Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 3 Seiten: 490-503.

George Du Maurier’s best-selling novel, Trilby (1894), is as important because of its defiance of social and cultural norms as it is for its apparent compliance with them. Trilby is a fiction that, like its eponymous heroine, attempts to negotiate the perilously fine line between the highbrow and the lowbrow, or to put it another way, between fine art and political commentary on one side, and pornography and sensationalism on the other. This article examines the way that Du Maurier engages (...) his readership in this textual tease – his seduction of the reader – by suggesting the possibility of a peep show where everything that Victorian respectability abhors may be on display, and then his narratological dressing of the text, to ensure that where there is sexual non-conformity there is also moralism, and where there is social confrontation there is also historical distance. Understanding the textual appeal of Trilby as a character, the artist’s model who enchanted the fin-de-siècle reading public, is essential to appreciating how the discourses of pornography and fine art interact and have consequently evolved. This article therefore examines why Trilby succeeded with the Victorians where other, similarly sexually active heroines – such as Thomas Hardy’s Sue Bridehead – failed. Trilby the novel and Trilby the woman are both broken down by their author into manageable parts, a pornographic fetishistic technique that simultaneously eroticises, and makes more palatable, the textual and the physical bodies. (shrink)

The tourism industry is one of the largest industries in the world, and despite recent events that have made its operating environment more complex, the industry continues to grow [Theobald, 2005, Global Tourism, 3rd edn., Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier]. Commensurate to the size of the industry is a growth in the number of students pursuing degree courses in tourism around the world. Despite an increasingly sophisticated literature, the relative recency of the industry and its study has meant little attention has been paid in (...) the ethics literature to the dilemmas facing tourism managers and its students. Based on interviews with senior members of the tourism industry six scenarios are developed with pertinence to the challenges faced by industry practitioners today. This paper then applies the Multidimensional Ethics Scale [Reidenbach and Robin, 1990, Journal of Business Ethics, 9, 639–653] to tourism students at three prominent universities in the U.K., Canada and Australia. In total, 438 responses are achieved. The results have importance for the instruction of tourism students for the future, but also in informing decisions about the tools tourism destinations can effectively employ to control the future direction of the industry. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical issues surrounding information systems practice with a view to encouraging greater involvement in this aspect of IS research. Information integrity relies upon the development and operation of computer-based information systems. Those who undertake the planning, development and operation of these information systems have obligations to assure information integrity and overall to contribute to the public good. This ethical dimension of information systems has attracted mixed attention in the IS academic (...) discipline. Design/methodology/approach The authors are a multidisciplinary team providing a rich, diverse experience which includes professional and information ethics, management information systems, software engineering, data repositories and information systems development. Each author has used this experience to review the IS ethics landscape, which provides four complimentary perspectives. These are synthesised to tease out trends and future pointers. Findings It is confirmed that there is a serious lack of research being undertaken relating to the ethical dimension of the Information Systems field. There is limited crossover between the well-established multidisciplinary community of Computer Ethics research and the traditional Information Systems research community. Originality/value An outline framework is offered which could provide an opportunity for rich and valuable dialogue across the two communities. This is proposed as the starting point for a proactive research and practice action plan for information systems ethics. (shrink)

Online exam supervision technologies have recently generated significant controversy and concern. Their use is now booming due to growing demand for online courses and for off-campus assessment options amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Online proctoring technologies purport to effectively oversee students sitting online exams by using artificial intelligence systems supplemented by human invigilators. Such technologies have alarmed some students who see them as a “Big Brother-like” threat to liberty and privacy, and as potentially unfair and discriminatory. However, some universities and educators defend (...) their judicious use. Critical ethical appraisal of online proctoring technologies is overdue. This essay provides one of the first sustained moral philosophical analyses of these technologies, focusing on ethical notions of academic integrity, fairness, non-maleficence, transparency, privacy, autonomy, liberty, and trust. Most of these concepts are prominent in the new field of AI ethics, and all are relevant to education. The essay discusses these ethical issues. It also offers suggestions for educational institutions and educators interested in the technologies about the kinds of inquiries they need to make and the governance and review processes they might need to adopt to justify and remain accountable for using online proctoring technologies. The rapid and contentious rise of proctoring software provides a fruitful ethical case study of how AI is infiltrating all areas of life. The social impacts and moral consequences of this digital technology warrant ongoing scrutiny and study. (shrink)

