No âmbito dos principals trabalhos de Delfim Santos bem que, na totalidade da suamensagem, contextuamos a nossa reflexão em três proposições: "A pedagogia — o educando: ser essencial-existencial"; "A educação: fundamento e sentido da pedagogia"; "O espírito: fundamento e sentido da educação e dapedagogia". Deste modo, na primeira proposição, posicionamos o homem, no contexto pedagógico-educacional. Na segunda, movemo-nos na ambiguidade ontológica-metafísica e sistemáticatrans-sistemática; e, assim, se começámos por evidenciar, no processo educative os momentos essencial e existencial, concluímos pelos respectivos intervenientes. (...) Na terceira, conotamos a realidade e o espírito, como domínio metafísico da educação e da pedagogia. Na tríade das proposições, sobrelevamos, na primeira, o homem como termo de mediação, na segunda, aeducação e na terceira, o espírito, concluindo por este último, como termo médio fundamental e, assim, metafísico, da educação e da pedagogia, em Delfim Santos. (shrink)

No sentido do seu pensamento pretendemos, com o presente estudo, equacionar, adequadamente, arelação arelaçãofenomenologiae metafísicaem Delfim Santos. Ante a realidade e no âmbito do sistema e do método, distinguimos os domínios essencial-trans-sistemático ou metafísico e existencial-sistemático ou ontológico. Face ao conhecimentoe no contexto darazão especulativae metodológica, anotamos os sentidos de conhecimento, acto e termos, de sujeito (consciência) e objecto, esclarecendo que se, metafisicamente, o sujeito se posiciona perante o pensamento, entender-se-á, o objecto, apenas, em função da realidade. Ante aexistênciaeno âmbito (...) da ontologiae da fenomenologia, equacionamos, sucessivamente, as relações ontologia e fenomenologia, ontologiae hermenêuticae fenomenologiae hermenêutica. Face ao pensamento e no contexto da fenomenologia e da hermenêutica, se começamos por evidenciar a relação de sentido fenomenológico-hermenêutico, para assim compreendermos, subsequente e respectivamente, a determinação fenomenológica (regiões da realidade) e a conformação hermenêutica (categorias e princípios), concluímos com arelação de sentido hermenêutico-fenomenológico... Em todo este contexto, impõe-se-nos, como conclusão, arelação transcendental/fundamental fenomenologia e metafísica. Em reflexão final, chamamos a atenção para a necessidade das relações: prévia - ontologia e metafísicae... última/axial-filosofia e metafísica... em Delfim Santos. /// La présente étude prétend poser en termes adéquats, qui respectent le sens de sa pensée, la relation phénoménologique et métaphysique chez Delfim Santos. Devant la réalité et dans le cadre du système et de la méthode, nous distingons les domaines essentiel - transsystématique ou métaphysique et existentiel - systématique ou ontologique. Face à la connaissance et dans le contexte de laraison spéculative et méthodologique, nous pointons les sens de connaissance, acte et termes, de sujet (conscience) et objet, enmontrant que si, métaphysiquement, le sujet se place devant la pensée, on entendra l'objet seulement en fonction de la réalité. Devant l'existence et dans le cadre de l'ontologie et phénoménologie, ontologie et herméneutique et phénoménologie et herméneutique. Face à la pensée et dans le contexte de la phénoménologie et de l'herméneutique, se nous commençons par montrer la relation de sens phénoménologico-herméneutique, pour comprendre ainsi, ultérieurement et respectivement, la détermination phénoménologique (régions de laréalité) et la conformation herméneutique (catégories et principes), nous concluons avec larelationde sens herméneutico-phénoménologique... En tout e contexte de pensée ce qui s'impose à nous comme conclusion, c'est la relation transcendantal/fondamental, phénoménologie et métaphysique. En guise de réflexion finale, nous attirons l'attention sur lanécessité des relations: ontologie et métaphysique préalables et philosophie et métaphysique ultimes/axiales... chez Delfim Santos. /// This paper deals with the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics in the work of Delfim Santos. As to reality, and in the context of both system and method, we distinguish between the transystematic or metaphysical domain, and the existential-systematic or ontological one. As to knowledge, and in the context of both speculative and methodological reason, we note the meanings of knowledge, act and terms, subject (counsciousness) and object, and explain that if the subject is metaphysically posited before thought, then the object willbe understood only as a function of reality. As to existence, and in the contextof both ontology and phenomenololgy, we deal successively with the relations between ontology and phenomenology, ontology and hermeneutics, and phenomenology and hermeneutics. As to thought, and in the context of both phenomenology and hermeneutics, if we begin by stressing the phenomenologic-hermeneutical meaning relation, in order to understand, subsquently and respectively, both the phe phenomenologial determination (areas of reality) and the hermeneutical conformation (categories and principles), we then conclude by analysing the hermeneutic-penomenologicalmeaning relation... In this whole context, the transcendental/fundamental relation between phenomenology and metaphysics imposes itself upon us as a conclusion. Finally, we stress the need to consider the following relations: previous - ontology and metaphysics; and... last/axial - philosophy and metaphysics...in Delfim Santos. (shrink)

