One of the central elements of John Rawls’ argument in support of his two principles of justice is the intuitive normative ideal of citizens as free and equal. But taken in isolation, the claim that citizens are to be treated as free and equal is extremely indeterminate, and has virtually no clear implications for policy. In order to remedy this, the two principles of justice, together with the stipulation that citizens have basic interests in developing their moral capacities and pursuing (...) their conceptions of the good life, are meant to provide a more precise interpretation of what is involved in treating citizens as free and equal. Rawls’ critics, however, have argued that satisfying the two principles of justice is not the most appropriate or plausible way to respect the status of citizens as free and equal. In relation to this debate, the present paper has two aims. The first is to examine Rawls’ account of the type of freedom that a just society must guarantee equally to its citizens. I will argue that those who think of Rawls as a theorist of freedom as non-interference are mistaken, because his notion of liberty resembles in important respects the republican notion of freedom as non-domination. Second, I will consider the extent to which Rawls’ principles of justice successfully protect the freedom as non-domination of all citizens so as to effectively treat them as free and equal. (shrink)

When listening to degraded speech, such as speech delivered by a cochlear implant, listeners make use of top-down linguistic knowledge to facilitate speech recognition. Lexical knowledge supports speech recognition and enhances the perceived clarity of speech. Yet, the extent to which lexical knowledge can be used to effectively compensate for degraded input may depend on the degree of degradation and the listener’s age. The current study investigated lexical effects in the compensation for speech that was degraded via noise-vocoding in younger (...) and older listeners. In an online experiment, younger and older normal-hearing listeners rated the clarity of noise-vocoded sentences on a scale from 1 to 7. Lexical information was provided by matching text primes and the lexical content of the target utterance. Half of the sentences were preceded by a matching text prime, while half were preceded by a non-matching prime. Each sentence also consisted of three key words of high or low lexical frequency and neighborhood density. Sentences were processed to simulate CI hearing, using an eight-channel noise vocoder with varying filter slopes. Results showed that lexical information impacted the perceived clarity of noise-vocoded speech. Noise-vocoded speech was perceived as clearer when preceded by a matching prime, and when sentences included key words with high lexical frequency and low neighborhood density. However, the strength of the lexical effects depended on the level of degradation. Matching text primes had a greater impact for speech with poorer spectral resolution, but lexical content had a smaller impact for speech with poorer spectral resolution. Finally, lexical information appeared to benefit both younger and older listeners. Findings demonstrate that lexical knowledge can be employed by younger and older listeners in cognitive compensation during the processing of noise-vocoded speech. However, lexical content may not be as reliable when the signal is highly degraded. Clinical implications are that for adult CI users, lexical knowledge might be used to compensate for the degraded speech signal, regardless of age, but some CI users may be hindered by a relatively poor signal. (shrink)

El sistema educativo es responsable por la transmisión y expresión de la mayor parte de los patrones socioculturales que integran nuestra sociedad, entre los cuales se encuentra el género. Este es un tema de reciente abordaje en el contexto educativo, por lo cual son necesarios los estudios respecto a las percepciones docentes al respecto. Por otro lado, la metáfora es una herramienta utilizada en la vida cotidiana de las personas, para facilitar la producción y comprensión de conceptos abstractos, por lo (...) cual es útil para el estudio de creencias, opiniones y conceptualizaciones por parte de distintos grupos humanos. Este artículo, basado en una investigación cualitativa realizada en contexto de posgrado, tiene como objetivo describir las metáforas de animales producidas por estudiantes de pedagogía de quinto año respecto a sus estudiantes de género femenino y/o masculino. Por medio de entrevistas semiestructuradas a diez estudiantes, se identificó un total de 9 metáforas en el campo semántico de los animales, donde se diferenció el comportamiento de estudiantes en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en base a su género. Como resultados principales, se destaca que las metáforas asociadas al género masculino refieren a la inquietud, el desorden y lo físico; mientras que las metáforas asociadas al género femenino destacaban lo verbal y la tranquilidad. Por otro lado, algunas de las metáforas producidas relevaban la influencia de la edad en el comportamiento de los y las estudiantes. Futuras investigaciones podrán ampliar la muestra, y facilitar la elección de estrategias para disminuir las inequidades de género por parte de los y las profesionales de educación. (shrink)

