This paper is a counter to the view that names are always predicates with the same extension as a metalinguistic predicate with the form “is a thing called “N”” (the Predicate View). The Predicate View is in opposition to the Referential View of names. In this paper, I undermine one argument for the Predicate View. The Predicate View’s adherents take examples of uses of names that have the surface appearance of a predicate and generalise from these to treat uses of (...) names that do not have the surface appearance of a predicate. They show that the Predicate View can provide a unified account of these two uses and assume that the Referential account cannot. I propose an alternative view of names, the Polysemy View. This view allows one to resist the pressure to generalise from the cases with the surface appearance of predicates to all uses of names while nevertheless providing connections between the uses. On the Polysemy View names are not, in their core use, metalinguistic predicates. Names are predominantly referring expressions but they also freelance as metalinguistic predicates on occasion. They have a double life. This double life is possible because of the pragmatic and conventional connections between the two aspects of that life. My main aim in this paper is to show that the Predicate View is not the only view that can give a good account of apparently predicative uses of names. In addition, I offer some inconclusive reasons to prefer the Polysemy View over the Predicate View. My paper assumes a background framework that the Predicate and Referentialist Views share and I do not attempt to justify that framework. I ignore many other views of names (notably descriptivist views and relevance theoretic views) in order to focus on the debate between these two opponents. (shrink)

Existing metasemantic projects presuppose that word- (or sentence-) types are part of the non-semantic base. We propose a new strategy: an endogenous account of word types, that is, one where word types are fixed as part of the metasemantics. On this view, it is the conventions of truthfulness and trust that ground not only the meaning of the words (meaning by convention) but also what the word type is of each particular token utterance (words by convention). The same treatment extends (...) to identifying the populations through which the conventions prevail. We consider whether this proposal leads to new underdetermination challenges for metasemantics, and make a case that it does not. (shrink)

An interview with Gail Weiss concerning her interests and influences, especially the body and embodiment.

How does thinking affect doing? There is a widely held view that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. Once you have acquired the ability to putt a golf ball, play an arpeggio on the piano, or parallel-park, reflecting on your actions leads to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis--that's what is widely believed. But is it true? After exploring some of the contemporary and historical manifestations of the idea, Barbara Gail Montero (...) develops a theory of expertise which emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action. She aims to dispel various myths about experts who proceed without any understanding of what guides their action, and she analyzes research in both philosophy and psychology that is taken to show that conscious control and explicit monitoring of one's movements impedes well practiced skills. Montero explores a wide range of real-life examples of optimal performance, in sports, the performing arts, healthcare, the military, and other fields, and draws from psychology, neuroscience, and literature to offer a refreshing and persuasive view of expertise, according to which expert action generally is and ought to be thoughtful, effortful, and reflective. (shrink)

Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus Gail Fine. sense that they consider the issues it raises; and they argue, against its conclusion, that inquiry is possible. Like Plato and Aristotle, they also explain what makes inquiry possible; and they do ...

I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to the (...) way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written (...) introduction draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

If social, political, and material transformation is to have a lasting impact on individuals and society, it must be integrated within ordinary experience. Refiguring the Ordinary examines the ways in which individuals' bodies, habits, environments, and abilities function as horizons that underpin their understandings of the ordinary. These features of experience, according to Gail Weiss, are never neutral, but are always affected by gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, and perceptions of bodily normality. While no two people will experience (...) the ordinary in exactly the same way, the multiplicities, possibilities, overlaps, and limitations of day-to-day horizons are always intersubjectively constituted. Weiss turns her attention to changing the conditions and experiences of oppression from ordinary to extraordinary. This book is an impressive phenomenological, feminist reading of the complexities of human experience.M. V. Marder, University of Toronto, Feb. 2009. (shrink)

