ABSTRACT A recent issue of the journal Design and Culture included Lucy Kimbell's interview of object-oriented ontology philosopher Graham Harman. The invitation was premised on Harman's ability to counter the contemporary focus on user-centered design with an object orientation. Harman's appearance in the world of design discourse presents a paradox. To ask what object-oriented ontology that explicitly rejects anthropocentrism can offer user-centered and decidedly anthropocentric design practice seems to miss the point of an object orientation. An answer to the paradox (...) may reside in Ian Bogost's account of the metaphorism of object-oriented ontology. This essay explores Bogost's Alien Phenomenology, or What It's like to Be a Thing, which uses Harman's metaphor of black noise as “the background noise of peripheral objects,” and considers the design implications of Bogost's call to amplify black noise and linger in the speculative fiction of things, such as roasted green chile peppers, udon noodles, and pound cake. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the fecal metaphor utilized in the philosophies of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek; and considers how the fecal metaphor explain social relations mediated by consumption and production. For both philosophers, the fecal metaphor exposes epistemological and practical processes latent in both biological and artificial production. Adding to their questions, Dominique LaPorte and his, 1978 History of Shit, couples civilization with the publicly legislated private containment of shit. This paper investigates the relevance of these metabolic metaphors of consumption (...) for design history and studies. I suggest that the metaphors offer a systematic approach to design consumption and prompt us to consider the role of material context in design production, as reality altering material conceptualizations. (shrink)

This essential text contains contributions from a wide range of fields and provides role models for feminist scientists. Including chapters from scientists and feminist scholars, the book presents a wide range of feminist science studies scholarship-from autobiographical narratives and experimental and theoretical projects, to teaching tools and courses and community-based projects.

Delusions are a common symptom of schizophrenia and dementia. Though most English dictionaries define a delusion as a false opinion or belief, there is currently a lively debate about whether delusions are really beliefs and indeed, whether they are even irrational. The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together the psychological literature on the aetiology and the behavioural manifestations of delusions, and the philosophical literature on belief ascription and rationality. The thesis of the book (...) is that delusions are continuous with ordinary beliefs, a thesis that could have important theoretical and practical implications for psychiatric classification and the clinical treatment of subjects with delusions. By bringing together recent work in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and psychiatry, the book offers a comprehensive review of the philosophical issues raised by the psychology of normal and abnormal cognition, defends the doxastic conception of delusions, and develops a theory about the role of judgements of rationality and of attributions of self-knowledge in belief ascription. Presenting a highly original analysis of the debate on the nature of delusions, this book will interest philosophers of mind, epistemologists, philosophers of science, cognitive scientists, psychiatrists, and mental health professionals. (shrink)

This edited collection examines the relationship between three central terms-capitalism, feminism, and critique-while critically celebrating the work and life of a thinker who has done the most to address this nexus: Nancy Fraser. In honor of her seventieth birthday, and in the spirit of her work in the tradition of critical theory, this collection brings together scholars from different disciplines and theoretical approaches to address this conjunction and evaluate Fraser's lifelong contributions to theorizing it. Scholars from philosophy, political science, sociology, (...) gender studies, race theory and economics come together to think through the vicissitudes of capitalism and feminism while also responding to different elements of Nancy Fraser's work, which weaves together a strong feminist standpoint with a vibrant and complex critique of capitalism. Going beyond conventional disciplinary distinctions and narrow debates, all the contributors to this project share a commitment to critically understanding the connection between capitalism, exploitation, and the viable roads for emancipation.. They recover insights provided by classical traditions of political and social thought, but they also open new research directions adapted to the global challenges of our time. (shrink)

Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on Delusions.

What is it to base a belief on reasons? Existing attempts to give an account of the basing relation encounter a dilemma: either one appeals to some kind of neutral process that does not adequately reflect the way basing is a content-sensitive first-personal activity, or one appeals to linking or bridge principles that over-intellectualize and threaten regress. We explain why this dilemma arises, and diagnose the commitments that are key obstacles to providing a satisfactory account. We explain why they should (...) be rejected anyway, and then offer a new, knowledge-first virtue epistemological theory of the basing relation that shows how we can substantially theorize about mental processes without these commitments. The resulting view plausibly captures the way in which basing is an inherently mental and content-sensitive process. (shrink)

