Scholars in language and social interaction have long been concerned with the role of texts in institutional settings, studying, for example, how interview schedules actively shape conversational dynamics between participants. While texts have been acknowledged as active in this way, their generative capacity remains largely overlooked. This article argues that like human subjects, texts in interaction enact agency. One text in particular, a screening form used to diagnose the learning disability attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is analyzed to claim that this text (...) brings about the very condition it is designed to measure: a learning disability. Drawing from work in discursive psychology, I show how the measurement requires the client to adopt certain speaking positions, which then enables the text to speak for the client. I also demonstrate how the text constructs otherwise normal behavior as pathological through punctuation and nominalization. Finally, I illustrate how the spatial organization of the text constrains clients’ choices for interacting with it. This article claims that texts produce, rather than reflect, cognitive phenomena, and it moreover encourages that the notion of text as agent be taken seriously, especially when it presents the capacity to disable. (shrink)

Participation in experimental studies can be conceptualized as Goffmanian frames, i.e. a set of rules which include the fact the experimenter will be observing participant behavior through (the recording of) the experiment. This study is focused on frame breaches in 16 video- and audio-recorded dyadic conversations taking place in an experimental setting. Our main conclusion is that the experimental frame is conceptualized by participants as including constraints that go beyond non-experimental interactions, and in particular the need to mitigate frame breaches, (...) which are seen as face-threatening. Analyses revealed that participants only broke the research frame after they completed the task they were assigned by the researcher, and that breaches did not necessarily correspond to changes in key. Insights gained in relation to face and mitigation are discussed, as well as the participants’ need to determine their next steps once the research purpose has been perceived complete. (shrink)

Why do American ghettos persist? Decades after Moynihan’s report on the black family and the Kerner Commission’s investigations of urban disorders, deeply disadvantaged black communities remain a disturbing reality. Scholars and commentators today often identify some factor―such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime―as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to “fix” ghettos or “help” their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban (...) poor as moral agents responding to injustice. (shrink)

The Growing-Block view of time has some problems with the past. It is committed to the existence of the past, but needs to say something about the difference between the past and present. I argue that we should resist Correia and Rosenkranz’ response to Braddon-Mitchell’s argument that the Growing-Block leads to scepticism about whether we are present. I consider an approach, similar to Peter Forrest, and show it is not so counter-intuitive as Braddon-Mitchell suggests and further show that it requires (...) no ‘semantic and metaphysical gymnastics’, as Chris Heathwood has suggested. In doing these things I make the problem of the past on the Growing-Block view a problem in its history, not its present. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to d discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, (...) and events, based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine. (shrink)

Much evidence suggests that, from a young age, humans are able to generalize information learned about a subset of a category to the category itself. Here, we propose that—beyond simply being able to perform such generalizations—people are biased to generalize to categories, such that they routinely make spontaneous, implicit category generalizations from information that licenses such generalizations. To demonstrate the existence of this bias, we asked participants to perform a task in which category generalizations would distract from the main goal (...) of the task, leading to a characteristic pattern of errors. Specifically, participants were asked to memorize two types of novel facts: quantified facts about sets of kind members and generic facts about entire kinds. Moreover, half of the facts concerned properties that are typically generalizable to an animal kind, and half concerned properties that are typically more idiosyncratic. We predicted that—because of the hypothesized bias—participants would spontaneously generalize the quantified facts to the corresponding kinds, and would do so more frequently for the facts about generalizable properties. In turn, these generalizations would lead to a higher rate of quantified-to-generic memory errors for the generalizable properties. The results of four experiments supported this prediction. Moreover, the same generalizable-versus-idiosyncratic difference in memory errors occurred even under cognitive load, which suggests that the hypothesized bias operates unnoticed in the background, requiring few cognitive resources. In sum, this evidence suggests the presence of a powerful bias to draw generalizations about kinds. (shrink)

In public health research, tracking folk racial categories (in disease risk, etc.) is a double-edged tool. On the one hand, tracking folk racial categories is dangerous because it reinforces a problematic but fairly common belief in biological race essentialism. On the other hand, ignoring racial categories also runs the risk of ignoring very real biological phenomena in which marginalized communities, likely in virtue of their marginalization, are sicker and in need of improved resources. Much of the conversation among epidemiologists and (...) philosophers of medicine concerning the issue of tracking folk racial categories in public health research springs forth from largely black/white binarized health inequities. While health inequities between black and white Americans are certainly a very important topic, I am interested in investigating the complications to this conversation about the potential harms of tracking folk racial categories in public health research generated by the consideration of Indigenous identities in the US—groups whose health inequities are typically tracked based on the folk racial category of “Native American” or “American Indian,” but whose unique identity categories and community membership problematize the current spectrum of approaches to tracking folk racial categories in epidemiologic research. This paper will draw on scholarship by and about Indigenous people in the US context to address an undertheorized facet of the conversations concerning the potential harms of tracking folk racial categories in public health research, including the potential undermining of American Indian sovereignty and Indigenous epistemologies. I will end on some methodological considerations inspired by the inclusion of Indigenous identities in the US in the conversation about tracking folk racial categories in epidemiologic research. (shrink)

