Mapping a public discourse with the tools of computational text analysis comes with many contingencies in the areas of corpus curation, data processing and analysis, and visualisation. However, the complexity of algorithmic assemblies and the beauty of resulting images give the impression of ‘objectivity’. Instead of concealing uncertainties and artefacts in order to tell a coherent and all-encompassing story, retaining the variety of alternative assemblies may actually strengthen the method. By utilising the mobility of digital devices, we could create mutable (...) mobiles that allow access to our laboratories and enable challenging rearrangements and interpretations. (shrink)

Author presents reflection on the evolution of political terms and notions throughout Russian history. In this study, as its main focus is the reconstruction of the development process of concepts and notions pertaining to the political whole. Nevertheless, these issues do surface in the context of conceptualizing the political community, as an important aspect of both political organization and political action. In Russia, certain concepts pertaining to some aspects of freedom did develop, but what never emerged was the general idea (...) of freedom as the central political issue. On the other hand, the issue of authority emerged as an independent field of thought, as a result of the despotic and anti-despotic interpretations of terms used to describe the political system. (shrink)

BackgroundEverybody has the right to decide whether to receive specific medical treatment or not and to provide their free, prior and informed consent to do so. As dementia progresses, people with Alzheimer’s dementia (PwAD) can lose their capacity to provide informed consent to complex medical treatment. When the capacity to consent is lost, the autonomy of the affected person can only be guaranteed when an interpretable and valid advance directive exists. Advance directives are not yet common in Germany, and their (...) validity is often questionable. Once the dementia diagnosis has been made, it is assumed to be too late to write an advance directive. One approach used to support the completion of advance directives is ‘Respecting Choices’®—an internationally recognised, evidence-based model of Advance Care Planning (ACP), which, until now, has not been evaluated for the target group of PwAD. This study’s aims include (a) to investigate the proportion of valid advance directives in a memory clinic population of persons with suspected AD, (b) to determine the predictors of valid advance directives, and (c) to examine whether the offer of ACP can increase the proportion of valid advance directives in PwAD.MethodWe intend to recruit at leastN = 250 participants from two memory clinics in 50 consecutive weeks. Of these, the first 25 weeks constitute the baseline phase (no offer of ACP), the following 25 weeks constitute the intervention phase (offer of ACP). The existence and validity of an advance directive will be assessed twice (before and after the memory clinic appointment). Moreover, potential predictors of valid advance directives are assessed.DiscussionThe results of this study will enhance the development of consent procedures for advance directives of PwAD based on the ACP/Respecting Choices (R) approach. Therefore, this project contributes towards increasing the autonomy and inclusion of PwAD and the widespread acceptance of valid advance directives in PwAD.Trial RegistrationDRKS, DRKS00026691, registered 15th of October 2021,https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00026691. (shrink)

