The Perceptual Hypothesis is that we sometimes see, and thereby have non-inferential knowledge of, others' mental features. The Perceptual Hypothesis opposes Inferentialism, which is the view that our knowledge of others' mental features is always inferential. The claim that some mental features are embodied is the claim that some mental features are realised by states or processes that extend beyond the brain. The view I discuss here is that the Perceptual Hypothesis is plausible if, but only if, the mental features (...) it claims we see are suitably embodied. Call this Embodied Perception Theory. I argue that Embodied Perception Theory is false. It doesn't follow that the Perceptual Hypothesis is implausible. The considerations which serve to undermine Embodied Perception Theory serve equally to undermine the motivations for assuming that others' mental lives are always imperceptible. (shrink)

It is often assumed that when we see common opaque objects in standard light this is in virtue of seeing their facing surfaces. Here I argue that we should reject that claim. Either we don't see objects' facing surfaces, or—if we hold on to the claim that we do see such things—it is at least not in virtue of seeing them that we see common opaque objects. I end by showing how this conclusion squares both with our intuitions and with (...) the facts of vision science. (shrink)

We can know some things about each others' mental lives. The view that some of this knowledge is genuinely perceptual is getting traction. But the idea that we can see any of each others' mental states themselves - the Simple Perceptual Hypothesis - remains unpopular. Very often the view that we can perceptually know, for example, that James is angry, is thought to depend either on our awareness of James' expression or on the way James appears - versions of what (...) I call the Expressive Hypothesis. The Expressive Hypothesis is intuitive. But in this chapter I argue that it does not allow us to do away with the thought that we sometimes perceive people's mental states. I take my arguments to provide some tentative support for the Simple Perceptual Hypothesis. (shrink)

There has been recent interest in the hypothesis that we can directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. One popular strategy for defending that hypothesis is to claim that some mental features are embodied in a way that makes them available to perception. Here I argue that this view would imply a particular limit on the kinds of mental feature that would be perceptible (§2). I sketch reasons for thinking that the view is not yet well-motivated (§3). And I (...) present an alternative, epistemological strategy (§4). The epistemological strategy is to discern which features of our environment are perceptible by reflection on our capacity to identify them. If the epistemological strategy is accepted it becomes plausible that we sometimes directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. But it becomes implausible to suppose that our perceptual access is limited in the way the embodied view would imply. I end by sketching reasons to think that we sometimes directly perceive each other’s desires (§5). (shrink)

Our knowledge of each others’ mental features is sometimes epistemically basic or non-inferential. The alternative to this claim is Inferentialism, the view that such knowledge is always epistemically inferential. Here, I argue that Inferentialism is not plausible. My argument takes the form of an inference to the best explanation. Given the nature of the task involved in recognizing what mental features others have on particular occasions, and our capacity to perform that task, we should not expect always to find good (...) inferential explanations of our knowledge. This conclusion is an epistemological one. The motivation for it is independent of metaphysical concerns about functionalism or about the best way to model the cognitive architecture which produces our knowledge of others’ minds. Given this it is compatible both with the truth of functionalism and theory–theory construed as a cognitive model. (shrink)

From Immanuel Kant to Postmodernism, this volume provides an unparalleled student resource: a wide-ranging collection of the essential works of more than 50 seminal thinkers in modern European philosophy. Areas covered include Kant and German Idealism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Marxism and the Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism. Each section begins with a concise and helpful introduction, and all the texts have been selected for accessibility as well as significance, making the volume ideal for introductory and advanced levels (...) in philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, and the history of modern thought. (shrink)

