This paper explores the potential of 'new nature writing' - a literary genre currently popular in the UK - as a kind of arts activism, in particular in terms of how it might engage with the environmental crisis and lead to a kind of collective politics. We note the limitations of the genre, notably the reproduction of class, gender and ethnic hierarchies, the emphasis on nostalgia and loss, and the stress on individual responses rather than collective politics. But we also (...) take seriously the claims of art to enable us to imagine other futures, suggesting that new nature writing has the potential to play a role in collective forms of environmental justice and capabilities. (shrink)

Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy.

The revival of virtue ethics over the last thirty‐five years has produced a bewildering diversity of theories, which on the face of it seem united only by their opposition to various features of more familiar Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. In this paper I present a systematic account of the main positive features of virtue ethics, by articulating the common ground shared by its different varieties. I do so not to offer a fresh defence of virtue ethics, but rather to (...) provide a conceptual map that locates its main claims and arguments in relation to those of rival theories, and identifies its distinctive contribution to contemporary ethics. I set out six specific claims which are made by all forms of virtue ethics, and I explain how these claims distinguish the theory from recent character‐based forms of Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism. I then use this framework to briefly survey two main strands of virtue ethics which have been developed in the literature.1. (shrink)

Books VI-X of Livy's history of Rome describe the beginnings of Rome's conquest of Italy in the fourth century BC and contain some of Livy's finest writing. This is the first full-scale, scholarly commentary to be written on this part of the history in modern times. The first of three volumes, this book contains an extensive introduction and the commentary to Book VI. The introduction provides a full analysis of the Roman annalistic tradition, of Livy's style and narrative technique, and (...) of the manuscript tradition; the commentary devotes equal attention to historical, literary, linguistic, and textual matters. The remaining two volumes, which are forthcoming, will deal with Books VII-VIII and IX-X respectively. An indispensable work of reference for anyone interested in Latin literature and early Roman history, as well as for scholars of Livy himself, these three volumes represent a major new contribution to Latin scholarship. (shrink)

Down Girl is a broad, original, and far ranging analysis of what misogyny really is, how it works, its purpose, and how to fight it. The philosopher Kate Manne argues that modern society's failure to recognize women's full humanity and autonomy is not actually the problem. She argues instead that it is women's manifestations of human capacities -- autonomy, agency, political engagement -- is what engenders misogynist hostility.

In many recent discussions of the morality of actions where both good and bad consequences foreseeably ensue, the moral significance of the distinction between intended and foreseen consequences is rejected. This distinction is thought to bear on the moral status of actions by those who support the Doctrine of Double Effect. According to this doctrine, roughly speaking, to perform an action intending to bring about a particular bad effect as a means to some commensurate good end is impermissible, while performing (...) an action where one intends only this good end and merely foresees the bad as an unintended sideeffect may be permissible. Consequentialists argue that this is a distinction which makes no moral difference to the evaluation of the initial act in the two cases, given that the overall consequences are the same in each case. In this paper we aim to show that a standard consequentialist line of argument against the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction fails. Consequentialists commonly reject the moral relevance of this distinction on the grounds that there is no asymmetry in moral responsibility between intending and foreseeing evil. We argue that even if this claim about moral responsibility is correct, it does not entail, as many Consequentialists believe, that there is no moral asymmetry between acts of intended and foreseen evil. We go on to argue that those consequentialists who do concede the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction at the level of agent evaluations cannot consistently make such a concession, and that such a position is in any case untenable, because it entails a complete severance of important conceptual connections between act and agent evaluations. (shrink)