The article purports to examine the risk to cultural identity amongst an Indian community in South Africa using a single case study methodology. A case study approach was followed, using the qualitative research methodology, whereby not only the how, but also adding focus on the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, experiences and motivations that people have underlie their behaviour. The year 1960 marked the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Indians to the Colony of Natal, hence the study considers the period (...) 1895 to 1960. Identifying with a particular culture allows members of that community to experience feelings of belonging and security. Moving across continents, Indian indentured sugar plantation labourers came to the Colony of Natal from 1860 until 1911 bringing with them their cultural identity. The risk to cultural identity is a significant contributor to an individual’s well-being. Cultural identity may be viewed as a sense of belonging based on one’s ancestry, rituals, religion, traditions, values and even language. When they were transported during the concurrent time of colonisation and indenture, they became displaced and thus an emotional threat to their well-being, belonging and security was created and simultaneously experienced. This threat compromised their cultural identity. This risk to cultural identity is investigated in the narrative of an Indian female national matriarch, Mrs Takurine Mahesh Singh who arrived in the Colony in 1895 and passed away in 1959. A risk to cultural identity existed, but the Indian community in South Africa did not experience deculturalisation. They were able to practise their ancestral culture without losing their identity. This is one of the findings and it concludes the abstract.Contribution: The study of identity, identity diffusion, identity loss is a very important aspect to study, especially for displaced communities who suffer not only alienation from their mother country, but also losing contact and cultures as a result of displacement. This article provides insight on the risk to cultural identity in Natal between 1895 and 1960. In terms of the findings, cultural identity is an important contributor to well-being. Identifying with a particular culture gave the matriarch a feeling of belonging and security. It also provides access to social and other networks which provide support and shared strength, values and aspirations. Although a product of oral history, for this research, the article could not be supported by other historical materials in an attempt at balancing the views as scholars have not explored the widowed Indian nationals who have remained in the Colony after indenture. This article should not be viewed simplistically as a retelling of Mrs Singh’s life story, but rather a narrative based on reflective memories that pieced together her departure from India under the political system of indenture, living and surviving as a widow under harsh laws and having multiple identities. The narrative oral history approach combined with a qualitative research methodology does not focus on analysis and interpretation but rather brings to the fore, the opportunity for further exploratory studies where the question ‘why’ will be answered. (shrink)

The sensitive period for phonetic learning, evidenced by improved native speech processing and declined non-native speech processing, represents an early milestone in language acquisition. We examined the extent that sensory encoding of speech is altered by experience during this period by testing two hypotheses: early sensory encoding of non-native speech declines as infants gain native-language experience, and music intervention reverses this decline. We longitudinally measured the frequency-following response, a robust indicator of early sensory encoding along the auditory pathway, to a (...) Mandarin lexical tone in 7- and 11-months-old monolingual English-learning infants. Infants received either no intervention or music intervention randomly between FFR recordings. The language-experience group exhibited the expected decline in FFR pitch-tracking accuracy to the Mandarin tone, while the music-intervention group did not. Our results support both hypotheses and demonstrate that both language and music experiences alter infants’ speech encoding. (shrink)

Adolescence is an important developmental period marked by a transition from primarily parental-controlled eating to self-directed and peer-influenced eating. During this period, adolescents gain autonomy over their individual food choices and eating behavior in general. While parent-feeding practices have been shown to influence eating behaviors in children, little is known about how these relationships track across adolescent development as autonomy expands. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify factors that impact food decisions and eating autonomy among adolescents. Using (...) the food choice process model as a guide, four focus groups were conducted with 34 adolescents. Focus group discussion was semi-structured, asking teens about influences on their food choices across different food environments, their involvement with food purchasing and preparation, and perceived control over food their choices. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using deductive and inductive code creation and thematic analysis. This study found six leading influences on adolescents' food choices and identified additional factors with prominence within specific environmental contexts. This study distinguished a broader spectrum of factors influencing adolescent food choice that extend beyond “convenience” and “taste” which have previously been identified as significant contributors. The degree of control that teens reported differed by eating location, occasion, and social context. Finally, adolescents demonstrated various levels of engagement in behaviors related to their eating autonomy. Identifying the emergent themes related to adolescent autonomy was the first step toward the goal of developing a scale to evaluate adolescent eating autonomy. (shrink)

Humanitarian healthcare work presents a range of ethical challenges for expatriate healthcare professionals, including tragic choices requiring the selection of a least-worst option. In this paper we examine a particular set of tragic choices related to the prioritization of care and allocation of scarce resources between individuals in situations of widespread and urgent health needs. Drawing on qualitative interviews with clinicians, we examine the nature of these choices. We offer recommendations to clinical teams and aid organizations for preparing and supporting (...) frontline clinicians in their efforts to determine the least-worst option, and in their responsibility for making such choices. (shrink)

