Drawing on Arabic passages from Ibn Gabirol's original Fons Vitae text, and highlighting philosophical insights from his Hebrew poetry, Sarah Pessin develops a "Theology of Desire" at the heart of Ibn Gabirol's eleventh-century cosmo-ontology. She challenges centuries of received scholarship on his work, including his so-called Doctrine of Divine Will. Pessin rejects voluntarist readings of the Fons Vitae as opposing divine emanation. She also emphasizes Pseudo-Empedoclean notions of "Divine Desire" and "Grounding Element" alongside Ibn Gabirol's use of (...) a particularly Neoplatonic method with apophatic (and what she terms "doubly apophatic") implications. In this way, Pessin reads claims about matter and God as insights about love, desire, and the receptive, dependent, and fragile nature of human being. Pessin reenvisions the entire spirit of Ibn Gabirol's philosophy, moving us from a set of doctrines to a fluid inquiry into the nature of God and human being - and the bond between God and human being in desire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 126-127 [Access article in PDF] James Arthur Diamond. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. viii + 235. Paper, $20.95. In his text about the nature of Maimonidean text, Diamond shows us firsthand how the great medieval Jewish thinker's use of biblical and (...) rabbinic prooftexts brings life to each page of his Guide by having meaning rely ultimately on the reader's interpretive glance. Inviting us into his study with an epigraph by Rosenzweig on the integral role of quotation in Jewish medieval writing, Diamond concludes that a prooftext within Maimonides' great philosophical text, The Guide of the Perplexed, is "not merely a prop on which to hang certain philosophical propositions regarding God and his relationship to the creation but rather melds with the text to form an organic continuum of thought" (160). By showing how Maimonides has crafted a masterful "interplay of text and prooftext" (30), Diamond presents the Guide to us as "a bridge, drawing the student out of the philosophical text into the sacred texts and back again, dissolving the divide between the two in a perpetual hermeneutical crisscross" (31).Emphasizing the centrality of the role of the reader—and in particular, the reader engaged in an intertextual hermeneutic—in any appreciation of Maimonidean text, Diamond employs Ricoeurian language, speaking, for example, of how Maimonides' text, in its use of prooftexts whose efficacy lies in the reader's interpretive response, constitutes "a network of intersignification, thanks to which the isolated texts signify something else, something more" (40; quote from Ricoeur, "The Bible and the Imagination," 71). In particular, Diamond stresses how these hermeneutically charged prooftexts are used by Maimonides to penetrate through a range of—what are for Maimonides—metaphorical discourses about the Divine within the Jewish tradition. Ranging from straightforwardly anthropomorphic claims about God sitting or standing, to more subtly anthropocentric conceptions of the role of God in Providence, there are a host of biblical and rabbinic claims about God which Maimonides sees as metaphors—statements whose meanings are in no way worn on their sleeves, as it were. Mindful, though, of the potentially devastating effects of alerting all religious folk to the falsity of certain ways of thinking about God, Maimonides crafts his text—in particular, according to Diamond, in his use of intertextually pointing prooftexts—to beckon only the philosophically prepared readers to the real truths about God and Providence. These truths are neither spelled out in the prooftext nor in the further context from which said prooftext is pulled; rather, as Diamond explains, the truths emerge in the hermeneutical unfolding of text and prooftext, in the live process of the reader's intertextual investigation. In an encounter with Maimonides' Guide, intertextually pointing prooftexts thus enable a reader to fashion "a 'surplus of meaning' out of apparent semantic nonsense" (11; reference to Ricoeur's treatment of metaphor in his Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning).What is fresh, creative and new about Diamond's book is not that it alerts us to the presence of secret writing strategies in Maimonides' Guide which reveal unspoken truths about God. This idea in and of itself is quite well-rehearsed within Maimonidean scholarship. What is fresh, creative and new about Diamond's study is that, in its focus on the hermeneutical efficacy of prooftexts as central to that secret writing strategy, it actually walks us through the hermeneutical process in question, step by step, with a number of cases in point. And so, Diamond not only tells us that Maimonides uses prooftexts as a strategy for pointing careful readers to uncover unspoken truths about the Divine, but Diamond actually devotes a full-length study to showing how this works in a number of [End Page 126] concrete cases. Diamond actually engages in exegesis of Maimonides' Guide in this study of Maimonidean exegesis; he actually shows us how he thinks a number of prooftexts ought to be traced through. Using a number of Maimonidean prooftexts as his starting points, Diamond takes us from Maimonides' text... (shrink)