Sometimes, a form of discrimination is hard to register, understand, and articulate. A rich precedent demonstrates how victim testimonies have been key in uncovering such “hidden” forms of discrimination, from sexual harassment to microaggressions. I reflect on how this plausibly goes too for “attentional discrimination”, referring to cases where the more meaningful attributes of one social group are made salient in attention in contrast to the less meaningful attributes of another. Victim testimonies understandably dominate the “context-of-discovery” stage of research into (...) these initially opaque forms of discrimination; a victim’s encounter with the gap between their experience and dominant conceptual frameworks for understanding it is what provides an initial foothold for analysis to begin. Some object, however, to this methodology continuing to dominate the later “context-of-justification” stage, where the hypothesis is rigorously challenged. I argue that this objection underestimates not just how other methodologies are more likely to inherit the various mechanisms of invisibility hiding the discrimination in question, but also how victim testimonies are distinctively well-suited to recognize and challenge those mechanisms. Victim testimonies, then, ought to continue playing a dominant role into these later stages of research regarding hidden forms of discrimination. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of ten essays by Douglas Gasking (1911–1994), a significant figure in Australian philosophy. There are three previously published papers, “Mathematics and the World” (proposing a form of conventionalism), “Causation and Recipes” (expounding a manipulation account of causation), and “Clusters”, (an account of certain varieties of class-membership). The seven previously unpublished papers include further work on causation, some epistemological issues, subjective probability, a carefully worked out account of the sense in which observable behaviour can be criterial (...) for mental states, and the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments.The introduction to the volume describes Gasking’s life and work, and a bibliography lists Gasking’s publication, and also works of other philosophers who have engaged with Gasking’s ideas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of (...) Destiny.Walter Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

Background: Ethical care in maternity is fundamental to providing care that both prevents harm and does good, and yet, there is growing acknowledgement that disrespect and abuse routinely occur in this context, which indicates that current ethical frameworks are not adequate. Care ethics offers an alternative to the traditional biomedical ethical principles. Research aim: The aim of the study was to determine whether a correlation exists between midwifery-led care and care ethics as an important first step in an action research (...) project. Research design: Template analysis was chosen for this part of the action research. Template analysis is a design that tests theory against empirical data, which requires pre-set codes. Participants and context: A priori codes that represent midwifery-led care were generated by a stakeholder consultative group of nine childbearing women using nominal group technique, collected in Perth, Western Australia. The a priori codes were applied to a predesigned template with four domains of care ethics. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was granted by the Edith Cowan University research ethics committee REMS no. 2019-00296-Buchanan. Findings: The participants generated eight a priori codes representing ethical midwifery care, such as: 1.1 Relationship with Midwife; 1.2 Woman-centred care; 2.1 Trust women’s bodies and abilities; 2.2. Protect normal physiological birth; 3.1. Information provision; 3.2. Respect autonomy; 4.1. Birth culture of fear and 4.2. Recognition of rite of passage. The a priori codes were mapped to the care ethics template. The template analysis found that midwifery-led care does indeed demonstrate care ethics. Discussion: Care ethics takes into consideration what principle-based bioethics have previously overlooked: relationship, context and power. Conclusion: Midwifery-led care has been determined in this study to demonstrate care ethics, which suggest that further research is defensible with the view that it could be incorporated into the ethical codes and conduct for the midwifery profession. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 209-229, June 2022.

One variety of love is familiar in everyday life and qualifies in every reasonable sense as a reactive attitude. ‘Reactive love’ is paradigmatically (a) an affectionate attachment to another person, (b) appropriately felt as a non-self-interested response to particular kinds of morally laudable features of character expressed by the loved one in interaction with the lover, and (c) paradigmatically manifested in certain kinds of acts of goodwill and characteristic affective, desiderative and other motivational responses (including other-regarding concern and a desire (...) to be with the beloved). ‘Virtues of intimacy’ as expressed in interaction with the lover are agent-relative reasons for reactive love, and like other reactive attitudes, reactive love generates reasons in its own right. Within a broad conception of the virtues, reactive love sheds light on the reactive attitudes more generally. (shrink)

Much has been published about the ethical issues encountered by clinicians in genetics/genomics, but those experienced by clinical laboratory scientists are less well described. Clinical laboratory scientists now frequently face navigating ethical problems in their work, but how they should be best supported to do this is underexplored. This lack of attention is also reflected in the ethics tools available to clinical laboratory scientists such as guidance and deliberative ethics forums, developed primarily to manage issues arising within the clinic.We explore (...) what ethical issues are being experienced by clinical scientists, how they think such issues could be best analysed and managed, and whether their practice might be enhanced by more situated approaches to ethics deliberation and practice such as ethical preparedness. From thematic analysis of cases presented by clinical scientists at a specially convened meeting of the UK Genethics Forum, we derived three main ethical themes: (1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising.We argue that although standardisation is important for promoting shared understandings of good (including ethical) practice, supplementary approaches to enhance and sustain ethical preparedness will be important to help clinical scientists and others in the recently expanded genetic/genomic medicine environment foster quality ethical thinking. (shrink)

