We commend the authors for their comprehensive discussion on consent and episiotomies.1 They correctly observe that informed consent for all proposed interventions in maternity care is always necessary. The claim that consent for maternity health services does not always have to be fully informed or explicit, however, is erroneous. We are especially concerned with, and surprised by, the endorsement of ‘opt-out consent’. ‘Opt-out consent’ (a.k.a. substitute decision making) is already standard practice in maternity healthcare, with obstetric violence a normalised response (...) to conclusive refusals or requests for explanations. Informed consent is based on the fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy and integrity, which healthcare providers are obliged to respect. Healthcare structured around human rights violations is not care. It is cruel and inhumane treatment—a violation of yet another fundamental human right—and a reflection of poor-quality care. To be valid, consent must always be informed, specific, timely, freely given and reversible. The provider must provide information specific to each and every proposed intervention in a timely manner. The consumer has the right to consider, freely accept or refuse before providers can act. They can also change their mind at any time. Provider attempts to substitute consumer decision-making rights constitute assault and battery. Whether the infraction was major or minor is of no consequence to human rights law. National courts create artificial …. (shrink)

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt 's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt 's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive (...) racial critique of Arendt 's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt 's treatment of the Black experience in the United States", as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt 's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article develops an Arendtian conception of resentment and shows that resentment as a response to injustice is in fact only possible within a community of persons engaged in moral and recognitive relations. While Arendt is better known for her work on forgiveness—characterized as a creative rather than vindictive response to injury—this article suggests that Arendt provides a unique way of thinking about resentment as essentially a response to another human's subjectivity. But when injury is massive, so beyond the (...) pale that the possibility of face-to-face human interaction is annihilated, the space for resentment is thereby destroyed. Ironically, while the absence of resentment might at first seem to be an unproblematically good thing, Arendt shows us that the loss of resentment actually signals the loss of the properly human realm. (shrink)

Joel Katzav’s article describes and explains the realist perspectivist views of Grace de Laguna, showing the distinctiveness of her positions in a number of fields. My focus will be on her views of the self and persons, and how they are embedded in their communities, experience emotions, and develop morality. As Katzav outlines, de Laguna’s position can be characterized as a form of speculative philosophy that develops an ontology of modes of being. Katzav sees speculative philosophy and naturalism intertwining (...) in her work as de Laguna extends and criticizes science (the speculative aspect) as well as drawing on it (the naturalistic aspect). De Laguna’s project is to create a philosophical system that can be communicated to others. This system, according to Katzav, uses imagination, metaphor, and paradoxical formulations, such as ‘qualitative uniqueness’ to describe individuality, in a way that is common in continental philosophy. My commentary examines de Laguna’s views as they are set out by Katzav and suggests how his article opens up lines of philosophical inquiry concerning the self, community and morality. De Laguna’s views on these issues can also usefully be compared to those of Hannah Arendt to see how her articulation of these themes intersects with and differs from Arendt’s ideas. (shrink)

Arendt’s concept of the social is at the heart of her interventions in racial politics in the United States. Readers of Arendt often focus on whether her distinction is too rigid to accommodate the reality of US racial politics, or whether it can be altered to be more capacious. The central issue here is that of closing the gap between conceptual abstraction and concrete reality. However, by extending our archive regarding the social and political beyond Arendt—to work in subaltern studies (...) and the thought of Arendt’s radical Black contemporaries—I argue that we can craft a concept of the social as a counterinsurgent logic by which political acts are reduced to social disorder, neutralizing the political edge and novelty of revolt. The distinction between the social and political is therefore useful not to describe or categorize kinds of revolts or struggles but to critically examine the way they are interpretatively and concretely transformed from ‘political’ to ‘social’ struggles. Situating Arendt among contemporary revolutionaries such as James and Grace Lee Boggs, I argue that they mobilized such a distinction, asking not what rebellions were but what might be made of them. (shrink)

