For 170 years, Harriet Taylor Mill has been presented as a footnote in John Stuart Mill’s life. This volume gives her a separate voice. Readers may assess for themselves the importance and influence of her ideas on "women’s" issues such as marriage and divorce, education, domestic violence, and suffrage. And they will note the overlap of her ideas on ethics, religion, arts, and socialism, written in the 1830s, with her more famous husband’s works, published 25 years later.

The question, "Why has Harriet Taylor Mill appeared in the history of philosophy as she has?" has several answers. The answers intertwine the personality and politics of Harriet, the sexism of those who wrote of her (which was a reflection of the overall status of women during the period the commentator wrote), misunderstandings of the means and meaning of her collaboration with John Stuart Mill, and the disturbing challenge of her questioning.

The question, “Why has Harriet Taylor MM appeared in the history of philosophy as she has?” has several answers. The answers intertwine the personality and polities of Harriet, the sexism of those who wrote of her, misunderstandings of the means and meaning of her collaboration with John Stuart Mill, and the disturbing challenge of her questioning.

On Liberty celebrates a collaborative theory of knowing exemplified in the way Harriet and John worked together. They believed fervently in the power of individuals struggling together to grasp the truth – including both the “idealistic” belief that there is truth as opposed to mere subjective opinion, and a deep scepticism about the beliefs accepted by the majority.

On Liberty celebrates a collaborative theory of knowing exemplified in the way Harriet and John worked together. They believed fervently in the power of individuals struggling together to grasp the truth – including both the “idealistic” belief that there is truth as opposed to mere subjective opinion, and a deep scepticism about the beliefs accepted by the majority.

This essay examines Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) in light of new archival findings on the medical practices of Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the narrative). While critics have sharply defined the feminist politics of Jacobs’s sexual victimization and resistance, they have overlooked her medical experience in slavery and her participation in reform after escape. I argue that Jacobs uses the rhetoric of a woman-led health reform movement underway during (...) the 1850s to persuade her readers to end slavery. This essay reconstructs both contexts, revealing that Jacobs links enslaved women’s physical and sexual vulnerability with her female readers’ fears of male doctors’ threats to modesty and of their standard bleed-and-purge treatments. Jacobs illustrates that slavery damages women’s health as much as heroic medicine, and thus merits the political activism of her readers. Specifically, Jacobs dramatizes her conflicts with the rapacious physician-master at moments that are crucial to women’s health: marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Ultimately, this essay advances a new understanding of the role of health reform in social change: it galvanized other movements such as women’s rights and abolition, particularly around issues of bodily autonomy for women and African Americans. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

According to the Argument for Autonomous Mental Disorder, mental disorder can occur in the absence of brain disorder, just as software problems can occur in the absence of hardware problems in a computer. This article argues that the AAMD is unsound. I begin by introducing the “natural dysfunction analysis” of disorder, before outlining the AAMD. I then analyze the necessary conditions for realizer autonomous dysfunction. Building on this, I show that software functions disassociate from hardware functions in a way that (...) mental functions do not disassociate from brain functions. It follows that mental disorders are brain disorders necessarily. (shrink)

Climate science denial is serious. It facilitates political procrastination and brings us ever closer to a world beset by growing food insecurity, heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and extensive los...

In traditional epistemology, psychological self-knowledge is taken to be the paradigm of privleged a priori knowledge. According to an influential incompatibilist line of thought, traditional epistemic features attributed to psychological self-knowledge are supposed to be inconsistent with content externalism. In this paper, I examine one prominent compatibilist response by an advocate of content externalism, i.e., Fred Dretske's answer tot he incompatibilist argument, based on the model of displaced perceptual knowledge. I discuss the costs and benefits of his answer.

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is eroding at a time when we are racing to produce a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19. This medical right that we have long taken for granted was first sacrificed on the altar of military expediency in 1990 when the Department of Defense asked for and received from the FDA a waiver that permitted it to force an experimental anthrax vaccine on (...) the ranks of ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf. Since then, the military has pressed ahead to impose nonconsensual testing of the blood substitute PolyHeme in civilian urbanities, quietly enrolling more than 20,000 non-consenting subjects since 2005. Most Americans think that their right to give or withhold consent is protected by law, but the passing in 1996 of modifications to the Code of Federal Regulations, such as statute CFR 21 50.24, now permit investigators to conduct research with trauma victims without their consent or event their knowledge. More than a dozen studies since have used the 1996 loophole to recruit large numbers of subjects without their knowledge. The erosion of consent is the result of a U.S. medical-research system that has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted. (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently advanced a Generalised Selected Effects Theory of biological proper function. According to Garson, his theory spells trouble for the Dysfunction Account of Disorder. This paper argues that Garson’s critique of the Dysfunction Account from the Generalised Theory fails, and that we should reject the Generalised Theory outright. I first show that the Generalised Theory does not, as Garson asserts, imply that neurally selected disorders are not dysfunctional. Rather, it implies that they are both functional and dysfunctional. (...) I argue on this basis that the Generalised Theory yields conflicting functional norms, and we that should reject it outright on these grounds. (shrink)