Animals used in biological research and testing have become integrated into the trajectories of modern biomedicine, generating increased expectations for and connections between human and animal health. Animal research also remains controversial and its acceptability is contingent on a complex network of relations and assurances across science and society, which are both formally constituted through law and informal or assumed. In this paper, we propose these entanglements can be studied through an approach that understands animal research as a nexus spanning (...) the domains of science, health and animal welfare. We introduce this argument through, first, outlining some key challenges in UK debates around animal research, and second, reviewing the way nexus concepts have been used to connect issues in environmental research. Third, we explore how existing social sciences and humanities scholarship on animal research tends to focus on different aspects of the connections between scientific research, human health and animal welfare, which we suggest can be combined in a nexus approach. In the fourth section, we introduce our collaborative research on the animal research nexus, indicating how this approach can be used to study the history, governance and changing sensibilities around UK laboratory animal research. We suggest the attention to complex connections in nexus approaches can be enriched through conversations with the social sciences and medical humanities in ways that deepen appreciation of the importance of path-dependency and contingency, inclusion and exclusion in governance and the affective dimension to research. In conclusion, we reflect on the value of nexus thinking for developing research that is interdisciplinary, interactive and reflexive in understanding how accounts of the histories and current relations of animal research have significant implications for how scientific practices, policy debates and broad social contracts around animal research are being remade today. (shrink)

The Peri ide^on is the only work in which Aristotle systematically sets out and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms. Gail Fine presents the first full-length treatment in English of this important but neglected work. She asks how, and how well, Aristotle understands Plato's theory of forms, and why and with what justification he favors an alternative metaphysical scheme. She examines the significance of the Peri ide^on for some central questions about Plato's theory of forms--whether, for example, (...) there are forms corresponding to every property or only to some, and if only to some, then to which ones; whether forms are universals, particulars or both; and whether they are meanings, properties or both. Fine also provides a general discussion of Plato's theory of forms, and of our evidence about the Peri ide^on and its date, scope, and aims. While she pays careful attention to the details of the text, she also relates it to contemporary philosophical concerns. The book will be valuable for anyone interested in metaphysics ancient or modern. (shrink)

This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible, which unvaryingly but often implicitly accompany debates about data and openness.

It is an ancient view, to be found even in Aristotle’s analysis of friendship, that the other is an alter ego, another myself. More recently, this conception has provoked spirited debate within and without the phenomenological tradition. It can be found in a wide variety of texts, from Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations to Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” The basic position can be summarized as follows. Intentional experiences are subjective, first-person experiences, not objective, third-person experiences.

This article considers some of the ways in which ‘the black woman’ as both representation and embodied, sentient being is rendered visible and invisible, and to link these to the multiple and competing ways in which she is ‘present’. The issues are engaged through three distinct but overlapping conceptualisations of ‘presence’. ‘Presence’ as conceived in performance studies; ‘presence’ as conceived and worked with in psychoanalysis; and ‘presence’ as decolonising political praxis among Indigenous communities. I use these conceptualisations of presence to (...) consider the various ways in which the black woman as figure and as embodied/sentient subject has been made present/absent in different discursive registers. I also explore what is foreclosed and how this is itself linked to legacies of colonial ‘worlding’. I end with consideration of alternative modes of black women's presence and how this offers a resource for new modes of sociality. (shrink)

M. J. Levett's elegant translation of Plato's _Theaetetus_, first published in 1928, is here revised by Myles Burnyeat to reflect contemporary standards of accuracy while retaining the style, imagery, and idiomatic speech for which the Levett translation is unparalleled. Bernard William’s concise introduction, aimed at undergraduate students, illuminates the powerful argument of this complex dialogue, and illustrates its connections to contemporary metaphysical and epistemological concerns.

In Telling Flesh, Vicki Kirby addresses a major theoretical issue at the intersection of the social sciences and feminist theory -- the separation of nature from culture. Kirby focuses particularly on postmodern approaches to corporeality, and explores how these approaches confine the body within questions about meaning and interpretation. Kirby explores the implications of this containment in the work of Jane Gallop, Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell, as well as in recent cyber-criticism. By analysing the inadvertent repetition of the nature/culture (...) division in this work, Kirby offers a powerful reassessment of dualism itself. (shrink)