It is common to interpret Maimonides as emphasizing the unknowability of God’s essence. In this paper, Sarah Pessin asks us to supplement this interpretation with the additional sense that God’s essence is also knowable for Maimonides. Analyzing Maimonides’ treatment of Exodus 33-34 and his treatment of the various ways of knowing and not knowing “God’s Face” and “God’s Back,” Pessin identifies “philosophical wonder” as a special state in which philosophers and prophets apprehend nature in such a way (...) as to be filled with an awareness of God’s presence in the universe. After presenting passages of the Guide of the Perplexed which beckon to God’s knowability, she goes on to introduce “hylomorphic apophasis”—the idea that God, for Maimonides, is simultaneously manifest in and obscured by the materiality of nature. The essay ends with a consideration of Maimonides’ analysis of a Rabbinic verse about God’s wrapping himself in a prayer shawl. (shrink)

After considering core ‘interruptions’ of identity and justice in the post-secularist agonisms of Connolly and Levinas, I mine their views for core practical insights about the possibilities for theist-atheist respect. After considering Connolly on ‘content v. comportment’ and after exploring the virtue of mystery as part of a mystery/contestability/generosity triad, as well as Connolly’s, Levinas’, Nietzsche’s and Bergson’s levels of optimism and pessimism about theism, I end by pointing to cracks in Connolly’s path to pluralism, and I recommend that the (...) ‘open and trembling’ mood of Levinas’ phenomenology serves as an important model for the kind of generous comportment that atheists and theists need on our path to respectful agono-pluralism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Neopythagoreans1Sarah Pessin1the thesis of this article is three-fold. First, I suggest, uncontroversially, that Boethius was in many ways influenced by Neopythagorean ideas. Second, I recommend that in light of our appreciation of his Neopythagorean inclinations in at least some of his writings, we understand his esoteric reference to the “hebdomads”—at the outset of his treatise often called by that name—as a reference to something Neopythagorean. (...) This I suggest in light of the fact that, as I will discuss, the “hebdomad” plays an important role within the Neopythagorean literature of Nicomachus of Gerasa, an author with whose writings Boethius was intimately familiar. Lastly, I suggest—following Dillon’s analysis of the Triad and the Hebdomad within Nicomachus’ works—an interpretation of the ‘hebdomad’ within the Neopythagorean corpus which, if correct, would make appropriate Boethius’ reference to it at the outset of a treatise on the nature of God and creation.2In his introductory remarks to the Quomodo Substantiae,2 a short but difficult theological treatise on the nature of goodness and its relation to being (esse), Boethius gives his reader fair warning:... tu ne sis obscuritatibus brevitatis adversus, quae cum sint arcani fida custodia turn id habent commodi, quod cum his solis qui digni sunt conloquuntur. [End Page 29]... do not you take objection to obscurities consequent on brevity, which are the sure treasure-house of secret doctrine and have the advantage that they speak only with those who are worthy.3While itself somewhat obscure, this statement seems to suggest that a clear explication of the treatise would involve the clarification of certain notions which Boethius chooses not to clarify, and hence, the uninitiated reader will be met with obscurity.4 Consider this suggested reading especially in light of what immediately follows: After listing nine brief axioms, we are told that: “These preliminaries are enough then for our purpose. The intelligent interpreter of the discussion will supply the arguments appropriate to each point.”5 What is most important to note in support of the claim that Boethius is intentionally obscuring the content of the work which follows, is that he never refers to these obscure axioms again—not in way of explaining them, or even in way of helping the reader use them to elucidate the subject matter which follows, (which is apparently what they are capable of doing). Furthermore, this lack of explanation and expansion on his part appears—as evidenced in the above quote—to be in line with his intended purposes in this treatise. It seems that the “intelligent interpreter” to whom he refers is the reader who is knowledge-able of certain ideas which Boethius prefers not to elaborate upon in this treatise, and who should at least in theory therefore be able to arrive at a full understanding of the arguments which follow.6The veil of obscurity which we seem to meet in the terse nature of the content of the treatise itself, then, also seems apparent in Boethius’ esoteric reference to the “hebdomads” at the outset of the treatise:You ask me to state and explain somewhat more clearly that obscure question in my Hebdomads concerning the manner in which substances are good in virtue of existence without being substantial goods. You urge that this demonstration is necessary because the method of this kind of treatise is not clear to all... But I think over my Hebdomads with myself, and I keep my speculations in my own memory rather than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it [End Page 30] is made amusing.7 Wherefore do not you take objection to obscurities stemming from brevity... 8Boethius’ reference to his “hebdomads” here is perplexing.Looking to the Greek word for ‘seven,’ (‘hepta’), it has been suggested that these ‘hebdomads,’ (lit., ‘groups of seven,’ or simply ‘sevens’), might simply refer to a weekly meeting group (i.e., a ‘seminar’), which Boethius attended, and which provided him the impetus to compose the treatise in question. Others suggest that this ‘group of sevens’ refers to the list of axioms which follows (which some... (shrink)