Through imaginative engagement readers of fiction become, to an extraordinary extent, the narrator’s ‘children’: they often submit themselves to the narrator’s authority without reserve. But precisely because of that, readers are deeply at a loss when their trust is betrayed. This underscores a core function of fiction, namely to evoke emotional response in the reader. In this paper, we hypothesize how a reader’s imaginative engagement can be subjected to narrative frustration due to processing or moral complexity. The types of narrative (...) frustration we consider differ in terms of their sources, and their emotional and behavioral impacts on the reader. Here, we break down these frustrations into their component parts, in an effort to better characterize the different classes of frustrations. We propose that frustrations arise from different combinations of local uncertainty, moral clash and global uncertainty. These sources of frustration in turn explain the reader’s emotional response and their consequent reading behavior as they imaginatively engage with fiction. (shrink)

An important devotional genre in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, meditations invited their readers to place themselves at the scene of various moments in Christ’s life and encouraged them to have particular emotional responses—joy, sorrow, compassion, and the like—to those imaginative experiences. In its emphasis on feeling, meditation was seen as an activity particularly suited for women and their closer ties with the body. Meditation was also seen as an activity distinct from contemplation, which was portrayed as a “higher,” more (...) intellective pursuit. Yet meditation was intended to increase love to Christ, and love was widely considered to increase knowledge—knowledge of the same sort that contemplation also claimed to yield. Over time, then the widespread popularity of this spiritual exercise opens up space for women’s claims to knowledge to be heard because of (rather than despite) their association with the body. (shrink)

Countless conceptual metaphors related to human experience have been identified and discussed in the literature. In most conceptual metaphors, a concrete, experiential sou...

Inspiré de la pratique de l’auteure auprès de personnes en situation d’exil et de précarité rencontrées en centre d’hébergement pour demandeurs d’asile, cet article questionne la parentalité interne (Ciccone, 2012) dans l’économie psychique d’un homme confronté pendant son enfance aux mauvais traitements de son père et au départ définitif de sa mère, longtemps violentée. L’auteure s’intéresse à ses efforts pour se différencier des violences subies mais aussi à la reproduction inconsciente des rapports d’emprise et d’abandon, manifeste dans le lien transférentiel, (...) et à sa propre paternité dans un parcours d’exil et d’errance en quête d’objets parentaux. Le travail thérapeutique se focalise sur la restauration de ses capacités de contenance et de transformation dans une clinique du lien intersubjectif et intrapsychique. (shrink)

This paper highlights the need to apply an equity lens when assessing the impact of preemption and related legal doctrines on community health. Community autonomy to set and pursue public health priorities is an essential part of achieving health equity. Unfortunately, the priorities of organized industry interest groups often conflict with health equity goals. These groups have a history of successfully using law to limit community autonomy to pursue public health measures, most notably through preemption and related legal doctrines. We (...) examine this phenomenon using two examples. First, we look at dental association efforts to block the spread of dental therapists in Indian Country. Native dental therapists have been improving the oral health of native people in Alaska for over a decade; yet the national and state dental associations have sought with mixed success to leverage state and federal laws to hinder other tribal governments from utilizing these providers. We compare these efforts with a restaurant association-led movement to limit what municipal governments can do to address food-based health inequities, focusing on a “model” ALEC bill that started in Ohio. Finally, we discuss how municipalities and Tribes are fighting back and continuing to pursue health equity for their communities. (shrink)

In a post-apartheid South Africa, the value of reflective memories and their impact on community history gives credibility to their relationship with personal struggles such as disability, be it physical or political. Shaped by South African Indian heritage, an isolated individualised case of a second-generation descendant’s ability–disability experience is researched and narrated in this article. The respondent, Dr Kasturi Varley is a woman of the South African Indian community, who was born almost 101 years after the first shipload of Indian (...) indentured labourers arrived in the then Colony of Natal. Her memories shed light on a unique Indo-African-European experience. Her indentured paternal grandfather arrived in the African continent in August 1900. Her reflective memories and shared experiences of various episodes of the ability–disability paradigm add to the body of knowledge of the Indian indentured labour system that already exists and partially fills up the prevalent gaps in the research on this topic. Her story is unique in that she worked wheelchair-bound at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and subsequently settled in the United Kingdom. This study applied a qualitative research methodology.Contribution: This article provides insight on reflective memories within the domain of social memory and contributes to an understanding of the historiography of the descendants of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa. In 2020, this community commemorated the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the labourers to the Colony of Natal. (shrink)

