I argue that contemporary accounts of ideology critique—paradigmatically those advanced by Haslanger, Jaeggi, Celikates, and Stanley—are either inadequate or redundant. The Marxian concept of ideology—a collective epistemic distortion or irrationality that helps maintain bad social arrangements—has recently returned to the forefront of debates in contemporary analytic social philosophy. Ideology critique has similarly emerged as a technique for combating such social ills by remedying those collective epistemic distortions. Ideologies are sets of social meanings or shared understandings. I argue in this paper (...) that because agents must coordinate on them to be mutually intelligible, ideologies, on the fashionable contemporary account, are conventions. They are equilibrium solutions to a particular kind of social coordination problem. The worry is that changing pernicious conventions requires more than the epistemic remedy contemporary critical social theorists prescribe. It also requires overcoming strategic impediments like high first-mover costs. Thus contemporary proponents of ideology critique—the “new ideology critics,” as I’ll call them—face a dilemma. Either their account of social change fails to account for important strategic impediments to social change, in which case it is inadequate, or it incorporates a theory of strategic behavior, and thus merely reinvents the wheel, poorly. It adds nothing to prominent convention-based accounts of social change in the social sciences. More generally, this is an example of a pernicious trend in contemporary critical social theory. Contemporary critical social theorists have abandoned their predecessors’ commitment to engaging with social science, thereby undermining their efforts. (shrink)

“Structural Injustice” refers to injustices that can't be attributed to particular actions by bad actors. This article surveys Iris Marion Young's influential account of structural injustice; lays out some considerations related to the concept's use as an analytical tool; and critically surveys Young's account of individual responsibility for structural injustice.

The Australian scientist Frank Macfarlane Burnet—winner of the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his contributions to the understanding of immunological tolerance—is perhaps best recognized as one of the formulators of the clonal selection theory of antibody production, widely regarded as the ‘central dogma’ of modern immunology. His work in studies in animal virology, particularly the influenza virus, and rickettsial diseases is also well known. Somewhat less known and publicized is Burnet’s research on bacteriophages, which he conducted in the first decade (...) of his research career, immediately after completing medical school. For his part, Burnet made valuable contributions to the understanding of the nature of bacteriophages, a matter of considerable debate at the time he began his work. Reciprocally, it was while working on the phages that Burnet developed the scientific styles, the habits of mind and laboratory techniques and practices that characterized him for the rest of his career. Using evidence from Burnet’s published work, as well as personal papers from the period he worked on the phages, this paper demonstrates the direct impact that his experiments with phages had on the development of his characteristic scientific style and approaches, which manifested themselves in his later career and theories, and especially in his thinking regarding various immunological problems. (shrink)

Sankaran examines the cultural and social matrix in which Carnatic music was cultivated and consumed in mid-twentieth century India, including the ways that musicians negotiated caste politics and the double standard for male and female musicians. Sankaran's memoir is interwoven with passages from Daniel M. Neuman's work on music in North India, which inspired Sankaran's project, and interviews with Sankaran by Matthew Allen.

A speech perception experiment provides evidence that the linguistic relationship between words affects the discrimination of their talkers. Listeners discriminated two talkers' voices with various linguistic relationships between their spoken words. Listeners were asked whether two words were spoken by the same person or not. Word pairs varied with respect to the linguistic relationship between the component words, forming either: phonological rhymes, lexical compounds, reversed compounds, or unrelated pairs. The degree of linguistic relationship between the words affected talker discrimination in (...) a graded fashion, revealing biases listeners have regarding the nature of words and the talkers that speak them. These results indicate that listeners expect a talker's words to be linguistically related, and more generally, indexical processing is affected by linguistic information in a top-down fashion even when listeners are not told to attend to it. (shrink)

Uma Narayan attempts to clarify what the feminist notion of the 'epistemic privilege of the oppressed' does and does not imply. She argues that the fact that oppressed 'insiders' have epistemic privilege regarding their oppression creates problems in dialogue with and coalitionary politics involving 'outsiders' who do not share the oppression, since the latter fail to come to terms with the epistemic privilege of the insiders. She concretely analyzes different ways in which the emotions of insiders can be inadvertantly (...) hurt by outsiders and suggests ways in which such problems can be minimized. (shrink)

_Dislocating Cultures_ takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas. Drawing attention to the political forces that have spawned, shaped, and perpetuated these misrepresentations since colonial times, Uma Narayan inspects the underlying problems which "culture" poses for the respect of difference and cross-cultural understanding. Questioning the problematic roles assigned to Third World subjects within multiculturalism, Narayan examines ways in which (...) the flow of information across national contexts affects our understanding of issues. _Dislocating Cultures_ contributes a philosophical perspective on areas of ongoing interest such as nationalism, post-colonial studies, and the cultural politics of debates over tradition and "westernization" in Third World contexts. (shrink)