Questo contributo teorico propone una prospettiva innovativa nel dibattito sul concetto di “bullshit”. L’ipotesi principale è che la vaghezza sia un elemento fondamentale delle bullshit, che si focalizza sull’attività. In questo modo si supera il dibattito in letteratura che mette al centro o l’intenzionalità dell’enunciatore o la struttura e il contenuto degli enunciati. Si sostiene inoltre che la vaghezza non debba essere considerata come un limite, ma come un’opportunità per comprendere situazioni comunicative complesse. Questo differente approccio, basato sulla tradizione pragmatista, (...) supera alcuni limiti evidenziati in letteratura, aprendo la strada a una comprensione più approfondita del fenomeno delle bullshit. Offre inoltre una risposta esaustiva ad alcuni quesiti di Frankfurt e riconosce il lato “produttivo” delle bullshit, adattandosi meglio a molteplici circostanze quotidiane. Un approccio pragmatista al fenomeno-bullshit basato sulla vaghezza offre una maggiore comprensione di fenomeni complessi di comunicazione senza cadere nel “paradigma della sincerità” evidenziato da Frankfurt. (shrink)

'Eye hEar The Visual in Music' employs the concept of the visual in proximate relation to music, producing a tension: 'is it not the case that there is a gulf between painting and music, between the visible and the audible? One is full of colour and light yet silent; one is invisible and marvellously noisy.' Such a belief, this book argues, betrays an ideological constraint on music, desiccating it to sound, and art to vision. The starting point of this study (...) is more hybrid (and hydrating): that music is never employed without numerous and complex intersections with the visual. By involving the concept of synaesthesia, the book evokes music's multi-sensory nature, stops it from sounding alone, and offers music as a subject for art historians. Music bleeds into art and visuality, in its graphic depiction in notation, in the theatre of performance, its sights and sites. This book looks at music in its absolute guise as a model for art; at notation and the conductor as the silent visual fulcra around which music circulates; at the music and image of Erik Satie; at the concert hall as white cube; at the symphonic film '2001: A Space Odyssey'; and at the liminality of John Cage and Andy Warhol. (shrink)

Objective: To measure the stability of life-sustaining treatment preferences amongst older people and analyse the factors that influence stability. Design: Longitudinal cohort study. Setting: Primary care centres, Granada (Spain). Eighty-five persons age 65 years or older. Participants filled out a questionnaire with six contexts of illness (LSPQ-e). They had to decide whether or not to receive treatment. Participants completed the questionnaire at baseline and 18 months later. Results: 86 percent of the patients did not change preferences. Sex, age, marital status, (...) hospitalisation, and self-perception of health and pain did not affect preferences. Morbidity and the death of a relative did. Conclusion: Stability of preferences of older persons in relation to end-of-life decisions seems to be more probable than instability. Some factors, such as the death of a relative or the increase in morbidity, can change preferences. These findings have implications for advance directives (ADs) and advance care planning. (shrink)

This paper explores the intertwinement of ontology and history that happened after the idealist turn of Kantian transcendentalism, particularly in classic German idealism and later in American pragmatism. The paper focuses on the less remarked-upon consequence of this intertwinement, namely the possibility of a new reading of history based on changes in concepts and habitual mentality. The paper proposes a new take on historiography that vindicates Hegel’s insight but changes his approach to a pragmatist one, more apt to face historical (...) changes in a technical way and less easily twistable into ideological frameworks. The paper argues that the notion of habit, as phenomenologically and semiotically described by Peirce, is the fundamental cellule of the pragmatist take on the entanglement of history and ontology. The paper elaborates on the notion of habit, singling out a special form of it called “gesture” that can be a useful tool for reading the history of the human spirit without incorporating Hegel’s dialectic and Absolute. The paper compares the notion of gesture as it originated in the pragmatist tradition with the parallel use of the term in the early studies of Michel Foucault and argues that the notion of gesture is better equipped to tackle a theoretical reading of history. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