Background:Nurses must balance their perceived duty to care against their perceived risk of harm to determine their willingness to report during disaster events, potentially creating an ethical dilemma and impacting patient care.Research aim:The purpose of this study was to investigate nurses’ perceived duty to care and whether there were differences in willingness to respond during disaster events based on perceived levels of duty to care.Research design:A cross-sectional survey research design was used in this study.Participants and research context:Using a convenience sample (...) with a snowball technique, data were collected from 289 nurses throughout the United States in 2017. Participants were recruited through host university websites, Facebook, and an American Nurses Association discussion board.Ethical considerations:Institutional review board approval was obtained from the University of Texas at Tyler and the University of Arkansas.Findings:Analysis of willingness to report to work based on levels of perceived duty to care resulted in the emergence of two groups: “lower level of perceived duty to care group” and “higher level of perceived duty to care group.” The most discriminating characteristics differentiating the groups included fear of abandonment by co-workers, reporting because it is morally the right thing to, and because of imperatives within the Nursing Code of Ethics.Discussion:The number of nurses in the lower level of perceived duty to care group causes concern. It is important for nursing management to develop strategies to advance nurses’ safety, minimize nurses’ risk, and promote nurses’ knowledge to confidently work during disaster situations.Conclusion:Level of perceived duty to care affects nurses’ willingness to report to work during disasters. Primary indicators of low perceived duty to care are amenable to actionable strategies, potentially increasing nurses’ perceived duty to provide care and willingness to report to work during disasters. (shrink)

Traditionally, it has been supposed that both minds and mental states are unobservable. If the mind and its contents are hidden in this way, our knowledge of others' mental lives would have to be indirect. In this thesis, I argue that it is not plausible-to suppose that all of our knowledge, of others mental lives is indirect. It is more plausible to suppose that sometimes, we can perceive others' mental states. Thereby, we can sometimes come to have direct, perceptual knowledge (...) of when another is in some mental state’ The hypothesis that we can sometimes perceive each others' mental states is plausible because it is possible, and because if it were true, it would bestexplain our knowledge of others' mental states. It is possible to perceive others' mental states, because others' behaviours need not conceal those states. Rather, what behaviour sometimes does is to reveal another's mental state. When behaviour acts this way, knowledge of another's mental state need not rest on any beliefs about their behaviour. If others' behaviour could inform us of their mental states only in so far as it could be our evidence of their mental states, then the evidence it would provide could not be sufficient to secure all the knowledge we take ourselves to have about others’ mental states. If so, the claim that all we have to go on in discovering how others think or feel is the evidence of their behaviour could not hope to explain that knowledge. So, only if it were true that others' behaviour sometimes enabled us to perceive their mental states could we adequately explain all our knowledge of their mental states. For these reasons, I claim that the hiddenness of the mental is a myth. (shrink)

Health equity can be defined as the absence of disadvantage to individuals and communities in health outcomes, access to health care, and quality of health care regardless of one’s race, gender, nationality, age, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. Health equity concerns those disparities in public health that can be traced to unequal, systemic economic, and social conditions. Despite significant improvements in the health of the overall population, health inequities in America persist. Racial and ethnic minorities continue to experience higher rates (...) of morbidity and mortality than non-minorities across a range of health issues. For example, African-American children with asthma have a seven times greater mortality rate than Non-Hispanic white children with the illness. While cancer is the second leading cause of death among all populations in the U.S., ethnic minorities are especially burdened with the disease. (shrink)

Health equity can be defined as the absence of disadvantage to individuals and communities in health outcomes, access to health care, and quality of health care regardless of one’s race, gender, nationality, age, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. Health equity concerns those disparities in public health that can be traced to unequal, systemic economic, and social conditions. Despite significant improvements in the health of the overall population, health inequities in America persist. Racial and ethnic minorities continue to experience higher rates (...) of morbidity and mortality than non-minorities across a range of health issues. For example, African-American children with asthma have a seven times greater mortality rate than Non-Hispanic white children with the illness. While cancer is the second leading cause of death among all populations in the U.S., ethnic minorities are especially burdened with the disease. (shrink)

