Daryl Pullman provides a valuable comparison between the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) rates in Canada and California, illuminating the factors that appear to be pushing Canada down a slippery...

Every day nurses are required to make ethical decisions in the course of caring for their patients. Ethics in Nursing Practice provides the background necessary to understand ethical decision making and its implications for patient care. The authors focus on the individual nurse’s responsibilities, as well as considering the wider issues affecting patients, colleagues and society as a whole. This third edition is fully updated, and takes into account recent changes in ICN position statements, WHO documents, as well as addressing (...) current issues in healthcare, such as providing for the health and care needs of refugees and asylum seekers, bioethics and the enforcement of nursing codes. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Women and Ancient Greek Philosophy is an essential reference source for cutting-edge scholarship on women, gender, and philosophy in Greek antiquity. The volume features original research that crosses disciplines, offering readers an accessible guide to new methods, new sources, and new questions in the study of ancient Greek philosophy and its multiple afterlives. Comprising 40 chapters from a diverse international group of experts, the Handbook considers questions about women and gender in sources from Greek antiquity spanning (...) the period from 7th c. BCE to 2nd c. BCE, and in receptions of Greek antiquity from the Roman Imperial period, through the European Renaissance to the current day. Chapters are organized into five major sections: I. Early Greek antiquity – including Sappho, Presocratic philosophy, Sophists, and Greek tragedy – 700s–400s BCE II. Classical Greek antiquity – including Aeschines, Plato, and Xenophon – 400s–300s BCE III. Late Classical Greek to Hellenistic antiquity – including Cyrenaics, Cynics, the Hippocratic corpus, and Aristotle – 300s–200s BCE IV. Late Greek antiquity to Roman Imperial period – including Pythagorean women, Stoics, Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and late Platonists – 200s BCE to 700s CE V. Later receptions – including Shakespeare, the European Renaissance, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Harrison, Sarah Kofman, and Toni Morrison The Routledge Handbook of Women and Ancient Greek Philosophy is a vital resource for students and scholars in philosophy, Classics, and gender studies who want to gain a deeper understanding of philosophy’s rich past and explore sources and questions beyond the traditional canon. The volume is a valuable resource, as well, for students and scholars from history, humanities, literature, political science, religious studies, rhetorical studies, theatre, and LGBTQ and sexuality studies. (shrink)

In the current American iconoclash, certain monuments are subject to vandalism and municipal removal from their pedestals. Phrases such as “the erasure of history” and “damnatio memoriae” point to concerns that iconoclasm is an attempt to censor history or even remove certain individuals from public memory altogether. Because these phrases beckon the past, this wave of iconoclasm calls for a close examination of previous image-breaking to establish motives. Drawing first from art history, we analyze Byzantine iconoclasm and anxieties over the (...) nature of icons’ power, before contextualizing these findings within image destruction from the Paleolithic to the present day. Each comparison is suggestive of an enduring aesthetic principle: that what appears inanimate is not always inert. Next, drawing from cultural anthropology, we argue that principles of sympathetic magic are at the heart of contemporary iconoclasms, but not in the way media outlets often suggest. Instead, the fear of history’s erasure betrays a deeply rooted equivalence between the representation and the represented. In perceiving their fates as shared, sympathetic magic is seen to persist in the way humans create, interpret, and desecrate images. We conclude with the speculative realist proposition that iconoclasm can produce new, original artworks, which carries implications for the autonomy of art and its distribution between artist and artwork. (shrink)

The present paper illustrates an autobiographical writing experience carried out in a therapeutic day care center involving nine preadolescents and adolescents with moderate to severe mental distress. According to the literature, autobiographical writing is an useful tool to improve educational work with teenagers, because it can accommodate the need to express themselves that characterizes the adolescence and can prevent or reduce feelings of distress. Autobiographical practice is particularly suitable to work with teenagers because it is focused on the question “Who (...) am I?”, which is typical of adolescence. This question was the central theme of the autobiographical writing workshop. During the workshop, was proposed an introspective journey in search of one’s identity between past (who was I?), present (who am I?) and a possible future (who do I want to become?). This article will describe the themes and various stimuli that were proposed during the meetings and will present and discuss the results achieved. (shrink)

