Feminist philosophy seems to conflict with traditional philosophical methodology. For example, some uses of the concept of gender by feminist philosophers seem to commit the genetic fallacy. I argue that use of the concept of gender need not commit the genetic fallacy, but that the concept of gender is problematic on other grounds.

Thinking About Sexual Harassment aims to provide the information necessary for careful, critical thinking about the concept of sexual harassment. Part I traces the construction of the concept of sexual harassment from the first public uses of the term through its definitions in the law, in legal cases, and in empirical research. Part II analyses philosophical definitions of sexual harassment and a number of issues that have arisen in the law, including the reasonable woman standard and whether same-sex harassment should (...) be considered sex discrimination. (shrink)

Language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object for it is a part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created. (Mead 1934, p. 78).

Most discussions of sexual harassment and laws addressing sexual harassment focus solely on sexual harassment in the workplace and/or in academe. In this paper, I will explore sexual harassment in public spaces such as streets and public transportation. Street and/or transportation harassment is a major problem for women in a number of countries. These forms of harassment constrain women’s freedom of movement, preventing them from taking advantage of opportunities at school, at work, and in politics. I will argue that such (...) harassment must be eliminated if women are to have equal opportunities in society. (shrink)

Most discussions of sexual harassment and laws addressing sexual harassment focus solely on sexual harassment in the workplace and/or in academe. In this paper, I will explore sexual harassment in public spaces such as streets and public transportation. Street and/or transportation harassment is a major problem for women in a number of countries. These forms of harassment constrain women’s freedom of movement, preventing them from taking advantage of opportunities at school, at work, and in politics. I will argue that such (...) harassment must be eliminated if women are to have equal opportunities in society. (shrink)

This new volume in the acclaimed Oxford Readings in Philosophy sereis offers a selection of the most important philosophical work being done in the new and fast-growing interdisciplinary area of artificial life. Artificial life research seeks to synthesize the characteristics of life by artificial means, particularly employing computer technology. The essays here explore such fascinating themes as the nature of life, the relation between life and mind, and the limits of technology.

How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the (...) nature of human creativity in the arts. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind. (shrink)

An essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind, "The Creative Mind" has been updated to include recent developments in artificial ...

What is the mind? How does it work? How does it influence behavior? Some psychologists hope to answer such questions in terms of concepts drawn from computer science and artificial intelligence. They test their theories by modeling mental processes in computers. This book shows how computer models are used to study many psychological phenomena--including vision, language, reasoning, and learning. It also shows that computer modeling involves differing theoretical approaches. Computational psychologists disagree about some basic questions. For instance, should the mind (...) be modeled by digital computers, or by parallel-processing systems more like brains? Do computer programs consist of meaningless patterns, or do they embody (and explain) genuine meaning? (shrink)

Learn how to think beyond the theoretical in any environment. "Ethics & Issues in Contemporary Nursing, 1st Edition" examines the latest trends, principles, theories, and models in patient care to help you learn how to make ethically sound decisions in complex and often controversial situations. Written from a global perspective, examples throughout the text reflect current national and international issues inviting you to explore cases considering socio-cultural influences, personal values, and professional ethics. Historical examples demonstrate how to think critically while (...) upholding moral and professional standards, as well as the law. Key topics throughout explore advocacy and rights, diversity, nurse burnout, mass casualty events, social media, violence in the workplace, medication error prevention, opioid and other substance use, HIPAA, and healthcare reform. In addition, this new title contains supplemental case studies and review questions to further challenge and prepare you to make morally sound decisions in any healthcare setting. -- From product description. (shrink)

This title explores how human commitments, rooted in the story of God's love, are acts of free choice and love. Farley reflects on the concrete experiences of people who strive to be faithful to what they have claimed to love: 'My concern is to name something that I think is, after all, common to all of our lives - an experience, a reality, perhaps a problem, a challenge, something that is sometimes a source of joy, sometimes a cause of tragedy'. (...) Farley explores the nature nad meaning of commitment as it is played out in our lives, addressing love, fidelity, a sense of obligation, and covenant. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of classical and contemporary readings provides a clear and comprehensive guide to the many hotly-debated philosophical issues at the heart of artificial intelligence.

The applications of Artificial Intelligence lie all around us; in our homes, schools and offices, in our cinemas, in art galleries and - not least - on the Internet. The results of Artificial Intelligence have been invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language from a fresh angle.As a concept, Artificial Intelligence has fuelled and sharpened the philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. (...) Margaret A. Boden reviews the philosophical and technological challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence, considering whether programs could ever be really intelligent, creative or even conscious, and shows how the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence has helped us to appreciate how human and animal minds are possible. (shrink)

Margaret Boden presents a series of essays in which she explores the nature of creativity in a wide range of art forms. Creativity is the generation of novel, surprising, and valuable ideas. Boden identifies three forms of creativity each eliciting a different form of surprise.