The relevance and value of oral history practices and principles and its impact on community history gives credence to its relationship with the liberation struggle. The liberation struggle heroines that formed the cohort of interviewees for this research were members of the South African Indian community. This interview- research process provides a platform that allows the veteran South African female of Indian Heritage to reflect almost 50 years later and be a part of the celebration, preservation and promotion of struggle (...) narratives. The women who were interviewed for this research shed light on celebrating political achievements, whilst remembering and recalling the educational, material and economic assistance from international sources. Furthermore, these women referred to the preservation of South Africa’s unique heritage as, South Africa is united in its diversity. Promoting the values of the liberation struggle by sharing her anecdotes, honouring the cadres, relating experiences, retelling tales and sometimes possibly reliving military camp days completed the oral history interview process and eventually added to the body of knowledge that already exists and partially filled the gaps that exist.Contribution: From a multidisplinary religious perspective, this article contributes to the historical and social-cultural discourse on liberation theology within a paradigm in which the intersection of social sciences and humanities generates a transdisciplinary contested discourse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 143-144 [Access article in PDF] Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, editors. Aquinas's Moral Theory. Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. vi i+ 291. $49.95 Although medieval philosophy generally hasn't received much attention from Anglo-American philosophers in the last few centuries, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas has long been the exception to that rule. In one (...) sense, then, the collection of essays in Aquinas's Moral Theory fits into a long-standing and rich tradition of critical analysis and thoughtful reconstruction. In another sense, however, the book treads ground that is, if not entirely new, then at least not well worn. Most treatments of Aquinas's ethics discuss it in separation from the rest of his work. Aquinas himself, however, sees his moral theory as intrinsically tied up with other aspects of his philosophical system, such as his metaphysics and his philosophical theology. Aquinas's Moral Theory argues that fully understanding Aquinas's ethics, then, requires attention to the way in which "his interests in moral issues often flow into and inform and shape his work in other areas, just as his moral reflections are shaped and grounded by them" (3).MacDonald and Stump have drawn together a group of ten essays by respected scholars in medieval philosophy—essays written with the explicit intent of examining Aquinas's moral theory both in its own right and in light of Aquinas's broader philosophical system. Not surprisingly, the papers in the book range over a wide number of philosophical and theological topics. Moreover, they explore connections not only within Aquinas's work, but between Aquinas and Aristotle, between Aquinas and his contemporaries, and between Aquinas's thought and problems in contemporary philosophy. [End Page 143] It's useful, then, that the papers are grouped under three main headings: Moral Theory and Moral Theology, Moral Psychology and Practical Reason, and Moral Theory in Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics.Perhaps the most striking feature of this particular collection of essays is the diversity of scholarship it represents. Although the ten essays contribute to the same larger project, the individual authors use at least three distinct approaches in accomplishing that goal: for example, Anthony Kenny ("Aquinas on Aristotelian Happiness") and Mark Jordan ("Ideals of Scientia Moralis and the Invention of the Summa theologiae") examine motivations for some of the distinctive innovations in Aquinas's moral thought. By contrast, the essays by Jan Aertsen ("Thomas Aquinas on the Good: The Relation between Metaphysics and Ethics"), E. J. Ashworth ("Aquinas on Significant Utterance: Interjection, Blasphemy, Prayer"), John Boler ("Aquinas on Exceptions in Natural Law"), and Paul Spade ("Degrees of Being, Degrees of Goodness: Aquinas on Levels of Reality") seek primarily to raise or resolve difficulties within Aquinas's philosophical system. Finally, Peter King ("Aquinas on the Passions"), Scott MacDonald ("Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations: Aquinas's Account of Reason's Role in Action"), Gareth Matthews ("Saint Thomas and the Principle of Double Effect"), and Eleonore Stump ("Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness") consider what light Aquinas has to shed on issues of particular interest to contemporary philosophers.The rich variety of viewpoints and interpretations that constitute one of the main strengths of this volume also constitutes one of its main weaknesses, however. The difference between the approaches of, say, Stump, Jordan, and Aertsen are almost dizzying. So the collection of essays doesn't yield a unified picture of Aquinas's moral theory; readers looking for an introduction to Aquinas's ethics or for a comprehensive overview of its relation to his broader metaphysical system will be disappointed. In particular, the papers in the section devoted to moral theory in philosophy of language and metaphysics raise more questions than they answer; the reader is left wondering what further consequences the provocative claims made there have for Aquinas's ethics.Still, this represents not as much a flaw in the book itself as it does a conscious call to further scholarship. As Aertsen and Spade both remark... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 97-112.

