Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means of (...) broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity. (shrink)

The article explores some neglected aspects of Kierkegaard's view on Ethics. The author of the article takes into account that the well-known view of ethics provided in Either-Or ii is suspended by the time Kierkegaard publishes Fear and Trembling. Nevertheless, the aim of this article is precisely to show that things are not that simple. The author begins with the view of ethics embedded in The Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and then takes up a more wide-angle view linked to Kierkegaard's notion (...) of the Sublime, which uncovers a passionate motion toward ethics as what one is and can be. The view focused by Subjectivity" is followed by the view focused by The Sublime and Perfectionism. /// O presente artigo explora alguns dos aspectos mais negligenciados nos estudos acerca da visão kierkegaardiana da Ética O autor do artigo toma em consideração o facto de que a perspectiva sobre a vida ética proposta por Kierkegaard na segunda parte da obra Alternativa parece estar já superada no momento em que Kierkegaard publica Temor e Tremor. Apesar disso, objectivo do artigo é precisamente mostrar que as coisas não são assim tão simples. O autor começa com a visão da Ética proposta na obra Post-Scriptum, avançando uma perspectiva mais ampla do ético associada com a noção kierkegaardiana de Sublime, noção essa que desvela um movimento apaixonado para a Ética entendida como aquilo que se é e que se pode vir a ser. Nesse sentido, a perspectiva do ético focalizada na noção de Subjectividade é seguida pela perspectiva focalizada nas noções de Sublime e de Perfeccionismo. (shrink)

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens gives us an account of Mrs. Gargery going into a rage that is as remarkable for its brevity as for its insight. ‘I must remark of my sister,’ says Pip, ‘that passion was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages.’1 What is remarkable about this passage is its descriptive richness, (...) that way it shows how many of our emotional reactions involve something more than spontaneity in their actual performance. All this we glean readily and grasp as true from being with others; the genius of Dickens is to carry what is so close to us unto the page. I suspect that in his own wry manner, Husserl too would have liked this passage. He held out for a method of describing concrete lived phenomena that would neither underinterpret nor over-interpret. Such a description would avoid the twin and complementary sins of stripping meaning away from the appearances and putting strangeness into them. Presupposing too little is just as erroneous as too much, and Husserl was acutely aware that ‘in the apprehension of a man very much is already included.’2 When the descriptive imperative is to the fore, Husserl’s studies of the other are notable for their rejection of psychophysical dualism. But when the Cartesian exclusion of contingent certainty triumphs, he adopts a methodological dualism that decomposes the ordinary and unitary experience of the Other. The criticisms of his Cartesian derivation the Other are by now quite familiar, and I will only rehearse them where they intersect with the main theses of this paper. What I would first like to establish is that Husserl’s Cartesian approach to the Other - beginning in Logical Investigations and culminating in the derivation of the alter ego from the monadic sphere of ownness - clashes with the account of bracketing and reduction in Ideas I.. (shrink)

In 1979, neuroscientists Libet, Wright, Feinstein and Pearl introduced the “delay-and-antedating” hypothesis/paradox based on the results of an on-going series of experiments dating back to 1964 that measured the neural adequacy [brain wave activity] of “conscious sensory experience”. What is fascinating about the results of this experiment is the implication, especially when considered in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of “intentionality” and the “pre-reflective life of human motility”, that the body, and hence not solely the mind, is a thinking thing. (...) The experiments and conclusions of Libet et al. have attracted considerable academic attention and have been used in the development of psychological theories on automotivism and the adaptive unconscious. Moreover, they have engendered a series of important considerations in respect of the question of free will. This paper outlines the connections between the findings of Libet et al. and Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as presented in the Phenomenology of Perception. It is not our intention to argue that the former amounts to new wine in old bottles, but rather to show counterfactually that Merleau-Ponty’s ontology provides a theoretical framework which explains the experimental data obtained by Libet et al., and provides further speculative confirmation of the work stemming from neuro-physical research and emerging theories on the adaptive unconscious. (shrink)

A supplemental text for an Issues in Early Childhood Education or Introduction to Early Childhood Education course in Early Childhood Education departments or in Child and Family Studies departments. Covers five leading theorists whose perspectives are studied and applied widely in early childhood education. The book distills each theorist's work and explains how it relates to early care and education. Brief, inexpensive; a perfect complement to foundational courses.