In this book, Kate Distin proposes a theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the origin and development of human culture. Distin introduces the concept that humans share information not only in natural languages, which are spoken or signed, but also in artefactual languages like writing and musical notation, which use media that are made by humans. Languages enable humans to receive and transmit variations in cultural information and resources. In this way, they (...) provide the mechanism for cultural evolution. The human capacity for metarepresentation - thinking about how we think - accelerates cultural evolution, because it frees cultural information from the conceptual limitations of each individual language. Distin shows how the concept of cultural evolution outlined in this book can help us to understand the complexity and diversity of human culture, relating her theory to a range of subjects including economics, linguistics, and developmental biology. (shrink)

By looking at the politics of classification within machine learning systems, this article demonstrates why the automated interpretation of images is an inherently social and political project. We begin by asking what work images do in computer vision systems, and what is meant by the claim that computers can “recognize” an image? Next, we look at the method for introducing images into computer systems and look at how taxonomies order the foundational concepts that will determine how a system interprets the (...) world. Then we turn to the question of labeling: how humans tell computers which words will relate to a given image. What is at stake in the way AI systems use these labels to classify humans, including by race, gender, emotions, ability, sexuality, and personality? Finally, we turn to the purposes that computer vision is meant to serve in our society—the judgments, choices, and consequences of providing computers with these capacities. Methodologically, we call this an archeology of datasets: studying the material layers of training images and labels, cataloguing the principles and values by which taxonomies are constructed, and analyzing how these taxonomies create the parameters of intelligibility for an AI system. By doing this, we can critically engage with the underlying politics and values of a system, and analyze which normative patterns of life are assumed, supported, and reproduced. (shrink)

There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)

Ethics dumping is the practice of undertaking research in a low- or middle-income setting which would not be permitted, or would be severely restricted, in a high-income setting. Whilst Kenya operates a sophisticated research governance system, resource constraints and the relatively low number of accredited research ethics committees limit the capacity for ensuring ethical compliance. As a result, Kenya has been experiencing cases of ethics dumping. This article presents 11 challenges in the context of preventing ethics dumping in Kenya, namely (...) variations in governance standards, resistance to double ethics review, resource constraints, unresolved issues in the management of biological samples, unresolved issues in the management of primary data, unsuitable informed consent procedures, cultural insensitivity, differing standards of care, reluctance to provide feedback to research communities, power differentials which facilitate the exploitation of local researchers and lack of local relevance and/or affordability of the resultant products. A reflective approach for researchers, built around the values of fairness, respect, care and honesty, is presented as a means of taking shared responsibility for preventing ethics dumping. (shrink)

Culture is a unique and fascinating aspect of the human species. How did it emerge and how does it develop? Richard Dawkins suggested culture evolves and that memes are cultural replicators, subject to variation and selection in the same way as genes are in the biological world. Thus human culture is the product of a mindless evolutionary algorithm. Does this imply, as some have argued, that we are mere meme machines and that the conscious self is an illusion? This highly (...) readable and accessible book extends Dawkins's theory, presenting for the first time a fully developed concept of cultural DNA. Distin argues that culture's development can be seen as the result of memetic evolution and as the product of human creativity. Memetic evolution is perfectly compatible with the view of humans as conscious and intelligent. This book should find a wide readership amongst philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and non-academic readers. (shrink)

Hegel famously argues that Kant’s account of critical distance depends upon an impoverished conception of freedom. In its place, Hegel introduces a richer conception of freedom, according to which the self who is capable of self-determination is multifaceted: wanting and thinking, social and individual. This richer conception gives rise to an account of critical reflection that emphasizes engagement with our motives and practices rather than radical detachment from them. But what is most distinctive about Hegel’s account is the idea that (...) when we reflect upon motives and practices, we draw upon shared self-understandings that are neither universal nor just particular to individuals. There is, Hegel argues, no presocial identity or self that can be detached from our socially constituted contexts of thought and value. This has important implications for how we conceive of critical reflection. (shrink)