We used optical neuroimaging to explore the extent of functional overlap between working memory (WM) networks involved in language and Early Stone Age toolmaking behaviors. Oldowan tool production activates two verbal WM areas, but the functions of these areas are indistinguishable from general auditory WM, suggesting that the first hominin toolmakers relied on early precursors of verbal WM to make simple flake tools. Early Acheulian toolmaking elicits activity in a region bordering on Broca’s area that is involved in both visual (...) and verbal WM tasks. The sensorimotor and mirror neurons in this area, along with enhancement of general WM capabilities around 1.8 million years ago, may have provided the scaffolding upon which a WM network dedicated to processing exclusively linguistic information could evolve. In the road map going forward, neuro-archaeologists should investigate the trajectory of WM over the course of human evolution to better understand its contribution to language origins. (shrink)

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended (...) altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers. Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven’t paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime. While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences. (shrink)

This paper examines how Charlotte Brontë's belief in phrenology influences the narration of her novel Jane Eyre. Phrenology was a nineteenth-century belief that the shape of the skull could give information about a person's temperament. Phrenologists speculated that the brain was split into separate parts, or faculties, that defined the individual's ability to feel a particular emotion. A bump on the skull implied that the faculty underneath that part of the skull was bigger, so the individual was more inclined to (...) feel that emotion. By placing Jane Eyre within the historical context of the rise of phrenology, I explore the ways in which Brontë's phrenological representation of Jane's mind informs and parallels the autodiegetic narration of Jane Eyre. My analysis focuses on moments when Jane draws attention to the fact that she is a first-person narrator telling the story of her own past experiences. I argue that these moments are comparable to those when Jane’s experiencing-self is fractured into phrenological faculties. Concomitantly, I seek to trace how Jane's narration changes as she moves between the locations of Thornfield, the Moor House, and Ferndean. I suggest that the shifts in narration draw attention to these locations as metaphors for varying degrees of restriction on Jane's faculties. Through an application of nineteenth-century psychological studies, I conclude that Brontë uses her narration style to criticize phrenologists who promote an unnaturally restrictive control of the faculties. (shrink)

The essay provides both an interpretation and a theoretical reconstruction of the political philosophy of Martin Delany, a mid-nineteenth-century radical abolitionist and one of the founders of the doctrine of black nationalism. It identifies two competing strands in Delany's social thought, "classical" nationalism and "pragmatic" nationalism, where each underwrites a different conception of the analytical and normative underpinnings of black political solidarity. It is argued that the pragmatic variant is the more cogent of the two and the one to which (...) Delany is most committed. It is also suggested that pragmatic nationalism can still serve usefully as a theoretical schema through which African Americans can understand and carry out their current political projects. (shrink)

I reply to Mills's critique of my effort to show the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for thinking about and responding to racial injustices. Contrary to Mills's claims, my suggestion that the fair equality of opportunity principle can remedy socioeconomic disadvantages caused by the legacy of racial oppression is compatible with Rawls's framework, does not conflate distributive justice with corrective justice, and does not confuse racial injustice with economic injustice. I also raise doubts about Mills's project to radically reconstruct (...) contractarian political philosophy. He seeks to displace ideal theory with nonideal theory by foregrounding the realities of past racial domination. Against this approach, I argue that an ideal theory that abstracts away from these realities is not inherently ideological, useless for corrective justice, or too ideal to guide social reform. And I defend the view that ideal theory is indispensible for nonideal theorizing about racial justice. (shrink)

It has become apparent that the debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists has come to a stalemate. Neither view can reasonably claim to be the most rational philosophy of science, exclusively capable of making sense of all scientific activities. On one prominent analysis of the situation, whether we accept a realist or an anti-realist account of science actually seems to depend on which values we antecedently accept, rather than our commitment to “rationality” per se. Accordingly, several philosophers have attempted (...) to argue in favour of scientific realism or constructive empiricism by showing that one set of values is exclusively best, for anyone and everyone, and that the downstream choice of the philosophy of science which best serves those values is therefore best, for anyone and everyone. These efforts, however, seem to have failed. In response, I suggest that philosophers of science should suspend the effort to determine which philosophy of science is best for everyone, and instead begin investigating which philosophy of science is best for specific people, with specific values, in specific contexts. I illustrate how this might be done by briefly sketching a single case study from the history of science, which seems to show that different philosophies of science are better at motivating different forms of scientific practice. (shrink)

