The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations are drawn (...) by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

Despite several decades of criticism, dichotomous thinking about behavioral development remains widespread and influential. This is particularly true in study of birdsong development, where it has become increasingly common to diagnose songs, elements of songs, or precursors of songs as either innate or learned on the basis of isolation-rearing experiments. The theory of sensory templates has encouraged both the dichotomous approach and an emphasis on structural rather than functional aspects of song development. As a result, potentially important lines of investigation (...) have been overlooked and the interpretation of existing data is often flawed. Evidence for a genetic origin of behavioraldifferencesis frequently interpreted as evidence for the genetic determination of behavioralcharacters. The technique of isolation rearing remains the methodology of choice for many investigators, despite the fact that it offers only a rather crude analysis of the contribution of experience to song development and provides no information at all about genetic contributions to development. The latter could in principle be elucidated by the application of developmental-genetic techniques, but it is unlikely that these can easily be applied to the study of birdsong. Because developmental questions are so often posed in terms of the learned–innate dichotomy, “experience” is taken to be synonymous with “learning” and the possible role of nonobvious contributions to song development has largely been ignored. An alternative approach, based on Daniel Lehrman's interactionist theory of development, permits a more thorough appreciation of the problems that have yet to be addressed, and provides a more secure conceptual foundation for theories of song development. (shrink)

Despite the amount of attention that activists, educators, psychologists, and the media place on bullying and bullying prevention, there has been no sustained philosophical reflection on bullying, nor has there been a feminist analysis of the growing literature on bullying. This essay seeks to satisfy those two needs. The first section is a broad introduction to the literature on bullying. I define bullying and distinguish it from teasing, sassing, roughhousing, and other more benign interactions. I also outline two common solutions (...) to bullying: zero-tolerance policies and “ecological” interventions. The second section uses feminist ethics of care to analyze the effectiveness of each approach. I argue that ecological approaches to bullying are preferable to zero-tolerance policies because they operate on a relational model of the self and identity-formation. I elaborate a notion of affirmation as the mechanism that stabilizes and solidifies our sense of self across time. I then use affirmation to analyze three things: why people bully one another, the specific harm inflicted by bullying, and why ecological approaches are more effective in reducing bullying. The third section uses my account of affirmation to critique the scientism and troublingly gendered assumptions that underlie much of the work on bullying. (shrink)

There is little doubt that our political discourse has become more polarized over the last thirty years. I argue that as radical thinkers we can turn to politeness as one way to begin working past this partisan and adversarial atmosphere. I define politeness as a self-conscious appreciation of the role of social convention in repairing and maintaining our relationships. The first section compares politeness and decency to highlight what is unique about politeness. The second section argues that politeness can be (...) considered a form of care. The third and final section describes how radical theory can use politeness to start initiating healthier dialogue. (shrink)

This article uses the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to advocate for LGBT-inclusive intake questions across aging network services. I argue that care providers need to know their charge's sexual orientation and/or gender identity because caring touch is responsive, meaning that the care provider understands how her touch will be perceived and can change her actions accordingly. Information about a charge's sexual orientation and/or gender identity is one important way to furnish the care provider with the information (...) she needs to calibrate effectively the expressive impact of her touch. (shrink)

The comparative method, closely identified with Darwinian evolutionary biology, also has a long pre-Darwinian history. The method derives its scientific power from its ability to interpret comparative observations with reference to a theory of relatedness among the entities being compared. Such scientifically powerful strong comparison is distinguished from weak comparison, which lacks such theoretical grounding. This paper examines the history of the strong comparison permitted by the comparative method from the early modern period to the threshold of the Darwinian revolution (...) in the mid nineteenth century. It interprets the work of early pioneers such as Belon, Willis, Perrault, and Tyson from this methodological perspective, rather than focusing on their particular anatomical findings. Although these early writers made formative scientific contributions through their comparative investigations, the more theoretically grounded application of the comparative method by Geoffroy, Cuvier, and Owen was instrumental in laying the foundation for its later incorporation into Darwinian evolutionary theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressive Translations:Parrhesia and the Politics of Being UnderstoodTim R. JohnstonAuthor And Activist Julia Serano’s spoken word poem “Performance Piece” is a smart and passionate polemic against people who say that “all gender is performance” (Serano 2010, 85). In response to those who treat gender as an endlessly mutable fiction, performance, or facade Serano says:Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my (...) eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn’t capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. (Serano 2010, 85–86)My first reaction to this understanding of performativity was to get defensive, immediately thinking of all the ways in which it reflects a poor reading of Judith Butler and is an incorrect use of the concept. Yet, to make that argument would mean arriving late to the party. Many theorists, notably Jay Prosser and Viviane Namaste, have made similar arguments about performativity to which Butler and many others have responded. I am not interested in joining this debate by defending or critiquing performativity; instead, I want to take seriously Serano’s criticism of the way performativity functions as a “mantra” for [End Page 84] “queerer-than-thou hipsters” (Serano 2010, 87). The fact is, concepts that help people make sense of their experience are often taken up piecemeal. They gain traction, get printed on posters, discussed in safe-spaces, taught in intro classes, and yelled at parents. They take on a life of their own and are queered again and again. It may not be anyone’s fault that performativity has come to signify a kind of insincerity, detachment from the body, linguistic constructionism, or a play of surfaces, but for many people this is exactly what it means. What follows is inspired by the questions at the heart of Serano’s poem: “Can’t we find new ways of speaking? Shouldn’t we be championing new slogans that empower all of us, whether trans or non-trans, queer or straight, female and/or male and/ or none of the above?” (Serano 2010, 87). I depart slightly from Serano insofar as I am not interested in replacing performativity as a concept. Instead, I am interested in locating other concepts that could be useful in understanding and communicating our multiple experiences of gender.Serano’s concern is not only the depth and conviction with which she experiences gender, but also the communicability of this conviction. We are social beings. We seek out the company of other people, animals, and objects. In order to flourish we need to feel understood by our surroundings. We are creatures that need to be connected, and connection requires translating our subjective experiences into a communicable, socially understandable register. How does this translation occur? How do we make ourselves understandable? What external forces regulate or influence this translation? And, crucially, how can we construct philosophical concepts that do justice to our need to feel that our interior selves are understood? What concept could we cast out into the world that might answer Serano’s call for new ways of speaking? What follows is an attempt to think through this question by looking at the relationship between the medicalization of trans people, Michel Foucault’s writings on parrhesia, and coming out.The first half of this essay examines the ways in which the medical apparatus that manages transitioning attempts to control transsexual coming-out narratives, an example of what Foucault calls biopower. I argue that the medicalization of transitioning has created a legible transsexual identity structured on the distance between our interiority and the world external to the self. The trans person’s claims about their interior sense of self are the only evidence needed to access medical technologies such as hormone therapy or surgery. But oftentimes such claims are only accepted as valid if they conform to certain scripts—scripts that are... (shrink)