It is hard to overstate the growing impact of the works of Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa on contemporary social theory. Given the quality and originality of their intellectual contributions, it is no accident that they can be regarded as two towering figures of contemporary German social theory. The far-reaching significance of their respective approaches is reflected not only in their numerous publications but also in the fast-evolving secondary literature engaging with their writings. All of this should be reason (...) enough to take note of their collaborative work, which, most recently, has culminated in the publication of their co-authored book Spätmoderne in der Krise: Was leistet die Gesellschaftstheorie? (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021). The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the latest exchange between Reckwitz and Rosa contains valuable insights into recent and ongoing trends in society in general and social theory in particular. The first part comprises an outline of the central matters at stake in, and the core lessons learnt from, the constructive dialogue between Reckwitz’s critical analytics and Rosa’s critical theory, before moving, in the second part, to an assessment of the most significant limitations of their respective views and propositions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.3 (2001) 89-107 [Access article in PDF] Teaching DeconstructionGiving, Taking, Leaving, Belonging, and the Remains of the University Simon Morgan Wortham The Remains of the University and the Study of Culture In his recent essay "Literary Study in the Transnational University," J. Hillis Miller tries to account for the hostility shown by some practitioners of a certain kind of cultural studies toward what is perceived as "high" (...) theory—in particular, deconstruction. Describing the emergence of cultural studies as a quasi-discipline, he remarks:Insofar as cultural studies still depends on the traditional idea of culture as the production in a subject or subjectivity of an identity produced through indoctrination by a nation-state or by a subculture such as an ethnic or gender community... it was necessary to resist the questioning by deconstruction of all the key concepts necessary to this idea of culture. These include identity, agency, the homogeneity of a given culture, whether hegemonic or minority, the definition of an individual by his or her participation in a nation or community, the unbreakable tie of a text or any other assemblage of signs to its context. The questioning by theory of these concepts often needed to be sidestepped in order for the project of cultural studies and related new disciplines to get going. These key concepts are glued together by a reinstalled referentiality that can no longer afford to be put in question and remain in question. [83] For Miller, a cultural studies of this sort relies on a minimal degree of retention of such unquestioned "referentiality" as a condition of its need to thematize, narrativize, or interpret various texts, events, and artifacts according to a wider "context" (whether this be described as "historical," "social," or "cultural") to which these phenomena remain unbreakably tied. A "context" such as outlined by Miller would of course need to be accorded a basic level of coherence for the analysis to get underway. Furthermore, insofar as—for Miller—this "context" would thereby establish a more or less generalizable framework within which might be understood the shaping of identity in particular instances, thus facilitating rather traditional ways of determining objects of cognition and knowledge, it could be considered to work so as to reanimate conventional ideas of the "self" or "agency." In assuming that there is always a "context" for every "text," in a way that could be comprehended in the above terms, a cultural studies of the kind described by Miller would reinstall the particular as an expression or exemplar of a more clearly determined situation or setting (history, nation, culture, society, ideology), which, in turn, might be considered to fuel critical misrecognition or reduction of the effects and implications of "transnationality" or "globalization." Furthermore, in this case, the [End Page 89] supposed exemplarity of the particular in its identity with the general would inevitably tend to prompt an account, as Miller himself puts it, of the "production in a subject or subjectivity of an identity" produced by a culture, whether it be hegemonic or minority: the assumed culture of a nation-state or, as is more often emphasized nowadays, a subculture existing in some sort of relation to more dominant cultural practices and trends. In addition to this reinscription of knowledge in relation to the human subject, the founding of a certain kind of cultural study upon longstanding models of cognition, as described above, would reestablish cultural studies practitioners working in this way as themselves knowing subjects. From this perspective, then, Miller would doubtless see certain aspects of the critical landscape of cultural studies—its not infrequent commitment to "identity politics" over the years, its shift of emphasis toward the participatory agency of subjects within contemporary popular culture, even some versions of the debate about the ethics of cultural studies—as set up to reinstall the coextensivity of subjects of knowledge and knowing subjects in a way that would depend uncritically on deeply structured relations of reference, identity, and agency.Miller therefore views cultural studies as, in the last analysis, based on a rather unquestioning reversion to more orthodox humanistic... (shrink)

The idea that there could be spatially extended mereological simples has recently been defended by a number of metaphysicians (Markosian 1998, 2004; Simons 2004; Parsons (2000) also takes the idea seriously). Peter Simons (2004) goes further, arguing not only that spatially extended mereological simples (henceforth just extended simples) are possible, but that it is more plausible that our world is composed of such simples, than that it is composed of either point-sized simples, or of atomless gunk. The difficulty for these (...) views lies in explaining why it is that the various sub-volumes of space occupied by such simples, are not occupied by proper parts of those simples. Intuitively at least, many of us find compelling the idea that spatially extended objects have proper parts at every sub-volume of the region they occupy. It seems that the defender of extended simples must reject a seemingly plausible claim, what Simons calls the geometric correspondence principle (GCP): that any (spatially) extended object has parts that correspond to the parts of the region that it occupies (Simons 2004: 371). We disagree. We think that GCP is a plausible principle. We also think it is plausible that our world is composed of extended simples. We reconcile these two notions by two means. On the one hand we pay closer attention to the physics of our world. On the other hand, we consider what happens when our concept of something—in this case space—contains elements not all of which are realized in anything, but instead key components are realized in different features of the world. (shrink)