Peut-on mieux caractériser autrement Hannah Arendt que par la passion de comprendre, par cette large appétence à saisir l'inédit du monde dans toute sa complexité? Introduite en France depuis une vingtaine d'années seulement, la philosophe, qui a toujours entretenu un rapport tumultueux avec la philosophie, y est considérée aujourd'hui comme un auteur majeur grâce à des ouvrages comme Les Origines du totalitarisme, La Crise de la culture ou La Condition de l'homme moderne. On ne cesse de la citer, de (...) la lire ou de s'y référer, tant dans le domaine philosophique que dans les sciences politiques ou sociales. Mais comment connaître davantage son itinéraire Intellectuel et l'articulation d'une pensée forte, qui touche à des domaines aussi divers? Comment percevoir les intuitions clés d'Hannah Arendt au-delà d'une seule approche événementielle? Philosophe de formation, elle aussi, Martine Leibovici invite ici à mieux découvrir ou redécouvrir la cohérence et l'originalité d'une réflexion qui marque en profondeur le XXe siècle. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt fut tout d'abord l'élève, puis la muse et l'amie de Martin Heidegger avant de devenir la collègue et la critique sévère de son ancien maître. A la différence de Heidegger qui, pour un laps de temps plutôt bref, adhéra au parti nazi lorsqu'il fut élu recteur de l'université de Fribourg en 1933, Hannah Arendt fut quant à elle contrainte de se réfugier aux Etats-Unis à cause de ses origines juives. Pendant une vingtaine d'années, toute relation entre (...) le maître et son élève fut interrompue. En 1950, Hannah Arendt rentra en Europe et, contre toute attente, voulut revoir son ami d'autrefois. C'est à cette époque que reprit leur relation épistolaire. Cet ouvrage reporte le lecteur au tout début de leur amitié retrouvée : à travers un jeu énigmatique d'allusions et de renvois, Heidegger évoque, dans une longue lettre, les épisodes majeurs de sa vie politique, académique et de penseur, l'amour pour son élève et des fragments d'événements oubliés dans le passé et retrouvés grâce à la puissance de l'imagination et de la mémoire. (shrink)

What do the terms sex and gender identity, or gender history, mean in a medical context? When does it matter to a healthcare professional whether a patient has male or female reproductive biology?...

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the major intellectual positions in the philosophical debate on Islamic law that is occurring in contemporary Iran.

A personal narrative prefaces this engaging volume adapted from the author’s doctoral work. stef m. shuster [sic] immediately informs the reader the terrain explored in Trans Medicine was not embar...

This paper draws from the recent literature on psychological richness of life, conceptualized as a third dimension of a good life which would be particularly desirable when happiness or meaning in life cannot be satisfactory attained, to investigate whether recovering from a COVID infection could be associated with PRL. We hypothesize that people who have recovered from being infected by the virus rate their PRL higher than those who have not been infected. Two cross-sectional studies support the hypothesis, and also (...) found that people who recovered from a COVID infection were less prone to want to delete the pandemic time period from their life line and reported lower levels of death anxiety. The findings have implications for coping both on a societal and individual level, by changing perspectives and valuing the richness of positive as well as negative experiences, as well as counteracting repetitiveness and tedium and stimulating new experiences and reflection. The findings also have implications for future research on well-being, which could be informed by expanding the perspective from living well to a life well-lived, and future research on PRL and coping in terms of investigating causalities and interaction effects. (shrink)