This study shows how, in its overall ability to shed light on the vexing complexity of human being, Maimonides’ discourse on matter—treated via metaphors or seen as itself a metaphor—emerges as a venerable guide, pointing the careful reader to the most important truths about perfected humanity within the Guide of the Perplexed. After examining and harmonizing Maimonides’ dual metaphors of matter (matter as the married harlot and the woman of valor) in this way, I show how metaphor as a literary (...) form is itself an illustration of matter’s positive role in the life of the soul. Following upon this consideration of the importance of metaphorical discourse, I end by briefly suggesting how the metaphysics of matter may itself quite generally be characterized as a kind of metaphor. (shrink)

In this project, I offer an extended treatment of Gabirol's metaphysical doctrine of universal hylomorphism . My thesis is that, for Gabirol , matter signifies the most sublime moment of the Neoplatonic Intellect, and, by extension, the pre-determinate, essential existence which each thing has in virtue of its subsistence in said Intellect. My reading thus identifies matter with a grade of pure Being. Drawing upon Latin, Hebrew and Arabic Fons Vitae materials, I develop and support this thesis in light of (...) three of Gabirol's most vexing remarks about matter, viz., that matter is 'per se existens,' descended directly from the First Essence, and like a Divine Throne. In the course of developing my thesis, I argue for strictly distinguishing between Gabirol's UH and other Augustinian forms of UH, for revising the accounts of Pines, Weisheipl, Brunner and Schlanger, for the relevance of Saadiah's Sefer Yez&dotbelow;irah commentary in a study of Gabirol, and for the conceptual identification of creation ex nihilo and emanation. I also provide the reader with a larger Neoplatonic context for considering the superiority of the material over the formal, as I additionally examine relevant notions of materiality in a variety of other textual traditions, including the writings of Plotinus, Proclus, and the Neopythagorean Nicomachus, as well as various Jewish and Islamic texts . ;I close with a 'meta' analysis of Gabirol's metaphysical project in which I suggest treating Gabirol's interest in universal hylomorphism---and any other bits of cosmo-ontology---in terms of said doctrine's ability to effect the reader's soul in certain ethically and epistemologically crucial ways. In this move, I suggest that the importance of Gabirol's philosophical metaphysics is not best gauged by considering what his metaphysical propositions denote, but instrumentally by considering the effect said propositions are intended to have on the reader. I develop this point by providing analyses of Neoplatonic dialectic, textual rhetoric, and the mechanics of imagination in Gabirol's Arabic Neoplatonic tradition. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of Descartes's metaphysics to place it in its immediate historical context, the Late Scholastic philosophy of thinkers such as Suárez against which Descartes reacted. Jorge Secada views Cartesian philosophy as an 'essentialist' reply to the 'existentialism' of the School, and his discussion includes careful analyses and original interpretations of such central Cartesian themes as the role of scepticism, intentionality and the doctrine of the material falsity of ideas, universals and the relation between sense and (...) understanding, causation and the proofs of the existence of God, the theory of substance, and the dualism of mind and matter. His study offers a picture of Descartes's metaphysics that is both novel and philosophically illuminating. (shrink)