In this book, David McNeill illuminates Plato’s distinctive approach to philosophy by examining how his literary portrayal of Socrates manifests an essential interdependence between philosophic and ethical inquiry. In particular, McNeill demonstrates how Socrates’s confrontation with profound ethical questions about his public philosophic activity is the key to understanding the distinctively mimetic, dialogic, and reflexive character of Socratic philosophy. Taking a cue from Nietzsche’s account of “the problem of Socrates,” McNeill shows how the questions Nietzsche raises are (...) questions that, in Plato's depiction, Socrates was aware of and responded to. McNeill also shows how the Republic provides a view of Socratic moral psychology that resembles Nietzsche’s account of human psychology: it deals with the internalized ethical narratives and justificatory schemes through which human beings orient themselves to their world. McNeill argues that this moral psychology not only determines Socrates’s explicit account of different character types and political regimes but also crucially informs his dialectical engagements with his various interlocutors in the dialogues. In addition to contributing a unique perspective to current debates about Socrates’s philosophic methods and the significance of the literary character of Plato’s dialogues, the book offers a far-reaching interpretation of Plato’s presentation of the theoretical and practical activities of the fifth-century Sophists. And in showing how Plato responds to “modern” theoretical challenges, McNeill provides new evidence to question standard views of the differences between ancient and modern conceptions of the self, society, and nature. (shrink)

Systems of oppression function by exploiting the most vulnerable amongst us. Where these oppressive systems overlap, the victims are pitted against one another. Slaughterhouses provide a particularly brutal example, wherein speciesism, capitalism, and carcerality intersect at the expense of their collective victims. In a dozen compelling essays from around the world, Vegan Entanglements: Dismantling Racial and Carceral Capitalism examines the ways human and animal bodies are controlled, manipulated, and sectioned within a system that commodifies labor, production, and individual beings for (...) profit. The book is divided into four sections: 1: The Intersection(s) Between Prison- and Animal-Industrial Complexes; 2: Critical Animal Geographies and the Panopticon; 3: Law, Veganism, and the Carceral State; and 4: Fighting for Our Collective Liberation with Consistent Anti-Oppression. (shrink)

Adults and children spontaneously produce gestures while they speak, and such gestures appear to support and expand on the information communicated by the verbal channel. Little research, however, has been carried out to examine the role played by gesture in the listener's representation of accumulating information. Do listeners attend to the gestures that accompany narrative speech? In what kinds of relationships between gesture and speech do listeners attend to the gestural channel? If listeners do attend to information received in gesture, (...) how is this information represented— is it 'tagged' as originating in the gestural channel? In this article research is described that addresses these questions. Results show that listeners do attend to information conveyed in gesture, when that information supplements or even contradicts the information conveyed by speech. And information received via gesture is available for retelling in speech. These results are taken to demonstrate that gesture is not taken by the listener to be epiphenomenal to the act of speaking, or a simple manual translation of speech. But they also suggest that the information conveyed in a discourse may be represented in a manner that is neither gesture nor language, although accessible to both channels. (shrink)

I give a brief precis of Lyons' book. I discuss the problem of delineating basic from non-basic beliefs. I argue that one of Lyons' possible solutions doesn't work - his definition of a perceptual module does not allow us to decide which beliefs are basic. And I argue that another possible solution undermines some of Lyons' motivation. The intuitive understanding of belief may not generate the Clairvoyancy troubles he fears.