This special issue explores intersections of feminism, postcolonialism, and technoscience. The papers emerged out of a 2014 research seminar on Feminist Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan. Through innovative engagement with rich empirical cases and theoretical trends in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, and STS, the papers trace local and global circulations of technoscience. They illuminate ways in which science and technology are imbricated in circuits of state power and global (...) inequality and in social movements resisting the state and neocolonial orders. The collection foregrounds the importance of feminist postcolonial STS to our understandings of technoscience, especially how power matters for epistemology and justice. (shrink)

The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, or so (...) we will argue. We will then go on to explore an alternative family of purely mereological rules in the vicinity of Weak Unrestricted Composition, Cardinal Composition: A plurality of pairwise non-overlapping objects composes an object iff the objects in the plurality are of cardinality smaller than $$\kappa $$ κ. As we will show, all the instances for infinite $$\kappa $$ κ s determine fusion and are compatible with junk, and every instance for a $$\kappa > \aleph _0$$ κ > ℵ 0 is furthermore compatible with gunk and dense chains of parthood. (shrink)

What about Confucian bioethics should compel our interest? Apart from the fact that Confucianism grounds the belief system of a great number of people, a Confucian bioethics poses a profound challe...

The ethical and legal challenges posed by assisted reproduction techniques are both profound and breathtaking, with most societies unable to fully comprehend one technique before another one, even more daring, emerges. The wrongful implantation of embryos in two women undergoing in vitro fertilisation treatments at two separate clinics in the UK seriously vitiates the traditional concept of who is a parent. In one case, a patient’s embryos were wrongly implanted into another woman seeking similar treatment, and in the second, a (...) woman’s eggs were fertilised using sperm from a man other than her husband.In the first mix-up, neither member of the recipient couple was the genetic parent of the child, while in the second case, the recipient mother was the genetic mother and her husband was not the genetic father. The mix-ups resulted in litigation to determine who the rightful parents were. First, I will show in this paper that, although the outcome of the application of English law in both cases was in agreement with the outcome prescribed by basic principles of Islamic law and bioethics, that agreement is based on different reasoning in the two traditions. Next, I will show that the profound ethical implications of reproductive technologies begs for a more pluralistic bioethical discourse than the one-dimensional analysis applied by secular Western societies that currently dominates the enquiry, particularly as most Western societies are more or less multicultural and multireligious. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides an overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts feminist theorists have developed to challenge established knowledge. Leading feminist theorists, from around the globe, provide in-depth explorations of a diverse array of subject areas, capturing a plurality of approaches. The Handbook raises new questions, brings new evidence, and poses significant challenges across the spectrum of academic disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory.

In this article, we consider a recent trend whereby private equity available from venture capital firms is being deployed toward mission-driven initiatives in the form of impact investing. Acting as hybrid organizations, these impact investors aim to achieve financial results while also targeting companies and funds to achieve social impact. However, potential mission drift in these VCs, which we define as a decoupling between the investments made and intended aims, might become detrimental to the simultaneous financial and social goals of (...) such firms. Based on a content analysis of mission statements, we assess mission drift and the hybridization level of VC impact investors by examining their missions and their investment practices through the criteria of social and financial logic. After examining eight impact-oriented VC investors and their investments in 164 companies, we find mission drift manifest as a disparity between the means and ends in half of the VC impact investors in our sample. We discuss these findings and make suggestions for further studies. (shrink)

Im Zeitalter des sogenannten »Anthropozäns« werden wir Zeugen einer ontologischen Verschiebung: Die modernen Grenzziehungen zwischen Kultur und Natur, Subjekt und Objekt sowie die Vorstellung einer Welt, die aus unabhängigen Entitäten besteht, werden in der aktuellen Umbruchskonfiguration weitreichend destabilisiert. So ist die »Krise« der Moderne auch als eine »Krise« des Seins zu lesen, die die Möglichkeit eines (Anders-)Werdens relationaler Welt/en eröffnen könnte. Aus einer medienphilosophischen Perspektive fragt Lisa Handel danach, wie dieses Aufsprengen der Seinsontologie von der Frage der Medialität her (...) zu denken und situieren ist. Ontomedialität ist »Kartenkunde und Reisebericht« einer Welt, in der Medialität und Ontologie je schon implodiert und ununterscheidbar geworden sind. (shrink)

Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or ...