In this article, I examine racial narratives of passing and their relationship to discourses of hybridity. Rather than defining passing as inherently transgressive, or as one side of identity politics or the other, I suggest that passing must be understood in relationship to forms of social antagonism. I ask the following questions: how are differences that threaten the system recuperated? How do ambiguous or hybrid bodies get read in a way which further supports the enunciative power of those who are (...) telling the difference? In what ways is `passing' implicated in the very discourse around tellable differences? Although to some extent all identities involve passing - insofar as the subject never `is' what it `images' itself to be - we still need to theorize the differences between passing as white and passing as black. I argue that passing as black as a white subject can function as a technique of knowledge which assumes `blackness' to be imageable and hence beable. However, for black subjects to refuse to pass as white - that is, for black subjects to pass as black - can make visible the violent histories concealed by the invisibility of the mark of passing. Such a process of passing as black subjects is tied to a politics of the collective - a coming together through the recognition of the lack that engenders passing in the first place. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this introduction to the thematic issue on _the future of the cognitive science(s)_, we examine how challenges and uncertainties surrounding the past and present of this discipline make it difficult to chart its future. We focus on two main questions. The first is whether cognitive science is a single unified field or inherently pluralistic. This question can be asked at various levels: First, with respect to the disciplines that should be included in the cognitive hexagon and their reciprocal (...) relationships: should we speak of cognitive science or of the cognitive sciences? Second, with regard to the conceptual and methodological changes (turns or revolutions) that have taken place within the cognitive project from its inception to the present day. Third, it pertains to cognitive psychology as a discipline. Before the emergence of cognitive science psychology was a fragmented discipline characterized by different traditions and approaches: has cognitive science been able to stem this fragmentation? Finally, we can question the unity of the cognitive architecture itself: is cognition produced by homogeneous or heterogenous mechanisms for information processing? We show that the issue of unity is addressed by several of the papers included in this thematic issue. In the second part of this introduction, we query the role that each component discipline should play in the cognitive project and in particular which should lead the project going forward, and why. Again, we show how this issue has been tackled by several articles featured in this collection. _Keywords_: Future of Cognitive Science; Cognitive Psychology; Pluralism and Cognitive Science; Philosophy and Cognitive Science; Fragmentation of Psychology _Quale futuro per la scienza cognitiva?_ _Riassunto_: In questa introduzione al fascicolo tematico dedicato al _futuro della scienza cognitiva_ prendiamo in considerazione sfide e incertezze che caratterizzano il passato e il presente di questa disciplina, rendendo difficile prevedere il suo futuro. Due le questioni principali su cui concentriamo l’attenzione. La prima: la scienza cognitiva è un ambito unitario o intrinsecamente pluralistico? Questo problema si manifesta a diversi livelli. In primo luogo, riguarda le discipline che dovrebbero comporre l’esagono cognitivo e le loro relazioni reciproche: dovremmo parlare di scienza cognitiva o di scienze cognitive? In secondo luogo, riguarda le trasformazioni (svolte o rivoluzioni) concettuali e metodologiche avvenute all’interno di questo progetto dalla sua nascita fino ai giorni nostri. In terzo luogo, riguarda la psicologia cognitiva. Prima della nascita della scienza cognitiva la psicologia era una disciplina frammentaria caratterizzata da diverse tradizioni e approcci: possiamo dire che la scienza cognitiva abbia posto rimedio a tale frammentazione? Infine, il problema dell’unità sorge anche in relazione all’architettura cognitiva stessa, considerando che la cognizione potrebbe o potrebbe non essere prodotta da meccanismi omogenei di elaborazione delle informazioni. Nella presentazione che segue si cerca di mostrare come l’unità, in tutte queste varianti, sia una questione affrontata da diversi articoli presenti in questo fascicolo tematico. Nella seconda parte di questa introduzione prendiamo in considerazione il problema del ruolo che ciascuna disciplina componente dovrebbe svolgere nel progetto cognitivo e, in particolare, quale dovrebbe guidare il progetto e perché, ponendo in evidenza come anche questa sia una questione centrale, tematizzata da diversi lavori presentati in questo fascicolo. _Parole chiave_: Futuro della scienza cognitiva; Psicologia cognitiva; Pluralismo e scienza cognitiva; Filosofia e scienza cognitiva; Frammentazione della psicologia. (shrink)