In a compelling chronicle of her search to understand Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex, Margaret A. Simons offers a unique perspective on Beauvoir's wide-ranging contribution to twentieth-century thought. She details the discovery of the origins of Beauvoir's existential philosophy in her handwritten diary from 1927; uncovers evidence of the sexist exclusion of Beauvoir from the philosophical canon; reveals evidence that the African-American writer Richard Wright provided Beauvoir with the theoretical model of oppression that she used in The Second (...) Sex; shows the influence of The Second Sex in transforming Sartre's philosophy and in laying the theoretical foundations of radical feminism; and addresses feminist issues of racism, motherhood, and lesbian identity. Simons also draws on her experience as a Women's Liberation organizer as she witnessed how women used The Second Sex in defining the foundations of radical feminism. Bringing together her work as both activist and scholar, Simons offers a highly original contribution to the renaissance of Beauvoir scholarship. (shrink)

Teaching chemistry remains a profoundly challenging activity. This paper arises from reflection on the challenges of creating meaningful assessments. Herein a simple framework to assist in making more visible the different kinds of knowledge required for mastery of chemistry is described. Building from a realist foundation the purpose of this paper is to lay the intellectual scaffolding for the framework. By situating the framework theoretically, it is intended to highlight the value of engaging with philosophy for the project of knowledge (...) building in chemistry. Use of this framework has laid bare some significant limitations to the ways in which organic chemistry has been assessed. Making the visible to students aids in their engagement with knowledge and for a small minority has developed their understanding of science more generally. The framework provides a simple, easily usable tool for the evaluation of chemistry assessments. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

What is creativity? One new idea may be creative, whereas another is merely new: What's the difference? And how is creativity possible? These questions about human creativity can be answered, at least in outline, using computational concepts. There are two broad types of creativity, improbabilist and impossibilist. Improbabilist creativity involves novel combinations of familiar ideas. A deeper type involves METCS: the mapping, exploration, and transformation of conceptual spaces. It is impossibilist, in that ideas may be generated which – with respect (...) to the particular conceptual space concerned – could not have been generated before. The more clearly conceptual spaces can be defined, the better we can identify creative ideas. Defining conceptual spaces is done by musicologists, literary critics, and historians of art and science. Humanist studies, rich in intuitive subtleties, can be complemented by the comparative rigour of a computational approach. Computational modelling can help to define a space, and to show how it may be mapped, explored, and transformed. Impossibilist creativity can be thought of in “classical” Al terms, whereas connectionism illuminates improbabilist creativity. Most Al models of creativity can only explore spaces, not transform them, because they have no self-reflexive maps enabling them to change their own rules. A few, however, can do so. A scientific understanding of creativity does not destroy our wonder at it, nor does it make creative ideas predictable. Demystification does not imply dehumanization. (shrink)

Intentionality is characteristic of many psychological phenomena. It is commonly held by philosophers that intentionality cannot be ascribed to purely physical systems. This view does not merely deny that psychological language can be reduced to physiological language. It also claims that the appropriateness of some psychological explanation excludes the possibility of any underlying physiological or causal account adequate to explain intentional behavior. This is a thesis which I do not accept. I shall argue that physical systems of a specific sort (...) will show the characteristic features of intentionality. Psychological subjects are, under an alternative description, purely physical systems of a certain sort. The intentional description and the physical description are logically distinct, and are not intertranslatable. Nevertheless, the features of intentionality may be explained by a purely causal account, in the sense that they may be shown to be totally dependent upon physical processes. (shrink)

It’s sometimes said, and even more often assumed, that life is necessary for mind. If so, and if A-Life promises to throw light on the nature of life as such, then A-Life is in principle highly relevant to the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. However, very few philosophers have attempted to argue for the relation between life and mind. It’s usually taken for granted. Even those (mostly in the Continental tradition, including some with a following in A-Life) who have (...) insisted on the linkage have stated it rather than justified it. If an evolutionary account of intentionality is acceptable, then perhaps biological life ‘makes room’ for mind. But that claim is problematic, since it’s not clear that the type of self-organization involved in life-as-such must necessarily include evolution. Even if it does, it’s a further step to show that life is strictly necessary for mind. (shrink)

This collection of Margaret Boden's essays written between 1982 and 1988 focuses on the relevance of artificial intelligence to psychology.

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.