Nature and Colonialism: A Reader provides students with a collection of classic texts on environmental thought and invites them to analyze the texts alongside the often contrarian ideas of expansion, development, and human exceptionalism. Readers are encouraged to consider early perspectives on the hierarchical power relationships between political/economic entities and nature/peoples, and whether foundational views of environmentalism supported the proliferation of colonial ideology. The collection begins with a piece by Zitkala-Sa, a Dakota Sioux activist and writer, and highlights a voice (...) of resistance against the redefinition and reimagining of nature via colonialist thought. Students read seminal works related to nature by Charles Darwin, George Perkins Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Gifford Pinchot. They are challenged to engage in sociocultural inquiry to better understand how views of the relationship between humans and nature have developed over time, as well as how they continue to shape modern thought and perspectives regarding environmentalism. Designed to stimulate critical thought and inquiry, Nature and Colonialism is an ideal supplementary textbook for courses in environmental science or philosophy, especially those with emphasis on the relationship between humans and their environment." -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems; the same problems look different when we change the lens. There has recently been a shift to "postmodal" conceptual tools: concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality. This shift transforms the debate over structuralism in the metaphysics of science and philosophy of mathematics. Structuralist theses say that patterns are "prior" to the nodes in the patterns. In modal (...) terms this would mean that the nodes cannot vary independently of the pattern. But its postmodal meaning is unclear. Does it mean, e.g., that a fundamental account of reality somehow speaks only of patterns? What would that mean? Three structuralist positions are examined through a postmodal lens: nomic/causal/dispositional essentialism, structuralism about individuals (e.g., structural realism, e.g., ante rem mathematical structuralism), comparativism about quantities. The question of when theories are equivalent, and how that impacts the debate over structuralism, is also discussed. (shrink)

Four- Dimensionalism defends the thesis that the material world is composed of temporal as well as spatial parts. This defense includes a novel account of persistence over time, new arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology, and responses to the challenges four- dimensionalism faces." "Theodore Sider pays particular attention to the philosophy of time, including a strong series of arguments against presentism, the thesis that only the present is real. Arguments offered in favour of four- dimensionalism include novel arguments (...) based on time travel, the debate between spacetime substantivalists and relationalists, and vagueness. Also included is a comprehensive discussion of the paradoxes of coinciding material objects, and a novel resolution of those paradoxes based on temporal counterpart theory. In conclusion Sider replies to prominent objections to four- dimensionalism, including discussion of the problem of the rotating homogenous disk. (shrink)

This essay describes how longstanding conceptions of professionalism in American medical care came under attack in the decades since the enactment of Medicare in 1965 and how the reform strategy and core provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act illustrate the weakening of those ideas and the institutional practices embodying them.The opening identifies the dominant role of physicians in American medical care in the two decades after World War II. By the time Medicare was enacted in 1965, associations of American (...) physicians were almost completely in charge of medical education, specialist certification, and the enforcement of professional norms on their members. Who could be a doctor, what education and training would be required, and what collegial oversight was operative was first a professional matter and only secondly implicated the state through malpractice or major corporations via the employment of physicians. (shrink)

This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and Oakeshott. In bringing Wittgenstein's work to bear (...) on issues of social theory the book shows the relevance of his work to a body of thought to which it has never been applied. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in political science and sociology, as well as some literary theorists. (shrink)

According to Timothy Williamson, we should accept the simplest and most powerful second-order modal logic, and as a result accept an ontology of "bare possibilia". This general method for extracting ontology from logic is salutary, but its application in this case depends on a questionable assumption: that modality is a fundamental feature of the world.

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

Inspired by Heidegger’s concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein’s ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds—the "site of the social"—as a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki’s analysis reveals the advantages of this site ontology over the traditional individualist, holistic, and structuralist accounts that have (...) dominated social theory since the mid-nineteenth century. A special feature of the book is its development of the theoretical argument by sustained reference to two historical examples: the medicinal herb business of a Shaker village in the 1850s and contemporary day trading on the Nasdaq market. First focusing on the relative simplicity of Shaker life to illuminate basic ontological characteristics of the social site, Schatzki then uses the sharp contrast with the complex and dynamic practice of day trading to reveal what makes this approach useful as a general account of social existence. Along the way he provides new insights into many major issues in social theory, including the nature of social order, the significance of agency, the distinction between society and nature, the forms of social change, and how the social present affects its future. (shrink)

A property, F, is maximal iff, roughly, large parts of an F are not themselves Fs.' Maximality makes trouble for a recent analysis of intrinsicality by Rae Langton and David Lewis.

