Wealthy individuals stand to gain materially from economic inequality and, moreover, have shaped many organizational and societal practices that perpetuate economic inequality. Thus, they are unlikely allies in the effort to remedy economic inequality. In this article, however, we study the mobilization of a small group of wealthy activists who join underprivileged allies to expose and contest the root causes of wealth consolidation; they offer an instructive alternative to “philanthrocapitalism,” whereby the wealthy give after extreme accumulation. Our study contributes to (...) the growing literature on inequality and organizations by recognizing how inequality is reproduced through organizations, cognizant that efforts to halt this reproduction will likely be contested by the wealthy. Our study examines how advocacy by the wealthy may be challenging, but it may garner attention because it is unexpected. We derive the concept of “privilege work” from our observations of an often awkward and fraught process that enables the wealthy to engage with their own privilege, use their insider knowledge of wealth accumulation as a lever for change, and work respectfully with underprivileged allies rather than invoking superior status. (shrink)

In Chapter 5 of Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock argues that legitimate states may not remove long-settled undocumented immigrants. In this paper, I show that Brock’s claims in this chapter are compelling but limited in scope. Across each of the real-world examples she engages with throughout the chapter, there are clear and widely-acceptable case-specific reasons to think that these groups of undocumented people should be excused for violating immigration law. Partly as a result of her focus on (...) these specific examples, her analysis leaves two important real-world cases of removal undiscussed: cases in which an individual becomes an undocumented resident at a time when that state’s immigration policy clearly indicated that they were not welcome; and cases in which an undocumented person faces removal after violating criminal law. In this paper, I will argue that removal would also be impermissible in these cases. (shrink)

Research on bodies and work relies on theoretical perspectives that see the working body as a resource and/or symbol. This study bridges these complementary theories, incorporating two concepts that extend and synthesize them into a more holistic model of embodied inequality. Drawing primarily on the accounts of women domestic workers in Ecuador’s largest city, I explore the embodied dimensions of domestic work and show how unequal relations between workers and employers manifest in and on bodies, specifically through interactions around health, (...) food, and appearance/clothing. I argue that paid domestic workers’ bodies are simultaneously resources that can be used for work, and symbols interpreted according to local hierarchies of gender and class. (shrink)

Abstract:This article analyzes the use of classical references in Monica Youn's collection Blackacre. Inspired by rhizomatic models of classical reception studies, my reading focuses on the relationship between classical references in the body of the poems, on the one hand, and classical references in the paratexts on the other hand. I argue that Youn's oblique engagement with classical material exposes the limitations of an arborescent or genealogical model of reception and, on a related note, the constraints imposed by the construct (...) of the canon as Youn leverages the heterogeneity of Asian American literature to resist the idea of a simple, hierarchical, one-way classical canon. (shrink)

Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, there are two necessary conditions for refugeehood: a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion and alienage – that is, being outside of one’s country of nationality or habitual residence. In 1985 Andrew Shacknove famously argued that both of these conditions should be rejected. Shacknove’s paper prompted much debate about the suitability of the persecution condition, but his rejection of the alienage requirement has (...) received significantly less attention. In this paper I argue, against some recent defenders of the Convention, that Shacknove was right to claim that the alienage condition should be rejected. On my view, people who would be granted refugee status if they crossed a border, but who remain in their country of nationality, should also be eligible for refugee status. (shrink)

Are countries especially entitled, if not obliged, to prioritize the interests or well-being of their own citizens during a global crisis, such as a global pandemic? We call this partiality for compatriots in times of crisis “crisis nationalism”. Vaccine nationalism is one vivid example of crisis nationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic; so is the case of the US government’s purchasing a 3-month supply of the global stock of the antiviral Remdesivir for domestic use. Is crisis nationalism justifiable at all, and, (...) if it is, what are its limits? We examine some plausible arguments for national partiality, and conclude that these arguments support crisis nationalism only within strict limits. The different arguments for partiality, as we will note, arrive at these limits for different reasons. But more generally, so we argue, any defensible crisis nationalism must not entail the violation of human rights or the worsening of people’s deprivation. Moreover, we propose that good faith crisis nationalism ought to be sensitive to the potential moral costs of national partiality during a global crisis and must take extra care to control or offset these costs. Thus, crisis nationalism in the form of vaccine nationalism or the hoarding of global supplies of therapeutics during a global pandemic exceeds the bounds of acceptable partiality. (shrink)

A handful of scholars have offered explanations for why states with otherwise restrictive immigration laws should relax their demands for people applying to immigrate for family reasons. However, much less has been said about the family unification rights of refugees. This paper extends the existing discussion on family-based immigration to refugees, arguing that: (1) states have stronger duties to reunite refugee families; (2) some refugees should be entitled to reunite with their “extended” family; (3) refugee family reunion should not be (...) subject to financial conditions; and (4) the right to family reunion is especially strong for refugee children. (shrink)