How do people decide which claims should be considered mere beliefs and which count as knowledge? Although little is known about how people attribute knowledge to others, philosophical debate about the nature of knowledge may provide a starting point. Traditionally, a belief that is both true and justified was thought to constitute knowledge. However, philosophers now agree that this account is inadequate, due largely to a class of counterexamples (termed ‘‘Gettier cases’’) in which a person’s justified belief is true, but (...) only due to luck. We report four experiments examining the effect of truth, justification, and ‘‘Gettiering’’ on people’s knowledge attributions. These experiments show that: (1) people attribute knowledge to others only when their beliefs are both true and justified; (2) in contrast to contemporary philosophers, people also attribute knowledge to others in Gettier situations; and (3) knowledge is not attributed in one class of Gettier cases, but only because the agent’s belief is based on ‘‘apparent’’ evidence. These findings suggest that the lay concept of knowledge is roughly consistent with the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, and also point to a major difference between the epistemic intuitions of laypeople and those of philosophers. (shrink)

This article contends that environmental organisations vary in type, scale and purpose in ways that help stewards self-sort into the opportunities that align with their individual motivations and e...

According to one understanding of the problem of dirty hands, every case of dirty hands is an instance of moral conflict, but not every instance of moral conflict is a case of dirty hands. So, what sets the two apart? The dirty hands literature has offered widely different answers to this question but there has been relatively little discussion about their relative merits as well as challenges. In this paper I evaluate these different accounts by making clear which understanding of (...) concept distinctness underlies them and which of them is, ultimately, the most plausible one in the case of dirty hands and ordinary moral conflict. In order to do so, I will borrow from the terminology employed in recent debates in the philosophy of evil which have tackled a similar problem to the one at hand, i.e. defining what sets evil apart from ordinary wrongdoing. Here it has been argued that concepts could be distinct in three ways: they can have a quantitative difference, a strong qualitative or a moderate qualitative difference. I conclude that the most convincing definition of dirty hands draws a moderate qualitative distinction between ordinary moral conflict according to which dirty hands are those moral conflicts that involve a serious violation or betrayal of a core moral value. (shrink)

Freedom and the subject in Jean-Paul Sartre -- Freedom and necessity in Jacques Derrida -- Freedom and the subject in contemporary philosophy and theory -- Theorizing pathologies and therapeutics of freedom.

