Abstract Taking my point of entry from George Eliot's reference to ?the power of Ignorance?, I analyse some manifestations of that power as she portrays it in the life of a young woman of affluence, in her novel Daniel Deronda. Comparing and contrasting this kind of ignorance with James Mill's avowed ignorance of local tradition and custom in his History of British India, I consider how ignorance can foster immoral beliefs which, in turn, contribute to social-political arrangements of dominance and (...) subordination. Yet I ask, too, how judgements of culpability can be sustained when ignorance is culturally induced. (shrink)

I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenomenological method and attempt to show its importance in studies of infant behavior. The second objective is substantive: Applying the minimal phenomenological approach, combined with Meltzoff’s “like-me” developmental framework, I propose the hypothesis that infants learn the pointing gesture at least in part through imitation. I explain how developments in sensorimotor ability (posture, arm and hand control and coordination, and locomotion) in the first year of (...) life prepare the infant for acquiring the pointing gesture. The former may directly enable the latter by allowing the infant to experience its own body as being “like those” of others, thus allowing it to imitatively appropriate a broader range of adult behavior. My proposal emphasizes the embodiment of mind in the development of cognition, contrary to latent dualistic tendencies in some developmental literature. (shrink)

In this essay I take issue with entrenched conceptions of individual autonomy for how they block understandings of the implications of rape in patriarchal cultures both 'at home' and in situations of armed conflict. I focus on human vulnerability as it manifests in sedimented assumptions about violence against women as endemic to male-female relations, thwarting possibilities of knowing the specific harms particular acts of rape enact well enough to render intelligible their far-reaching social-political-moral implications. Taking my point of departure from (...) Debra Bergoffen's call for 'a new epistemology of rape', I consider what such a call can amount to within an instituted social imaginary where male domination and female subordination are taken for granted—naturalized. (shrink)

The problem -- Specific natures -- Local natures -- Universal natural laws -- The passions of the unnatural -- The very idea of order -- The plenitude of orders -- Saving the phenomena.

This paper is a defense of what I call The Simple View, according to which propositions are simple, fine-grained, abstract entities that have truth-conditions essentially and fundamentally. The Simple View has two controversial implications: (i) propositions do not (literally) have constituents or parts, and (ii) propositions’ having truth-conditions is a brute fact about them. I criticize the Simple View’s two competitors, the Possible Worlds View and the Structured View, for failing to provide a plausible ontology of propositions and failing to (...) explain the propositional features they set out to explain. I then consider three versions of the Simple View, developed by George Bealer, Trenton Merricks, and Peter van Inwagen, and argue that Bealer’s view is the most promising. (shrink)

In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.

Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral (...) development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

The first in a two-volume anthology of Hayden White's uncollected essays from the last two decades of his life, revealing White as a public intellectual. It places White's thought in context, explaining its major themes, sources, and frames of reference, and features five previously unpublished lectures as well as more complete versions of several published essays.

This paper proposes a theory of text on-screen as “unvoiceover.” It addresses both the case for captioning as social good and the affordances (aesthetic, affective) of writing in or over the moving image. Advancing an argument informed by perspectives from d/deaf Studies, Critical Disability Studies and Digital Interface Studies, and applying modes of analysis from literary criticism alongside those proper to the study of moving image and sound, it examines the idiosyncrasies of text-in-motion as non-sonorous, fugitive counterpart to the traditional, (...) troublesome “voiceover.” To develop a poetics of the unsounding voice on-screen, the paper focalizes its argument through multimedia artist Liza Sylvestre’s Captioned series: a body of moving image work that is itself, paradoxically, uncaptioned. Framing Sylvestre’s lyrical “unvoiceover” as a reimagining of the lost roles of film explainers and literary intertitles, I argue that the artist’s takeover of the caption track intervenes critically in contemporary debates about the ethics of audio-visual translation, situated description and access as public ethos rather than private concern. Posing the artist’s personal-and-political writing as suggestive of a lower-case analogue to Deaf Gain, I show how Sylvestre’s “unvoiceover” educates its “receivers” in the purpose and functioning of captions. By reading Sylvestre’s writing on-screen more closely than its fugitive form seems to invite, I show how the unvoiceover encultures its own demands on its readers and elicits its own habits of reading. By scrutinizing how Sylvestre’s series makes the case for captioning, this paper makes the case for a new appraisal of the aesthetic, affective and political affordances of the unvoiceover as writing on the run. (shrink)

In a recent article, ‘Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong’, Savulescu and Cameron argue that a selective lockdown of older people is not ageist because it would treat people unequally based on morally relevant differences. This response argues that a selective lockdown of older people living in long-term care homes would be unjust because it would allow the expansive liberties of the general public to undermine the basic liberties of older people, (...) and because it would discriminate on the basis of extrinsic disadvantages. (shrink)