Meaning-making plays a central role in how we deal with experiences of suffering, including those due to mental disorder. And for many, religious beliefs, experiences, and practices (hereafter, religious engagement) play a central role in informing this meaning-making. However, a crucial facet of the relationship between experiences of mental disorder and religious engagement remains underexplored—namely the potentially positive effects of mental disorder on religious engagement (e.g. experiences of bipolar disorder increasing sense of God’s presence). In what follows, I will present (...) empirical findings from two recent studies of mine which shed light on the extent to which participants experienced these positive effects, specific components of these effects, and how they fit into their understanding of their mental disorder and its relationship to their religious identity. In doing so, I will draw on and expand Tasia Scrutton’s Potentially Transformative view (2015a, 2015b, 2020) according to which mental disorders may provide opportunities for spiritual growth. My empirical results align with and help deepen an account according to which mental disorders are potentially spiritually transformative by providing further insight into such instances: specifically, which symptoms and internal and external factors are often involved, as well as which religious beliefs, experiences, and/or practices are often affected. After presenting these results and articulating their relevance for a potentially transformative view of mental disorder, I will then address some potential objections to the theoretical account as well as some limitations of the empirical work, before sketching possible promising directions for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Philosophy, Science, Politics, and LawFrancis OakleyThe quintessentially scholastic distinction between God’s power understood as absolute and ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata) has been described “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and (...) grace.” 1 The importance of that distinction the historical scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to indicate. 2 The idea that it expressed had emerged already in the twelfth century, and in the standard form familiar to us from later years we now know it to have surfaced among the theologians of Paris in the opening years of the thirteenth. We also know that long before the end of the thirteenth century it had come to be understood in the two distinct ways that were to persist on through the late medieval and early modern centuries and to be acknowledged in the neo-scholastic manuals of the late nineteenth century.According to the first of these understandings, embedded in the classical formulations given to the distinction by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and many other later thinkers, the term potentia absoluta was used simply to denote God’s power in itself, taken in abstracto and without reference to the orders of nature and grace he has actually willed de potentia ordinata to establish. There was no question, that is, of the absolute power’s [End Page 669] being understood as a presently-active power by means of which God intervenes in the world to act apart from or set aside the order established by the ordained power. It refers instead to God’s ability to do many things he does not choose to do. Or put in the temporal terms that William Courtenay favors, it refers to “the total possibilities initially open to God, some of which were realized by creating the established order,” the “unrealized possibilities” being “now only hypothetically possible.” 3Side by side with this “classical” usage, however, there had emerged already in the thirteenth century what has been called a “juristic” or “opera-tionalized” understanding of the potentia dei absoluta as a presently-active power of potential interposition in the established order. Thus Duns Scotus, who gave a most influential expression to this alternative understanding, drawing an analogy not only with kings but with any free agent within whose power the law falls, distinguished between the ordained power by which God acts de jure in accordance with the rightful law he has established and the absolute power whereby de facto he can act apart from or against the law. In such a formulation the absolute power clearly exceeds the ordained. Rather than referring simply to the realm of logical possibility prior to God’s ordination of things, that absolute power is now construed as a presently-active and extraordinary power capable of acting apart from the order established de potentia ordinata and prevailing in the ordinary course of things. This “juristic” understanding of the distinction was clearly affiliated closely with the cognate distinction that medieval canonists invoked as early as the thirteenth century in an attempt to elucidate what the pope, in the absoluteness of his plenitudo potestatis, or absolute power, could do that was not open for him to do when acting in accordance with his merely ordained or “ordinary” power.Philosophy and ScienceIn an earlier and complementary article, I traced the career of the power distinction, as well as the persistence of the two distinct ways of understanding it, across the fifteenth century and on into the thinking of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, Lutheran and Reformed as well as Catholic. 4 It remains now to go on to demonstrate that the currency of the distinction in these later centuries was no more confined to strictly theological circles or settings than it had been during the Middle Ages. The Coimbran commentators and Suárez certainly deployed it for more generally philosophical purposes, 5 [End Page 670] and in the seventeenth century they were by no means... (shrink)