Book synopis: A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work. Covers the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on the work of Descartes Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals Explores the philosophical significance of (...) his contributions to mathematics and science Concludes with a section on the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 442-443 [Access article in PDF] Steven Nadler, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche. Cambridge Companions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 319. Cloth, $54.95. With his own Cambridge Companion, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche has at last arrived in the English speaking world. As editor Nadler puts it, "Malebranche was widely recognized by his philosophical and theological (...) contemporaries... as an intellectual force to be reckoned with, a bold... synthesizer of... St. Augustine and Descartes and a systematic thinker of the first rank" (1). Yet until the relatively recent arrival of books or translations by scholars such as Nadler, McCracken, Jolley, Schmaltz, and Riley, Malebranche has largely been treated by Anglo-American scholars as merely the solitary proponent of the allegedly rather silly doctrine of occasionalism. The tide is now turning, and we may expect that over the next few years Malebranche's wide-ranging sophistication and significance will be more widely appreciated. Invaluable to that end will be Nadler's volume, which is of great interest both to those new to Malebranche and to seasoned scholars, for it presents accessible yet thorough introductions to Malebranche's many interesting doctrines—concerning self-knowledge, vision in God, continuous creation, occasionalism, theodicy, grace, freedom, morality, etc.—as well as raises important questions for future research. All of the essays Nadler has assembled are by well-known scholars, and all are worthwhile.The first point to make is that occasionalism—the view that God is the only true cause, and that finite substances lack all true causal power—was neither silly, nor was Malebranche its only proponent. As Nadler's own essay makes clear, the doctrine (or variations thereof) has roots in medieval philosophy as well as in Descartes, and was favored by other Cartesians preceding Malebranche, such as Cordemoy, la Forge, Geulincx, and Clauberg; further, Malebranche offered numerous distinct arguments for it, and, as evidenced in essays by Schmaltz, Rutherford, Kremer, and Riley, intended it to fit with his other metaphysical views in a complete and coherent system. Even if, as some of these same authors suggest, Malebranche failed to get everything to fit quite right, it's at least clear that the oft-raised charge that occasionalism was merely an ad hoc solution to the Cartesian mind-body problem is unjustified. There is of course room to disagree with certain details here: I've argued elsewhere, for example against Nadler, that despite evidence to the contrary Malebranche does not invoke continuous creation as an argument for occasionalism, and, in effect, against Kremer, that Malebranche can succeed in reconciling occasionalism and his conception of free will. But then the fact that scholars can disagree on points such as these is precisely evidence that Malebranche is a rich subject of study.Different essays have different virtues. Some are especially strong in philosophical analysis. Schmaltz provides penetrating analyses of Malebranche's doctrine that we see [End Page 442] all things "in God" as well as of related issues (such as the distinction between the intellectual and the sensible), and also traces their roots in or ramifications for thinkers such as Augustine, Descartes, Arnauld, and Regis; Kremer, too, does an impressive job disentangling the many discrete threads in Malebranche's theory of free will. Essays by Moreau and Riley are particularly useful for their overview or synthetic nature: Moreau presents the many points of contention in the decades-long dispute between Malebranche and Arnauld, while Riley makes explicit the implications that many of the doctrines discussed by other contributors have for Malebranche's moral theory (in the process perhaps implicitly supporting the claim that Malebranche's moral theory may be essential for understanding his metaphysics). Brown's and Robinet's contributions, the former detailing Malebranche's positive influence on or critical reception by figures such as Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, the latter focusing on disputes between Malebranche, Arnauld, and Leibniz, are essential for those interested (as all should be) in working Malebranche into standard undergraduate courses on modern philosophy, and will also be... (shrink)