This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment can be an extremely helpful ally for contemporary feminist theorists, critical race theorists, and disability studies scholars because his work suggests that the gender, race, and ability of bodies are not innate or fixed features of those bodies, much less corporeal indicators of physical, social, psychic, and even moral inferiority, but are themselves dynamic phenomena that have the potential to overturn accepted notions of normalcy, naturalness, and normativity. Taking seriously Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that (...) our bodies are the means by which we directly engage with the world, I suggest, encourages us to be attentive to how an individual’s or group’s gender, race, and bodily abilities differentially affect how their bodies are responded to by other bodies. The responses of others, in turn, directly influences the significance of an individual’s actions within that situation. This essay provides a critical examination of specific feminist philosophers, critical race scholars, and disability theorists who creatively utilize Merleau-Pontian insights to illustrate, and ultimately combat, the insidious ways in which sexism, racism, and “compulsory able-bodiedness”, impoverish the lived experience of both oppressors and the oppressed, largely by predetermining the meaning of their bodily interactions in accordance with institutionalized cultural expectations and norms. (shrink)

This article explores the development of a novel biomedical research organism, and its potential to remake the species and spaces of translational medicine. The humanized mouse is a complex experimental object in which mice, rendered immunodeficient through genetic alteration, are engrafted with human stem cells in the hope of reconstituting a human immune system for biomedical research and drug testing. These chimeric organisms have yet to garner the same commentary from social scientists as other human–animal hybrid forms. Yet, they are (...) rapidly being positioned as central to translational medicine in immunological research and pharmaceutical development. This article explores the complex relations between species and spaces they seek to enact. Humanizing mice simultaneously moves these animal forms towards the intimate geographies of corporeal equivalence with humans and the expansive geographies of translational research. These multiple trajectories are achieved by the way humanized mice function as both uncertain ‘epistemic things’ and as expansive ‘collaborative things’, articulating mouse genetics with other research, notably stem cell science. In the context of post-genomics, their indeterminacy is critical to their collaborative value; their expansive potential follows as much from their biological openness as from specific expectations. Yet, these new research organisms have both accumulative and disruptive capacities, for there are patterns of interference between these trajectories, remaking boundaries between experimental practices and clinical contexts. (shrink)

This book opens the door to the effects of intellectual, educational, and economic colonization of young children throughout the world. Using a postcolonial lens on current educational practices, the authors hope to lift those practices out of reproducing traditional power structures and push our thinking beyond the adult/child dichotomy into new possibilities for the lives that are created with children.

Large-scale sequencing tests, including whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing, are rapidly moving into clinical use. Sequencing is already being used clinically to identify therapeutic opportunities for cancer patients who have run out of conventional treatment options, to help diagnose children with puzzling neurodevelopmental conditions, and to clarify appropriate drug choices and dosing in individuals. To evaluate and support clinical applications of these technologies, the National Human Genome Research Institute and National Cancer Institute have funded studies on clinical and research sequencing under (...) the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research program as well as studies on return of results. Most of these studies use sequencing in real-world clinical settings and collect data on both the application of sequencing and the impact of receiving genomic findings on study participants. They are occurring in the context of controversy over how to obtain consent for exome and genome sequencing. (shrink)

Lately, several commentators have argued that there are significant differences between ancient and modern skepticism. For example, it has been argued that ancient skeptics disavow belief, whereas the moderns disavow only knowledge. It has also been argued that the scope of ancient skepticism is considerably less radical than that of modern skepticism: unlike the moderns, the ancients do not question whether they have bodies or whether there is an external world furnished with the sorts of objects we generally take there (...) to be. They do not suspend judgment as to whether, for example, honey exists, but only as to whether it is sweet. One explanation that has been given for the allegedly modest scope of ancient skepticism is its practical concern: ancient skepticism is a way of life, one that is supposed to secure the skeptic’s happiness. But, according to Myles Burnyeat, “[s]uch being his primary concern, he cannot doubt in a completely general way his ability to act in the world.” Modern skepticism, by contrast, is said to be “a strictly methodological affair,” with the result that, unlike ancient skeptics, modern ones can act in the face of radical skepticism. (shrink)

Lecturer in social foundations of education and women's studies, Victoria College, Australia.