Context: Direct realism is a non-reductive, anti-representationalist theory of perception lying at the heart of mainstream analytic philosophy, where it is currently generating a lot of interest. For all that, it is widely held to be both controversial and anti-scientific. On the other hand, the sensorimotor theory of perception initially generated a lot of interest within enactive philosophy of cognitive science, but has arguably not yet delivered on its initial promise. Problem: I aim to show that the sensorimotor theory and (...) direct realism complement each other, and that the result is a philosophically radical, but fully scientifically realised, theory of perception. Method: The article uses philosophical analysis and discussion. It also draws on empirical evidence from the relevant cognitive sciences. Results: Direct realism can be augmented by sensorimotor theory to become a scientifically tractable alternative to the mainstream, representationalist research programme within cognitive science. Implications: The article aims to further clarify the philosophical importance of the sensorimotor approach to perception. It also aims to show that the apparently radical claim that we perceive objects themselves is amenable to normal scientific study. Constructivist content: Objects are analysed as a kind of collaboration between the world and the perceiver. On this account, we can never perceive outside the categories of our own understanding, but we do perceive genuinely outside our own heads. Thus, the approach here is not exactly constructivism, though it shares many goals and results with constructivism. (shrink)

Context: The enactivist tradition, out of which neurophenomenology arose, rejects various internalisms – including the representationalist and information-processing metaphors – but remains wedded to one further internalism: the claim that the structure of perceptual experience is directly, constitutively linked only to internal, brain-based dynamics. Problem: I aim to reject this internalism and defend an alternative analysis. Method: The paper presents a direct-realist, externalist, sensorimotor account of perceptual experience. It uses the concept of counterfactual meaningful action to defend this view against (...) various objections. Results: This account of experience matches certain first-person features of experience better than an internalist account could. It is fully tractable as “normal science.” Implications: The neuroscientific conception of brain function should change from that of internal representation or modelling to that of enabling meaningful, embodied action in ways that constitutively involve the world. Neurophenomenology should aim to match the structure of first-person experience with the structure of meaningful agent-world interactions, not with that of brain dynamics. Constructivist content: The sensorimotor approach shows us what external objects are, such that we may enact them, and what experience is, such that it may present us with those enacted objects. (shrink)

The role of Broca's area is currently unclear even with regard to language. Suggestions that this area was enlarged on the left in certain of our hominid ancestors are unconvincing. Broca's area may have nothing to do with a lateralized gestural or vocal system Handedness may have evolved more than four million years ago.

In order to be eligible for refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention, an individual must have a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. A major problem with this condition for refugee status is that it leaves significant protection gaps, for it is generally agreed that individuals fleeing indiscriminate violence or generalized harm do not satisfy this requirement. In this paper, I evaluate existing arguments both defending and (...) critiquing the persecution condition, and then outline my own account of the criteria that should replace it. I argue that my view is preferable to alternatives suggested in the literature because it satisfies three key desiderata: 1) it eliminates protection gaps; 2) it is feasible to implement in a world like ours; and 3) it preserves the importantly political nature of the institution of refugeehood. (shrink)

The claim that behaviourally undetectable inverted spectra are possible has been endorsed by many physicalists. I explain why this starting point rules out standard forms of scientific explanation for qualia. The modern ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ is an updated way of defending problematic intuitions like these, but I show that it cannot help to recover standard scientific explanation. I argue that Chalmers is right: we should accept the falsity of physicalism if we accept this problematic starting point. I further argue that (...) accepting this starting point amounts to at least implicitly endorsing certain theoretical claims about the nature of introspection. I therefore suggest that we allow ourselves to be guided, in our quest to understand qualia, by whatever independently plausible theories of introspection we have. I propose that we adopt a more moderate definition of qualia, as those introspectible properties which cannot be fully specified simply by specifying the non-controversially introspectible ‘propositional attitude’ mental states (including seeing x, experiencing x, and so on, where x is a specification of a potentially public state of affairs). Qualia thus defined may well fit plausible, naturalisable accounts of introspection. If so, such accounts have the potential to explain, rather than explain away, the problematic intuitions discussed earlier; an approach that should allow integration of our understanding of qualia with the rest of science. (shrink)