Thought experiments feature prominently in both scientific and philosophical methods. In this paper, I investigate two questions surrounding knowledge in the thought experiment process. First, on what implicit knowledge do thought experiments rely? Second, what provides epistemic justification for beliefs acquired through the process? I draw upon neo-Aristotelian metaphysics and Husserlian phenomenology to argue that essence is the object of implicit knowledge that anchors the imagined possibilities involved in thought experiments to the actual world, and that this essentialist knowledge enables (...) the possibility of prima facie justification being conferred by the phenomenological givenness of thought experiment scenarios. (shrink)

Dimitri Lorrain est chercheur en sciences humaines (EHESS), spécialisé dans l'étude de l'art et de la littérature (il a publié des articles sur Michel-Ange, Alberti, ainsi que sur l'art des «?nouveaux commanditaires?»). Installé à Francfort-sur-le-Main, il chronique la vie intellectuelle allemande pour la revue Panorama des idées.

In this paper, I criticize Structured Propositionalism, the most widely held theory of the nature of propositions according to which they are structured entities with constituents. I argue that the proponents of Structured Propositionalism have paid insufficient attention to the metaphysical presuppositions of the view – most egregiously, to the notion of propositional constituency. This is somewhat ironic, since the friends of structured propositions tend to argue as if the appeal to constituency gives their view a dialectical advantage. I criticize (...) four different approaches to providing a metaphysics of propositional constituency: set-theoretic, mereological, hylomorphic, and structure-making. Finally, I consider the option of taking constituency in a deflationary, metaphysically ‘lightweight’ sense. I argue that, though invoking constituency in a lightweight sense may be useful for avoiding the ontological problems that plague the ‘heavyweight’ conception, it no longer proffers a dialectical advantage to Structured Propositionalism. (shrink)

Introduction -- Ethics and research -- Twenty questions : ethical research dilemmas and PHD students -- Research pitfalls for new entrants to the academy -- Scientists behaving badly: insights from the fraud triangle -- Slicing and dicing : ex ante approaches -- Slicing and dicing : ex post approaches -- Retraction : mistake or misconduct? -- Double-blind review in the age of google and powerpoint -- Ethics in research scenarios : what would you do? -- Thought leader : Michael A. (...) Hitt on ethics in research -- Ethics and teaching -- Beyond course content : ethical dilemmas in teaching -- Teaching and ethics : a critical incident -- Peer pressure or, I thought i was out of high school -- Teaching versus preaching: conversational ethics in the classroom -- My students want to friend me! boundaries and relationships with social networks -- What do we do when students despair? : considering pedagogical caring -- From content to relationship -- It's not just rate my professor anymore! : ethics and student evaluations -- Student recommendations : to give, or not to give, that is the question -- Thought leader : Robert A. Giacalone on "broken when entering" -- Ethics in professional life -- Codes and conflicts of interest -- When is a job offer really a job offer in the academy? -- Attending professional meetings -- Peer reviewing -- Managing university service work -- Tribalism -- Outside appointments -- Consulting -- Media engagement -- Thought leader : Andrew H. van de Ven on ethics and professional life -- Conclusions -- Connecting the dots : themes, practices and considering what's next -- Index. (shrink)

What is a paradox? -- Knowing and believing -- Vagueness and identity -- Logic and truth -- Mathematical paradoxes -- Probability paradoxes -- Space and time -- Impossibilities -- Deciding and acting -- Index of philosophers.

This book offers a comprehensive account of the major philosophical works on friendship and its relationship to self-love. The book gives central place to Aristotle's searching examination of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Lorraine Pangle argues that the difficulties surrounding this discussion are soon dispelled once one understands the purpose of the Ethics as both a source of practical guidance for life and a profound, theoretical investigation into human nature. The book also provides fresh interpretations of works on friendship (...) by Plato, Cicero, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne and Bacon. The author shows how each of these thinkers sheds light on central questions of moral philosophy: is human sociability rooted in neediness or strength? is the best life chiefly solitary, or dedicated to a community with others? Clearly structured and engagingly written, this book will appeal to a broad swathe of readers across philosophy, classics and political science. (shrink)

This book is a fresh examination of Aristotle's teaching on the relation between reason and moral virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking as its point of departure the oft-noted, but still perhaps not sufficiently appreciated fact, that this treatise is the first half of a two-volume work on political science. As such, it lays the foundation for Aristotelian political science and, in significant ways, for the field of political science altogether. The proper aim of the political community according to Aristotle (...) is to promote the human good; it is the task of the Nicomachean Ethics to elaborate what this good is. It provides Aristotle's fullest answer to the most radical question about justice, the question of why we should be just or moral at all, in its teaching on the essential relation of virtue to happiness. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 36-37.