I begin by identifying two approaches for comprehending actions: the analytical approach and the hermeneutical approach. I examine two analytical approaches. The first is the covering law model as defended by Ernest Nagel. The second is the practical syllogism as defended by G. H. von Wright. They are both inadequate because the interpretation they allow for is limited. That is, the contexts into which they would fit actions do not allow for the range of meanings an action may present. The (...) hermeneutical approach, on the other hand, licenses any followable connections. Determination of relevant connections is made with reference to the question precipitating inquiry and the particular situation inquired into. ;Moreover, looking closely at the notion of cause, I show that the sort of causality the historian uses differs from the sort of causality of interest to natural and social scientists. That is, the historian is interested in examining individual causal connections as a way of comprehending particular incidents together, whereas the natural and social scientists are primarily concerned with comprehending individual events into a class of events and then connecting classes of events, which abstractly connect the individual events. In this way, prediction becomes possible. ;We cannot comprehend history in the same way in which we comprehend nature if we think that actions have no broader meaning than their place in the order of nature. While this view is abhorrent to some, it is held by many serious people. Consequently, we move from an epistemological question to an ethical question, "Ought we to try to comprehend history in the way we comprehend nature?" We must acknowledge this ethical question because the relationship between knower and thing known in history is not only an epistemological relationship, it is also a human relationship. Like all human relationships, it has an ethical dimension. ;Narrative comprehension of human action is to be preferred over more straightforwardly theoretical modes of comprehension because the narrative form is peculiarly able to comprehend alternative points of view into coherent wholes. Its ability to do this allows for the presentation of agents not simply as objects, but as subjects. One particularly important reason for this is that once we see the formal principle of unity within narrative as a movement to agreement, we can recognize this same movement as the principle underlying each person's experience. ;History may help us to re-affirm democratic values because in its recognition of the diversity of points of view it reminds us that each of us has only a perspective on the social world, and not the whole story. The reason for this, however, is not some failure of will on our part, but rather that the social world is a creation of our interpretations as well as our actions, and all of our interpretations have some role in the formation of the contexts that form the meaning of our words and deeds. (shrink)

Argues that Heidegger's early reading of Aristotle provides him with a critical resource for addressing the problematic domination of theoretical knowledge in Western civilization.

Speakers of the “green backlash” movement frequently advertise their approach as one of rigorous scepticism, and themselves as defenders of scientific method. In reality, their use of scepticism is often highly flawed and inconsistent; this is clearly seen in case examples focusing on Philip Stott's arguments on climate change, and Julian Simon's arguments on physical limits to growth. What this discourse illustrates is that sceptical language is often used as a rhetorical tool for advancing an underlying political philosophy that is (...) based on an ideal of modern science as bestower of unlimited material power. In order to understand, and to criticise this discourse effectively, one needs to recall the criticisms made by the likes of Hayek and Arendt of “scientism”—the misuse of the language of science, and its aura of predictive certainty, to portray certain political visions as being inevitably true and triumphant. (shrink)

Explores the notion of ethos in Heidegger’s thought.

Sophocles' Antigone contains the first recorded instance of the word αὑτ ό νομος, the source for our word “autonomous”. I argue that reflection upon the human aspiration toward autonomy is central to that work. I begin by focusing on the difficulty readers of the play have determining whether Antigone's actions in the play should be considered autonomous and then suggest that recognizing this difficulty is crucial to a proper understanding of the play. The very aspects of Antigone's character that seem (...) to militate against understanding her actions within the play as autonomous—her rejection of life, her intimacy with death and the way she seems defined by her incestuous heritage— serve to illustrate the inherently problematic character of a moral ideal that we can provisionally call Antigone's autonomy. I show how the movement of the play can be understood in terms of Antigone's progress from what Kant would characterize as a heteronomous representation of her irremissible duty to bury her dead brother, to a self-conception defined by a recognition and embrace of her autonomy understood as, in Kant's words, “a respect for something entirely different from life”. Antigone's autonomy is exemplified by her choice to be dead, the choice to bear the burden of responsibility to her own. This choice, I argue, must be understood as the choice of herself as defined by her obligation to her own. Sophocles' Antigone suggests that the moral ideal Antigone represents is unliveable, but that this ideal is nonetheless essential to human moral aspiration. (shrink)

_Explores the notion of _ethos_ in Heidegger’s thought._.