Ten years after the Human Genome Project’s completion the life sciences stand in a moment of uncertainty, transition, and contestation. The postgenomic era has seen rapid shifts in research methodology, funding, scientific labor, and disciplinary structures. Postgenomics is transforming our understanding of disease and health, our environment, and the categories of race, class, and gender. At the same time, the gene retains its centrality and power in biological and popular discourse. The contributors to Postgenomics analyze these ruptures and continuities and (...) place them in historical, social, and political context. Postgenomics, they argue, forces a rethinking of the genome itself, and opens new territory for conversations between the social sciences, humanities, and life sciences. Contributors. Russ Altman, Rachel A. Ankeny, Catherine Bliss, John Dupré, Michael Fortun, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sabina Leonelli, Adrian Mackenzie, Margot Moinester, Aaron Panofsky, Sarah S. Richardson, Sara Shostak, Hallam Stevens. (shrink)

When we define something as a crime, we generally thereby criminalize the attempt to commit that crime. However, it is a vexing puzzle to specify what must be the case in order for a criminal attempt to have occurred, given that the results element of the crime fails to come about. I argue that the philosophy of action can assist the criminal law in clarifying what kinds of events are properly categorized as criminal attempts. A natural thought is that this (...) project should take the form of specifying what it is in general to attempt or try to perform an action, and then to define criminal attempts as attempts to commit crimes. Focusing on Gideon Yaffe's resourceful work in Attempts (Oxford University Press, 2010) as an example of this strategy, I argue that it results in a view that is overly inclusive: one will count as trying to commit a crime even in the far remote preparatory stages that we in fact have good reason not to criminalize. I offer an alternative proposal to distinguish between mere preparations and genuine attempts that has its basis not in trying, but doing: a criminal attempt is underway once what the agent is doing is a crime. Working out the details of this schema turns out to have important implications for action theory. A recently burgeoning view known as Naive Action Theory holds that all action can be explained by appeal to some further thing that the agent is doing, and that that the same explanatory nexus is at work even when we appeal to what the agent is intending, trying, or preparing to do -- these notions do explanatory work because they too refer to actions that are in progress, albeit in their infancy. If this is right, than the notion of 'doing' will also be too inclusive for the purposes of the criminal law. I argue that we should draw the reverse conclusion: the distinctions between pure intending, trying, preparing, and doing serve an important purpose in the criminal law, and this fact lends support to the view that they are genuine metaphysical and explanatory distinctions. (shrink)

After offering an opening consideration of the hazards of neoliberalism, I address the general shape of the crisis of care that has evolved under its auspices. Two aspects of this crisis require greater attention: the moral precarity of caregivers and the relational harms of neoliberal capitalism. Thus, I first consider the moral precarity that caregivers experience by drawing on a concept that originates in scholarly work on the experiences of healthcare workers and combat veterans, namely, moral injury. Through this concept, (...) we can see how caregivers in late-stage capitalism face a seemingly unavoidable violation of their own significant moral beliefs. Second, I examine how the crisis of care results not only in individual harms of moral injury but also in harms to relationships themselves, as I continue to track the impact of moral injury on our intrapersonal and interpersonal lives. Ultimately, I argue that an important facet of the crisis of care is how it operates as a crisis of relationality in which our intrapersonal and interpersonal connections are placed under practical and moral strain. In taking a broader view, we can see how the fraying of particular intrapersonal and interpersonal connections can accumulate, resulting in the unraveling of wider webs of interdependency, just when we need them most. Throughout the paper, I zero in on the moral implications of the crisis of care driven by neoliberalism, featuring the damages that caregivers and their relationships sustain when situated in morally precarious ways. In doing so, I drive home the point that the crisis of care under neoliberalism is as much a moral and relational crisis as it is a political and economic one. (shrink)