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the (...) motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences. (shrink)

"A magisterial accomplishment that will be the standard in this field for years to come."--John D. Caputo, Villanova University "Outstanding, entirely original, absolutely groundbreaking.... It is quite simply the best account to date--and the best we can expect for decades in the future--of the philosophical development of Heidegger's early thought."--Thomas Sheehan, Loyola University "A magisterial accomplishment that will be the standard in this field for years to come."--John D. Caputo, Villanova University.

This paper by Theodore de Laguna presents and argues for the deflationary theory of truth. The paper was first published in French in 1922. The version published here is the original, English version of the paper and has been edited by Joel Katzav.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Shamik Dasgupta has argued that realists about natural properties (and laws, grounding, etc.) cannot account for their epistemic value. For "properties are cheap": in addition to natural properties and any value the realist might attach to them, there are also "shmatural" properties (standing to natural properties like charge and mass as Goodman's grue and bleen stand to green and blue) and a corresponding "shmvalue" of theorizing in terms of them. Dasgupta's challenge is one of objectivity: the existence of the "shmamiked" (...) network of concepts threatens the objectivity of facts stated using the unshmamiked network. But the challenge can be repelled given a proper understanding of objectivity itself. (shrink)

There is growing support for the view that social categories like men and women refer to “objective types” (Haslanger 2000, 2006, 2012; Alcoff 2005). An objective type is a similarity class for which the axis of similarity is an objective rather than nominal or fictional property. Such types are independently real and causally relevant, yet their unity does not derive from an essential property. Given this tandem of features, it is not surprising why empirically-minded researchers interested in fighting oppression and (...) marginalization have found this ontological category so attractive: objective types have the ontological credentials to secure the reality (and thus political representation) of social categories, and yet they do not impose exclusionary essences that also naturalize and legitimize social inequalities. This essay argues that, from the perspective of these political goals of fighting oppression and marginalization, the category of objective types is in fact a Trojan horse; it looks like a gift, but it ends up creating trouble. I argue that objective type classifications often lack empirical adequacy, and as a result they lack political adequacy. I also provide, and in reference to the normative goals described above, several arguments for preferring a social ontology of natural kinds with historical essences. (shrink)

In domains like stock brokerage, clinical psychiatry, and long‐term political forecasting, experts generally fail to outperform novices. Empirical researchers agree on why this is: experts must receive direct or environmental learning feedback during training to develop reliable expertise, and these domains are deficient in this type of feedback. A growing number of philosophers resource this consensus view to argue that, given the absence of direct or environmental philosophical feedback, we should not give the philosophical intuitions or theories of expert philosophers (...) greater credence than those of novice philosophers. This article has three objectives. The first is to explore several overlooked issues concerning the strategy of generalizing from empirical studies of non‐philosophical expertise to the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. The second is to explain why empirical research into a causal relationship between direct learning feedback and enhanced expert performance does not provide good grounds for abandoning a default optimism about the epistemic superiority of expert philosophical theories. The third is to sketch a positive characterization of learning feedback that addresses developmental concerns made salient by the empirical literature on expert performance for specifically theory‐driven or “armchair” domains like philosophy. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set in, threatening to undermine (...) shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities. (shrink)

Gender‐affirming care is almost exclusively discussed in connection with transgender medicine. However, this article argues that such care predominates among cisgender patients, people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. To advance this argument, we trace historical shifts in transgender medicine since the 1950s to identify central components of “gender‐affirming care” that distinguish it from previous therapeutic models, such as “sex reassignment.” Next, we sketch two historical cases—reconstructive mammoplasty and testicular implants—to show how cisgender patients offered justifications grounded (...) in authenticity and gender affirmation that closely mirror rationales supporting gender‐affirming care for transgender people. The comparison exposes significant disparities in contemporary health policy regarding care for cis and trans patients. We consider two possible objections to the analogy we draw, but ultimately argue that these disparities are rooted in “trans exceptionalism” that produces demonstrable harm.. (shrink)

Using four principles common to several theories about possible worlds, It is argued that the necessary existence of a divine being that is essentially omnipotent, Omniscient, And morally perfect is impossible. The central argument employs the premise that there are possible worlds that any divine being ought not to actualize (because of their evil contents). This premise is then defended on the grounds that the same sort of justification that we give for other modal statements that we accept can be (...) given for modal statements which entail the premise. It is concluded that we must reject the guiding principle that gives rise to the traditional theistic concept, Viz., That if a property p of an individual is an excellence of it and hence its having p is good, Then its having p necessarily or essentially is better. (shrink)

One of the most eminent Heidegger scholars of our time, Theodore Kisiel has found worldwide critical acclaim, his particular strength being to set Heidegger's ...

