What, if anything, do we epistemically owe to each other? Various “traditional” views of epistemology might hold either that we don’t epistemically owe anything to each other, because “what we owe to each other” is the realm of the moral, or that what we epistemically owe to each other is just to be epistemically responsible agents. Basu (2019) has recently argued, against such views, that morality makes extra-epistemic demands upon what we should believe about one another. So, what we owe (...) to each other is not just a matter of word and deed, but also of belief. And in fact, Basu argues, sometimes those moral demands require us to believe in ways that cut against orthodox epistemic norms. This paper has three aims. First, to offer two strategies for accommodating the kinds of cases Basu discusses while nonetheless holding that only epistemic normativity makes demands on belief. Second, to offer an alternative account of what we owe to each other that does not hold that morality demands that we sometimes believe against our evidence or in violation of epistemic norms. And third, to give a brief diagnosis of why it seems intuitive that morality makes extra-epistemic doxastic demands on us. Ultimately, I argue that what we epistemically owe to each other does not require us to violate orthodox, invariantist epistemic norms. Morality demands that we have a proper regard for others, not that we sometimes believe against our evidence. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

Although the skeptical crisis at the dawn of modern philosophy can be properly labelled Pyrrhonian specific features of the academic school of skepticism played an important role in this crisis. Academic skepticism becomes even more influential in post-Cartesian skepticism from Foucher to Hume.

the contrast and similarity between Rist and Macintyre can be better understood if we take into account their different interpretations of the Republic, especially their 1) descriptions of the primary problem faced by Plato, 2) their interpretation of Plato’s response to the problem, and 3) their evaluation of the contemporary relevance of the problem and his response. The differences and similarities between the views of MacIntyre and Rist on the Republic reflect much larger difference and similarities on the fundamental nature (...) of moral philosophy, the problem of relativism, and the importance of God for ethics. I have illustrated these similarities and differences in the context of their understanding of the problems faced by Plato, the nature and adequacy of his response, and the relevance of the response of later philosophical ethics. (shrink)

The history of ideas about addiction often comes down to a history of debates over the use and meaning of language. Nowhere is this more clear than in the interminable “Is addiction a ‘disease’?” debate. In Marc Lewis’ excellent Biology of Desire and in his paper that centers this issue, there is far more agreement between his work and mine than there is disagreement on the “disease” question. Here, however, I make a case for greater compatibility between the “disease” view (...) and learning models of addiction than Lewis does, because I think the nuance is worth exploring. Indeed, if addiction science and ethics paid more attention to nuance in general, the whole field would be far better off. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's moral thought (...) accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or (...) on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

This book offers an exciting look at the important and often uneasy place of philosophy in cultural theory today. In the United States and Britain, cultural studies has taken a largely non-philosophical form. Yet, in its hostility to disciplinary boundaries and its search for theoretical generality, cultural studies has much in common with a philosophical tradition of totalization from which it has historically distanced itself. Throughout, Osborne shows how and why concepts currently popular in cultural theory have brought philosophical questions (...) to center stage. He discusses many important thinkers who have straddled the philosophy-cultural divide such as Benjamin, Adorno, Jameson, and Clement Greenberg. (shrink)

The current research explored the effect of anger on hypothesis confirmation—the propensity to seek information that confirms rather than disconfirms one's opinion. We argued that the moving against action tendency associated with anger leads angry individuals to seek out more disconfirming information than sad individuals, attenuating the confirmation bias. We tested this hypothesis in two studies of experimentally primed anger and sadness on the selective exposure to hypothesis confirming and disconfirming information. In Study 1, participants in the angry condition were (...) more likely to choose disconfirming information than those in the sad or neutral condition when given the opportunity to read more about a social debate, and reading the disconfirming information affected their subsequent attitude. Study 2 measured participants' opinions and information selection about the 2008 US Presidential Election and their desire to “move against” a person or object. Participants in the angry condition reported a greater tendency to oppose a person or object, which resulted in the attenuation of the confirmation bias. (shrink)

Drawing on feminist and sociocultural theories of emotion that focus on the social, political, and dynamic nature of emotions in history teachers’ pedagogical decision-making, this article presents findings from the analysis of interviews with two white teachers on the role of emotions in their teaching of history in comprehensive, urban high schools. While the teachers perceived that students’ emotional connection to historical content was a necessary step in learning history, each teacher negotiated different emotional rules in their classrooms, creating unique (...) learning experiences for their students. This study demonstrates the significance of emotions in history teaching, providing examples of the complexity of how teachers navigate dominant discourses about students and education and their own personal goals when it comes to teaching about the past. (shrink)