Radical and autopoietic enactivists disagree concerning how to understand the concept of sense-making in enactivist discourse and the extent of its distribution within the organic domain. I situate this debate within a broader conflict of commitments to naturalism on the part of radical enactivists, and to phenomenology on the part of autopoietic enactivists. I argue that autopoietic enactivists are in part responsible for the obscurity of the notion of sense-making by attributing it univocally to sentient and non-sentient beings and following (...) Hans Jonas in maintaining a phenomenological dimension to life-mind continuity among all living beings, sentient or non-sentient. I propose following Merleau-Ponty instead, who offers a properly phenomenological notion of sense-making for which sentience is a necessary condition. Against radicalist efforts to replace sense-making with a deflationary, naturalist conception of intentionality, I discuss the role of the phenomenological notion of sense-making for understanding animal behavior and experience. (shrink)

There’s been a recent surge of interest among analytic philosophers of religion in divine ineffability. However, divine ineffability is part of a traditional conception of God that has been widely rejected among analytic philosophers of religion for the past few decades. One of the main reasons that the traditional conception of God has been rejected is because it allegedly makes God too remote, unknowable, and impersonal. In this paper, I present an account of divine ineffability that directly addresses this concern (...) by arguing that the deepest knowledge of God’s nature that we can attain is personal, rather than propositional. On this view, it is precisely because knowledge of God’s nature is personal that it cannot be linguistically expressed and communicated. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Scott Soames’ theory of naturalized cognitive propositions faces a serious objection: there are true propositions for which NCP cannot account. More carefully, NCP cannot account for certain truths of mathematics unless it is possible for there to be an infinite intellect. For those who reject the possibility of an infinite intellect, this constitutes a reductio of NCP.

I offer an examination of trust relations in scientific inquiry as they seem to contrast with a lack of trust in an example of knowledge imposed from above by an unaccountable institutional power structure. On this basis I argue for a re-reading of John Hardwig's account of the place of trust in knowledge, and suggest that it translates less well than social epistemologists and others have assumed into a model for democratic epistemic practice.

Which is better: a guarantee of a modest amount of moral value, or a tiny probability of arbitrarily large value? To prefer the latter seems fanatical. But, as I argue, avoiding such fanaticism brings severe problems. To do so, we must decline intuitively attractive trade-offs; rank structurally identical pairs of lotteries inconsistently, or else admit absurd sensitivity to tiny probability differences; have rankings depend on remote, unaffected events ; and often neglect to rank lotteries as we already know we would (...) if we learned more. Compared to these implications, fanaticism is highly plausible. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and the relation between the two, in his Phenomenology of Perception. Against a common interpretation, I argue on exegetical and philosophical grounds that the distinction should not be understood as one between two kinds of speech, but rather between two internally related dimensions present in all speech. This suggests an interdependence between speaking and spoken aspects of speech, and some commentators have critiqued Merleau-Ponty for claiming a priority of speaking over (...) spoken speech. However, there is a sense in which Merleau-Ponty is right to emphasize the priority, namely, in terms of the ontological priority of the speaking subject with respect to language understood as a constituted cultural ideality. The latter only maintains its ontological status insofar as it is taken up by a language community. I favorably contrast Merleau-Ponty’s views on this question to those of the late Heidegger and de Saussure, and suggest potential applications of this clarified position for contemporary discussions in philosophy of language. (shrink)

The dominant account of propositions holds that they are structured entities that have, as constituents, the semantic values of the constituents of the sentences that express them. Since such theories hold that propositions are structured, in some sense, like the sentences that express them, they must provide an answer to what I will call Soames’ Question: “What level, or levels, of sentence structure does semantic information incorporate?”. As it turns out, answering Soames’ Question is no easy task. I argue in (...) this paper that the two most promising ways of answering it, the Logical Form Account and the LF Account, are both unsatisfactory. This result casts doubt on the very idea that propositions are structured. (shrink)

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences--from anatomy to crystallography--are those featured (...) in scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity--or truth-to-nature or trained judgment--is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity-- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, and other books, and coeditor of The Architecture of Science. (shrink)

Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter of rendering continuous the methods, epistemologies, and ontologies of phenomenological and natural scientific inquiry. Presupposed in this statement of the problematic, however, is that there is an original discontinuity, a rupture between phenomenology and the natural sciences that must be remedied. I propose that this way of thinking about the issue is rooted in a simplistic understanding of the phenomenological reduction that entails certain assumptions about the subject matter (...) of phenomenology and its relationship to the natural sciences. By contrast, Merleau‐Ponty's first work, The Structure of Behavior, presents a radically different approach to the phenomenological reduction, one that traverses the natural sciences and integrates them into phenomenology from the outset. I outline the argument for this position in The Structure of Behavior and then discuss consequences for current methodological issues surrounding the naturalization of phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between empirical sciences of mind, phenomenological psychology, and transcendental phenomenology. This novel exegesis of Merleau‐Ponty's view on the reduction offers new insight into his oft‐quoted remark that the phenomenological reduction is impossible to complete. (shrink)