Ethical justification for clinical research may invoke equipoise, an element of scientific uncertainty regarding the superior choice if presented with different therapeutic options. Given a relativ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues eds. by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup AhnAlex MikulichAsian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues Edited by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn WACO, TX: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. 355 PP. $44.95This volume opens new horizons in Christian ethics. Editors Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn suggest two ways of conceptualizing Asian American Christian ethics. They describe the (...) first as "agency- or advocacy-centered" and the second as "bringing Western and Asian philosophical, theological, and cultural traditions together in critical dialogue and for selective retrieval for Asian American Christian ethics" (11). While the contributors to this book rightfully develop agency and advocacy-centered approaches within complex histories of colonialism and oppression, they also emulate Michael Walzer's "connected critic" who is not naïvely or uncritically "neutral" or dispassionate. The contributors appropriately use co-critical approaches that make possible "new and creative 'traditioning'" that does not uncritically reinscribe some "purer" Asian past or "undefiled by Western contact" (15).Nearly every chapter unpacks the deeply problematic term "Asian American" that was originally employed by activists who sought a new identity as "self-determining subjects rather than as 'oriental objects' in the United States" (4). But the term obfuscates multiple diversities within richly divergent national, geographical, colonial, and cultural histories and traditions.Hoon Choi explores the complexity of gender and sexual identities through a richly textured intersectional approach, examines how these identities become intertwined in double and triple binds, and reinterprets Christ as the fullness of humanity against Western hegemony and Eastern sexism. Choi's vibrant reinterpretation of Jesus Christ is complemented by a wise and compassionate pastoral approach.Sharon M. Tan calls for a reinterpretation both of Christian and Asian traditions of marriage, family, and parenting that will "entail a bicultural approach to life" and "creative new ways of retelling their stories and imagining their futures" (42). Tan underscores the difficulty of describing a Pan-Asian approach to marriage, family, and parenting by exploring the complexities of "Tiger Mothers," multigenerational households, the "special case of refugees," transnational families, and biculturality and adaptation.Hannah Ka deconstructs a wide range of Christian approaches to environmental ethics and reinterprets Sallie McFague's Body of God ecological theology through a distinctive Asian American approach. Drawing on beautiful and challenging stories from her own family as well as Confucian and Taoist [End Page 215] thought, Ka suggests a reinterpretation both of existential and functional indebtedness between human beings and all living things. She contends that "humans cannot survive even a day without … all other inorganic and organic existents on earth, while [other existents] can flourish without humans. The life of the human species is not merely interdependent with, but utterly indebted to, all the other existents on earth, rendering humans more vulnerable than others" (221).These are only a few examples of how this volume exemplifies clear, cogent, and constructive Christian ethics. Chapters by Ilsup Ahn ("Virtue Ethics"), Keun-Joo Christine Pae ("Peace and War"), Christina A. Astorga ("Wealth and Prosperity"), Ki Joo (KC) Choi ("Racial Identity and Solidarity"), SueJeanne Koh ("Health Care"), Hak Joon Lee ("Immigration"), Irene Oh ("Education and Labor"), and Jonathan Tran ("Cosmetic Surgery") all expand the horizons of contemporary ethics. I highly recommend this text for scholars to engage new horizons of Christian ethics and to use for a wide variety of upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Christian ethics as well as constructive and pastoral theology.Alex MikulichLoyola University New OrleansCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challenge is (...) to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual. Some lyrics give voice to a group whose experience is attended to in the work. This may be done through a posited fictional speaker, but the ontology of the speaker is shown to be less important. Attending to a group whose concerns are voiced allows us to explain how poems can manage to address our-worldly concerns even when lacking actual persons whose expressions we encounter in the poems. (shrink)

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat of global (...) destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice ...

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary (...) view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one’s rational character, whether or not those activities are under one’s voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle. (shrink)

The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

This new translation is an extremely welcome addition to the continuing Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works. English-speaking readers of the third Critique have long been hampered by the lack of an adequate translation of this important and difficult work. James Creed Meredith’s much-reprinted translation has charm and elegance, but it is often too loose to be useful for scholarly purposes. Moreover it does not include the first version of Kant’s introduction, the so-called “First Introduction,” which is now recognized as indispensable (...) for an understanding of the work. Werner Pluhar’s more recent translation, which does include the First Introduction, is highly accurate when it confines itself to rendering Kant’s German. However, it is often more of a reconstruction than a translation, containing so many interpretative interpolations that it is often difficult to separate out Kant’s original text from the translator’s contributions. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews have provided a translation that compares to or exceeds Pluhar’s in its literal approach to the German, but that confines all interpretative material to footnotes and endnotes, so that the text itself, with all its unclarities and ambiguities, lies open to view. In addition, Guyer, as editor of the volume, has provided a great deal of valuable supplementary material. This includes an introduction with an outline of the work and details of the history of its composition and publication, and a wealth of endnotes offering clarifications of the text, background information, and, most strikingly, many references to related passages in Kant’s voluminous writings, particularly in connection with Kant’s earlier writings related to aesthetics. The edition also records differences among the first three editions of the work, and—of particular interest—erasures from and additions to Kant’s manuscript of the First Introduction. Although the introduction and endnotes reflect interpretative views that are sometimes disputable, this supplementary material makes the present edition into a valuable resource even for those able to read the text in German. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