A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology--and (...) this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security. Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain. (shrink)

This paper argues that the diversity of conflicting comprehensive doctrines in liberal pluralist societies raises a problem of estrangement between citizens and the basic structure of society that Rawls' version of political liberalism does not successfully solve. 'Political estrangement' occurs when someone refuses to accept a political outcome that favors a comprehensive doctrine she rejects, based on what she imagines, correctly or incorrectly, to be true of her fellow citizens' comprehensive doctrines and their effect on political outcomes. Rawls argues that (...) the political conception of justice and the use of public reason ensure the incompatibility of our comprehensive doctrines will not undermine our willingness to to accept political decisions contrary to our own values. However, public reason does not guarantee this result. Imagination can allow us to see that the influence of some reasonable comprehensive doctrines can lead to oppressive political outcomes and public reason restricts us from addressing this fact. Yet, widening public reason to account for this problem is likely to increase the conditions that cause estrangement. The paper concludes that the political conception of justice and public reason may sometimes fail to adequately justify political outcomes in the sense Rawls hopes. (shrink)

Good epistemic practices are essential to the well-functioning of organizations. Epistemic practices are adopted norms, policies, procedures, and general methodologies that further our epistemic aims or realize our epistemic values. This chapter argues for the importance of organizational good epistemic practices through an analysis of the failures of risk management implicated in JPMorgan’s notorious ‘London Whale’ trading losses, which roiled the financial markets in 2012. A number of these failures of risk management exemplified ways in which we, as fallible reasoners, (...) may be prone to error individually and collectively. Good epistemic practices inter alia anticipate and endeavor to correct for erroneous patterns of reasoning. They help guard against future epistemic failings, and they support good reasoning within and on the part of organizations. In so doing, they constitute some of the key structural elements of organizational epistemic virtues. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is among the fastest developing areas of advanced technology in medicine. The most important qualia of AI which makes it different from other advanced technology products is its ability to improve its original program and decision-making algorithms via deep learning abilities. This difference is the reason that AI technology stands out from the ethical issues of other advanced technology artifacts. The ethical issues of AI technology vary from privacy and confidentiality of personal data to ethical status and value (...) of AI entities in a wide spectrum, depending on their capability of deep learning and scope of the domains in which they operate. Developing ethical norms and guidelines for planning, development, production, and usage of AI technology has become an important issue to overcome these problems. In this respect three outstanding documents have been produced:1. The Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence2. Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI3. Asilomar Artificial Intelligence PrinciplesIn this study, these three documents will be analyzed with respect to the ethical principles and values they involve, their perspectives for approaching ethical issues, and their prospects for ethical reasoning when one or more of these values and principles are in conflict. Then, the sufficiency of these guidelines for addressing current or prospective ethical issues emerging from the existence of AI technology in medicine will be evaluated. The discussion will be pursued in terms of the ambiguity of interlocutors and efficiency for working out ethical dilemmas occurring in practical life. (shrink)

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains (...) how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being. (shrink)

In philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science, definitions of clinical delusions are not based on the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions, since there is no consensus yet on what causes delusions. Some of the defining features of delusions are epistemic and focus on whether delusions are true, justified, or rational, as in the definition of delusions as fixed beliefs that are badly supported by evidence. Other defining features of delusions are psychological and focus on whether delusions are harmful, as (...) in the definition of delusions as beliefs that disrupt good functioning. Even if the epistemic features go some way towards capturing what otherwise different instances of clinical delusions have in common, they do not succeed in distinguishing delusions as a clinical phenomenon from everyday irrational beliefs. Focusing on the psychological features is a more promising way to mark the difference between clinical and non-clinical irrational beliefs, but there is wide variability in the extent to which delusions are psychologically harmful, and some everyday irrational beliefs can affect functioning in similarly negative ways. In this chapter we consider three types of belief that share similar epistemic features and exhibit variation with respect to how psychologically harmful they are: (1) delusions of thought insertion, (2) alien abduction beliefs, and (3) self-enhancing beliefs. In the light of the similarities and differences among these cases, we highlight the difficulty in providing an answer to what makes an irrational belief delusional. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHilary Putnam provides an anti-skeptical argument motivated by semantic externalism. He argues that our best theorizing about what it takes to experience, think, and so on, entails that the world is much as we take it to be. This fact eliminates the possibility of radical skeptical scenarios, where from our perspective everything seems as it does in the actual case, but we are widely and systematically mistaken. I think that this approach is generally correct, and that it is the most (...) promising strategy for undermining radical skepticism. There are, however, well-discussed difficulties with Putnam's way of pursuing this strategy. I argue that in order to avoid these objections we will have to be more radical externalists than Putnam proposed; in particular, we will have to beperspectival externalists. According to perspectival externalism, a subject's reliable relations to her environment play a crucial role in determining not only the contents of her mental events, but also what it is like for her to grasp those contents. While semantic externalism is widely accepted in epistemology, perspectival externalism is not. I argue that perspectival externalism is independently more plausible than mere semantic externalism, and that such an account can enable us to better pursue Putnam's anti-skeptical strategy. (shrink)