This paper studies emotional inferencing triggered by emotion terms using Pragma-Dialectics and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The corpus, in French, is an excerpt of a video-recorded testimony in which a middle school teacher evokes her experience of being in class the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack, thus presenting a case of argumentation in context. The analysis focuses on the argumentative structure and on the rhetorical strategies that trigger emotional inferencing. The emotional inferencing derives from a Locus of Ontological (...) Implication, which links a situation and an emotion, while the culture-bound elements tend to be part of the endoxon. (shrink)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year 1989 Philosopher, mother, and feminist Sara Ruddick examines the discipline of mothering, showing for the first time how the day-to-day work of raising children gives rise to distinctive ways of thinking.

The coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people’s perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in an (...) urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020. The social restrictions imposed through national legislation divided the 69-day period into three phases. We collected observations, field audio recordings, photography, and diary notes on 50 days. Experts in soundscape and architecture were presented with the recordings, in randomized order, and made two separate perceptual analyses. One group rated the recordings for pleasantness and eventfulness using an adapted version of the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol, and a partly overlapping group annotated perceived sound events with free-form semantic labels. The labels were systematically classified into a four-level Taxonomy of Sound Sources, allowing an estimation of the relative amounts of Natural, Human, and Technological sounds. Loudness and three descriptors developed for bioacoustics were extracted computationally. Analysis showed that Eventfulness, Acoustic Complexity, and Acoustic Richness increased significantly over the time period, while the amount of Technological sounds decreased. These observations were interpreted as reflecting changes in people’s outdoor activities and behavior over the whole 69-day period, evidenced in an increased presence of Human sounds of voices and walking, and a significant shift from motorized vehicles toward personal mobility devices, again evidenced by perceived sounds. Quantitative results provided a backdrop against which qualitative analyses of diary notes and observations were interpreted in relation to the restrictions and the architectural specifics of the site. An integrated analysis of all sources pointed at the temporary suspension of human outdoor activity as the main reason for such a change. In the third phase, the progressive return of street life and the usage of personal mobility vehicles seemed to be responsible for a clear increase in Eventfulness and Loudness even in the context of an overall decrease of Technological sounds. Indoor human activity shared through open windows and an increased presence of birdsong emerge as a novel characteristic element of the local urban soundscape. We discuss how such changes in the acoustic environment of the site, in acoustic measurements and as perceived by humans, point toward the soundscape being a crucial component of a comprehensive urban design strategy that aims to improve health and quality of life for increasingly large and dense populations in the future. (shrink)

Background Families whose child has unexplained intellectual or developmental differences often hope that a genetic diagnosis will lower barriers to community-based therapeutic and support services. However, there is little known about efforts to mobilize genetic information outside the clinic or how socioeconomic disadvantage shapes and constrains outcomes.Methods We conducted an ethnographic study with predominantly socioeconomically disadvantaged families enrolled in a multi-year genomics research study, including clinic observations and in-depth interviews in English and Spanish at multiple time points. Coding and thematic (...) development were used to collaboratively interpret fieldnotes and transcripts.Results Thirty-two families participated. Themes included familial expectations that a genetic diagnosis could be translated into information, understanding, and assistance to improve the quality of a child’s day-to-day life. After sequencing, however, genetic information was not readily converted into improved access to services beyond the clinic, with families often struggling to use a genetic diagnosis to advocate for their child.Conclusion Families’ ability to use a genetic diagnosis as an effective advocacy tool beyond the clinic was limited by the knowledge and resources available to them, and by the eligibility criteria used by therapeutic service providers’ – which focused on clinical diagnosis and functional criteria more than etiologic information. All families undertaking genomic testing, particularly those who are disadvantaged, need additional support to understand the limits and potential benefits of genetic information beyond the clinic. (shrink)