Resumen La argumentación es una forma de discurso en la que un hablante defiende una postura en una discusión. El presente trabajo se enfoca en la complejidad argumentativa y los recursos evaluativos y evidenciales que caracterizan las disputas de niños de diverso nivel socioeconómico. Se analizaron 94 disputas entre niños de 4 años y otros niños (5 a 10 años) en situaciones de juego espontáneo registradas en hogares de sectores socioeconómicos medio y bajo. El análisis identificó diferencias marginales en la (...) complejidad argumentativa entre los grupos. Por su parte se hallaron diferencias significativas en recursos de evaluativos de emocionalidad y en los evidenciales deónticos y exclamativos a favor de los sectores de nivel socioeconómico bajo. Los sectores medios registraron un mayor empleo de expresiones de causalidad y conectores. Los resultados se discuten a la luz de los hallazgos de investigaciones previas. Abstract Argumentation is a type of discourse in which a speaker defends a claim in a discussion. The present work focuses on the argumentative complexity and the evaluative and evidential resources that characterize the disputes of children of different socioeconomic levels. We analyzed 94 disputes between 4-year-old children and other children (5 to 10 years old) in situations of spontaneous play registered in homes of middle and low socioeconomic status (SES). The analysis identified marginal differences in argumentative complexity between the groups. On the other hand, significant differences were found in evaluative expressions of emotion and in deontic and exclamatory evidential markers, more frequently used by the low SES group. The mid SES group tends to use a higher number of expressions of causality and connectors. The results are discussed with reference to the findings of previous research. (shrink)

Creating a mobile software-based exploration (artwork?/app?) puts the artist-coder in a position to interact with the mediated image streams that connect people on the Internet. The mediated streams often contain portraits and self-portraits, selfies, of the participants. These selfies are visual status messages of the people participating in the data streams. They can be used by the poster to identify themselves in the data stream and represent a way the creator of the selfie wants to be seen by the social (...) circle in which the image is posted. These images could reveal recognizable characteristics of the subject. The characteristics could be recognizable by people and software along the mediated path that the image traverses. Algorithmic intervention on the image affects the human and software interpretation of the image. In the works #autoselfie and FIFO ribbon, images are modified on a pixel level, in a way that the user of the app/work cannot control completely. The modifications reveals the potential power of the software systems to modify the imagery that people use to identify themselves in mediated communication environments. Moreover, the changes applied are chosen by the artist coder to impede recognition by software systems downstream but make human recognition possible in some cases. The alterations make the software in the app visible on a pixel level. The works then let the user post the altered images on Twitter or Google+ social media streams. The framing of this work as artwork or mobile app creates a tension, which affects audience interpretation and user experience choices made by the artist. These ideas are explored in the 2013 work #autoselfie and the 2014 work FIFO ribbon that runs on Android devices. #autoselfie was used to remix images created by winners of the South African 2013 Sanlam National Portrait Award, to explore the intervention of algorithms on mediated portraits and self-portraits. (shrink)

International Indigenous rights coalitions increasingly involve Indigenous and non-Indigenous civil society organizations with diverse backgrounds and interests. As these organizations more frequently interact and partner with one another, what issues are being emphasized in their advocacy efforts? This study utilizes content analysis of 60 Indigenous rights organizations’ websites, as well as interviews of several leaders and staff, to explore whether African Indigenous organizations emphasize different aspects of Indigenous rights in their messaging and advocacy than their other Indigenous and non-Indigenous coalition (...) partners, We find that African Indigenous CSOs discuss issues of unequal treatment more frequently, and issues of self-determination and assimilation less frequently, than their coalition partners. The messaging of Indigenous organizations outside of Africa contained similar themes as that of non-Indigenous CSOs. This raises questions regarding why these messages differ: do African Indigenous groups have distinct concerns and/or are there other reasons for the variance in messaging across international Indigenous rights coalitions. (shrink)

Este artigo procura estabelecer os fundamentos filosóficos e epistemológicos que permitam suportar a educação para a cidadania, tendo em vista um novo conceito de cidadania que responda às necessidades da sociedade contemporânea. Neste âmbito, o artigo confronta autores clássicos com o intuito de indagar acerca dos limites e da natureza do conhecimento e da ação humana. A obra destes autores será relacionada com o trabalho de investigadores recentes, na área da epistemologia experimental e da psicologia. Isto permitirá tirar as conclusões (...) desejadas, não perdendo de vista as caraterísticas e os desafios da sociedade contemporânea. (shrink)

Josef Sudek, the 'Poet of Prague', had a legendary career spanning almost six decades. His craftsmanship and technical virtuosity were unparalleled among his contemporaries. Faced with the legacy of cubism, surrealism and the Czech avantgarde, Sudek sought his own approach, characterized by a striking mastery of light.

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

This article reviews Alex Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu’sHow the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism(2015). It argues that the book offers a stimulating and ambitious approach to solving the problems of Eurocentrism and the origins of capitalism in growing critical scholarship in historical sociology and International Relations. However, by focusing on the ‘problem of the international’ and proposing a ‘single unified theory’ based on uneven and combined development, the authors present a history of international relations that trades (...) off methodological openness and legal complexity for a structural and exclusive consequentialism driven by anti-Eurocentrism. By misrepresenting the concept of social-property relations in terms of the internal/external fallacy, and by confusing different types of ‘internalism’ required by early-modern jurisdictional struggles, the book problematically conflates histories of international law and capitalism. These methodological problems are contextualised by examples from the Spanish, French and British empires’ conceptions of sovereignty and jurisdiction and their significant legal actors and processes. (shrink)