This study sought to determine cardiologists’ degrees of ethical awareness and preferred courses of action for ethical dilemmas frequently encountered in clinical settings. For this evaluation, an online survey was created and sent to cardiologists affiliated with various academic posts in Ankara, Turkey. The survey included ten cases with various ethical considerations selected from our book, “Clinic Ethics with Cases from Cardiology.” Four possible action choices were defined for each case. Participants were asked to choose one or more of these (...) preferences. In addition, a fictional change was made in each case’s context without changing the original ethical issue, and participants were asked whether an attitude different from the first chosen one was preferred. The participation ratio was 49/185 (26%), consent ratio 47/185 (25,4%), and completion ratio 44/185 (23,7%). Nine of the ten scenario changes did not change participants’ preferred action. For most questions, action preferences were concentrated between the two options. Although legal regulations did not reduce ethical dilemmas, they clarified physicians’ action preferences. Similarly, as an obscure moral issue gained prominence, physicians were forced to draw clearer lines in their actions. External factors such as healthcare emergencies can change physicians’ ethical dilemma-solving attitudes. (shrink)

Film Ethics considers a range of films and texts of film criticism alongside disparate philosophical discourses of ethics by Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, ...

This chapter provides an introduction to the emerging field of the philosophy of money and finance. The field addresses philosophical issues about the nature of money and the normative foundations of financial systems. Although philosophical theorizing about money and finance dates back to Antiquity, the topic has only recently emerged as a central research focus. The chapter also introduces the present anthology and locates its parts and chapters in the broader field. More specifically, the anthology is divided into four main (...) parts: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Political Philosophy. Each part contains four chapters on different but interrelated topics, which are all introduced here. (shrink)

Das Bose ist die zentrale Herausforderung fur das Denken der Freiheit. Die vorliegende Studie rekonstruiert historisch versiert den Problemzusammenhang von Freiheit und Notwendigkeit im Deutschen Idealismus und prazisiert den systematischen Losungsansatz Schellings um das Jahr 1809. Diese Neuinterpretation der Freiheitsschrift berucksichtigt auch die theologischen Fragen und die im Hintergrund wirksame Tradition des (Neu-)Platonismus.

Much insect sounding is beyond the limits of typical human hearing ability. This sonic separation is exacerbated by a socialized narrative of fear and avoidance of insects in many western societies. With the use of audio technologies to expand our senses, we can embrace opportunities to get to know sensory and communicative insect sound-worlds beyond our own. Ecological sound art – sound art that has an environmentalist intent – is a tangible and accessible means of listening to these sounds. In (...) the series Built Hidden Soundscapes, the primary author (Schonberg) composes imagined soundscapes existing solely of sounds that are beyond the limits of typical human hearing ability. In this article we introduce two compositions in this series, Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke and Pipeline Road. These compositions offer a temporary expansion of our aural senses that can increase listeners’ awareness of cryptic insect existences/ecologies. We suggest that this listening practice might prompt future auralization (sounding or hearing in the mind) of insect sound for the listener. (shrink)

Der Band untersucht rhetorische Strategien der emotionalen Kommunikation in Partnerwerbungsgesprächen. Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass eine bewusste Steuerung emotionaler Gesprächsprozesse durch einen strategischen Kommunikator die Erreichung des angestrebten Ziels wahrscheinlicher macht, geht er der Frage nach, welche Möglichkeiten sich in solchen Gesprächen bieten, mit Hilfe sprachlich-textlicher Mittel emotional zu überzeugen. Dabei konzentriert er sich - in Abgrenzung zu Studien emotionaler Körpersprache - ganz auf die verbale Seite der Kommunikation. Als Datenbasis dienen die Transkripte eines Korpus aus Face-to-Face-Gesprächen. Basierend auf einem (...) methodisch innovativen Ansatz zur Untersuchung des Verhältnisses von Sprache und Emotion, liefert der Band zahlreiche neue Erkenntnisse für die Rhetorik-, Emotions- und Gesprächsforschung. Dr. Lisa Becker promovierte im Fach Allgemeine Rhetorik an der Universität Tübingen. (shrink)