The application of constructivism to “nature” and “wilderness” is intellectually and politically objectionable. Despite a proclivity for examining the social underpinnings of representations, constructivists do not deconstruct their own rhetoric and assumptions; nor do they consider what socio-historical conditions support their perspective. Constructivists employ skewed metaphors to describe knowledge production about nature as though the loaded language use of constructivism is straightforward and neutral. They also implicitly rely on a humanist perspective about knowledge creation that privileges the cognitive sovereignty of (...) human subject over nature. Politically, the constructivist approach fails to take the scientific documentation of the biodiversity crisis seriously; it diverts attention toward discourses about the environmental predicament, rather than examining that predicament itself; and it indirectly cashes in on, and thus supports, human colonization of the Earth. (shrink)

Kit Fine and Gideon Rosen propose to define constitutive essence in terms of ground-theoretic notions and some form of consequential essence. But we think that the Fine–Rosen proposal is a mistake. On the Fine–Rosen proposal, constitutive essence ends up including properties that, on the central notion of essence, are necessary but not essential. This is because consequential essence is closed under logical consequence, and the ability of logical consequence to add properties to an object’s consequential essence outstrips the ability of (...) ground-theoretic notions, as used in the Fine–Rosen proposal, to take those properties out. The necessary-but-not-essential properties that, on the Fine–Rosen proposal, end up in constitutive essence include the sorts of necessary-but-not-essential properties that, others have noted, end up in consequential essence. (shrink)

Hartry Field’s epistemological challenge to the mathematical platonist is often cast as an improvement on Paul Benacerraf’s original epistemological challenge. I disagree. While Field’s challenge is more difficult for the platonist to address than Benacerraf’s, I argue that this is because Field’s version is a special case of what I call the ‘sociological challenge’. The sociological challenge applies equally to platonists and fictionalists, and addressing it requires a serious examination of mathematical practice. I argue that the non-sociological part of Field’s (...) challenge amounts to a minor reformulation of Benacerraf’s original challenge. So, I contend, Field’s challenge is not an improvement on Benacerraf’s. What is new to Field’s challenge is as much a problem for the fictionalist as it is for the platonist. (shrink)

Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, ...

Public, private, non-profit and for-profit nursing education enterprises in the U.S. are competing with one another in a newly complex and volatile educational landscape, placing academic leaders into situations fraught with moral, ethical and legal compromise with few precedents for guidance. This case study provides a richly contextualized narrative exploration of ethical and legal challenges to one leader’s moral courage, a fictionalized exploration drawn from multiple sources over time, to form a composite that is nonetheless firmly rooted in the complexity (...) and competitiveness characteristic of nursing education today. Our purpose is three-fold: 1) to direct the reader to moral and ethical questions that require thoughtful discourse and analysis among current and future academic nursing leaders; 2) to raise the issue of the need for regulations and oversight that reflect the changing realities of today’s increasingly complex and competitive educational arena; and 3) to encourage nursing education leaders to share additional cases that resonate for them, and in so doing, to expand the wellspring of ideas from which we can all draw in becoming more effective and morally courageous leaders. (shrink)

This book attempts to reframe abortion rights by focusing not on a woman's right to choose abortion, but rather on a woman's right to consent to pregnancy. Drawing on legal, medical, and philosophical definitions of pregnancy, it disaggregates the consent to sexual intercourse from the consent to pregnancy and argues that men and women have equal right to bodily integrity, which is defined as the freedom from nonconsensual bodily intrusion. The work provides the grounds for a woman's right to an (...) abortion and state funding of abortions. (shrink)

How can women’s rights be seen as a universal value rather than a Western value imposed upon the rest of the world? Addressing this question, Eileen Hunt Botting offers the first comparative study of writings by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Although Wollstonecraft and Mill were the primary philosophical architects of the view that women’s rights are human rights, Botting shows how non-Western thinkers have revised and internationalized their original theories since the nineteenth century. Botting explains why this (...) revised and internationalized theory of women’s human rights—grown out of Wollstonecraft and Mill but stripped of their Eurocentric biases—is an important contribution to thinking about human rights in truly universal terms. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories have become a ubiquitous feature of contemporary culture. From a communication studies perspective, conspiracy theories undermine democratic communication by misleading the publ...