Traditional as well as contemporary interpreters of Indian Yogācāra divide that tradition into a variety of doxographical camps depending on whether awareness is understood tobe endowed with phenomenal content (ākāra) and, if so, whether that content is understood to be real or true. Kamalaśīla’s extensive commentary on his teacher Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha contains passages that throw into question certain doxographical equivalencies, especially the equivalencies sometimes proposed betweenthe doctrine that awareness is endowed with phenomenal content (sākāravāda) and the doctrine that such content (...) is true or real (satyākāravāda) and between the doctrine that awareness is devoid of phenomenal content (nirākāravāda) and the doctrine that such content is false or unreal (alīkākāravāda). Further, in accord with his broadly rhetorical approach to the application of reason, Kamalaśīla is seen in this commentary to endorse a range of seemingly contradictory positions vis-à-vis ākāra. This article argues that this situation can be explained by way of reference to Kamalaśīla’s larger philosophical and soteriological program as a Mādhyamika thinker, a program not made explicit in the text yet nonetheless present in nascent form. That is, while various theories of awareness as endowed or not endowed with phenomenal content are useful in different rhetorical contexts as well as at different stages of philosophical analysis, at the end of the day such distinctions are moot since neither awareness nor its content is upheld as ultimately real. Instead, soteriologically efficacious phenomenal content is said to be like a “true dream” (satyasvapna), an illusion that satisfies only for as long as it remains unanalyzed. (shrink)

Recent claims contrast relief experienced because a period of unpleasant uncertainty has ended and an outcome has materialized (temporal relief)—regardless of whether it is one’s preferred outcome—with relief experienced because a particular outcome has occurred, when the alternative was unpalatable (counterfactual relief). Two studies (N = 993), one run the day after the United Kingdom left the European Union and one the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, confirmed these claims. “Leavers” and Biden voters experienced high levels of relief, and less (...) regret and disappointment than “Remainers” and Trump voters. “Remainers” and Trump voters showed an effect of precursor, experiencing little relief about the outcome that had occurred but stronger relief that a decision had been implemented. Only Trump voters who believed the election was over showed this precursor effect. Results suggest at least two different triggering conditions for relief and indicate a role for anticipated relief in voting behavior. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that we should not ascribe beliefs and desires to subjects like zombies or (present day) computers which do not have phenomenal consciousness. In order to ascribe beliefs, we must distinguish between personal and subpersonal content. There may be states in my brain which represent the array of light intensities on my retina, but these states are not beliefs, because they are merely subpersonal. I argue that we cannot distinguish between personal and subpersonal content without reference (...) to phenomenal consciousness. I argue for this by examining two attempts to account for belief without reference to phenomenal consciousness, functionalism and Dennett's patterns of behavior theory, and showing that they both fail. In the course of the arguments that these attempts fail, I develop some positive reasons for believing that phenomenal consciousness is indeed necessary. (shrink)

Inspection of surviving mirrors and related objects shows that they were too crude to offer the early Renaissance painter an optical short-cut to a naturalistic image of his subject. The craftsmanship of mirror makers was independent of and inferior to the quality of theories of image formation of the day.

How does modern writing in French grapple with the present absence and absent presence of lost loved ones? How might it challenge and critique the relegation of certain deaths to the realm of the unmournable? What might this reveal about the role of the literary in the French and francophone world and shifting conceptions of the nation state? Essays from the Revolution to the present day explore these questions from a variety of perspectives, bringing out the ways in which mourning (...) blurs the boundaries between the personal and the historical, the aesthetic and the ethical, the self and the other, and ultimately reasserting its truly critical resonance as a concept. (shrink)