Tinguelys gesamtes Œuvre scheint vom Vanitas-Motiv grundiert: seine sinnlosen Maschinen aus Schrott, sich selbst vernichtenden, ephemeren Artefakte, die in Form von Flügelaltären stattfindende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod und erst recht der eine barocke Tragikomödie referierende Cenodoxus. Dass dieser Eindruck trügt, zeigt sich sobald das scheinbar Evidente mit den frühneuzeitlichen Spielarten der Vanitas konfrontiert wird. Dennoch adaptiert und inszeniert Tinguely das Motiv mit dem melancholischen Gestus des seines Heilshorizonts verlustig gegangenen Subjekts.

Стаття актуалізує проблему антропологічних вимірів музичного мистецтва на основі впливу естетичної емоції. Робоча гіпотеза розвідки ґрунтується на трьох позиціях: генезис звукоемоційних комплексів убачається в емоційному тлумаченні; модусом антропології музики є феномени, що закладені як глибинна структура в розвитку європейської культури в історичній перспективі та в сьогоденні; музичне мистецтво моделює за допомогою інтонаційної мови ціннісне багатство, логіку й динаміку людського світовідношення, організує духовне спілкування між людьми й поколіннями.

In philosophy, the last thirty years or so has seen a split between 'simulation theorists' and 'theory-theorists', with a number of variations on each side. In general, simulation theorists favour the idea that our knowledge of others is based on using ourselves as a working model of what complex psychological creatures are like. Theory-theorists claim that our knowledge of complex psychological creatures, including ourselves, is theoretical in character and so more like our knowledge of the world in general. The body (...) of this paper is divided into three parts. In Part I, I introduce the 'contrastive case' of autism. Autism is a developmental disorder that has recently become the focus of sustained philosophical and psychological attention because of the selective way in which it affects individuals' social capacities. Theory-theorists argue that autistic children's unique profile of assets and deficits is most fruitfully explained by their inability to develop and deploy a theory of mind. After considering the strengths of this hypothesis, I claim theory-theorists face two unresolved difficulties: explaining why high-functioning autistics who develop some theory of mind capacities still fail to engage in normal psychological knowing; and explaining why autistics are generally as unknowable to us in the privileged sense of normal psychological knowing as we are to them. In Part II, I provide the theoretical framework for addressing these challenges by developing an account of normal psychological knowing as psycho-practical expertise. In Part III, I return to the problem of autism, showing how this psycho-practical approach to normal psychological knowing may further suggest how to encompass various aspects of the disorder that tend to be ignored under the prevailing theory-theory approach. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)

The medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth has been encouraged by the continuing growth of technology that can be applied to the reproductive journey. Technology now has the potential to fully separate reproduction from the human body with the prospect of ectogenesis—the gestation of a fetus outside of the human body. This paper considers the issues that have been caused by the general medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth and the impact that ectogenesis may have on these existing issues. The medicalisation of (...) pregnancy and childbirth is criticised for its impact on the relationship between doctors and pregnant women and the way in which doctors treat fetuses. It is argued that ectogenesis may cause more imbalance in the doctor and intended parent relationship and may result in an increased lack of clarity regarding a doctor’s duty to the fetus. This paper finds that extensive guidance and revised legislation will be necessary to minimise the impact of ectogenesis on the existing issues caused by the medicalisation of reproduction. (shrink)