The triumph was the most prestigious accolade a politician and general could receive in republican Rome. After a brief review of the role played by the triumph in republican political culture, this article analyzes the severe limits Augustus placed on triumphal parades after 19 BC, which then became very rare celebrations. It is argued that Augustus aimed at and almost succeeded in eliminating traditional triumphal celebrations completely during his lifetime, by using a combination of refusing them for himself and his (...) relatives and of rewarding his legates who fought under his auspices with ornamenta triumphalia and an honorific statue in the Forum of Augustus. Subsequently, the elimination of the triumph would have been one natural result of the limit placed on further imperial expansion recommended by Augustus in his will, a policy his successors chose not to follow. Tiberius, however, was unwilling to conform to this new order and retired from public life to Rhodes the year after celebrating a triumph in 7 BC, the first such celebration since 19 BC. Tiberius' two triumphs and the senate's repeated offers of further triumphs to Augustus himself represented a different vision of the role triumphal celebration should take in a restored res publica and an ongoing challenge to the princeps. (shrink)

This paper asks when a natural disease kind is truly 'reactive' and when it is merely associated with a corresponding social kind. I begin with a permissive account of real kinds and their structure, distinguishing natural kinds, indifferent kinds and reactive kinds as varieties of real kind characterised by super-explanatory properties. I then situate disease kinds within this framework, arguing that many disease kinds prima facie are both natural and reactive. I proceed to distinguish ‘simple dependence’, ‘secondary dependence’ and ‘essential (...) dependence’ between a natural kind and its classification, and argue that a natural kind is only really reactive, in an important sense, under conditions of essential dependence. On this basis, I offer a principled hypothesis for why psychiatric kinds tend to be more metaphysically unstable than paradigm somatic disease kinds. (shrink)

This article explores the co-existence of, and relationship between, alternative education in the form of home education and mainstream schooling. Home education is conceptually subordinate to schooling, relying on schooling for its status as alternative, but also being tied to schooling through the dominant discourse that forms our understandings of education. Practitioners and other defenders frequently justify home education by running an implicit or explicit comparison with school; a comparison which expresses the desire to do ‘better’ than school whilst simultaneously (...) encompassing the desire to do things differently. These twin aims, however, are not easy to reconcile, meaning that the challenge to schooling and the submission to norms and beliefs that underlie schooling are frequently inseparable. This article explores the trajectories of ‘better than’ and ‘different from’ school as representing ideas of utopia and heterotopia respectively. In particular I consider Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a means of approaching the relationship between school and other forms of education. Whilst it will be argued that, according to Derrida's ideas of discursive deconstruction, alternative education has to be expressed through the dominant educational discourse, it will also be suggested that employing the idea of the heterotopia is a strategy which can help us explore the alternative in education. (shrink)

Background Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR. Aim To assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE (...) in GGR. Method A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus. Study findings Thirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR. Conclusion GGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research. (shrink)

All authors in this symposium use a food regime perspective to ask questions about the present which—as these articles demonstrate—have several possible answers. History suggests a time perspective of 25–40 year cycles so far—a food regime 1870–1914, an experimental and chaotic era 1914–1947, and a food regime 1947–1973. It has been less than 40 years since 1973, when food regime analysts agree that a contested and experimental period began. There is no consensus on whether it has already ended or how (...) it might issue into a new food regime. The conversation is more fruitful than the conclusions. I intend these comments as an invitation to join in. (shrink)

During the past four decades the governance of environmental problems – the definition of issues and their political and practical resolution – has evolved to include a wider range of stakeholders in more extensive open discussions. In the introduction to this issue of Environmental Values on ‘Environment, Policy and Participation’, we outline some features of these recent developments in participatory environmental governance, indicate some key questions that arise, and give an overview of the collection of papers in this special issue.

Foucault’s theories of power, resistance, and agency provide useful tools of analysis to support a stronger understanding of the individual experiences of survivors of sexual violence in conflict situations, as many feminist accounts have tended to focus analysis at the macro-level. This paper will outline key Foucauldian concepts, before discussing how Foucauldian and feminist theories can be complementary and indeed useful tools in understanding sexual violence. This paper will then apply a Foucauldian-Feminist framework to better understand patterns of sexual violence (...) in conflict, and to propose modes of resistance for survivors of sexual violence. (shrink)

In the last two decades, prizes in the sciences have proliferated and, in particular, rich prizes with large honoraria. These developments raise several questions: Why have rich prizes proliferated? Have they greatly changed the reward system of science? What effects will such prizes have on scientists and on science? The proliferation of such prizes derives from marked limitations on the numbers and types of scientists eligible for Nobel prizes and consequent increases in the number of uncrowned laureate-equivalents. These would-be surrogates (...) for Nobel prizes extend the reward system of science in its upper reaches but this change is not fundamental. The spread of rich prizes to new fields provides added incentives to potential winners, which has its own disutilities; it reinforces competitiveness, concern for priority and attendant secrecy, all this amplifying ambivalence toward the reward system in science. There may also be modest positive effects of such new awards in the form of heightened popular esteem for science and interest in it. (shrink)