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

COVID-19 continues to dominate 2020 and is likely to be a feature of our lives for some time to come. Given this, how should health systems respond ethically to the persistent challenges of responding to the ongoing impact of the pandemic? Relatedly, what ethical values should underpin the resetting of health services after the initial wave, knowing that local spikes and further waves now seem inevitable? In this editorial, we outline some of the ethical challenges confronting those running health services (...) as they try to resume non-COVID-related services, and the downstream ethical implications these have for healthcare professionals’ day-to-day decision making. This is a phase of recovery, resumption and renewal; a form of reset for health services.1 This reset phase will define the ‘new normal' for healthcare delivery, and it offers an opportunity to reimagine and change services for the better. There are difficulties, however, healthcare systems are already weakened by austerity and the first wave of COVID-19 and remain under stress as the pandemic continues. The reset period is operating alongside, rather than at the end, of the pandemic and this creates difficult ethical choices. ### Balancing the greater good with individual care Pandemics—and public health emergencies more generally—reinforce approaches to ethics that emphasise or derive from the interests of communities, rather than those grounded in the claims of the autonomous individual. The response has been to draw on more public health focused ethics, ‘if demand outstrips the ability to deliver to existing standards, more strictly utilitarian considerations will have to be applied, and decisions about how to meet the individual's need will give way to decisions about how to maximise overall benefit’.2 Alongside this, effective …. (shrink)

Review of essays by Bernstein, in translation. This book review could also be entitled “John Dewey: Old and New”, recalling a distant resemblance to one of the most well known books of Dewey, Individualism Old and New (1930). But in this case the subject pursued under this title would be the development in the reception of John Dewey’s work in the past century. This is a genuine hermeneutical reflection on the significance of one of the most important American intellectuals in (...) the present day. (shrink)

Physical activity and sedentary behaviour have been linked to the mental health of children and adolescents, yet the timing of behaviours may play a role in this relationship and clarifying this could inform interventions. We explored cross-sectional associations of PA and SED in varying time segments throughout the school day with the mental health of school-aged children and adolescents from rural Northeastern Ontario, Canada. A total of 161 students wore accelerometers for 8 days and completed a self-report survey. Mental health (...) was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Accelerometer-measured SED, light PA, and moderate and vigorous PA were estimated in the time-segments before school, school time, after school, and evenings. Associations were tested with multilevel linear regressions while adjusting for confounding factors. Students spent 72.6 min in MVPA, 209.0 min in LPA, and 621.0 min in SED per day. Daily SED was associated with less conduct problems. Evening LPA was inversely associated with hyperactivity, while SED was associated with hyperactivity and with peer problems before school, and during school. No associations were observed for MVPA, emotional symptoms, or prosocial behaviour. In conclusion, displacing SED with LPA in some specific periods of the day may benefit the mental health of students; taking this into account could strengthen interventions. (shrink)

Implanting deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes in patients with Parkinson’s disease often results in the appearance of a non-infectious, delayed-onset edema that disappears over time. However, the time window between the DBS electrode and DBS stimulating device implant is often used to record local field potentials (LFPs) which are used both to better understand basal ganglia pathophysiology and to improve DBS therapy. In this work, we investigated whether the presence of post-surgery edema correlates with the quality of LFP recordings in (...) eight patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease implanted with subthalamic DBS electrodes. The magnetic resonance scans of the brain after 8.5 ± 1.5 days from the implantation surgery were segmented and the peri-electrode edema volume was calculated for both brain hemispheres. We found a correlation (ρ = −0.81, p < 0.0218, Spearman’s correlation coefficient) between left side local field potentials of the low beta band (11–20 Hz) and the edema volume of the same side. No other significant differences between the hemispheres were found. Despite the limited sample size, our results suggest that the effect on LFPs may be related to the edema localization, thus indicating a mechanism involving brain networks instead of a simple change in the electrode-tissue interface. (shrink)

While for a long time the study of medieval logic focused on editorial projects and reconstructions of central medieval doctrines such as the theories of signification, supposition, consequences, and obligations, nowadays the spectrum of analysis has broadened and is increasingly informed by modern logical research, whose perspective is then applied to medieval logic. Promoting this tendency, logicians and researchers concerned with semantics in the Gesellschaft für Philosophie des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (GPMR) founded a working group bringing together medieval logic (...) and modern applied logic. The present volume is a seminal document of these interests and activities. It analyzes theories in medieval logic which are useful for solving questions of recent logic and explains crucial parts of medieval logic, philosophy, and theology by applying techniques of present-day logic. (shrink)