This text corresponds to Lectio Inauguralis of our Faculty in the first academic semester of 1988. Its aim is to show, from theoretical consciously assumed suppositions and through concrete achievements, some lines of research that can make intelligible the process followed in Latin America by the philosophy of explicitly Christian inspiration. It seeks, first of all, to bring to light what is theoretical and vitally at stake in each of the most significant moments of this process. Some philosophical figures are (...) also highlighted as illustrative examples. After some brief reflections that try to define the meaning of the terms “Christian Philosophy in Latin America”, the development of this philosophy is exposed from the 18th century up to the present time. The text preserves its original form, with no references and subtitles. Only a summary bibliography has been added. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker distinguishes two senses in which testimonial injustice is epistemic. In the primary sense, it is epistemic because it harms the victim as a giver of knowledge. In the secondary sense, it is epistemic, more narrowly, because it harms the victim as a possessor of knowledge. Her characterization of testimonial injustice has raised the following objection: testimonial injustice is not always an epistemic injustice, in the narrow, secondary sense, as it does not always entail that the victim is (...) harmed as a knowledge-possessor. By adopting a perspective based on Robert Brandom's normative expressivism, we respond to this objection by arguing that there is a close connection, conceptual and constitutive rather than merely causal, between the primary and the secondary epistemic harms of testimonial injustice, such that testimonial injustice always involves both kinds of epistemic harm. We do so by exploring the logic and functioning of belief and knowledge ascriptions in order to highlight three ways in which the secondary epistemic harm caused by testimonial injustice crystallizes: it undermines the epistemic agency of the victim, the epistemic friction necessary for knowledge, and the possibility of occupying particular epistemic nodes. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

The paper gives an overview of primate research and the economic-ethical 'lessons' we can derive from it. In particular, it examines the complex, multi-faceted and partially conflicting nature of (non-) human primates. Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, apparently walk on two legs: a selfish and a groupish leg. Given evolutionary continuity and gradualism between monkeys, apes and humans, human primates seem to be bipolar apes as well. They, too, tend to display a dual structure: there seems to (...) be a pro-social and a self-interested side to our species and a bipolar tension seems to exist between competition and cooperation respectively between self-interest and the common good. We are apparently at the same time Homines oeconomici and Homines culturali. Our inner ape tries to combine self-interested and common good motives. Based on de Waal's Russian doll model, the essay investigates the evolutionary origins of morality and 'eusociality'. With the help of selected case studies stemming from behavioural sciences/economics, the paper illustrates examples of empathy, altruism, reciprocal fairness, pro-social and other-regarding preferences, inequity aversion and altruistic punishment in (non-)human primates. Beside this selfless and groupish side, the paper also reflects on the self-interest and egoistic nature of (non-)human primates and the behavioural and cognitive differences between monkeys, apes and humans. (shrink)