RESUMO. O romance A convidada, de Simone de Beauvoir, não é ainda a manifestação sensível da moral da ambiguidade propriamente dita. É possível, no entanto, compreender a relação entre alguns conceitos fundamentais que povoam a forma romanesca e a concepção da metafísica moral, tal como Merleau-Ponty a concebe, tanto no ensaio que o filósofo consagrou ao romance, quanto em suas anotações, em O visível e o invisível. A partir dessa relação, destacaremos três momentos distintos e complementares: das imagens negativas (...) à tomada de decisão; as formas abstratas da alteridade e a alteridade concreta; da sedimentação dos conteúdos em movimento à forma da reversibilidade. ABSTRACT: Simone de Beauvoir's novel L'invitée is not yet the sensible manifestation of a morals made up of ambiguities in the strict sense. However, it is possible to comprehend the relationship between some fundamental concepts that abide in the novelistic form and in a conception of moral metaphysics, as these are conceived by Merleau-Ponty in his essay dedicated to de Beauvoir's novel and in his notes on The Visible and the Invisible. From this relationship, we will highlight three distinct but complimentary moments: from negative images to the making of decisions; abstract forms of alterity and concrete alterity; from the sedimentation of contents in movement to the form of reversibility. (shrink)

Este comentario se centra en el primer capítulo de Abductive Reasoning (2006), donde Aliseda ofrece nuevas herramien-tas conceptuales para examinar los modelos metodológicos que trazan una distinción de contextos en la investigación científica. Elucidamos la posición de Popper frente al problema del descubrimiento y distinguimos dos sentidos en que deliberadamente utiliza ‘discovery’ en su LSD (1959), distinción que permite reforzar la heterodoxa interpretación que hace Aliseda de la metodología popperiana. Por último, nos detenemos en la comparación entre Popper y Simon (...) frente a la “lógica del descubrimiento”, ya que condensa las razones por las que Aliseda considera que la dicotomía descubrimiento-justificación está destinada al fracaso.This brief commentary focuses on the first chapter of Abductive Reasoning (2006), where Aliseda offers new conceptual tools for examining the methodological models in which a distinction between contexts of scientific research is traced. In particular, we analyze Popper’s position with respect to the problem of discovery and distinguish two different senses in which he deliberately uses the term ‘discovery’ in LSD (1959); this, in turn, lends support to Aliseda’s heterodox interpretation of the Popperian methodology. Last, we examine the comparison the author makes between Popper and Simon as it contains the primary reasons for asserting that the discovery-justification dichotomy is doomed to failure. (shrink)

Michael Dummett offered a semantic characterisation of a variety of realism-antirealism debates. This approach has fallen out of fashion. This has been to the detriment of metaphysics. This paper offers an accurate characterisation of Dummett’s view, often lacking in the literature, and then defends it against a range of attacks (from Devitt, Miller and Williamson). This understanding of realism debates is resilient, and if we take it seriously the philosophical terrain looks importantly different. In particular, the philosophy of language (...) has a foundational role with respect to metaphysics. (shrink)

To whom do we owe obligations of distributive justice? In the last decade a number of distinguished political theorists — such as David Miller and Yael Tamir — have defended a nationalist account of our distributive obligations. This paper examines their account of distributive justice. In particular, it analyses their contention (a) that individuals owe special obligations to fellow‐nationals, (b) that these obligations are obligations of distributive justice and (c) that these obligations are enforceable. Miller and Tamir's justifications, (...) I argue, do not support these claims. Moreover, I argue, (a) and (c) should only be accepted in a greatly qualified form and (b) should be rejected altogether. The paper thus concludes that the nationalists' preferred account of distributive justice is untenable. (shrink)

El artículo relaciona el nuevo orden narrativo con la técnica del “storytelling” y cómo se manifiestan en el periodismo actual. Se estudian los casos de tres periodistas: David Simon, Stieg Larsson y Ryzard Kapuscinski y cómo su obra muestra la difusa línea de los hechos, la recreación, la invención, la fábula, la historia, la apariencia y la verdad. Se contrastan estos casos con las aportaciones del paradigma narrativo de Fisher. Nos preguntamos también cómo se crean narraciones en Internet a partir (...) de los periodistas estudiados. El ámbito de la verdad periodística se entremezcla con una apariencia de verdad mientras la ficción que aparenta realidad se convierte en acercamiento a ésta. La aproxi-mación a este fenómeno, que se inicia a finales del siglo XX y se consolida en la primera década del siglo XXI, se lleva a cabo desde las aportaciones de la Teoría de la Comunicación. (shrink)