Conversations in Metaphysics: Ever Ancient, Ever New introduces students to metaphysics through a set of contemporary readings based on classical metaphysical texts, thinkers, and concepts. It challenges readers to consider and seek possible answers to questions of metaphysics relative to human knowledge and the nature of reality. Organized historically, the readings endeavor to define and probe the concepts of metaphysics, existence, being, God, evil, and morality from antiquity to the present. The historical lens provides students with deeper context for the (...) contemporary readings and helps them establish a basic knowledge of metaphysics and its place within philosophical tradition. In later readings, students are invited to explore how metaphysics relates to religion, science, and technology in the modern world, as well as how metaphysics has shaped and continues to shape the reality of our universe. Rich with engaging material and endless opportunities for critical thought, Conversations in Metaphysics is an ideal ancillary text for courses in philosophy that call attention to metaphysics and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf raises an epistemic challenge for mathematical platonists. In this paper, I examine the assumptions that motivate Benacerraf’s original challenge, and use them to construct a new causal challenge for the epistemology of mathematics. This new challenge, which I call ‘Gödel’s Gap’, appeals to intuitive insights into mathematical knowledge. Though it is a causal challenge, it does not rely on any obviously objectionable constraints on knowledge. As a result, it is more compelling than the original challenge. (...) It is also more general; the challenge applies equally to platonistic and non-platonistic accounts of mathematical truth. And it can be generalized beyond the case of mathematical knowledge to pose a challenge for, e.g., moral knowledge. (shrink)

This article explores the epistemological and strategic issues facing feminists embarking upon narrative explorations into women's experiences. It considers the implications for feminist epistemology of acknowledging women's participation in dominant ideologies about their social role. Focusing upon questions of women's agency, it asks how this `conforming knowledge' might complicate postmodernist feminist notions of resisting and reconstructing law's categorisation of `Woman'. It also represents an attempt to clarify, in advance of my own analysis of women's agency in abortion decision-making, why postmodern (...) feminists might talk to women – the `subjects' of law's constructive power. It seeks additionally to open a discussion among a wider audience of feminists about what we might do with the information uncovered through listening to women's own stories in an area pronounced upon authoritatively by a multitude of discourses. (shrink)

Bryan Ronald Wilson, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a world-renowned sociologist of religion. He was awarded a D.Litt. by the University of Oxford in 1994, the same year that he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Wilson was also awarded an Arnold Gerstenberg studentship, which allowed him to take up a place at the London School of Economics, where Maurice Ginsberg introduced him to the literature of the sociology of religion and where he developed a life-long (...) interest in sectarian movements. He returned to Yorkshire to take up an Assistant Lectureship in Sociology in the Department of Social Studies at the University of Leeds in October 1955, being promoted to Lecturer in 1957. There Wilson taught courses on urban sociology, sociological theory, and the social institutions of modern Britain, as well as on the sociology of religion. He was a Fellow of All Souls College for thirty years. The themes of secularisation, rationalism, and sectarianism were of particular interest to Wilson throughout his academic life. (shrink)

Creationism and evolutionism are taken to typify a fundamental opposition among the diverse beliefs about creation to be found in the United Kingdom and the United States. A comparison between the two types and the two countries suggests that people may be more concerned about the credibility and consequences of belief in an alternative account of our origins than about the actual method by which we were created. Examples of concern include interpretations of the Bible, ethical implications, and the epistemological (...) standings of revelation and/or science that are thought to follow from acceptance of a particular belief concerning how we got here. (shrink)

The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, founded in Seoul in 1954 by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, has been more popularly known as the Unification Church or ‘the Moonies.’ Following revelations that he reports having received as a young man, Moon devoted his life to preaching and eventually publically proclaiming himself to be the Messiah, or Lord of the Second Advent, come to fulfil the mission of restoring God’s Kingdom of Heaven on earth. His early struggles (...) in Korea clearly had a considerable influence on the trajectory of his life and the development of the UC into a world-wide movement that reached into a wide variety of areas, such as anti-communist politics, the media, the arts, the sciences and vast businesses. Following Moon’s death, the movement has split into three separate factions, the largest of which is run by his widow, and the other two by, respectively, his oldest living and youngest sons. (shrink)

Mary Wollstonecraft’s visionary treatise, originally published in 1792, was the first book to present women’s rights as an issue of universal human rights. Ideal for coursework and classroom study, this comprehensive edition of Wollstonecraft’s groundbreaking feminist argument includes illuminating essays by leading scholars that highlight the author’s significant contributions to modern political philosophy, making a powerful case for her as one of the most substantive political thinkers of the Enlightenment era. No other scholarly work to date has examined as closely (...) both the ideological moorings and the enduring legacy of Wollstonecraft’s courageous discourse. (shrink)

This article examines Mary Wollstonecraft's public reception in American newspapers from 1800 to 1869. Wollstonecraft was portrayed to the American public as a philosopher of women's rights, a new model of femininity, and a pioneer of women's political activism. Although these iconic uses of Wollstonecraft were regularly negative, they grew more positive as the women's rights movement gained steam alongside the abolition movement.