I expand modal normativism, a theory of metaphysical modality, to give a normativist account of metaphysical explanation. According to modal normativism, basic modal claims do not have a descriptive function, but instead have the normative function of enabling language users to express semantic rules that govern the use of ordinary non-modal vocabulary. However, a worry for modal normativism is that it doesn’t keep up with all of the important and interesting metaphysics we can do by giving and evaluating metaphysical explanations. (...) So, I advance modal normativism by arguing that metaphysical explanations also have a normative rather than descriptive function. In particular, non-causal explanatory claims have formal and semantic properties that make them expressively stricter than basic modal claims and so are better suited to express fine-grained aspects of semantic rules. A major payoff of my normativist account of metaphysical explanations is that it yields a plausible story about how we come to evaluate and know metaphysical explanations—we do this primarily by conceptual analysis. I also respond to a number of objections, including the objection that the epistemic payoffs of my view are not worth the metaphysical costs. (shrink)

In some domains experts perform better than novices, and in other domains experts do not generally perform better than novices. According to empirical studies of expert performance, this is because the former but not the latter domains make available to training practitioners a direct form of learning feedback. Several philosophers resource this empirical literature to cast doubt on the quality of philosophical expertise. They claim that philosophy is like the dubious domains in that it does not make available the good, (...) direct kind of learning feedback, and thus there are empirical grounds for doubting the epistemic quality of philosophical expertise. I examine the empirical studies that are purportedly bad news for professional philosophers. On the basis of that examination, I provide three reasons why the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise does not undermine the status of philosophical expertise. First, the non-philosophical task-types from which the critics generalize are unrepresentative of relevant philosophical task-types. Second, empirical critiques of non-philosophical experts are often made relative to the performance of linear models—a comparison that is inapt in a philosophical context. Third, the critics fail to discuss findings from the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise that have more favorable implications for the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. In addition to discussing implications for philosophical expertise, this article makes progress in the philosophical analysis of the science of expertise and expert development. (shrink)

This paper presents a new solution to the problem of peer disagreement that distinguishes two principles of rational belief, here called probability and autonomy. When we discover that we disagree with peers, there is one sense in which we rationally ought to suspend belief, and another in which we rationally ought to retain our original belief. In the first sense, we aim to believe what is most probably true according to our total evidence, including testimony from peers and authorities. In (...) the second, we aim to base our beliefs only on objective evidence and argumentation, even if that lowers the probability of their being true. The first principle of rational belief tends to serve the short-term epistemic interests of individuals, while the second tends to serve the long-term epistemic interests of both individuals and groups. The best way to reconcile these principles in cases of peer disagreement is to associate them with two corresponding species of belief, here called perception and opinion. (shrink)

Thus, says Hare, a judgment that someone is happy is an appraisal, not a statement of fact. I do not wish to deny that there are some uses of 'happy', ascribed to a person or to a life, for which this is the case; but I would like to maintain that there are other uses of 'happy', philosophically important ones, in which a judgment that a third person is happy is not an appraisal, but is rather a report about him (...) which may be true or false; and in which a first person judgment that one is happy, while it involves an appraisal, is still a report which may be true or false. (shrink)