Hope and Gabbert review and distil the relevant research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with conversations within an eyewitness context. In particular, they focus on how co‐witnesses’ retellings of witnessed events impair the quantity and quality of information subsequently reported to law enforcement authorities. Notably, they also provide interventions (e.g., careful witness management and post incident procedures, use of warnings, early individual accounts, etc.) to mitigate these negative, well‐documented mnemonic effects.

In post-independence India secularism was almost taken for granted as a defining feature of the women?s movement with its rejection of the public expression of religious and caste identities. However, already by the 1980s, the assumption that gender could be used as a unifying factor was challenged, revealing that women from different social and religious backgrounds understand and sometime use their identities in ways that are not driven necessarily by some ideology, but by more immediate concerns and even opportunism. This (...) realization opened up a debate about new strategies to tackle women?s activism, especially in light of aggressive political activism of some women associated with right-wing parties in India, which has clearly shattered the perception, held by some, of women as inherently peace-loving, whose gender identity would override their caste and religious belonging. (shrink)

Research on metaphors has shown that individuals form associations between the verticality, brightness, and distance of stimuli and their valence. Building on the literature on conceptual metaphor...

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from energy conservation, predict an SME’s level of engagement in selected environmental management practices. For family influence, this effect is found only in interaction with the number of owners. In addition to empirical (...) research on SMEs’ environmental behavior, this article draws on the ecological modernization literature as well as the theory of planned behavior. (shrink)

I struggle mamereTo bringYour wordsInto nokum'sCabinBut the wordsAre in battleCompetingfor my mindI am a mixed-blood woman raised in Canada where my two ancestries have competing worldviews, from social, political, and religious ideology to ancient philosophies. These mixed ancestries also come with different social expectations. In the social-political world of Native Studies where I walk daily, my French grandmother, mamere, is argued as coming from a world of privilege because she was white-skinned, and my Cree grandmother, nokum is thought to come (...) from a world of oppression because she was dark-skinned. Yet both my grandmothers experienced abuse and prejudice. How and where the abuses originated may be different, but they did occur. I have a lot to learn from my grandmothers, but it has taken me many years of inner conflict, self-righteousness, and pain to get to this understanding. To acknowledge both grandmothers having been oppressed means I cannot continue to think of the world in simplistic, binary terms of colonizer/colonized. I must legitimize the equality of suffering in both cultures. Indeed, my worldviews had been turned upside down as I began to identify with the feminist movement, nonetheless it is nokum's world that was shattered, demeaned, and distorted, so it is her world I bring to you today with this story. Another day I may talk about my mamere's patriarchal world, but today is for nokum. (shrink)

In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American philosophy that (...) "the knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory. (shrink)

Feminist affiliation has long been suspect among Native American women whose memories survive the dishonor of colonialism. The idea of common struggles is simultaneously repugnant and alluring. Sadly, this has led to much confusion and rejection between Aboriginal women. I suggest “a return to reciprocity” to understand and come to terms with feminist rejection or affiliation. If we cannot come together, the fracturing that began with European ideology will continue to fragment and destroy the fabric of Native cultures.

Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. By focusing on the idea that knowing is a creative process guided by imperatives (...) of epistemic responsibility, Code provides a fresh perspective on the theory of knowledge. From this new perspective, Code poses questions about knowledge that have a different focus from those traditionally raised in the two leading epistemological theories, foundationalism and coherentism. While not rejecting these approaches, this new position moves away from a primary concentration on determinate products and towards an examination of ever-changing processes. Arguing that knowledge never exists as an ungrounded abstraction but rather emerges through dialogue between variously authoritative "knowers" situated within particular social and historical contexts, she draws extensively on examples from lived social experience to illustrate the ways in which human beings have long tried to recognize and meet their epistemic responsibilities. This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code"--Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

In this article, we evaluate the Compositionality Argument for structured propositions. This argument hinges on two seemingly innocuous and widely accepted premises: the Principle of Semantic Compositionality and Propositionalism (the thesis that sentential semantic values are propositions). We show that the Compositionality Argument presupposes that compositionality involves a form of building, and that this metaphysically robust account of compositionality is subject to counter-example: there are compositional representational systems that this principle cannot accommodate. If this is correct, one of the most (...) important arguments for structured propositions is undermined. (shrink)