Settler colonial imaginaries are constructed through the repeated, intergenerational layering of settler ecologies onto Indigenous ecologies; they result in fortified ignorance of the land, Indigenous peoples, and the networks of relationality and responsibility that sustain co‐flourishing. Kyle Whyte (2018) terms this fortification of settler ignorance vicious sedimentation. In this paper, we argue that Outlaw Country music plays important roles in sedimenting settler imaginaries. We begin by clarifying the epistemic dimensions of vicious sedimentation. We then explore specific cases where Outlaw Country (...) songs function as epistemic scaffolding for maintaining and preserving deeply sedimented settler imaginaries. Finally, we conclude by considering ways of using country music as epistemic scaffolding for constructing resistant epistemologies, through the processes of trickster hermeneutics (Vizenor, 1999) and epistemic chronostratigraphy. (shrink)

[Graeme Forbes] In I, I summarize the semantics for the relational/notional distinction for intensional transitives developed in Forbes (2000b). In II-V I pursue issues about logical consequence which were either unsatisfactorily dealt with in that paper or, more often, not raised at all. I argue that weakening inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a gorgon', are valid, but that disjunction inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon (...) or an immortal gorgon', are invalid. Since 'a gorgon' and 'a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon' are extensionally and intensionally the same quantifier, it is not completely trivial to arrange the semantics of intensional transitives so that this classification of the inferences is obtained. (This paper is an abridged version of Forbes (2001a); the latter will be incorporated into a forthcoming monograph, Attitude Problems.) /// [Jennifer Saul] This paper discusses the question of which verbs are intensional transitives. In particular, I ask which verbs Forbes should take to be intensional transitives. I argue that it is very difficult to arrive at a clear and plausible understanding of what an intensional transitive is-making it difficult to answer these questions. I end by briefly raising some questions about the usefulness of the category of intensional transitives. (shrink)

Despite the frequent interpretation of any Early-Christian-era art that contains both Christian and pagan imagery as being solely Christian in meaning, this paper argues that the identification of these images as being Christian in nature, with the pagan imagery only present as borrowed ideas to support a Christian message, is problematic. By assessing some of the existing scholarship surrounding this topic, I attempt to problematize the assumptions made that lead to these widely-accepted interpretations.

Although the character of the “lady detective”is a staple of the cozy mystery genre, we contend that there are no great lady detectives to rival Holmes or Poirot. This is not because there are no clever or interesting lady detective characters, but ratherbecause the concept of greatness is sociallyconstructed and, like coolness, depends on public acclaim and perception. We explore the mechanics of genre formation, arguing that the very structure of cozy mysteries precludes female greatness. To create a “great”character,theauthor cannot (...) just endowher with certain attributes; she must actively work to overcome her audience’s tendency to import structures of oppression into the story, and she must wrestle against the conventions of the genre. In doing so, however, authors risk setting their stories in a wholly different genre. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Therapeutic Nations, Dian Million highlights the complicated role that neoliberal arenas like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and international dialogues concerning human rights play in the marginalization of Indigenous communities. Neoliberal arenas are empowered by sociopolitical imaginaries, or a metaphorical moral fabric of a given community, that consist in discursive content and affective, felt knowledge. According to Million, the sociopolitical imaginaries that give weight and context to negative stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are the same sociopolitical imaginaries that empower neoliberal (...) arenas. In a sense, the proposed solutions are ‘cut from the same cloth’ as the causes of settler colonial violence. Million does not directly apply her argument to Indigenous language reclamation, but Million’s conceptions of sociopolitical imaginaries and paradoxically imposed neoliberal arenas are useful for framing a discussion of the potential harms in some Indigenous language reclamation projects, specifically, revitalization programming described by UNESCO and those pursued by U.S. research universities. I aim to show that some of these proposed solutions to Indigenous language loss are cut from the very same cloth, justified by the same sociopolitical imaginaries, as attempted linguicide itself. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that we currently face a climate crisis insofar as the climatological effects of excessive carbon emissions risk destabilizing advanced civilization and jeopardize cherished modern institutions. The threat posed by climate change is treated as unprecedented, demanding urgent action to avert apocalyptic conditions that will limit or even erase the future of all humankind. In this essay, we argue that this framework—the default climate crisis motif—perpetuates a discursive infrastructure that commits its proponents, if unwittingly, to logics that (...) ultimately reinforce the dynamics driving climate change and its attending injustices. By centering Indigenous feminist environmental discourses, which privilege the role of richly interweaving networks of responsibilities composing extended more-than-human kinship arrangements, we contend that climate crisis is instead primarily a manifestation of devastating multidimensional relational disruptions of Indigenous lands and lives. More pointedly, it is a rebound effect of centuries of accumulating colonial injustices against responsible lifeways that are critical for socioecological adaptability and responsiveness. Framing climate crisis as relational crisis hereby creates discursive space for much needed transformational Indigenous feminist visions for justly and effectively addressing climate change. (shrink)