Sentada en un bar, mientras Simone de Beauvoir lee mi artículo de la semana pasada, la miro. Ninguna madre burguesa tendría de qué quejarse: la señora Beauvoir tiene una blusa cuidadosamente planchada; está fresca como una rosa, su rostro es terso y limpio, de ella emana un discreto perfume, es verdaderamente perfecta. Su rebelión contra su familia y su entorno, tan bien descrita en las Memorias de una joven formal, no se muestra en los detalles de la vestimenta. (...) No, definitivamente, Simone de Beauvoir no tiene la agresividad "amazónica" al límite. (shrink)

Culture is a notoriously elusive concept. This fact has done nothing to hinder its popularity in contemporary analytic political philosophy among writers like John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Michael Walzer, David Miller, Iris Marion Young, Joseph Raz, Avishai Margalit and Bikhu Parekh, among many others. However, this should stop, both for the metaphysical reason that the concept of culture, like that of race, is itself either incoherent or lacking a referent in reality, and for several normative reasons. I focus on (...) the following interconnected points: • The vagueness of the term allows a myriad of candidates to claim rights, and typically to the detriment of increased equality and environmental goals . • Cultural capital cannot be regulated in the way that political capital must be regulated without undermining the cultures supposedly being protected. And the possession of cultural capital is almost never democratically regulated. In particular, granting cultures political status creates intergenerational conflict, rewarding the elders and creating incentives to be conservative and restrict cultural mobility of the younger generation. •The notion of a group owning “its” culture is conceptually suspect and corrupted by the foregoing points about unequal cultural capital. In defending a group’s right to preserve its culture we do not defend equally the rights of the individuals that make it up , and we ignore altogether the rights of those who may be unfairly denied recognition as “members” of the culture. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates that Beauvoir's La Vieillesse is a phenomenological study of old age indebted to Husserl's phenomenology of the body. Beauvoir's depiction of the doubling in the lived experience of the elderly--a division between outsiders' awareness of the elderly's decline and the elderly's own inner understanding of old age--serves as a specific illustration of Beauvoir's particular method of description and analysis.

More's Latin reply to Bugenhagen, given here with a facing English translation, is a comparatively brief but intense rebuttal of the principal points of Lutheran teaching concerning scripture ant tradition, faith and works, grace and free will, clerical celibacy, and the sacraments. It presents arguments elaborated at much greater length in More's other polemical works. _Supplication of Souls_ refutes _A Supplication for the Beggars_, an anticlerical pamphlet by Simon Fish which Henry VIII seems to have regarded with some favor. More (...) places his response in the mouths of the souls in purgatory. In the first book, he contemptuously demolished Fish's loose railery with accurate statistics and historical analysis. In the second, he defends the traditional doctrine of purgatory with brief arguments drawn from reason and a detailed analysis of scriptural passages. _Letter against Frith_ answers John Frith's Zwinglian arguments against the physical presence of Christ in the more. Written to an unknown correspondent, it is the briefest and mildest of More's polemical works and anticipates arguments presented moer elaborately in More's _The Answer to a Poisoned Book_. Besides full introductions and commentaries, a glossary, and an index, this volume contains seven appendices giving the works to which More is replying and other thematic, historical, and bibliographical matter closely related to the three works by More. (shrink)

Este comentario se centra en el primer capítulo de Abductive Reasoning (2006), donde Aliseda ofrece nuevas herramien-tas conceptuales para examinar los modelos metodológicos que trazan una distinción de contextos en la investigación científica. Elucidamos la posición de Popper frente al problema del descubrimiento y distinguimos dos sentidos en que deliberadamente utiliza ‘discovery’ en su LSD (1959), distinción que permite reforzar la heterodoxa interpretación que hace Aliseda de la metodología popperiana. Por último, nos detenemos en la comparación entre Popper y Simon (...) frente a la “lógica del descubrimiento”, ya que condensa las razones por las que Aliseda considera que la dicotomía descubrimiento-justificación está destinada al fracaso.This brief commentary focuses on the first chapter of Abductive Reasoning (2006), where Aliseda offers new conceptual tools for examining the methodological models in which a distinction between contexts of scientific research is traced. In particular, we analyze Popper’s position with respect to the problem of discovery and distinguish two different senses in which he deliberately uses the term ‘discovery’ in LSD (1959); this, in turn, lends support to Aliseda’s heterodox interpretation of the Popperian methodology. Last, we examine the comparison the author makes between Popper and Simon as it contains the primary reasons for asserting that the discovery-justification dichotomy is doomed to failure. (shrink)