In , Peter van Inwagen asked a good question. (Asking the right question is often the hardest part.) He asked: what do you have to do to some objects to get them to compose something—to bring into existence some further thing made up of those objects? Glue them together or what?1 Some said that you don’t have to do anything.2 No matter what you do to the objects, they’ll always compose something further, no matter how they are arranged. Thus we (...) learned of the fusion of the coins in our pockets and the Eiffel tower. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends an argument for the conclusion that a personal afterlife in the absence of any sort of body at all is not conceptually possible. The main idea behind the argument is that there would be no way for the identities of people in a bodiless state to be established, either by others or by themselves. The argument raises a significant challenge to explaining just how someone in a totally disembodied afterlife could ever be identified—a challenge that (...) has yet to be met. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the value of philosophy of science for history of science. I start by introducing a distinction between two ways of integrating history and philosophy of science: historical philosophy of science and philosophical history of science. I then offer a critical discussion of Imre Lakatos’s project to bring philosophy of science to bear on historical interpretation. I point out certain flaws in Lakatos’s project, which I consider indicative of what went wrong with PHS in the past. (...) Finally, I put forward my own attempt to bring out the historiographical potential of philosophy of science. Starting from Norwood Russell Hanson’s insight that historical studies of science involve metascientific concepts, I argue that philosophical reflection on those concepts can be historiographically fruitful. I focus on four issues and discuss their significance and utility for historiographical practice. (shrink)

La migration familiale forcée est un parcours émaillé de moments d’attente plus ou moins longs. Dans cette attente, il arrive que le corps engage un travail de somatisation permettant au sujet migrant de passer de la survie à la reprise en main progressive de sa subjectivité. À partir du suivi d’une jeune femme ayant été contrainte de migrer de l’Afrique du Nord à la France dans un contexte de violence politique et présentant des manifestations somatiques, la réflexion porte sur la (...) manière dont le corps vient signifier cette exigence de travail et sur la manière dont les premiers affects bruts permettent d’entendre la mise en mouvement des processus de pré-élaboration de la souffrance psychique et du trauma. (shrink)

L’enrôlement d’enfants dans les groupes armés est une triste réalité. Présents dans plusieurs conflits armés et guerres, ces derniers peuvent être enrôlés de force, mais il faut prendre en compte le phénomène avéré d’enrôlement volontaire. Les raisons de cet enrôlement volontaire sont nombreuses. Cet article se propose d’examiner la place que tient la maltraitance intra-familiale dans l’émergence et la pérennisation de ce phénomène. Il porte sur une étude de cas d’un enfant soldat rencontré lors d’une recherche en République démocratique du (...) Congo. Ce travail montre que l’enrôlement volontaire puise en partie sa source dans la souffrance du lien familial meurtri dans un tel contexte. Ceci se manifeste dans les questions de bonne distance, de partage de l’intimité et la construction de la figure de l’enfant intrus. (shrink)

Kant claims that “empirical psychology must always remain outside the rank of a natural science properly so called.” What led him to this conclusion? Kant first points out that if we take nature to be the totality of things insofar as they can be objects of our senses, then the doctrine of nature will contain two parts corresponding to the two forms of our sensibility: a doctrine of body and a doctrine of mind. But an “historical doctrine of nature comprising (...) nothing but systematically ordered facts” must be distinguished from natural science properly so called. For “only that can properly be called science whose certainty is apodictic; cognitions which can only have empirical certainty are only improperly called science”. Since the chemistry of his day consisted of “mere laws of experience,” Kant held that it was not really a science; the explanations it gives in terms of such laws leave us “unsatisfied because no a priori grounds can be given for these accidental laws which mere experience has taught”. There can be no proper natural science, so Kant argues, without “a pure part on which the apodictic certainty, which reason seeks in it, can be based”. This metaphysical foundation of science is transcendental insofar as it is concerned with the concept of nature in general. If we specify it further by introducing the empirical concept of body, or of mind, the a priori cognitions which can then be established will constitute a pure part of physics, or of psychology, “in which transcendental principles are applied to the two types of objects of our senses”. (shrink)

Past and present societies world-wide have employed well over 100 distinct notational systems for representing natural numbers, some of which continue to play a crucial role in intellectual and cultural development today. The diversity of these notations has prompted the need for classificatory schemes, or typologies, to provide a systematic starting point for their discussion and appraisal. The present paper provides a general framework for assessing the efficacy of these typologies relative to certain desiderata, and it uses this framework to (...) discuss the two influential typologies of Zhang & Norman and Chrisomalis. Following this, a new typology is presented that takes as its starting point the principles by which numerical notations represent multipliers (the principles of cumulation and cipherization), and bases (those of integration, parsing, and positionality). Many different examples show that this new typology provides a more refined classification of numerical notations than the ones put forward previously. In addition, the framework provided here can be used to assess typologies not only of numerical notations, but also of many other domains. (shrink)