Knowledge of the law and its impact on health outcomes is increasingly important in public health practice. The CDC's Public Health Law Academy helps satisfy this need by providing online trainings, facilitator toolkits, and legal epidemiology tools to aid practitioners in learning about the law's role in promoting public health.

ABSTRACT This paper is a case study in public health ethics. It considers whether there is a basis in ethics for political action by health professionals and their associations in response to inhumane treatment. The issue arises from Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the charge that this treatment has been both immoral and inhumane. This judgement raises several questions of broader significance in bioethics and of significance to the emerging field of public health ethics. These questions relate to the (...) role of health professionals in response to inhumane treatment of people in their charge; to the discipline of public health in light of a growing recognition of its ethical basis; and the role of public health and bioethical associations in response to ethical issues arising in a political context. It is argued that, in serious cases of humanitarian and human rights abuses affecting health and well‐being, there is a case for political action by health professionals, academic and professional institutions, and associations of public health and ethics. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his turn (...) toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

In the second half of the twentieth century, a surprising change in the notion of scientific truth gained ground when an evolutionary cosmology made the Newtonian world machine into no more than a passing phase of the cosmos, subject to exceptions in the neighborhood of Black Holes and other unusual objects. Physical and chemical laws ceased to be eternal and universal and became local and changeable, that is, fundamentally historical instead, and faced an uncertain, changeable future just as they had (...) in the initial phases of the cosmos.The earth sciences along with biology had become historical in the nineteenth century; and the Big Bang cosmology in effect brought physics and chemistry into line, allowing venturesome intellects to concoct a new all-embracing worldview that recognizes the catalytic role of the observer in defining what is observed, and how different levels of local complexity provoke new and surprising phenomena--including terrestrial life forms, and most notably for us, humanly-constructed symbolic meanings--of which science is only one example.The article then argues that it is time for historians to take note of the imperial role thus thrust upon their discipline by making a sustained effort to enlarge their views and explore the career of humankind on earth as a whole, thus making human history an integral part of the emerging scientific and evolutionary worldview.Tentative suggestions of how this might be addressed, focusing on changes in patterns of communication that expanded the scale of human cooperation, and thus conduced to survival, follow. Dance, then speech, were early breakthroughs expanding the practicable size of wandering human bands; then caravans and shipping allowed civilizations to arise; writing expanded the scale of coordination; warfare and trade harshly imposed best practice across wide areas of Eurasia and Africa and kept the skills of that part of the world ahead of what the peoples of other continents and islands had at their command. Then with the crossing of the oceans after 1492 our One World began to emerge and swiftly assumed its contemporary shape with further improvements in the range and capacity of communication--for example, printing, mechanically-powered transport, instantaneous data transmission--with consequences for human society and earth's ecosystem yet to be experienced.Much remains to be investigated and, in particular, interactions between the history of human symbolic meanings and the history of other equilibria--ecological, chemical, physical--within which we exist needs further study. But with suitable effort, history can perhaps become scientific and the emerging scientific evolutionary worldview begin to achieve logical completeness by bringing humankind within its scope. (shrink)

Aristotle claims in the Metaphysics that in order to be resourceful in first philosophic inquiry it is useful to go through perplexity well. In this essay, the author argues that that perplexity plays a parallel role in Aristotle’s account of practical, deliberative inquiry in the Nicomachean Ethics. He does so by offering an interpretation of the relation between Aristotle’s account of akratic ignorance in Nicomachean Ethics 7 and his emphasis on the necessity of going through perplexity when inquiring into akrasia. (...) Along the way, the author tries to shed some additional light on Aristotle’s conception of endoxa, his account of the so-called practical syllogism, and the distinction between ethical virtue simply and “authoritative” virtue. But the intention throughout the essay is to examine the role that perplexity about the phenomena of ethical life plays in Aristotle’s account of the kind of thoughtfulness required for excellence of character. (shrink)