What features of structural injustice distinguish it from mere collections of injustices committed by individuals? I argue that the standard model of moral judgment that centers agents and actions fails to adequately articulate what’s gone wrong in cases of structural injustice. It fails because features of the social world that arise only at large scale are normatively salient, but unaccounted for by the standard model. I illustrate these features with historical examples of normatively-different outcomes driven by institutional structure rather, holding (...) fixed characteristics of agents’ motivations. I then defend the view from reductionist objections. (shrink)

Study of Tattvacintāmaṇididhiti of Raghunātha Śiromaṇi, commentary on Pakṣatā, portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa, dealing with the essential nature of proposition (pakṣatā), of Navya Nyāya school in Hindu philosophy.

The article seeks to answer the question: Why should I be ethical? For an answer, it examines Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic. It seeks to explore the complex ethical issues posed by Mahabharata, how they are relevant to us as individuals and to us as managers and teachers of management in business schools and enables us to understand how possibly we could use the insights to better our lives and of those around us. Mahabharata’s central message, concludes the article, is (...) that ethics is not for convincing anyone; it is about convincing oneself. Mahabharata tells us that ethics is what makes life meaningful, at the individual level, group level and at the level of society, and cannot be justified in a consequentialist framework. (shrink)

Sensory processing dysfunction is characterized by a behaviorally observed difference in the response to sensory information from the environment. While the cerebellum is involved in normal sensory processing, it has not yet been examined in SPD. Diffusion tensor imaging scans of children with SPD and typically developing controls were compared for fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity across the following cerebellar tracts: the middle cerebellar peduncles, superior cerebellar peduncles, and cerebral peduncles. Compared to TDC, children with SPD (...) show reduced microstructural integrity of the SCP and MCP, characterized by reduced FA and increased MD and RD, which correlates with abnormal auditory behavior, multisensory integration, and attention, but not tactile behavior or direct measures of auditory discrimination. In contradistinction, decreased CP microstructural integrity in SPD correlates with abnormal tactile and auditory behavior and direct measures of auditory discrimination, but not multisensory integration or attention. Hence, altered cerebellar white matter organization is associated with complex sensory behavior and attention in SPD, which prompts further consideration of diagnostic measures and treatments to better serve affected individuals. (shrink)

Drawing parallels between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, I point to some common features of essentialist pictures of culture. I argue that cultural essentialism is detrimental to feminist agendas and suggest strategies for its avoidance. Contending that some forms of cultural relativism buy into essentialist notions of culture, I argue that postcolonial feminists need to be cautious about essentialist contrasts between "Western" and "Third World" cultures.

The essays in this volume bring to their focuses on philosophical issues the new angles of vision created by the multicultural, global, and postcolonial feminisms that have been developing around us.

As the term "family values" achieves prominence in the rhetoric of political debate, the social issues at the heart of today's political controversies deserve to be studied in depth. This volume brings together a group of philosophers, political scientists, and legal scholars to explore a wide range of specific topics dealing with the legal, ethical, and political dimensions of familial relationships. Topics addressed include the rights of unwed fathers, the nature of children's autonomy, children's rights to divorce their parents, parental (...) rights with respect to medical treatment and religious education of children, surrogate parenting, same-sex parenting, and single-parent families. Collectively, the essays point out that many contemporary issues pertaining to the having and raising of children pose genuinely hard choices for public policy makers, for those who make and enforce the laws, and for citizens who would like to engage in informed and critical democratic debate on these issues. (shrink)

I point to a colonial care discourse that enabled colonizers to define themselves in relationship to "inferior" colonized subjects. The colonized, however, had very different accounts of this relationship. While contemporary care discourse correctly insists on acknowledging human needs and relationships, it needs to worry about who defines these often contested terms. I conclude that improvements along dimensions of care and of justice often provide "enabling conditions" for each other.

On the tenets of Sankhya philosophy in the light of Vijnanabhiksu's bhāṣya and Yoga varttika.

On the sāṅkhya and yoga systems of Indian philosophy as interpreted by Vijñānabhikṣu, fl. 1545-1550, in his Sāṅkhyapravac̣anabhāṣya and Yogavārttika.