Spellman argues that Aristotle developed his views about substance in response to Plato’s theory of forms. In particular, she argues that Aristotelian substances are as much like Platonic forms as possible, minus the latter’s separation. Whether ASs are like PFs depends, of course, not only on what one takes ASs to be like, but also on what one takes PFs to be like; accordingly, Spellman provides accounts of both. She argues that ASs are what she calls specimens of natural kinds. (...) A specimen of a natural kind is not Socrates, but Socrates-qua-human-being: Socrates insofar as he is a human being. She argues that Socrates, and Socrates-qua-human-being are numerically the same, but not identical. They are not identical, because not everything true of Socrates is true of Socrates-qua-human-being. Socrates, for example, is snub-nosed, but Socrates-qua-human-being is not; for the latter has all and only the properties contained in the definition of human being. (shrink)

This paper uses the figure of the inbred laboratory mouse to reflect upon the management and mobilization of biological difference in the contemporary biosciences. Working through the concept of shifting experimental systems, the paper seeks to connect practices concerned with standardization and control in contemporary research with the emergent and stochastic qualities of biological life. Specifically, it reviews the importance of historical narratives of standardization in experimental systems based around model organisms, before identifying a tension in contemporary accounts of the (...) reproduction and differentiation of inbred mouse strains within them. Firstly, narratives of new strain development, foregrounding personal biography and chance discovery, attest to the contingency and situatedness of apparently universal biotechnological production. Secondly, discoveries of unexpected animal litters challenge efforts to standardize mouse phenotypes and control the reproduction of murine strains over space. The co-existence of these two narratives draws attention to the importance of and interplay between both chance and control, determination and emergence, and the making and moving of experimental life in biomedical research. The reception or denial of such biological excess reflects the distribution of agencies and the emerging spatialities of the global infrastructures of biotechnological development, with implications for future relations between animal lives and human becomings in experimental practices. (shrink)

Lately, several commentators have argued that there are significant differences between ancient and modern skepticism. For example, it has been argued that ancient skeptics disavow belief, whereas the moderns disavow only knowledge. It has also been argued that the scope of ancient skepticism is considerably less radical than that of modern skepticism: unlike the moderns, the ancients do not question whether they have bodies or whether there is an external world furnished with the sorts of objects we generally take there (...) to be. They do not suspend judgment as to whether, for example, honey exists, but only as to whether it is sweet. One explanation that has been given for the allegedly modest scope of ancient skepticism is its practical concern: ancient skepticism is a way of life, one that is supposed to secure the skeptic’s happiness. But, according to Myles Burnyeat, “[s]uch being his primary concern, he cannot doubt in a completely general way his ability to act in the world.” Modern skepticism, by contrast, is said to be “a strictly methodological affair,” with the result that, unlike ancient skeptics, modern ones can act in the face of radical skepticism. (shrink)

This paper considers and criticizes david armstrong's defense in his book of an allegedly nonrelational version of realism, "universals and scientific realism". It also challenges his claim that plato, But not aristotle, Held a relational version of realism.

This essay reflects on some of the problems with characterizing collective epistemic resistance to oppression as “unthinking” or antithetical to reason by highlighting the epistemic labor involved in contending with and resisting epistemic oppression. To do so, I develop a structural notion of epistemic gaslighting in order to highlight structural features of contexts within which collective epistemic resistance to oppression occurs. I consider two different forms of epistemic echoing as modes of contending with and resisting epistemic oppression that are sometimes (...) mischaracterized as “unthinking” or “group think.” The first sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in withdrawing from conditions of structural epistemic gaslighting that is sometimes mischaracterized as a pernicious self-sequestering that is antithetical to reason. The second sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in actively confronting epistemic structures that gaslight what is sometimes mischaracterized as an “irrational group think.” In both cases, I highlight how epistemic acts that may appear unreasonable “within the gaslight” are, on the contrary, engaged in serious and important epistemic labor. (shrink)

The idea that teachers love children is often taken for granted in education. Rarely is the idea of love itself examined. Bringing together the work of educators, curriculum theorists and clinical psychoanalysts, and drawing upon autobiographical and narrative case studies, this groundbreaking collection examines the collision of love and learning, including the ways in which such intersections are provoked, repressed and denied. Contributors turn to psychoanalysis to explore questions of love in all of its varying permutations - ambivalence, sexuality, hatred, (...) desire, projection, and loss - in order to demonstrate how the social ramifications of such work is critical to the ways teachers are currently being prepared for life in the classroom. (shrink)

