorithms are known to suffer from cold-start, popularity, and homogenizing biases, among others. While these are typically described as statistical biases rather than biases of moral import; in this paper we show that these statistical biases can lead directly to discriminatory outcomes. The intuitive idea is that data points on the margins of distributions of human data tend to correspond to marginalized people. The statistical biases described here have the effect of further marginalizing the already marginal. Biased algorithms for applications such as media recommendations can have significant impact on individuals’ and communities’ access to information and culturally-relevant resources. This source of bias warrants serious attention given the ubiquity of algorithmic decision-making. (shrink)

This chapter explores the epistemic roles played by connectionist models of cognition, and offers a formal analysis of how connectionist models explain. It looks at how other types of computational models explain. Classical artificial intelligence (AI) programs explain using abductive reasoning, or inference to the best explanation; they begin with the phenomena to be explained, and devise rules that can produce the right outcome. The chapter also looks at several examples of connectionist models of cognition, observing what sorts of constraints (...) are used in their design, and how their results are evaluated. It argues that the point of implementing networks roughly analogous to neural structures is to discover and explores the generic mechanisms at work in the brain, not to deduce the precise activities of specific structures. The chapter explores a formal analysis of the explanations offered, which interprets connectionist models and the cognitive theories they represent as sharing membership in a type of mechanism. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the ways that mechanisms are invoked in neuroscience and looks at a selection of the philosophical problems that arise when trying to understand mechanistic explanations. It introduces a series of historical case studies that illustrate how neuroscientists have depended on mechanistic metaphors in their efforts to understand the mind and brain, and how their mechanistic explanations have developed over time. The chapter highlights what contemporary philosophers have identified as the fundamental features of mechanisms and mechanistic (...) explanation. It considers some of the methodological issues that arise in neuroscience including how to integrate psychological with neural models, how to generalize findings in model organisms like the sea slug Aplysia to human learning and memory, and whether to favor top-down or bottom-up methods. Constructing multi-level mechanistic explanations involves intensive collaboration across different branches of science, and involves many challenges, both pragmatic and methodological. (shrink)

Who is the 'I' that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a (...) sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of 'Voices, Bodies, Practices' are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing "voices" can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts. (shrink)