Could it ever be ethically justifiable to remove a dead man’s sperm to enable his partner to bear a child to him? If he had clearly indicated his agreement to this in advance, then the posthumous removal of his sperm for this purpose can be ethically justified, particularly in circumstances where the interests of the resulting child can be adequately met. Few dead men would have addressed such a possibility while alive, however, unless they had a specific reason to consider (...) such an issue, perhaps because of a terminal illness. Without a prior indication that removal of his sperm for this purpose would be in accordance with his wishes in such circumstances, the posthumous use of a man’s sperm for procreation is unethical.Posthumously removing organs and tissue from those who have given prior consent to this is commonly thought ethically acceptable. Indeed, some argue that cadaveric organ donation can be ethically …. (shrink)

The Roman Catholic Church in Australia has lobbied politicians to prohibit embryonic stem cell research, on the grounds that such research violates the sanctity and inherent dignity of human life. I suggest, however, that reasoned reflection does not uniquely support such conclusions about the morality of stem cell research. A recent parliamentary standing committee report recommended that embryonic stem cell research be allowed to proceed in certain circumstances, and there appears to be widespread support in the Australian community for this (...) position. I argue that the moral value of democracy requires parliamentarians to acknowledge the informed views of the wider community here, and to resist lobbying by church leaders on this issue. (shrink)

This paper explores a neglected normative dimension of algorithmic opacity in the workplace and the labor market. It argues that explanations of algorithms and algorithmic decisions are of noninstrumental value. That is because explanations of the structure and function of parts of the social world form the basis for reflective clarification of our practical orientation toward the institutions that play a central role in our life. Using this account of the noninstrumental value of explanations, the paper diagnoses distinctive normative defects (...) in the workplace and economic institutions which a reliance on AI can encourage, and which lead to alienation. (shrink)

Revealed preference approaches to modelling agents’ choices face two seemingly devastating explanatory objections. The no self-explanation objection imputes a problematic explanatory circularity to revealed preference approaches, while the causal explanation objection argues that, all things equal, a scientific theory should provide causal explanations, but revealed preference approaches decidedly do not. Both objections assume a view of explanation, the constraint-based view, that the revealed preference theorist ought to reject. Instead, the revealed preference theorist should adopt a unificationist account of explanation, allowing (...) her to escape the two explanatory problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

The relationship between the photographic and optical images and time has been the subject of great deal of debate. Despite their differences, what many of these considerations have in common is their focus on the receiver, whether mechanical (the camera), biological (the eye–brain as the optical receiver), social or the memory and imagination of the observer. My aim here is to shift the emphasis from the receiver to the object or vista that is photographed or viewed and to explore how (...) the constraints implied by our modern understanding of the Universe, concerning space and time, impact on the way we perceive photographic and optical images. Viewed from this perspective, photographs can be treated as light projections of sections of the four-dimensional observable world onto two-dimensional spatial photographic or viewing surfaces. I shall show that despite the severe reduction that such projections imply, these modern considerations have the important consequence of bestowing a complex temporality upon optical images, including photographs. This realization dramatically changes the way we view photographs. I give examples of this rich temporality through considerations of terrestrial images – and more significantly images of the Sky, where these temporal effects are far more pronounced. (shrink)

Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to (...) uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake. (shrink)

(Penultimate draft) Embodied Cognition holds that bodily (e.g. sensorimotor) states and processes are directly involved in some higher-level cognitive functions (e.g. reasoning). This challenges traditional views of cognition according to which bodily states and processes are, at most, indirectly involved in higher-level cognition. Although some elements of Embodied Cognition have been integrated into mainstream cognitive science, others still face adamant resistance. In this paper, rather than straightforwardly defend Embodied Cognition against specific objections I will do the following. First, I will (...) present a concise account of embodied conceptual processing and highlight some of its advantages over non-embodied accounts, specifically focusing on the role of metaphors. Second, I will detail the influence of computational metaphors on theories of cognition and evaluation of these theories. Third, I will argue that embodied cognitive mechanisms, specifically those operating through computational metaphors, may drive some of the resistance to Embodied Cognition - and that Embodied Cognition is able to offer a uniquely compelling account of this. Ultimately, this will contribute to an improved understanding of Embodied Cognition, its explanatory power, and how it ought to be evaluated. Additionally, it will shed light on the role of metaphors in shaping philosophical thought and highlight the importance of these influences. (shrink)