[Przekład] W artykule dokonano przeglądu historiografii immunologii od 1999 roku, co w pewnym stopniu jest odpowiedzią na stanowisko takich historyków jak Thomas Söderqvist, którzy twierdzili, że to pole badawcze nie było wówczas dość rozwinięte (Söderqvist i Stillwell). Najpierw wskazano przeszłe i teraźniejsze problemy, które historiografia ma ze zdefiniowaniem immunologii, a następnie skomentowano ostatnie studia nad pojęciem immunologicznego „ja”. W dalszym toku przeglądu przeanalizowano i oceniono nowe publikacje poświęcone zróżnicowanym zagadnieniom immunologii oraz niektóre charakterystyczne oskarżenia formułowane wobec niedostatku pewnych dziedzin historii, (...) na przykład historii biograficznych i historii instytucji. W podsumowaniu przedstawiono konkurujące ze sobą kierunki, w których rozwinęła się historia immunologii, wychodząc poza wstępne, tymczasowe stadia uchwycone w poprzednim przeglądzie, i stając się wielogłosową, pluripotencjalną dyscypliną, podobną do przedmiotu jej badań. Pokazano też, że historia immunologii nadal rozwija się na wiele nowych i ekscytujących sposobów. (shrink)

Dislocating Cultures takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas.

Many feminists of color have demonstrated the need to take into account differences among women to avoid hegemonic gender-essentialist analyses that represent the problems and interests of privileged women as paradigmatic. As feminist agendas become global, there is growing feminist concern to consider national and cultural differences among women. However, in attempting to take seriously these cultural differences, many feminists risk replacing gender-essentialist analyses with culturally essentialist analyses that replicate problematic colonialist notions about the cultural differences between "Western culture" and (...) "non-Western cultures" and the women who inhabit them (Narayan 1998). Seemingly universal essentialist generalizations about "all women" are replaced by culture-specific essentialist generalizations that depend on totalizing categories such as "Western culture,' "non-Western cultures," "Indian women," and "Muslim women." The picture of the "cultures" attributed to these groups of women remains fundamentally essentialist, depicting as homogeneous groups of heterogeneous peoples whose values, ways of life, and political commitments are internally diverge. (shrink)

There are a variety of discourses and practices that position Western feminists as people who have a moral and political obligation to concern themselves with the welfare, suffering, or empowerment of non-Western subjects, often women, and intervene to “do good” on their behalf. Conversely, there are virtually no discourses and practices that assign moral and political obligations to non-Western feminists to intervene in matters involving the welfare or suffering of Western subjects, including women. A central goal of my paper is (...) to make this asymmetry explicit and distinguish it from charges such as “essentialism” more commonly made against Western feminist representations of their Others. I explore the consequences of discourses and practices that construct Western subjects as entitled to and obligated to concern themselves with the world entire, while not extending this global scope of concern to non-Western subjects. I critically examine, among other things, the roles assigned Western-funded NGOs in enabling Western subjects to engage in practices of “doing good” and I explore alternative possibilities that are more explicitly “political.” Along the way, I examine certain blind spots in Western political theory that appear connected to the picture of Western subjects as obligated to “do good” in distant places. My analysis engages substantially with Alison Jaggar’s essay, “Saving Amina,” drawing attention to matters of agreement and possible disagreement. (shrink)

Huey P. Newton remains one the left’s intellectual enigmas. Although lauded for being the leader of the Black Panther Party, Newton is relatively unacknowledged as an intellectual. This article challenges the neglect of Newton’s thought by shedding light on his theory of empire, and the present-day value of returning to his thought. The article centres on how Newton’s critique of what he called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’ prefigures many of the elements found in the work of Hardt and Negri on empire. This (...) comparison will be used to show how Newton not only foresaw elements of the rise of contemporary neoliberal globalization, but also offered an idea of political solidarity and revolutionary politics for such a context. The article concludes by highlighting how Newton’s ideas about the need for a war of position based on ‘survival pending revolution’ presents a more theoretically and empirically salient conceptualization of resistance than his successors. (shrink)

This essay analyzes why women whose immigration status is dependent on their marriage face higher risks of domestic violence than women who are citizens and explores the factors that collude to prevent acknowledgment of their greater susceptibility to battering. It criticizes elements of current U.S. immigration policy that are detrimental to the welfare of battered immigrant women, and argues for changes that would make immigration policy more sensitive to their plight.

Unlike women’s paid work in the formal sector and women’s unpaid domestic and care-giving labor, women’s informal sector work has received little explicit attention from philosophers, including feminist philosophers, though the vast majority of women in most Third World countries (roughly 80% overall) work in this sector.

This essay analyzes why women whose immigration status is dependent on their marriage face higher risks of domestic violence than women who are citizens and explores the factors that collude to prevent acknowledgment of their greater susceptibility to battering. It criticizes elements of current U.S. immigration policy that are detrimental to the welfare of battered immigrant women, and argues for changes that would make immigration policy more sensitive to their plight.