As Christian List (2021) has recently argued, the increasing arrival of powerful AI systems that operate autonomously in high-stakes contexts creates a need for “future-proofing” our regulatory frameworks, i.e., for reassessing them in the face of these developments. One core part of our regulatory frameworks that dominates our everyday moral interactions is blame. Therefore, “future-proofing” our extant regulatory frameworks in the face of the increasing arrival of powerful AI systems requires, among others things, that we ask whether it makes sense (...) to extend our blaming practices to these systems. In the paper, we argue for the admittedly surprising thesis that this question should be answered in the affirmative: contrary to what one might initially think, it can make a lot of sense to blame AI systems, since, as we furthermore argue, many of the important functions that are fulfilled by blaming humans can also be served by blaming AI systems. The paper concludes that this result gives us a good pro tanto reason to extend our blame practices to AI systems. (shrink)

Debates about empathy's role in morality are notoriously complex. On the one hand, proponents of empathy argue that it plays a crucial role in the process of making moral judgments, moral motivation, moral development, and the cultivation of meaningful personal relationships. On the other hand, critics of empathy warn that it is especially susceptible to a number of morally troubling biases and motivational shortcomings. Yet there is little consensus about what empathy is or what it might be good for from (...) a moral point of view. As a result, critics and proponents of empathy alike often wind up talking past each other and debates about empathy's role in morality reach an impasse. This paper proposes a typology of empathy's affective, cognitive, and motivational dimensions and the different forms that empathy can take depending on the nature and degree of prominence of these. It argues that different forms of empathy are well equipped to handle some moral tasks as well as ill‐equipped to handle others. Its aim in doing so is to clarify an otherwise conceptually thorny set of debates and to amplify future research on empathy and its role in the moral life. (shrink)

Newcomers and more experienced feminist theorists will welcome this even-handed survey of the care/justice debate within feminist ethics. Grace Clement clarifies the key terms, examines the arguments and assumptions of all sides to the debate, and explores the broader implications for both practical and applied ethics. Readers will appreciate her generous treatment of the feminine, feminist, and justice-based perspectives that have dominated the debate.Clement also goes well beyond description and criticism, advancing the discussion through the incorporation of a broad (...) range of insights into a new integration of the values of care and justice. Care, Autonomy, and Justice marks a major step forward in our understanding of feminist ethics. It is both direct and helpful enough to work as an introduction for students and insightful and original enough to make it necessary reading for scholars. (shrink)

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception (...) and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a contradiction is true, everything (...) is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)

Amodal completion is the representation of occluded parts of perceived objects. We argue for the following three claims: First, at least some amodal completion-involved experiences can ground knowledge about the occluded portions of perceived objects. Second, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not sensitive, that is, it is not the case that in the nearest worlds in which the relevant claim is false, that claim is not believed true. Third, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge (...) are not safe, that is, it is not the case that in all or nearly all near worlds where the relevant claim is believed true, that claim is in fact true. Thus, certain instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge refute both the view that knowledge is necessarily sensitive and the view that knowledge is necessarily safe. (shrink)

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...) empathy gaps arise when one projects one’s own current state into a simulation about another. Second, we argue that this process does not typically confer knowledge, even when the predictions it produces happen to be accurate. Third, we suggest that these results can be used to develop a challenge for L.A. Paul's view that authentic action sometimes requires subjective knowledge of one’s own values and how these values relate to relevant outcomes. We then sketch an alternative view of the epistemic grounds of authenticity, one on which authenticity requires a kind of understanding. The relevant form of understanding can be achieved by subjective knowledge but can also be achieved elsewise, such as through testimony from a close friend about what one values. (shrink)

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, _The Human Condition_ is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences (...) of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, _The Human Condition_ is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely. Hannah Arendt was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her _Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy_ and _Love and Saint Augustine_ are also published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

This article presents a model for regulating cognitive enhancement devices. Recently, it has become very easy for individuals to purchase devices which directly modulate brain function. For example, transcranial direct current stimulators are increasingly being produced and marketed online as devices for cognitive enhancement. Despite posing risks in a similar way to medical devices, devices that do not make any therapeutic claims do not have to meet anything more than basic product safety standards. We present the case for extending existing (...) medical device legislation to cover CEDs. Medical devices and CEDs operate by the same or similar mechanisms and pose the same or similar risks. This fact coupled with the arbitrariness of the line between treatment and enhancement count in favour of regulating these devices in the same way. In arguing for this regulatory model, the paper highlights potential challenges to its implementation, and suggests solutions. (shrink)