This paper presents a method for teaching undergraduate students how to write better term papers in philosophy. The method integrates two key assignment components: scaffolding and peer review. We explain these components and how they can be effectively combined within a single term paper assignment. We then present the results of our multi-year research study on the integrated method. Professor observations, quantitative measures, and qualitative feedback indicate that student writing improves when philosophy term paper assignments are designed to generate multiple (...) rounds of drafting and review. (shrink)

Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just some of the questions this book sets out to address. With an extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, Kate Greasley offers an alternative account to the reputable arguments of Ronald Dworkin (...) and Judith Jarvis Thomson and instead brings the philosophical notion of 'personhood' to the foreground of this debate. Structured in three parts, the book will consider the relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation of abortion; trace the key features of the conventional debate about when personhood begins and explore the most prominent issues in abortion ethics literature: the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide; and examine abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to selective abortion. The book concludes with a snapshot into the current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision. (shrink)

Despite advances in palliative care, some patients still suffer significantly at the end of life. Terminal Sedation (TS) refers to the use of sedatives in dying patients until the point of death. The following limits are commonly applied: (1) symptoms should be refractory, (2) sedatives should be administered proportionally to symptoms and (3) the patient should be imminently dying. The term ‘Expanded TS’ (ETS) can be used to describe the use of sedation at the end of life outside one or (...) more of these limits.In this paper, we explore and defend ETS, focusing on jurisdictions where assisted dying is lawful. We argue that ETS is morally permissible: (1) in cases of non-refractory suffering where earlier treatments are likely to fail, (2) where gradual sedation is likely to be ineffective or where unconsciousness is a clinically desirable outcome, (3) where the patient meets all criteria for assisted dying or (4) where the patient has greater than 2 weeks to live, is suffering intolerably, and sedation is considered to be the next best treatment option for their suffering.While remaining two distinct practices, there is scope for some convergence between the criteria for assisted dying and the criteria for ETS. Dying patients who are currently ineligible for TS, or even assisted dying, should not be left to suffer. ETS provides one means to bridge this gap. (shrink)

This paper explores how political theory may help us map algorithmic logics against different visions of the political. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of agonistic pluralism, this paper depicts algorithms in public life in ten distinct scenes, in order to ask the question, what kinds of politics do they instantiate? Algorithms are working within highly contested online spaces of public discourse, such as YouTube and Facebook, where incompatible perspectives coexist. Yet algorithms are designed to produce clear “winners” from information contests, (...) often with little visibility or accountability for how those contests are designed. In isolation, many of these algorithms seem the opposite of agonistic: much of the complexity of search, ranking, and recommendation algorithms is nonnegotiable and kept far from view, inside an algorithmic “black box.” But what if we widen our perspective? This paper suggests agonistic pluralism as both a design ideal for engineers and a provocation to understand algorithms in a broader social context: rather than focusing on the calculations in isolation, we need to account for the spaces of contestation where they operate. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I suggest that (...) we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM “incomparably the best” of all his writings only because he preferred that (...) later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content? (shrink)

As the ubiquity of technology-mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with technology-mediated ones. In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people’s emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesised that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the (...) least life-like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reported by 102 individuals (mean age = 19.3; 85.6% female) over the course of 7 days reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less affectionate, less supported, and less happy following less life-like interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between life-like communication and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and participants’ overall evaluations of interaction quality. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common technology-mediated communication tools that may lead to momentary changes in affective experiences and make social connection more challenging. (shrink)

The 2008 housing and financial crisis brought to light many ethically questionable lending and borrowing practices. As we learn more about what caused this crisis, it has become apparent that we need to think more carefully about the conditions under which can loans be ethically offered and accepted, but also about when it might be morally permissible to default on debts. I critique two distinct philosophical approaches to assessing the ethics of debt, arguing that bothapproaches are too simplistic because they (...) focus only on individual borrowers and lenders. As a result, neither approach can adequately grasp the moral implications of the social and economic failures that frame actual dilemmas of debt facing many individuals today. (shrink)