ACCORDING TO HUSSERL, THE REVOLUTION brought about by the new mathematical science of the seventeenth century was primarily an ontological one: a shift in the conception of the real. That Husserl opposes the new Galilean-Cartesian ontology is clear. This much is evident from the potent rhetoric of the Crisis declaiming Galileo as an "entdeckender und verdeckender Genius", forgetful of the lifeworld, failing to grasp what the mathematical-empirical method he brought to such a degree of perfection actually achieves. Indeed, even without (...) the ringing Crisis passages, one could already expect that Husserl, the phenomenologist, would oppose the Platonizing scientific realism of a Galileo or a Descartes. However, Husserl's critique of Galileo poses many puzzling questions, questions which are not directly addressed in the Crisis, and which can be answered only in terms of the broader position outlined by Husserl elsewhere. To whit: what is the more precise content of Husserl's objections against Galileo, and how are these justified? Further, if scientific realism is to be rejected on phenomenological grounds, does this imply that a phenomenological approach is necessarily instrumentalist? Finally, what solution does Husserl's thought offer to the realism/instrumentalism debate? (shrink)

IN SCIENCE, PERCEPTION, AND REALITY, Sellars marvels at the power of fashion in philosophy, which all too often offers us the spectacle of a stampede rather than a careful sifting of gold from dross. Sellars was worried that the flight from phenomenalism would lead to the familiar pendulum effect and so thwart his effort to “usher analytic philosophy out of its Humean and into its Kantian stage,” as Rorty has put it. Accordingly, Sellars’s critique of the Myth of the Given (...) aimed to show that what was really wrong with phenomenalism was nothing particular to the sense-data of the positivists but the framework of givenness itself. (shrink)

Though antiretroviral therapy is the standard of care for people living with HIV, its treatment limitations, burdens, stigma and costs lead to continued interest in HIV cure research. Early-phase cure trials, particularly those that include analytic treatment interruption, involve uncertain and potentially high risk, with minimal chance of clinical benefit. Some question whether such trials should be offered, given the risk/benefit imbalance, and whether those who choose to participate are acting rationally. We address these questions through a longitudinal decision-making study (...) nested in a Thai acute HIV research cohort. In-depth interviews revealed central themes about decisions to join. Participants felt they possessed an important identity as members of the acute cohort, viewing their bodies as uniquely suited to both testing and potentially benefiting from HIV cure approaches. While acknowledging risks of ATI, most perceived they were given an opportunity to interrupt treatment, to test their own bodies and increase normalcy in a safe, highly monitored circumstance. They were motivated by potential benefits to themselves, the investigators and larger acute cohort, and others with HIV. They believed their own trial experiences and being able to give back to the community were sufficient to offset participation risks. These decisions were driven by the specific circumstances experienced by our participants. Judging risk/benefit ratios without appreciating these lived experiences can lead to false determinations of irrational decision- making. While this does not minimise vital oversight considerations about risk reduction and protection from harm, it argues for inclusion of a more participant-centered approach. (shrink)

How are we to think and act constructively in the face of today’s environmental and political catastrophes? Gail Stenstad finds inspiring answers in the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Rather than simply describing or explaining Heidegger’s transformative way of thinking, Stenstad’s writing enacts it, bringing new insight into contemporary environmental, political, and personal issues. Readers come to understand some of Heidegger’s most challenging concepts through experiencing them. This is a truly creative scholarly work that invites all readers to (...) carry Heidegger’s transformative thinking into their own areas of deep concern. (shrink)

In most of the Socratic dialogues, Socrates professes to inquire into some virtue. At the same time, he professes not to know what the virtue in question is. How, then, can he inquire into it? Doesn't he need some knowledge to guide his inquiry? Socrates' disclaimer of knowledge seems to preclude Socratic inquiry. This difficulty must confront any reader of the Socratic dialogues; but one searches them in vain for any explicit statement of the problem or for any explicit solution (...) to it. The Meno, by contrast, both raises it explicitly and proposes a solution. (shrink)

This article reviews the history of the debate over use of biospecimens in research, the legal and ethical arguments that have been presented both in support of and in opposition to such use, court cases and judicial opinions involving disputes between specimen contributors, researchers, and institutions, and public attitudes regarding the use of biospecimens in research. The paper argues that proposed changes to the Common Rule are inadequate to resolve the legal and ethical concerns that have been raised with respect (...) to the use of biospecimens. It argues that there is a need to distinguish between the dual roles — subject and donor — played by contributors of biospecimens. (shrink)