Labor and Global Justice combines conceptual and theoretical perspectives across a multiplicity of relevant differences, both geographical and disciplinary, to develop a transnational perspective on labor and justice and to make clear how justice requires a rethinking of the relation between labor and global capital.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond “Born this Way”Tim R. JohnstonLGBTQ liberation requires that we become more critical of “born this way” rhetoric—the political and quasi-scientific claims that sexual orientation and gender identity are immutable and intrinsic facts. Born this way rhetoric gets at a lot of feminist and queer theorists’ favorite questions: Are we born with a sex or a gender? Does sex inform gender, or is sex just gender masquerading as nature? (...) Do I have a gay gene that somehow got flipped on, or was I just around one too many dolls at a formative age?I’m going to make a case for moving away from this rhetoric, but before I go too much farther let me say that I am not interested in policing anyone’s language or restricting the terms we use to explain our experience. I think born this way rhetoric can and should be utilized by those who find it accurately expresses their experience, and if progressive arguments are strengthened by born this way rhetoric then I think it is fine, as a political and rhetorical strategy, to continue using it to demand respect.How can we be critical of this rhetoric while still deploying it for personal or strategic reasons? Doing so requires acknowledging that the nature/nurture debate is not likely to be resolved anytime soon, so let’s take a short cut, sidestep that debate entirely, and talk about how born this way rhetoric functions politically. After reading the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, I’ve started to think of born this way rhetoric as a kind of founding mythology. Nancy describes myth as self-inscribing, auto-articulating, totalizing discourse. A myth is complete and self-sufficient because it explains itself, and in so doing it also establishes the framework within which the myth is intelligible. For example, telling the Christian creation myth both [End Page 140] explains the creation of the world, while also setting up the ontological and theological framework necessary to legitimate that myth. Myth is totalizing because it controls what is deemed intelligible or reasonable discourse. As the Christian creation myth describes the foundation of the world, it also invalidates alternative discourses such as evolution, making the myth a closed circuit that both founds and perpetuates itself.Nancy argues that myths only exist in their telling, and telling a myth creates community: “Myth arises only from a community and for it: they engender one another, infinitely and immediately” (Nancy 1991, 50). The telling of a myth posits that myth as a foundation for the community that believes and retells the myth. Nancy says:Absolute community—myth—is not so much the total fusion of individuals, but the will of community: the desire to operate, through the power of myth, the communion that myth represents and that it represents as communion or communication of wills. Fusion ensues: myth represents multiple existences as immanent to its own unique fiction, which gathers them together and gives them their common figure in its speech and as this speech. This does not mean that community is a myth, that communitarian communion is a myth. It means that myth and myth’s force and foundation are essential to community and that there can be, therefore, no community outside of myth.(Nancy 1991, 57)It is the telling of a myth in a community that both installs the myth as foundation and creates the community of people who share in that myth. Nancy recognizes the importance of myth in the formation of community, but warns that its tendency to provide a complete and totalizing view of the world can lead to fascist thinking. Myths are not necessarily supple, and a community based on myth may not afford its members the opportunity to make sense of their experience apart from the logic of the foundational myth.I propose we treat born this way rhetoric as a meaningful and important mythological foundation for many LGBTQ communities, while also remaining critical of its tendency to become a dogmatic and totalizing discourse. Born this way thinking is an unproven and unprovable certainty. We do not know why people have different sexual orientations and gender identities. It is a... (shrink)

There is little doubt that our political discourse has become more polarized over the last thirty years. I argue that as radical thinkers we can turn to politeness as one way to begin working past this partisan and adversarial atmosphere. I define politeness as a self-conscious appreciation of the role of social convention in repairing and maintaining our relationships. The first section compares politeness and decency to highlight what is unique about politeness. The second section argues that politeness can be (...) considered a form of care. The third and final section describes how radical theory can use politeness to start initiating healthier dialogue. (shrink)

This essay is a philosophical analysis of a parent's decision whether or not to consent to neonatal genital nomalization surgery for a child bom with ambiguous genitals. Using Henri Bergson's analysis of duration, I make the distinction between spatialized narrative snapshots, and attention to duration, A spatialized narrative snapshot is a speculative picture of the child's entire life. Attention to duration requires we acknowledge that as long as the child is alive her life is indeterminate. I then take Hilde Lindemann's (...) concept of holding and develop it to help parents understand attention to duration in order to resist the pressure to consent to genital normalization surgery. (shrink)