Park rangers hold a unique set of knowledge—of science, of publics, of institutional structures, of place, and of self—that should be recognised as valuable. For too long, models of the knowledge of scientists and publics have set people like rangers in an inbetweener position, seeing them as good at communicating, translating or negotiating from one side to the other, but not as making knowledge that is powerful in its own right. In this paper we argue that focus groups with park (...) rangers across regional and conservation parks in Aotearoa/New Zealand reveal the complexity and multiplicity of rangers’ knowledge-making that shows the science-public model as incomplete. We argue further that the model is flawed for its focus on the making and holding of knowledge and not also on how it is enacted. Rangers, we argue, are responsible every day for making knowledgeable decisions for the health and well-being of parks and people. Making good decisions, though, requires not just knowledge but also care. An understanding of the many ways rangers know and enact their knowledge is important for biosecurity practice, especially in models of adaptive governance. (shrink)

Background Policy decisions about childhood vaccination require consideration of multiple, sometimes conflicting, public health and ethical imperatives. Examples of these decisions are whether vaccination should be mandatory and, if so, whether to allow for non-medical exemptions. In this article we argue that these policy decisions go beyond typical public health mandates and therefore require democratic input.Methods We report on the design, implementation, and results of a deliberative public forum convened over four days in Ontario, Canada, on the topic of childhood (...) vaccination.Results 25 participants completed all four days of deliberation and collectively developed 20 policy recommendations on issues relating to mandatory vaccinations and exemptions, communication about vaccines and vaccination, and AEFI (adverse events following immunization) compensation and reporting. Notable recommendations include unanimous support for mandatory childhood vaccination in Ontario, the need for broad educational communication about vaccination, and the development of a no-fault compensation scheme for AEFIs. There was persistent disagreement among deliberants about the form of exemptions from vaccination (conscience, religious beliefs) that should be permissible, as well as appropriate consequences if parents do not vaccinate their children.Conclusions We conclude that conducting deliberative democratic processes on topics that are polarizing and controversial is viable and should be further developed and implemented to support democratically legitimate and trustworthy policy about childhood vaccination. (shrink)

A welcome addition to the Routledge Critical Thinkers series, Judith Butler is the first guidebook on this renowned feminist and queer theory scholar, which will help not only students of literary criticism but also students of law, sociology, philosophy, film and cultural studies. Examining Butler's work through a variety of contexts, including the formation of gender performativity, identity and subjecthood, Sarah Salih address Butler's crucial ideas on the gender agenda, the body, pornography, race, gay self-expression and power and psychoanalysis. Concluding (...) with an annotated bibliography, this book will be the ideal starting point for all new to Butler. (shrink)

This chapter develops an alternative to the dominant articulation of human existence on the basis of classical phenomenology, arguing that Edmund Husserl's phenomenological inquiries into the structures of embodiment provide a very different and more fruitful starting point for the investigation of sexual difference than the ideas of social gender and biological sex. The ways of classifying sex and gender characteristics mark them out on several different conceptual bases, and thus their categories may not correspond or coincide. Moreover historical and (...) biological inquiries indicate that the dimorphic notion of sex is prescriptive and constructive. Finally the sex/gender paradigm is dominated by the explanatory framework of causes and effects. The phenomenological analysis shows that the causal-functional framework is inadequate for the investigation of the plurality of the bodily existence and sexual difference as a dimension of this existence. In the light of the explication of the concepts of sex and gender, and the phenomenological analysis of embodiment, the sex/gender paradigm cannot offer a basis for a comprehensive philosophy of sexual existence. (shrink)