This book provides a compositional, truth-conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of the source of information on which a statement is based. Central to the proposed theory is the distinction between what propositional content is at-issue and what content is not-at-issue. Evidentials contribute not-at-issue content, and can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. In this volume, Sarah Murray builds on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials (...) and related phenomena, and proposes a semantics that does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, she argues that all sentences make three contributions: at-issue content, not-at-issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At-issue content is presented and made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground; not-at-issue content directly updates the common ground; and the illocutionary relation uses the at-issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type, can trigger further updates. 0The analysis is supported by extensive empirical data from Cheyenne, drawn from the author's own fieldwork, as well as from English and a variety of other languages. (shrink)

Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism (...) and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology. (shrink)

A new collection of essays highlighting the wide range of Buber's thought, career, and activism. Best known for I and Thou, which laid out his distinction between dialogic and monologic relations, Martin Buber (1878-1965) was also an anthologist, translator, and author of some seven hundred books and papers. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form, edited by Sarah Scott, is a collection of nine essays that explore his thought and career. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form shakes up (...) the legend of Buber by decentering the importance of the I-Thou dialogue in order to highlight Buber as a thinker preoccupied by the image of relationship as a geode to spiritual, social, and political change. The result is a different Buber than has hitherto been portrayed, one that is characterized primarily by aesthetics and politics rather than by epistemology or theology. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form will serve as a guide to the entirety of Buber's thinking, career, and activism, placing his work in context and showing both the evolution of his thought and the extent to which he remained driven by a persistent set of concerns. (shrink)

This volume is an interdisciplinary attempt to insert a broader, historically informed perspective into current political and academic debates on the issue of evidence and the reliability of scientific knowledge. Evidence in Action is the perfect resource for all those interested in the relationship between science, technology, and the role of knowledge in society.

This paper proposes a theory of text on-screen as “unvoiceover.” It addresses both the case for captioning as social good and the affordances (aesthetic, affective) of writing in or over the moving image. Advancing an argument informed by perspectives from d/deaf Studies, Critical Disability Studies and Digital Interface Studies, and applying modes of analysis from literary criticism alongside those proper to the study of moving image and sound, it examines the idiosyncrasies of text-in-motion as non-sonorous, fugitive counterpart to the traditional, (...) troublesome “voiceover.” To develop a poetics of the unsounding voice on-screen, the paper focalizes its argument through multimedia artist Liza Sylvestre’s Captioned series: a body of moving image work that is itself, paradoxically, uncaptioned. Framing Sylvestre’s lyrical “unvoiceover” as a reimagining of the lost roles of film explainers and literary intertitles, I argue that the artist’s takeover of the caption track intervenes critically in contemporary debates about the ethics of audio-visual translation, situated description and access as public ethos rather than private concern. Posing the artist’s personal-and-political writing as suggestive of a lower-case analogue to Deaf Gain, I show how Sylvestre’s “unvoiceover” educates its “receivers” in the purpose and functioning of captions. By reading Sylvestre’s writing on-screen more closely than its fugitive form seems to invite, I show how the unvoiceover encultures its own demands on its readers and elicits its own habits of reading. By scrutinizing how Sylvestre’s series makes the case for captioning, this paper makes the case for a new appraisal of the aesthetic, affective and political affordances of the unvoiceover as writing on the run. (shrink)

The prospect of using genome technologies to modify the human germline has raised profound moral disagreement but also emphasizes the need for wide-ranging discussion and a well-informed policy response. The Hinxton Group brought together scientists, ethicists, policymakers, and journal editors for an international, interdisciplinary meeting on this subject. This consensus statement formulated by the group calls for support of genome editing research and the development of a scientific roadmap for safety and efficacy; recognizes the ethical challenges involved in clinical reproductive (...) applications of genome editing but, importantly, rejects the idea that human reproductive germline modification is necessarily morally unacceptable; and highlights the importance of meaningful engagement in discussions of genome editing and the development of regulation and oversight mechanisms to govern future uses of such technologies. (shrink)