This new edition of Alexander Miller’s highly readable introduction to contemporary metaethics provides a critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary metaethics. Miller traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. From Moore’s attack on ethical naturalism, A. J. Ayer’s emotivism and Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism to anti-realist and best opinion (...) accounts of moral truth and the non-reductionist naturalism of the ‘Cornell realists’, this book addresses all the key theories and ideas in this field. As well as revisiting the whole terrain with revised and updated guides to further reading, Miller also introduces major new sections on the revolutionary fictionalism of Richard Joyce and the hermeneutic fictionalism of Mark Kalderon. The new edition will continue to be essential reading for students, teachers and professional philosophers with an interest in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Theory?Oscar Martín (bio) and Simone Pinet (bio)Theory is, of course, a medieval word, brought from Greek into Latin from a common root (theastai) that also gives us theater, linked through shared meanings related to speculation, contemplation, and so forth. It is used in the Bible, and its English modern use, according to the Oxford english dictionary, probably comes from a medieval Latin translation of Aristotle. The dictionary (...) does not direct us to any specific translation, but prompts us to compare with Italian and, of course, French usage. In French, however, the word théorie was not used until quite late. In fact, it appeared for the first time in French in a 1584 translation of Antonio de Guevara, the famous Spanish court preacher and man of letters whose oeuvre was translated, imitated, and plagiarized in France, Italy, Germany, and England during the sixteenth century. In Spanish, the word theoria had begun its vernacular life a few years before in the writings of Fernando de Herrera.Theoria is already documented by Antonio de Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino of 1495, listed between “speculation” and “species” and designating the contemplative and the art of speculation, from theory to the perception of its quality. It is appropriate that Spanish would give theory to the West, sharing with it a point of view or, better, a series of perspectives or miradores, as María Rosa Menocal would call them, from which to look back into or beyond cultural and literary practices [“Visions of al-Andalus”]. For Medieval Iberia was, as this collection of essays purports to be, not a space or a history but a shifting and fluid gaze on the conflicting world surrounding the different literary and cultural works dealt with in this issue.Reluctant at best, and most of the time resentful of theoretical approaches to the study of literature and culture, medievalism found in Hispanism a surprising and most loyal ally. If in most Spanish departments critical theory pushed its way into the study of later periods, to the point that today even the mourning itself (or celebration) of the agony of theory is done from a theoretical standpoint, Hispanomedievalism remained suspicious longer, and sharpened its words on statistics and “scientific” claims to authority. Its close relationship to historical research, however, also made this philology vulnerable to the practices of interpretation. And it is as a will to interpretation that theory has managed to place itself within and outside the criticism of medieval Iberian literature and culture in insightful and renewing ways—including collective projects similar to the present one. Marina Brownlee’s contribution to this volume in this sense offers a most telling guiding thread of this continued approach to the discipline, which she helped revitalize through her participation in the project the new Medievalism. More recently, Josiah Blackmore and Gregory Hutcheson, also contributing to the present volume, sparked a lively debate, as showcased in a forum published by La corónica, with their project Queer iberia: sexualities, cultures, and crossing from the Middle ages to the renaissance. But a host of monographs and single-authored books in recent years have come to inhabit and enliven medieval studies as Hispanism has grown into the most important area of foreign language studies. [End Page 3]Theories find themselves in the articles for this special issue by way of a development from within. There is no application, no rigid use of conceptual frameworks to revisit texts, but an interior process of thought on and through the texts and cultural practices analyzed that produces theoretical insights. While a variety of methodologies and theoretical positionings can be identified, both explicitly and not, from speech-act theory to deconstruction, from Žižek to Badiou, postcolonialism to politics, these seem to emerge from within, as if the obvious result of the need to think questions posed from slightly different standpoints than they have been up until now. All of the articles reflect on very well-known texts and periods, pondering about a discipline, its methodologies, even the nature of its object of study. These articles do not dismiss previous work, but they do bring it under a new light.At a... (shrink)

The rule-following debate, in its concern with the metaphysics and epistemology of linguistic meaning and mental content, goes to the heart of the most fundamental questions of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. This volume gathers together the most important contributions to the topic, including papers by Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Graeme Forbes, Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, John McDowell, Colin McGinn, Ruth Millikan, Philip Pettit, George Wilson, and José Zalabardo. This debate has centred on Saul Kripke's reading of the rule-following (...) sections in Wittgenstein and his consequent posing of a "sceptical paradox" that threatens our every day notions of linguistic meaning and mental content. These essays are attempts to respond to this challenge and represent some of the most important work in contemporary theory of meaning. They examine the notion of meaning; whether it is possible to find a suitable meaning-constituting fact from our previous behaviour or mental histories; objections to, and defenses of, dispositional accounts of meaning; the plausibility of non-factualism about meaning; our attempts to develop non-reductionist accounts of meaning; and the sources of the normativity which attaches to meaning, such as the linguistic practice of the community or the dispositions of the individual. With an introductory essay and a comprehensive guide to further reading the book is an excellent resource for courses in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, Wittgenstein, and metaphysics, as well as for all philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists with interests in these areas. Contributors include Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Graeme Forbes, Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, John McDowell, Colin McGinn, Alexander Miller, Ruth Garrett Millikan, Philip Pettit, George. M. Wilson, Crispin Wright, and José L. Zalabardo. (shrink)