The History of Beyng belongs to a series of Martin Heidegger's reflections from the 1930s that concern how to think about being not merely as a series of occurrences, but as essentially historical or fundamentally as an event. Beginning with Contributions to Philosophy, these texts are important for their meditations on the oblivion and abandonment of being, politics, and race, and for their incisive critique of power, force, and violence. Originally published in 1998 as volume 69 of Heidegger's Complete Works, (...) this English translation opens new avenues for understanding the trajectory of Heidegger's thinking during this crucial time. (shrink)

The History of Beyng belongs to a series of Martin Heidegger's reflections from the 1930s that concern how to think about being not merely as a series of occurrences, but as essentially historical or fundamentally as an event. Beginning with Contributions to Philosophy, these texts are important for their meditations on the oblivion and abandonment of being, politics, and race, and for their incisive critique of power, force, and violence. Originally published in 1998 as volume 69 of Heidegger's Complete Works, (...) this English translation opens new avenues for understanding the trajectory of Heidegger's thinking during this crucial time. (shrink)

In Freedom's Right Axel Honneth seeks to provide a theory of justice by appropriating Hegel's account of ethical substance in the Philosophy of Right, but he wants to do so without endorsing Hegel's more robust idealist commitments. I argue that this project can only succeed if Honneth can offer an alternative, comparatively robust demonstration of the rationality and normative coherence of existing social institutions. I contend that the grounds Honneth provides for this claim are insufficient for his purposes. In particular, (...) I argue that Honneth's claim that “justice and individual self-determination are mutually referential,” even were it to be accepted, would be insufficient to underwrite his more robust identification between the normative foundations of justice, autonomy and reciprocal self-realization. In the final section of the paper, I turn to Honneth's analysis of the “social institution” of friendship, which he, following Hegel, holds up as a paradigmatic instantiation of social freedom understood as, in Hegel's words, “being with oneself in another” . I argue that an analysis of the normative import of friendship wholly in terms of mutual recognition misses an important aspect of the kind of self-realization that friendship makes possible. (shrink)

5-43 This article aims to consider the robust field of environmental history as a whole, as it stands and as it has developed over the past twenty-five years around the world. It necessarily adopts a selective approach but still offers more breadth than depth. It treats the links between environmental history and other fields within history, and with other related disciplines such as geography. It considers the precursors of environmental history, its emergence since the 1970s, its condition in several settings (...) and historiographies. Finally it touches on environmental history’s relationship to social theory and to the natural sciences as they have evolved in recent decades. It concludes that while there remains plenty of interesting work yet to do, environmental history has successfully established itself as a legitimate field within the historical profession, and has a bright future, if perhaps for discouraging reasons. (shrink)

IN BOOK 9 OF THE REPUBLIC, Socrates tells Adeimantus that the “tyrantmakers” manage to defeat the relatives of the nascent tyrant in the battle over the young man’s soul by contriving “to make in him some eros, a sort of great winged drone, to be the leader of the idle desires.” This “leader of the soul,” Socrates claims.

In this important new book, leading Heidegger scholar William NcNeill provides a concise and systematic appraisal of the fate of phenomenology in Heidegger. He shows how the issue of “letting be” is already central and prominent in Heidegger’s early phenomenology and examines Heidegger’s phenomenological approach in relation to art and poetry.

The essay presents a series of explorations of Nietzsche’s conception of life as will to power, relying extensively on fragments from Nietzsche’s later notebooks, but also commenting on key selections from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morality. I argue that Nietzsche understands himself to be engaged in a unique kind of phenomenology of the body, and that will to power, as the primal force of life, should be understood not only as a creative (...) and unifying life-force, but equally as a force of differentiation and obliteration. (shrink)

The AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs' position statement on “Disaster Preparedness and Response” is a welcome discussion of an important issue: the extent to which physicians have a responsibility to treat people affected by disasters in which the nature, source, and cause of the harm is unclear and where the risk is largely unknown.