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be of one and the same kind? This (...) paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Interpreting Bernard Williams’s ethical philosophy is not easy. His style is deceptively conversational; apparently direct, yet argumentatively inexplicit and allusive. He is moreover committed to evading ready-made philosophical “-isms.” All this reinforces the already distinct impression that the structure of his philosophy is a web of interrelated commitments where none has unique priority. Against this impression, however, I will venture that the contours of his philosophy become clearest if one considers that there is a single, unchanging root conviction from which (...) his ethical philosophy grows. Despite the perpetual motion of his philosophical thought—its erudition, originality, range, and unceasing forward momentum—still, I contend, there is something unchanging at the heart of it. I will show this by reference to three signature theses: internal reasons, the relativism of distance, and the porous borders of philosophy and history. I will argue that the root conviction of which these are the fruits is the conviction that the constraints of universal rationality seriously underdetermine how one should live. This, I believe, is the vision of the human ethical condition that constitutes the largely inexplicit yet utterly fundamental presupposition beneath Williams’s ethical philosophy taken as a whole. I label the object of this root conviction ethical freedom, and thus portray Williams as a philosopher of ethical freedom. (shrink)

Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify (...) truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments and, independently, falsity judgments. The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent. We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. (shrink)

We gain information from collective, often institutional bodies all the time—from the publications of committees, news teams, or research groups, from web sites such as Wikipedia, and so on—but do these bodies ever function as genuine group testifiers as opposed to mere group sources of information? In putting the question this way I invoke a distinction made, if briefly, by Edward Craig, which I believe to be of deep significance in thinking about the distinctiveness of the speech act of testimony. (...) The distinction is that between somebody’s functioning as a ‘good informant’ and their functioning merely as a ‘source of information’. The difference between these has, as he remarks, a crucial ethical aspect: What I have in mind is the special flavour of situations in which human beings treat each other as subjects with a common purpose, rather than as objects from which services, in this case true belief, can be extracted. In this paper I shall try to bring out the distinctive nature of the role of good informant in a way that helps to clarify what is at stake in asking whether there can be group testimony in the sense of genuinely collective testimony—that is to say, where the group testifier is a collective and not merely a sum of individuals testifying in one or another form of aggregated chorus. (shrink)

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the (...) powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...) programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices. (shrink)

I consider Katherine Hawley's commitment account of interpersonal trustworthiness alongside her sceptical challenge regarding the value of philosophically modelling institutional trustworthiness as distinct from reliability. I argue, pace Hawley's challenge, that there would be significant diagnostic and explanatory loss if we were to content ourselves with ideas of institutional (un)reliability alone; and I offer an illustrative case where institutional unreliability is only the half of it, indicating that when it comes to certain kinds of institutional dysfunction, we do need philosophical (...) models of institutional ‘distrustworthiness’ if we are to achieve a proper diagnosis. (shrink)

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify (...) to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. However, little has been written about how best to conceive of concepts for the purposes of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I aim to fill this foundational gap, proceeding in three main steps: First, I propose a methodological framework for evaluating the conduciveness of a given concept of concept for conceptual engineering. Then, I develop a typology that contrasts two competing concepts of concept that can be used in conceptual (...) engineering — namely, the philosophical and psychological ones. Finally, I evaluate these two concepts of concept using the proposed methodological framework and I show that, when it comes to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, the psychological concept of concept outclasses its philosophical counterpart on all counts. This provides a baseline from which the concept of concept can be further improved for the purposes of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

She was to a degree the tool of her husband. However, despite the fact she was under his influence to a degree she cannot escape if the Bank took all reasonable steps to ensure that she had appreciated and understood what she was signing. It may be that Mrs Wright-Bailey did not have an adequate comprehension of the nature of the charge... [E]ven if she did not, the Bank did take all reasonable steps.