This reflection item provides an edited account of human rights lawyer Harriet Wistrich’s conversation with Manvir Grewal, Visiting Lecturer and Ph.D. student, and Harriet Samuels, Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. It summarises the exchange which focused on Harriet Wistrich’s career trajectory and the many public interest law cases that she has brought on behalf her clients, mainly women, in both domestic and international forums. It also includes a condensed version of the question and answer (...) session with the audience. Questions included the broader issues around domestic violence, rape, coercive control, sex work and the nature of feminism. (shrink)

The archive can take many forms but all are marked by a connective sequence: archive, memory, the past, narrative. The author explores this sequence through an account of her engagement with four different types of archive, constructing a phenomenology of the archive which highlights the promises and seductions offered to the researcher. Postmodern questioning may throw in doubt older conceptions, whereby the archive is used to legitimate knowledge claims about the past of a nomological nature. However, in a context where (...) intellectuals become interpreters rather than legislators, the role of the archive as repository of inert meanings is strengthened rather than weakened; using the archive helps us to understand the dialectical nature of the relationship between past and present and our own positioning within this. (shrink)

This paper seeks to redress the marginalization of Adorno in environmental philosophical discourse. Kate Soper describes two opposing ways of conceiving nature. There is the redemptive “nature-endorsing” paradigm that lays claim to the intrinsic value or “otherness” of nature. Conversely, the “nature-sceptical” approach denies that we can access originary, untouched nature. This paper argues that the significance of Adorno’s treatment of natural beauty lies in how he brings these approaches together. In writings that resonate with the dual connotations of Sebald’s (...) phrase “after nature”, Adorno both affirms the skeptical point that we cannot transcend a human history alienated from nature as well as retaining redemptive hope wherein art “after” nature seeks creative possibilities from out of the very ruins of history marked by nature’s destruction. (shrink)

This paper presents four arguments in favour of respecting Ulysses Contracts in the case of individuals who suffer with severe chronic episodic mental illnesses, and who have experienced spiralling and relapse before. First, competence comes in degrees. As such, even if a person meets the usual standard for competence at the point when they wish to refuse treatment, they may still be less competent than they were when they signed the Ulysses Contract. As such, even if competent at time 1 (...) and time 2, there can still be a disparity between the levels of competence at each time. Second, Ulysses Contracts are important to protect people’s most meaningful concerns. Third, on the approach defended, the restrictions to people’s liberty would be temporary, and would be consistent with soft paternalism, rather than hard paternalism: the contracts would be designed in such a way that individuals would be free to change their minds, and to change or cancel their Ulysses Contracts later. Finally, even if one rejects the equivalence thesis, this is still consistent with the claim that, in particular cases, it can be as wrong to allow a harm as to do a harm. Nevertheless, controversies remain. This paper also highlights several safeguards to minimise risks. Ultimately, we argue that people who are vulnerable to spiralling deserve a way to protect their autonomy as far as possible, using Ulysses Contracts when necessary. (shrink)

Defining Mental Disorder: Jerome Wakefield and His Critics, edited by Denis Forest and Luc Faucher, is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of medicine whose work is informed by that of Jerome Wakefield, or the disease debate in general. If you are anything like me, this book will open the door to a new depth of understanding of the harmful dysfunction analysis (HDA) and its methodical underpinnings, and an enriched appreciation of what is at stake in defining medical (...) disorder. To those confident that they understand Wakefield’s view and the surrounding debate, thinking perhaps that they do not need a refresher, I would say: perhaps you do not understand it as well as you think. Defining Mental Disorder provides much more than an overview of previously well-trodden ground. The chapters themselves, and Wakefield’s own detailed responses, help to elucidate a number of methodological nuances and peculiarities that have rarely been covered in such depth before. I was startled to learn how philosophically complex Wakefield’s position actually is, and how shallow my own understanding of it has been. It emerges as a far more nuanced and sophisticated account than I had given it credit for, and one that deserves serious reevaluation. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

To mark International Women’s Day the Research Group for Law, Gender and Sexuality at Westminster Law School held an evening conversation on 10 March 2016 on Women and Asylum. Speakers working in different areas of the asylum system shared their insights and experiences with an audience of staff, students, activists and other visitors. Harriet Samuels chaired the conversation and the speakers were Princess Chine Onyeukwu, Debora Singer, Priya Solanki and Zoe Harper. This article is an edited extract from the (...) transcript of the presentations and wide-ranging discussion, including the question and answer session. The discussion focused on the different steps in the refugee determination process and considered, in particular, the gendering of credibility and how women’s perceived lack of credibility has a significant impact on determinations and processes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper may be found in the following quotation. “Whenever an argument can be made to lead to a descending infinitude of natural numbers the hypothesis upon which the argument rests becomes untenable. This method of proof is called the method of infinite descent;.... It would be interesting and valuable to compare this method with the method of mathematical induction.”.