When Jesus meets the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s well in John 4, it is a meeting between two colonial subjects in the Roman Empire. In this encounter we find the Samaritan Woman as a triply marginalised body, a woman subject to multiple, intersecting forms of oppression within her patriarchal context. Identified as a Samaritan Woman, Jewish rabbis regarded her as unclean, impure, and being menstruous from birth. It can also be deduced that she is an outcast in her own society (...) because she comes to draw from the well at noon, the hottest part of the day when people did not usually fetch water. This Samaritan Woman is nameless, landless and powerless in an imperial, colonial and patriarchal context. The poem of Diana Ferrus, I’ve come to take you home, in memory of Sarah Baartman, highlights how Baartman was dehumanised and treated as a sexual object by European colonisers. Through a postcolonial reading of John 4, I consider the intersections between the Samaritan Woman and the early life of Sara Baartman in their respective colonial contexts and invite the reader, as the poem invites Baartman, to come home to Africa and resist Western European imperial and colonial patterns and tendencies.Contribution: This article has interdisciplinary implications. This is an interdisciplinary study in the sense that it offers a biblical interpretation of John 4 that is informed by the life of Sara Baartman that has been uncovered through anthropology, history and sociology. It is also integrating the field of postcolonial biblical hermeneutics with the theory of intersectionality. (shrink)

This paper gives a framework for understanding causal counterpossibles, counterfactuals imbued with causal content whose antecedents appeal to metaphysically impossible worlds. Such statements are generated by omissive causal claims that appeal to metaphysically impossible events, such as “If the mathematician had not failed to prove that 2+2=5, the math textbooks would not have remained intact.” After providing an account of impossible omissions, the paper argues for three claims: (i) impossible omissions play a causal role in the actual world, (ii) causal (...) counterpossibles have broad applications in philosophy, and (iii) the truth of causal counterpossibles provides evidence for the nonvacuity of counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

It is impossible to imagine contemporary critical theory without the work of Michel Foucault. His radical reworkings of the concepts of power, knowledge, discourse and identity have influenced the widest possible range of theories and impacted upon disciplinary fields from literary studies to anthropology. Aimed at students approaching Foucault's texts for the first time, this volume offers: * an examination of Foucault's contexts * a guide to his key ideas * an overview of responses to his work * practical hints (...) on 'using Foucault' * an annotated guide to his most influential works * suggestions for further reading. Challenging not just what we think but how we think, Foucault's work remains the subject of heated debate. Sara Mills' Michel Foucault offers an introduction to both the ideas and the debate, fully equipping student readers for an encounter with this most influential of thinkers. (shrink)

In this paper I will show the problems that are encountered when dealing with uniqueness of connectives in a bilateralist setting within the larger framework of proof-theoretic semantics and suggest a solution. Therefore, the logic 2Int is suitable, for which I introduce a sequent calculus system, displaying - just like the corresponding natural deduction system - a consequence relation for provability as well as one dual to provability. I will propose a modified characterization of uniqueness incorporating such a duality of (...) consequence relations, with which we can maintain uniqueness in a bilateralist setting. (shrink)

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings of what postmodernism (...) is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film. (shrink)

Mental simulation — such as imagining tilting a glass to figure out the angle at which water would spill — can be a way of coming to know the answer to an internally or externally posed query. Is this form of learning a species of inference or a form of observation? We argue that it is neither: learning through simulation is a genuinely distinct form of learning. On our account, simulation can provide knowledge of the answer to a query even (...) when the basis for that answer is opaque to the learner. Moreover, through repeated simulation, the learner can reduce this opacity, supporting self-training and the acquisition of more accurate models of the world. Simulation is thus an essential part of the story of how creatures like us become effective learners and knowers. (shrink)

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they `take up' space, and what they `can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly (...) through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way. (shrink)

A classic and fraught question in the philosophy of film is this: when you watch a film, do you experience yourself in the world of the film, observing the scenes? In this paper, we argue that this subject of film experience is sometimes a mere impersonal viewpoint, sometimes a first-personal but unindexed subject, and sometimes a particular, indexed subject such as the viewer herself or a character in the film. We first argue for subject pluralism: there is no single answer (...) to the question of what kind of subjectivity, if any, is mandated across film sequences. Then, we defend unindexed subjectivity: at least sometimes, films mandate an experience that is first-personal but not tied to any particular person, not even to the viewer. Taken together, these two theses allow us to see film experience as more varied than previously appreciated and to bridge in a novel way the cognition of film with the exercise of other imaginative capacities, such as mindreading and episodic recollecting. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)