Our ideas about forgiveness seem to oscillate between idealization and scepticism. How should we make sense of this apparent conflict? This paper argues that we should learn something from each, seeing these views as representing opposing moments in a perennial and well-grounded moral ambivalence towards forgiveness. Once we are correctly positioned, we shall see an aspect of forgiveness that recommends precisely this ambivalence. For what will come into view will be certain key psychological mechanisms of moral-epistemic influence – other-addressed and (...) self-addressed mechanisms of moral social construction – that enable forgiveness to function well when it is well-functioning, but which are also intrinsically prone to deterioration into one or another form of bad faith. Thus forgiveness is revealed as necessarily containing seeds of its own corruption, showing ambivalence to be a generically appropriate attitude. Moreover, it is emphasized that where forgiver and forgiven are relating to one another in the context of asymmetries of social power, the practice of forgiveness is likely to be further compromised, notably increasing the risk of negative influence on the moral-epistemic states of either the forgiver or the forgiven, or both. (shrink)

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk intelligibly—while (...) staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

Our understanding of social experiences is central to our social understanding more generally. But this sphere of epistemic practice can be structurally prejudiced by unequal relations of power, so that some groups suffer a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice—hermeneutical injustice. I aim to achieve a clear conception of this epistemicethical phenomenon, so that we have a workable definition and a proper understanding of the wrong that it inflicts.

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may (...) be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 27-50. (shrink)

Insight into animal biology and development provided by classical genetic analysis of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster was an incentive to develop advanced genetic tools for this insect. But genetic systems for the over one million other known insect species are largely undeveloped. With increasing information about insect genomes resulting from next generation sequencing, RNA interference is now the method of choice for reverse genetics, although it is constrained by the means of delivery of interfering RNA. A recent advance to (...) ensure sustained delivery with minimal experimental intervention or trauma to the insect is to exploit commensal bacteria for symbiont‐mediated RNA interference. This technology not only offers an efficient means for RNA interference in insects in laboratory conditions, but also has potential for use in the control of human disease vectors, agricultural pests and pathogens of beneficial insects. (shrink)

Taking on topics from pornography and prostitution to female genital mutilation, from womens magazines and marriage to sexual violence, contributors in this collection argue that the kind of liberal feminism currently rising to prominence does little to challenge the status quo.

In both social science and medicine, research on reproduction generally focuses on women. In this article, we examine how men’s reproductive contributions are understood. We develop an analytic framework that brings together Cynthia Daniels’ conceptualization of reproductive masculinity with a staged view of reproduction, where the stages include the period before conception, conception, gestation, and birth. Drawing on data from two medical sites that are oriented to the period before pregnancy, we examine how gendered knowledge about reproduction produces different reproductive (...) equations in different stages of the reproductive process. We conclude with a new research agenda that emerges from rethinking the role of men and masculinity in reproduction. (shrink)

Over the centuries, many philosophers have written about injustice. More recently, attention has turned to a previously little-recognized form of injustice – epistemic injustice. The philosopher Miranda Fricker coined the phrase ‘epistemic injustice’ – an example being when your credibility as a source of knowledge is unjustly downgraded (perhaps because you are ‘just a woman’ of the ‘wrong’ race). This interview with Miranda explores what epistemic injustice is, and why it is important.

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one should (...) not ameliorate for the sake of truth or knowledge, in the case of ideologies—at least, not primarily. (shrink)

The current literature on the value of knowledge is marred by two unwarranted presumptions, which together distort the debate and conceal what is perhaps the most basic value of knowledge, as distinct from mere true belief. These presumptions are the Synchronic Presumption, which confines philosophical attention to the present snapshot in time; and the Analytical Presumption, which has people look for the value of knowledge in some kind of warrant. Together these presumptions conceal that the value of knowledge might inhere (...) not in a necessary condition, but simply in a property that most knowledge possesses; and, in particular, that it might inhere, as I argue it does, in a certain property of 'resilience': the tendency to survive misleading counter-evidence over time owing to the subject's being in a position to weight it against evidence already possessed. (shrink)