In recent years, most political theorists have agreed that shame shouldn't play any role in democratic politics because it threatens the mutual respect necessary for participation and deliberation. But Christina Tarnopolsky argues that not every kind of shame hurts democracy. In fact, she makes a powerful case that there is a form of shame essential to any critical, moderate, and self-reflexive democratic practice. Through a careful study of Plato's Gorgias, Tarnopolsky shows that contemporary conceptions of shame are far too (...) narrow. For Plato, three kinds of shame and shaming practices were possible in democracies, and only one of these is similar to the form condemned by contemporary thinkers. Following Plato, Tarnopolsky develops an account of a different kind of shame, which she calls "respectful shame." This practice involves the painful but beneficial shaming of one's fellow citizens as part of the ongoing process of collective deliberation. And, as Tarnopolsky argues, this type of shame is just as important to contemporary democracy as it was to its ancient form. Tarnopolsky also challenges the view that the Gorgias inaugurates the problematic oppositions between emotion and reason, and rhetoric and philosophy. Instead, she shows that, for Plato, rationality and emotion belong together, and she argues that political science and democratic theory are impoverished when they relegate the study of emotions such as shame to other disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and explore some ideas about how factive emotional states and factive perceptual states each relate to knowledge and reasons. This discussion will shed light on the so-called ‘perceptual model’ of the emotions.

This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of continental philosophy of religion by treating the thought of its most important representatives, including its appropriations by several thinkers in the United States. Part I provides context by examining religious aspects of the thought of Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Christina Gschwandtner contends that, although the work of these thinkers is not apologetic in nature, it prepares the ground for the more religiously motivated work of more recent (...) thinkers by giving religious language and ideas some legitimacy in philosophical discussions. Part II devotes a chapter to each of the contemporary French thinkers who articulate a phenomenology of religious experience: Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, and Emmanuel Falque. In it, the author argues that their respective philosophies can be read as an apologetics of sorts--namely, as arguments for the coherence of thought about God and the viability of religious experience--though each thinker does so in a different fashion and to a different degree. Part III considers the three major thinkers who have popularized and extended this phenomenology in the U.S. context: John D. Caputo, Merold Westphal, and Richard Kearney. The book thus both provides an introduction to important contemporary thinkers, many of whom have not yet received much treatment in English, and also argues that their philosophies can be read as providing an argument for Christian faith. (shrink)

Global reproductive landscapes and with them cross-border routes are rapidly changing. This paper examines the reproductive routes and choices of fertility travellers from China to Russia as reported by medical professionals and fertility service providers. Providing new empirical data, it raises new ethical questions on the facilitation of cross-border reproductive travel and the commercialisation of reproductive treatment. The relaxation of the one-child policy in 2014 in China, the increasing demand for ART exceeding the capacity of national fertility clinics and the (...) difficulty of accessing treatment with donor eggs concomitant with a growing economic power of the upper–middle class are shaping the ART industry in Asia in new ways. A new development is Chinese citizens increasingly seeking ART treatment in Russia, which has a long-standing practice of ART governed by a liberal legislation. Furthermore, as China prohibits the export of gametes, Chinese fertility travellers rely on acquiring donor gametes once starting treatment abroad. Clinicians in Russia report three strategies amongst their Chinese patients: One group is using donor eggs of women of Asian appearance living in Russia or is hiring women of resembling appearance from third-party countries to donate their eggs in Russia to create resemblance in their offspring. Another group is buying white donor gametes to create Eurasian mixed children and thus ‘enhance’ their offspring. Providing novel empirical data, this article informs ethical deliberation and raises imminent questions for further research in this understudied geographic region and on cross-border reproductive treatment. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dirty hands literature has overlooked a crucial distinction in neglecting to discuss explicitly the issue of, what I call, symmetry. This is the question of whether, once we are confronted with a dirty hands situation, we could emerge with our hands clean depending on the action we choose. A position that argues that we can keep our hands clean I call “asymmetrical” and one that says that we will get our hands dirty no matter what (...) we do I call “symmetrical”. Not acknowledging this distinction is a problem because, firstly, it adds to the existing confusions about how best to define what dirty hands are. Secondly, it prevents the concept of dirty hands from being applied properly to other contexts such as, for example, the responsibility and accountability of politicians. I argue that we have good reason to favour a symmetrical understanding because it gives a more convincing account of what makes an action dirty and because it more accurately captures our complex moral decision-making when faced with dirty hands situations. The paper concludes by outlining possible implications that the distinction between the symmetry view and the asymmetry view has on wider debates surrounding the problem of dirty hands. (shrink)

The philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion has opened new ways of speaking about religious convictions and experiences. In this exploration of Marion’s philosophy and theology, Christina M. Gschwandtner presents a comprehensive and critical analysis of the ideas of saturated phenomena and the phenomenology of givenness. She claims that these phenomena do not always appear in the excessive mode that Marion describes and suggests instead that we consider degrees of saturation. Gschwandtner covers major themes in Marion’s work—the historical event, art, (...) nature, love, gift and sacrifice, prayer, and the Eucharist. She works within the phenomenology of givenness, but suggests that Marion himself has not considered important aspects of his philosophy. (shrink)

Microaggressions are a new moral category that refers to the subtle yet harmful forms of discriminatory behavior experienced by members of oppressed groups. Such behavior often results from implicit bias, leaving individual perpetrators unaware of the harm they have caused. Moreover, microaggressions are often dismissed on the grounds that they do not constitute a real or morally significant harm. My goal is therefore to explain why microaggressions are morally significant and argue that we are responsible for their harms. I offer (...) a conceptual framework for microaggressions, exploring the central mechanisms used for identification and the empirical research concerning their harm. The cumulative harm of microaggressions presents a unique case for understanding disaggregation models for contributed harms, blame allocation, and individual responsibility within structural oppression. Our standard moral model for addressing cumulative harm is to hold all individual contributors blameworthy for their particular contributions. However, if we aim to hold people responsible for their unconscious microaggressions and address cumulative harm holistically, this model is inadequate. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model, I argue that we, as individual perpetrators of microaggressions, have a responsibility to respond to the cumulative harm to which we have individually contributed. (shrink)

Nagel, San Juan, and Mar report an experiment investigating lay attributions of knowledge, belief, and justification. They suggest that, in keeping with the expectations of philosophers, but contra recent empirical findings [Starmans, C. & Friedman, O. (2012). The folk conception of knowledge. Cognition, 124, 272–283], laypeople consistently deny knowledge in Gettier cases, regardless of whether the beliefs are based on ‘apparent’ or ‘authentic’ evidence. In this reply, we point out that Nagel et al. employed a questioning method that biased participants (...) to deny knowledge. Moreover, careful examination of participants’ responses reveals that they attributed knowledge in Gettier cases. We also note that Nagel et al. misconstrue the distinction between ‘apparent’ and ‘authentic’ evidence, and use scenarios that do not feature the structure that characterizes most Gettier cases. We conclude that NS&M’s findings are fully compatible with the claim that laypeople attribute knowledge in Gettier cases in general, but are significantly less likely to attribute knowledge when a belief is generated based on apparent evidence. (shrink)

In certain contemporary theories of the politics of shame, shame is considered a pernicious emotion that we need to avoid in, or a salutary emotion that serves as an infallible guide to, democratic deliberation. The author argues that both positions arise out of an inadequate notion of the structure of shame and an oversimplistic opposition between shame and shamelessness. Plato's dialogue, the Gorgias, actually helps to address these problems because it supplies a deeper understanding of the place of shame in (...) democratic politics in ways that address our contemporary dilemmas. It does this first, by avoiding the simple opposition between shame and shamelessness and secondly, by articulating three different kinds of "politics of shame" that can characterize democratic deliberations. Finally, Plato's treatment of shame extends upon contemporary ethical and psychoanalytic notions of shame in ways that are directly relevant to the our contemporary political situation. (shrink)

Reviewers of this book have praised Christina Hoff Sommer's well-reasoned argument against many feminists' reliance on misleading, politically motivated 'facts' about how women are victimised.

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect (...) them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema's biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy. (shrink)