What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? Derek Attridge argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met, and in this book, which traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, shows how that work can illuminate a variety of topics. Chapters include (...) an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as 'radical atheism', and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabate. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader. (shrink)

In a lot of domains in metaphysics the tacit assumption has been that whichever metaphysical principles turn out to be true, these will be necessarily true. Let us call necessitarianism about some domain the thesis that the right metaphysics of that domain is necessary. Necessitarianism has flourished. In the philosophy of maths we find it held that if mathematical objects exist, then they do of necessity. Mathematical Platonists affirm the necessary existence of mathematical objects (see for instance Hale and Wright (...) 1992 and 1994; Wright 1983 and 1988; Schiffer 1996; Resnik 1997; Shapiro 1997 and Zalta 1988) while mathematical nominalists, usually in the form of fictionalists, hold that necessarily such objects fail to exist (see for instance Balaguer 1996 and 1998; Rosen 2001 and Yablo 2005). In metaphysics more generally, until recently it was more or less assumed that whatever the right account of composition—the account of under what conditions some xs compose a y—that account will be necessarily true (for a discussion of theories of composition see Simons 1987 and van Inwagen 1987 and 1990; the modal status of the composition relation is explicitly addressed in Schaffer 2007; Parsons 2006 and Cameron 2007). Similarly, it has generally been assumed that whatever the right account is of the nature of properties, whether they be universals, tropes, or whether nominalism is true, that account will be necessarily true (though see Rosen 2006 for a recent suggestion to the contrary). In considering theories of persistence it has been widely held that whether objects endure or perdure through time is a matter of necessity (Sider 2001; though see Lewis 1999 p227 who defends contingent perdurantism). And with respect to theories of time it is frequently held that whichever of the A- or B-theory is true is necessarily true. A-theorists often argue that there is time in a world only if the A-theory is true at that world (see for instance McTaggart 1903; Markosian 2004; Bigelow 1996; Craig 2001) while B-theorists often argue that the A-theory is internally inconsistent (Smart 1987; Mellor 1998; Savitt 2000 and Le Poidevin 1991). Once again, we find a few recent contingentist dissenters. Bourne (2006) suggests that it is a contingent feature of time that it is tensed, and thus that the A-theory is contingently true. Worlds in which there exist only B-theoretic properties are worlds with time, it is just that time in those worlds time is radically different to the way it is actually. Other defenders of the B-theory, though not expressly contingentists, do offer arguments against versions of the A-theory that try to show that such A-theories theories are inconsistent with the actual laws of nature (see for instance Saunders 2002 and Callender 2000); these arguments, at least, leave room for the possibility that the A-theories in question are contingently false (at least on the assumption that the laws of nature are themselves contingent, an assumption that not everyone accepts). Despite some notable exceptions, necessitarianism has flourished in many, if not most, domains in metaphysics. One such exception is Lewis’ famous defence of Humean supervenience as a contingent claim about our world. Lewis does not argue that necessarily, the supervenience base for all matters of fact in a world is nothing but a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. Rather, he thinks that we have reason to think that our world is one in which Humean supervenience holds (see Lewis 1986 p9-10 and 1994). Another exception to the necessitarian orthodoxy is to be found in the lively debate about the modal status of the laws of nature. Here, if anything, contingentism has been the dominating force, with it generally being held that there are possible worlds in which different laws of nature hold (this view is defended by, among others, Lewis 1986 and 2010; Schaffer 2005 and Sidelle 2002). Necessitarian dissenters hold that the laws of nature are necessary, frequently because they think it is necessary that fundamental properties have the causal or nomic profiles they do (see for instance Shoemaker 1980 and 1988; Swoyer 1982; Bird 1995; Ellis and Lierse 1994). Nevertheless, when it comes to thinking about the nature of the laws themselves, the necessitarian presumption is back on firm footing. Though there is disagreement about whether the laws are generalisations that feature in the most virtuous true axiomatisation of all the particular matters of fact (often known as the Humean view of laws and defended by Ramsey 1978; Lewis 1986 and Beebee 2000) or whether laws are relations of necessity that hold between universals (a view defended by Armstrong 1983; Dretske 1977; Tooley 1977 and Carroll 1990) no one has seriously suggested that it might be a contingent matter which of these is the right account of laws. The necessitarian orthodoxy is not surprising since metaphysics is largely an a priori process. While a priori reasoning may be used to determine whether a proposition is necessary or contingent, it is not well placed (in the absence of a posteriori evidence) to determine whether a contingent proposition is actually true or false. Since metaphysicians aim to tell us which principles are true in which worlds, on the face of it the discovery that metaphysical principles are contingent seems to make part of the task of metaphysics epistemically intractable. In what follows I consider two reasons one might end up embracing contingentism and whether this would lead one into epistemic difficulty. The following section considers a route to contingent metaphysical truths that proceeds via a combination of conceptual necessities and empirical discoveries. Section 3 considers whether there might be synthetic contingent metaphysical truths, and the final section raises the question of whether if there were such truths we would be well placed to come to know them. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between the metaphysical doctrine of realism about the external world and semantic realism, as characterised by Michael Dummett. I argue that Dummett's conception of the relationship is flawed, and that Crispin Wright's account of the relationship, although designed to avoid the problems which beset Dummett's, nevertheless fails for similar reasons. I then aim to show that despite the fact that Dummett and Wright both fail to give a plausible account of the relationship between (...) semantic realism and the metaphysical doctrine of realism, the semantic issue and the metaphysical issue are importantly related. I outline the precise sense in which the evaluation of semantic realism is relevant to the evaluation of realism about the external world, a sense overlooked by opponents of Dummett, such as Simon Blackburn and Michael Devitt. I finish with some brief remarks on metaphysics, semantics, and the nature of philosophy, and suggest that Dummett's arguments against semantic realism can retain their relevance to metaphysical debate even if we reject Dummett's idea that the theory of meaning is thefoundation of all philosophy. (shrink)