_A Critical Sense_ brings together in a single volume the leading figures of contemporary radical theory. Moving freely between philosophy, politics and cultural studies, it offers a fascinating overview of the lines of thought of today's intellectual left. Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and critical theory, literary studies, deconstruction, pragmatism, postcolonial and queer theory are discussed in a series of interviews from the journal _Radical Philosophy_. Those interviewed are: Judith Butler Cornelius Castoriadis Drucilla Cornell Axel Honneth Istvan Meszaros Edward Said Renata Salecl (...) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Cornel West Slavoj Zizek For those unfamiliar with the often daunting work of some of today's most important thinkers, _ACritical Sense_ will offer an ideal introduction; for those already acquainted with the writings of the theorists interviewed here, the collection will throw new - and often surprising - light on familiar ground. (shrink)

Examines the meaning of tolerance, its importance in modern society, and the kinds of intolerance or prejudice that may prevent people from respecting differences in others.

Why does philosophy give some people a headache, others a real buzz, and yet others a feeling that it is subversive and dangerous? Why do a lot of people think philosophy is totally irrelevant? What is philosophy anyway? The ABCs of philosophy??—easy to understand but never simplistic. Beginning with basic questions posed by the ancient Greeks - What is knowledge? What is good and evil? Philosophy For Beginners traces the answers given by western philosophy over the last 2,500 years.

Although Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on causation is frequently cited and anthologized, her main arguments have been ignored or misunderstood as havingtheir basis in quantum mechanics or a particular theory of perception. I examine her main arguments and show that they not only work against the Humean causaltheories of her time, but also against contemporary attempts to analyze causation in terms of laws and causal properties. She shows that our ordinary usage does not connect causation with laws, and suggests that philosophers (...) emphasize laws for mostly historical reasons. Moreover, she argues that the core of causation is derivativeness, which is as neglected now as when she wrote. Her focus on derivativeness indicates to us how we can both avoid the position that the causal “because” is truth-functional and yet still hold that causal statements are really explanatory. (shrink)

When viewed in its historical context, Ockham’s moral psychology is distinctive and novel. First, Ockham thinks that the will is free to will for or against any object, and can choose something that is in some sense not even apparently good. The will is free from the intellect’s dictates and from natural inclinations. Second, he emphasizes the will’s independence not only with respect to passions and habits, but also with respect to knowledge, the effects of original sin, grace, and God. (...) Third, Ockham consequently argues that someone is even able to will to be unhappy, and can will another’s happiness more than or even instead of his own. (shrink)

In memoriamof the late Ellen Meiksins Wood, this piece firstly remembers the main achievements of her forty years of work. Secondly, it introduces one of her contributions, ‘Britain versus France: How ManySonderwegs?’, until now unavailable in an anglophone publication and reprinted in the present issue. This contribution is a useful reformulation of her arguments concerning radical historicity, the concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’, and the specificity of French and British state formation and their political revolutions – in contrast to arguments for (...) a GermanSonderwegas an explanation for the rise of fascism. Wood also provides a fruitful illustration of how to apply a social-property relations approach to the development of the rule of law in each of these states, and thus furthers opportunities for debates on the potential of Political Marxism for understanding contemporary class struggles over rights. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

(2013). An Empirical Study: To What Extent and In What Ways Does Social Foundations of Education Inform Four Teachers’ Educational Beliefs and Classroom Practices? Educational Studies: Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 540-563.

This article explores the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their corresponding conceptual representations, by considering their respective continuities and discontinuities in language shift. I compare the figurative encoding of emotions in Kriol, a creole of northern Australia, with those of Dalabon, one of the languages replaced by this creole, with a particular focus on evidence from metaphorical gestures. The conclusions are three-fold. Firstly, the prominent figurative association between the body and the emotions observed in Dalabon is, overall, not matched (...) in Kriol. Secondly, although this association is not prominent in Kriol, it is not entirely absent. It surfaces where speakers are less constrained by linguistic conventions: in non-conventionalized tropes, and gestures in particular. Indeed, some of the verbal emotion metaphors that have disappeared with language shift are preserved as gestural metaphors. Thus, Kriol speakers endorse the conceptual association between emotions and the body, in spite of the lower linguistic incidence of this association. The third conclusion is that therefore, in language shift, conceptual figurative representations and linguistic figurative representations are independent of each other. The former can persist when the latter largely disappear. Conversely, the fact that speakers endorse a certain type of conceptual representation does not entail that they will use corresponding linguistic forms in the new language. The transfer of linguistic figurative representations seems to depend, instead, upon purely linguistic parameters. (shrink)

This introduction presents the symposium on Sam Knafo and Benno Teschke’s article in Historical Materialism, ‘Political Marxism and the Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique’ (2021). It briefly summarises the foundations of Political Marxism, discusses the broader implications of the debate raised by Knafo and Teschke for questions of collective knowledge-production and methods in Marxist historiography, and outlines the seven contributions of the symposium. The introduction concludes by tracing, through the evolution of debates in Political Marxism and the (...) contributions of its protagonists, some of the lineages of Marxist historiography as well as of the history of this journal. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do (...) not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data. (shrink)