In this reflection, I respond to Anthony Reddie's reflections and assertions about the sacramentality of black flesh in a world shaped by white supremacy. I locate myself as Korean American and refer to my experience of ministering to university students during the rise of Black Lives Matter in the US. Instead of offering cognate claims for the sacramentality of Asian flesh, I ask what theological repentance should look like in light of the historical profaning of the black body. Using the (...) work of two black American artists, jazz musician Robert Glasper and painter Titus Kaphar, I offer beginning reflections on how our liturgies and practices need to change as part of theological repentance—including lament. (shrink)

Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. In this book, Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, (...) but of probabilistic contents. -/- The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of female speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I criticise a recent account of fictional discourse proposed by Nathan Salmon. Salmon invokes abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names in both object- and meta-fictional discourse alike. He then invokes a theory of pretence to forge the requisite connection between object-fictional sentences and meta-fictional sentences, in virtue of which the latter can be assigned appropriate truth-values. I argue that Salmon's account of pretence renders his appeal to abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names (...) in object-fictional discourse explanatorily redundant. I further argue that his account is therefore no improvement over those he criticises, thus leaving his own account unmotivated. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, Second Edition_ is an invaluable guide and major reference source to the major topics, problems, concepts and debates in philosophy of psychology and is the first companion of its kind. A team of renowned international contributors provide forty-nine chapters organised into six clear parts: Historical background to Philosophy of Psychology Psychological Explanation Cognition and Representation The biological basis of psychology Perceptual Experience Personhood. _The Companion_ covers key topics such as the origins of experimental (...) psychology; folk psychology; behaviorism and functionalism; philosophy, psychology and neuroscience; the language of thought, modularity, nativism and representational theories of mind; consciousness and the senses; dreams emotion and temporality; personal identity and the philosophy of psychopathology. For the_ second edition_ many of the current chapters have been updated, and seven new chapters added on important new topics such predictive processing, comparative cognition, learning, and group cognition, as well as a new introductory chapter by the editors on the demarcation between philosophy and psychology. Essential reading for all students of philosophy of mind, science and psychology, _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology _will also be of interest to anyone studying psychology and its related disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three kinds of kinds: traditional philosophical kinds such as truth, knowledge, and causation; natural science kinds such as spin, charge and mass; and social kinds such as class, poverty, and marriage. The three-fold taxonomy I work with represents an idealised abstraction from the wide variety of kinds that there are and the messy phenomena that underlie them. However, the kinds I identify are discrete, and the three-fold taxonomy is useful when it comes to understanding claims (...) about the normativity, scope, and implementation of conceptual engineering. In particular it reveals: first, that conceptual engineering in a broad sense is not distinctively normative; but second, that there is a distinctive normativity present in conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration; third, that conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration is only possible for terms that refer to kinds whose grounds we can change; and fourth, that the amelioration of such kind terms can be brought about as a result of changing the grounds of those kinds. The overall aim is to draw attention to the differences between kinds of kinds to make sense of the diverse and often conflicting claims in the conceptual engineering literature, both from its proponents and from its detractors. The hope is that paying attention to the differences between kinds of kinds will provide a better understanding of the landscape. (shrink)

This volume will acquaint novice philosophers with one of the most important debates in twentieth-century philosophy, and will provide seasoned readers with a ...

"Gray Matters is a thorough examination of the main topics in recent philosophy of mind. It aims at surveying a broad range of issues, not all of which can be subsumed under one position or one philosopher's theory. In this way, the authors avoid neglecting interesting issues out of allegiance to a given theory of mind." --Book Jacket.

This paper develops a precise understanding of the thesis of moral encroachment, which states that the epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features. In addition, I raise objections to existing accounts of moral encroachment. For instance, many accounts fail to give sufficient attention to moral encroachment on credences. Also, many accounts focus on moral features that fail to support standard analogies between pragmatic and moral encroachment. Throughout the paper, I discuss racial profiling as a case study, (...) arguing that moral encroachment can help us identify one respect in which racial profiling is epistemically problematic. (shrink)