In this article we examine the effectiveness of consent in data protection legislation. We argue that the current legal framework for consent, which has its basis in the idea of autonomous authorisation, does not work in practice. In practice the legal requirements for consent lead to ‘consent desensitisation’, undermining privacy protection and trust in data processing. In particular we argue that stricter legal requirements for giving and obtaining consent as proposed in the European Data protection regulation will further weaken the (...) effectiveness of the consent mechanism. Building on Miller and Wertheimer’s ‘Fair Transaction’ model of consent we will examine alternatives to explicit consent. (shrink)

In the 1970s and 1980s, Simon Blackburn published a number of much-discussed works in which he argued that the supervenience of the moral on the natural generates a serious problem for moral realism, a problem which his own brand of moral projectivism can avoid. As we will see below, Blackburn construed moral supervenience in terms of what is known as weak supervenience. Partly in response to Blackburn, a number of philosophers have argued that weak supervenience is too weak to capture (...) the intuitive sense in which the moral supervenes on the natural. Instead, it is argued, we should opt for strong supervenience, and, further, that strong supervenience completely disables Blackburn's argument against moral realism. This idea – that strong supervenience undermines Blackburn's argument – is very common in recent metaethics, and the purpose of the present paper is to develop a challenge to this near-orthodoxy. (shrink)

A la luz de algunas críticas recientes, en el marco de este texto se busca impulsar un debate que tiene lugar en dos frentes: por una parte, la lógica del origen de la lógica y, por otra parte, la relación entre psicoanálisis y marxismo. Para ello se recuperan algunos textos publicados por Alain Badiou hacia finales de la década de 1960, en los que polemiza con Jacques-Alain Miller alrededor de los concepto de "sutura" y "sujeto" (Zizek), para situar tanto (...) las diversas posiciones como las coherentes reconsideraciones a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual. En efecto, desde "El concepto de modelo" hasta su más reciente trilogía (Teoría del sujeto, El ser y el acontecimiento y Lógica de los Mundos), se propone una perspectiva que lejos de establecer jerarquías y subordinaciones busca promover conexiones a partir de las especificidades y las diferencias a través de esa vía particular que es la filosofía. De este modo resulta posible apreciar que, pese a su crítica respecto de la primacía de la lógica del significante, los conceptos propuestos por Jacques Lacan funcionaron como una notoria fuente de inspiración para Badiou, especialmente en relación con el sujeto del inconsciente. (shrink)

Philosophia brings together, for the first time, the work of three major women thinkers of this century, producing a developing commentary on the human condition as an alternative to the mainstream, masculine, philosophical tradition.