"On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, assassination, his political thought remains underappreciated. Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, along with a cast of distinguished contributors, engage critically with King's understudied writings on a wide range of compelling, challenging topics and rethink the legacy of this towering figure."--Provided by publisher.

Ascriptions of mental states to oneself and others give rise to many interesting logical and semantic problems. Attitude Problems presents an original account of mental state ascriptions that are made using intensional transitive verbs such as 'want', 'seek', 'imagine', and 'worship'. Forbes offers a theory of how such verbs work that draws on ideas from natural language semantics, philosophy of language, and aesthetics.

_Grounding_ is meant to be a metaphysically explanatory relation of non-causal constitutive determination. Recently there has been significant interest in the idea that there might be ‘laws of metaphysics’ for grounding, analogous to the laws of nature for causation. In this paper I argue that current accounts of the structure of law-based grounding (focusing on Jonathan Schaffer’s structural equation modeling account) do not capture grounding’s directionality—a central feature. The formal account must be supplemented to satisfy this demand and give a (...) successful general account of directed grounding relations. I thus propose two alternative supplements: Priority-Inextricable Grounding and Priority-Extricable Grounding (itself divided into two alternatives—Priority by Absolute Fundamentality and Priority by Relative Fundamentality). Each supplement offers a distinct image of grounding—most illustratively, modally: for each, the structure of grounding contrastingly constrains the metaphysical compossibility of worlds that share facts or grounding relations. As such, I conclude that the supplements offer incompatible strategies for sourcing grounding directionality and grounding theorists ought to decide between them. (shrink)

African American history resounds with calls for black unity. From abolitionist times through the Black Power movement, it was widely seen as a means of securing a full share of America's promised freedom and equality. Yet today, many believe that black solidarity is unnecessary, irrational, rooted in the illusion of "racial" difference, at odds with the goal of integration, and incompatible with liberal ideals and American democracy. A response to such critics, We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical (...) defense of black political solidarity. Tommie Shelby argues that we can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defense of black solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought, focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, and he urges us to rethink many traditional conceptions of what black unity should entail. In this way, he contributes significantly to the larger effort to re-envision black politics and to modernize the objectives and strategies of black freedom struggles for the post-civil rights era. His book articulates a new African American political philosophy--one that rests firmly on anti-essentialist foundations and, at the same time, urges a commitment to defeating racism, to eliminating racial inequality, and to improving the opportunities of those racialized as "black.". (shrink)

In his article, Shelby critically engages with a conception of racism that locates racism in the “heart” of individuals. Such a volitional conception, which has been proposed by Jorge Garcia, suffers from several defects, the most important of which are that it is difficult to identify racist attitudes without recourse to racist beliefs and that such a conception of racism does not allow to see how individuals can be complicit in race-based oppression in the absence of racial hatred or (...) ill will. In lieu of a volitional conception of racism, Shelby advances a conception of racism as ideology which makes racist beliefs and their social consequences central to our understanding of racism. (shrink)

I aim to sketch a view of a methodology for metaphysics, suggested by Hookway’s reading of C. S. Peirce, that allows one to hold realist metaphysical views (i.e. ones that avoid anti-realism, or idealism) about some questions, but avoids merely verbal disputes, and ‘unwieldy realism’. It is named for Peirce’s ‘Critical Commonsensism’, and uses pragmatic transcendental arguments to defend realism about non-optional basic commitments, e.g. to generality, agency, normativity, modality, change, concrete substances, and other minds. It is critical because we (...) are entitled to hope that the presuppositions of our most basic non-optional commitments obtain, and commonsensical because we begin with our current practices and proceed with anti-sceptical fallibilism. I consider a number of objections to the proposed methodology, including concerns associated with our identification of presuppositions, with the basic non-optional commitments they are presuppositions of, and the community who are so committed. These questions, I will claim, are open to empirical and anthropological investigation, but can begin with careful observation of human practices of action, inquiry, explanation, and justification. I will defend the view we end up with as realist, rather than anti-realist or quasi-realist, and argue that, given holism of confirmation, we are plausibly justified in believing (rather than merely hoping) a number of metaphysical theses that have stood the test of time. (shrink)