Current research on construction of the female body focuses on non-Hispanic women in the United States. The idealized Latina body, however, is rapidly becoming commodified and objectified in global popular culture. Using standardized and open-ended surveys and group and individual interviews, the author examines the negotiation of sociocultural ideals and body image by adolescents at the intersection of gender, race, and beauty. These young women hold racist beauty ideals but are flexible when judging the appearance of real-life women. They perceive (...) two competing or complementary prototypes of beauty, one white and one Latina. This study fills a gap in the literature on beauty and the body by examining a non-U.S. sample that does not fit into the usual Black-white dichotomy of race. (shrink)

The explicit aim of Daniel Dennett’s new paper ‘What RoboMary Knows’ is to show that Mary will necessarily be able to come to know what it is like to see in colour, if she fully understands all the physical facts about colour vision. I believe we can establish that Dennett’s line of reasoning is flawed, but the flaw is not as simple as an equivocation on ‘knows’. Rather, it goes to the heart of functionalism and hinges on whether or not (...) Dennett is correct to claim that there is ‘no fact of the matter’ about what subjective experience consists in. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: I strongly agree with Kirchhoff and Hutto that consciousness and embodied action are one and the same, but I disagree when they say this identity cannot be fully explained and must simply be posited. Here I attempt to sketch the outlines of just such an explanation.

Special obligations toward compatriots are more controversial than other forms of partiality, because compatriot relationships are relatively “impersonal.” Even so, a variety of justifications for special duties among compatriots have been defended. This entry outlines three such accounts, drawing on categories identified in previous literature (Tan 2003, 2004; Beaton et al. 2021). The first two approaches – the instrumental approach and the institutional approach – derive special obligations to compatriots from general duties of justice. By contrast, the third approach (...) is relational in nature and grounds the justification for compatriot partiality directly in the special relationship compatriots share. (shrink)

Context: Seventeen years ago Francisco Varela introduced neurophenomenology. He proposed the integration of phenomenological approaches to first-person experience – in the tradition of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty – with a neuro-dynamical, scientific approach to the study of the situated brain and body. Problem: It is time for a re-appraisal of this field. Has neurophenomenology already contributed to the sciences of the mind? If so, how? How should it best do so in future? Additionally, can neurophenomenology really help to resolve or (...) dissolve the “hard problem” of the relation between mind and body, as Varela claimed? Method: The papers in this special issue arose out of a conference organised by the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society in Bristol, UK, in September 2012. We have invited a representative sample of the speakers at that conference to present their work here. Results: Various papers argue that the first-person methods of phenomenology are distinct from, and more robust than, the failed “introspectionist” methods of early modern psychology. The “elicitation interview” emerges as a successful and widely adopted method to have emerged from this field. Phenomenological techniques are already being successfully applied to neuroscientific problems. Various specific proposals for new techniques and applications are made. Implications: It is time to take neurophenomenology seriously. It has proven its worth, and it is ripe with the potential for further immediate, successful applications. Constructivist content: Varela’s key aim was to develop a non-dualising approach to the science of consciousness. The papers in this special issue look at the philosophical and practical details of successfully putting such an approach into practice. (shrink)

Upshot: I offer responses to the commentaries on my target article in five short sections. The first section, about the plurality of lived worlds, concerns issues of quite general interest to readers of this journal. The second section presents some reasons for rejecting “enabling” as well as “constitutive” representational approaches to understanding the mind. In the remaining three sections, I clarify aspects of sensorimotor direct realism relating to the self, qualia, counterfactuals, and the notion of “mastery.”.

This dissertation concerns the rights of refugees. It is a project of two parts. Part One provides an account of the scope of the right to refuge in international law. Here, I reject both the alienage and persecution requirements for refugee-status-eligibility outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Instead, I defend a definition that extends the right to refuge to any individual whose human rights are urgently threatened, who has no effective recourse to their home government, and whose interests can only (...) or best be satisfied by means of refuge. In Part Two, I turn to the question of what refugee-hosting states and societies owe to refugees within their borders. Here, I provide a refugee-specific framework for future discussion on the topic of integration, and outline some high-level rights and responsibilities states, refugees, and members of the host society have to facilitate integration between refugees and their host communities. I also provide an account of the scope and nature of refugee family reunification rights, arguing that states have stronger, broader, and less-conditional duties to reunite refugees with their families, especially when those refugees are children. I conclude with a summary of the arguments in this dissertation, and an outline of the primary principles upon which those arguments depend. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human (...) history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

В статье философия характеризуется на основе дискурсной парадигмы анализа: как текст, интеллектуальная деятельность и коммуникация. Характеризуются два равнозначных аспекта философского дискурса - когнитивный и коммуникативный. Обсуждается феномен философских контроверз, специфика философского спора, выразительные (знаковые) средства философского дискурса, роль мировоззренческого дискурса в современной общественно-политической ситуации в стране.