En este capítulo, analizo a qué se refiere Kuhn cuando habla de metáfora en las Conferencias Notre Dame, pero sobre todo a explorar a qué no se refiere. En la primera sección, analizo por qué Kuhn usa el término “metáfora” para referirse al proceso de aprendizaje de lenguaje científico, en particular, los paralelismos que encuentra entre ambos fenómenos. En la segunda sección, se presentan algunos aspectos centrales de dos teorías influyentes sobre la metáfora: la teoría del mapeo estructural y la (...) teoría de las metáforas conceptuales. Luego, en la sección III, vuelvo a Kuhn para ver las diferencias cruciales que encontramos entre los procesos metafóricos y el proceso de ostensión del que habla el autor. Finalmente, presento una noción del segundo Wittgenstein, la idea de figura, para ofrecer una nueva forma de interpretar la idea de que el cambio revolucionario involucra un cambio en la metáfora central. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists have focussed a great deal of attention on our human capacity to trust, but relatively little on the capacity to hope. This is a significant oversight, as hope and trust are importantly interconnected. This paper argues that, even though trust can and does feed our hopes, it is our empowering capacity to hope that significantly underwrites—and makes rational—our capacity to trust.

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

Is it possible to disagree with someone without considering them cognitively flawed? The answer seems to be a resounding yes: disagreeing with someone doesn't entail thinking less of them. You can disagree with someone and not think that they are unreasonable. Deep disagreements, however, may challenge this assumption. A disagreement is deep when it involves many interrelated issues, including the proper way to resolve the disagreement, resulting in its persistence. The parties to a deep disagreement can hold neutral or even (...) positive judgements of each other's epistemic character, as parties’ judging each other's epistemic character negatively (i.e., epistemic disdain) is not a defining feature of deep disagreements. When analysing real-life cases, however, we find that epistemic disdain is typical of deep disagreements. In this article, I analyse why this is the case. Given that epistemic disdain undermines cognitive peerhood, the prospects of deep disagreements between epistemic peers seem bleak. Finally, it is discussed how the phenomenon of epistemic disdain, as it relates to deep disagreements, may increase affective polarisation. (shrink)

The broad issue in this paper is the relationship between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That issue arises particularly sharply for cognitive neurospsychology, some of whose practitioners claim a methodological autonomy for their discipline. They hold that behavioural data from neuropsychological impairments are sufficient to justify assumptions about the underlying modular structure of human cognitive architecture, as well as to make inferences about its various components. But this claim to methodological autonomy can be challenged on both philosophical and empirical grounds. A (...) priori considerations about (cognitive) multiple realisability challenge the thesis on philosophical grounds, and neuroscientific findings from developmental disorders substantiate that challenge empirically. The conclusion is that behavioural evidence alone is inadequate for scientific progress since appearances of modularity can be thoroughly deceptive, obscuring both the dynamic processes of neural development and the endstate network architecture of real cognitive systems. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit model in more (...) detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

We call systematic disputes that are particularly hard to resolve deep disagreements. We can divide most theories of deep disagreements in analytic epistemology into two camps: the Wittgensteinian view and the fundamental epistemic principles view. This essay analyzes how both views deal with two of the most pressing issues a theory of deep disagreement must address: their source and their resolution. After concluding that the paradigmatic theory of each camp struggles on both fronts, the essay proceeds to show that, despite (...) their differences, these theories share some core assumptions and think of deep disagreements similarly: as grounded in fundamental epistemic differences between the parties. This underlying conception of deep disagreements the author calls “the fundamental model.” The essay provides reasons to be wary of this conception, and hence, mainstream epistemologists’ treatment of the issue. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that our folk-psychological expertise is a special case of extended and enculturated cognition where we learn to regulate both our own and others’ thought and action in accord with a wide array of culturally shaped folk-psychological norms. The view has three noteworthy features: it challenges a common assumption that the foundational capacity at work in folk-psychological expertise is one of interpreting behaviour in mentalistic terms, arguing instead that successful mindreading is largely a consequence of successful mindshaping; it (...) argues that our folk-psychological expertise is not only socially scaffolded in development, it continues to be socially supported and maintained in maturity, thereby presenting a radically different picture of what mature folk-psychological competency amounts to; it provides grounds for resisting a recent trend in theoretical explanations of quotidian social interaction that downplays the deployment of sophisticated mentalizing resources in understanding what others are doing. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)