Critics of empathy—the capacity to share the mental lives of others—have charged that empathy is intrinsically biased. It occurs between no more than two people, and its key function is arguably to coordinate and align feelings, thoughts, and responses between those who are often already in close personal relationships. Because of this, critics claim that empathy is morally unnecessary at best and morally harmful at worst. This paper argues, however, that it is precisely because of its ability to connect people (...) by coordinating and aligning their feelings, thoughts, and responses, that empathy is especially well suited to perform one particular moral task that has been largely overlooked in moral philosophical discussions. That is, helping people, including those who are antagonistically opposed on matters of moral, social, and political importance—what I call antagonistic moral opponents—find common ground: a set of shared beliefs, attitudes, values, or experiences that lays the requisite ground for even minimally positive relationships. Doing so can contribute to a number of morally, practically, and epistemically important outcomes, including resolving fraught disagreements, mitigating antagonism, promoting cooperation, learning from differences, and even forging positive relationships of various sorts. Contra critics, I therefore maintain that empathy is important for at least one area of the moral life. (shrink)

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

In this article, I aim to do two things: first, introduce Juche, the official philosophy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”), and second, defend Juche against Alzo David-West’s allegation that it is a nonsensical philosophy. I organize David-West’s complaints into two major strands—that Juche’s axiom is too vague to be of philosophical use and that Juche makes too stark a distinction between human vs. everything else—and offer responses to both strands. My goal isn’t to defend the regime, (...) but to present its ideology in the most charitable way so its merits and demerits can be seen more clearly in future engagements. (shrink)

In a 2020 article in Analysis, Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame fails. To object to this account, Lippert-Rasmussen considers the contrary of hypocrisy: hypercrisy. In this article, I show that if hypercrisy is a problem for the moral equality account, it is also a problem for Lippert-Rasmussen’s own account of why hypocrites lack standing to blame. I then reflect on the hypocrite’s and hypercrite’s standing to self-blame, which reveals that the (...) challenge hypercrisy poses for accounts of standing is different from the challenge Lippert-Rasmussen articulates. (shrink)

Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

I criticize recent nonconceptualist readings of Kant’s account of perception on the grounds that the strategy of the Deduction requires that understanding be involved in the synthesis of imagination responsible for the intentionality of perceptual experience. I offer an interpretation of the role of understanding in perceptual experience as the consciousness of normativity in the association of one’s representations. This leads to a reading of Kant which is conceptualist, but in a way which accommodates considerations favoring nonconceptualism, in particular the (...) primitive character of perceptual experience relative to thought and judgment. (shrink)

In a famous passage from the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein describes a pupil who has been learning to write out various sequences of numbers in response to orders such as “+1” and “+2”. He has shown himself competent for numbers up to 1000, but when we have him continue the “+2” sequence beyond 1000, he writes the numerals 1004, 1008, 1012. As Wittgenstein describes the case: We say to him, “Look what you’re doing!” — He doesn’t understand us. We say “You (...) should have added two; look how you began the series!” — He answers: “Yes! Isn’t it right? I thought that’s how I should [sollen] do it. — Or suppose he were to say, pointing to the series, “But I went on in the same way!”1The passage continues:— It would now be no use to us to say “But don’t you see…?” — and repeat for him the old explanations and examples. — In such a case, we might perhaps say: this person naturally understands our order, once given our explanations, as we would understand the order “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on.”. (shrink)

We use game theoretic models to take an in-depth look at the dynamics of discrimination and academic collaboration. We find that in collaboration networks, small minority groups may be more likely to end up being discriminated against while collaborating. We also find that discrimination can lead members of different social groups to mostly collaborate with in-group members, decreasing the effective diversity of the social network. Drawing on previous work, we discuss how decreases in the diversity of scientific collaborations might negatively (...) affect the progress of epistemic communities. (shrink)

The view that exertion of effort determines praiseworthiness for an achievement is implicit in ‘no pain, no praise’-style objections to biomedical enhancement. On such views, if enhancements were t...