Hegel famously argues that Kant’s account of critical distance depends upon an impoverished conception of freedom. In its place, Hegel introduces a richer conception of freedom, according to which the self who is capable of self-determination is multifaceted: wanting and thinking, social and individual. This richer conception gives rise to an account of critical reflection that emphasizes engagement with our motives and practices rather than radical detachment from them. But what is most distinctive about Hegel’s account is the idea that (...) when we reflect upon motives and practices, we draw upon shared self-understandings that are neither universal nor just particular to individuals. There is, Hegel argues, no presocial identity or self that can be detached from our socially constituted contexts of thought and value. This has important implications for how we conceive of critical reflection. (shrink)

Charges of inconsistency are frequently made against opponents of abortion for failing to ‘live out’ their beliefs. One such popular charge is that opponents of abortion are inconsistent for failing to ‘adopt the babies they don’t want aborted’—in this chapter, I will focus on a slightly broader version of this charge. I will understand adoption* broadly to include adopting and/or fostering children, as well as concretely supporting the systems involved in facilitating adoption and foster care through financial means, volunteering, and/or (...) advocacy. I will argue that opponents of abortion do not have special obligations to adopt* for the reasons often presumed, and thus are not inconsistent for failing to do so. However, I will go on to argue that they nevertheless have compelling reasons to do so—to decrease future abortions and oppose abortion with integrity. (shrink)

Human microbiome research makes causal connections between entire microbial communities and a wide array of traits that range from physiological diseases to psychological states. To evaluate these causal claims, we first examine a well-known single-microbe causal explanation: of Helicobacter pylori causing ulcers. This apparently straightforward causal explanation is not so simple, however. It does not achieve a key explanatory standard in microbiology, of Koch’s postulates, which rely on manipulations of single-microorganism cultures to infer causal relationships to disease. When Koch’s postulates (...) are framed by an interventionist causal framework, it is clearer what the H. pylori explanation achieves and where its explanatory strengths lie. After assessing this ‘simple’, single-microbe case, we apply the interventionist framework to two key areas of microbiome research, in which obesity and mental health states are purportedly explained by microbiomes. Despite the experimental data available, interventionist criteria for explanation show that many of the causal claims generated by microbiome research are weak or misleading. We focus on the stability, specificity and proportionality of proposed microbiome causal explanations, and evaluate how effectively these dimensions of causal explanation are achieved in some promising avenues of research. We suggest some conceptual and explanatory strategies to improve how causal claims about microbiomes are made. (shrink)

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a (...) reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways. Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage. (shrink)

This article presents a critique of Paulo Freire's philosophical perspective on human nature in the context of a doctoral research study to explore “muchness” or nurses’ subjective experience of well‐being; and demonstrates how this critique has informed the refinement of the theoretical principles used to inform research methodology and methods. Engaging in philosophical groundwork is essential for research coherence and integrity. Through this groundwork, largely informed by Freire's critical pedagogy and his ideas on humanization, I recognized the need to clarify (...) my understanding of the concepts of persons and personhood and how this related to Freire's use of the term human beings. This clarification process is essential to ensure congruence between the theoretical principles that I draw from his work and my beliefs about persons, personhood and person‐centredness. The article begins with a brief introduction to the research, followed by an overview of Freire's philosophical perspectives, and subsequently, the critique process is presented and discussed. This process involved engaging with the vast literature and debates about what it means to be a person, to make sense of the often complex and contradictory arguments. Eventually, three headings emerged that helped me to frame my evolving understanding: Our species: human beings; The kind that we are: human nature; and This person that I am: personhood. Through this process of exploration, I recognized that Freire's perspective on human nature (a) foregrounded cognitive rationality, which presented itself as a limitation when considering my ontological beliefs and the focus of my research, leading me to draw on the work of Mark Johnson and his ideas about embodiment to help me to further develop my theoretical principles; (b) focused on the “collective” rather than individuals, which is a shortcoming in relation to person‐centred research that acknowledges the uniqueness of participants. (shrink)

This article reviews three new books analysing the phenomenon of neoliberalism through religious lenses and comments on how Christian ethics should navigate among various distinct uses of the term ‘neoliberalism’ and the solutions a Christian ethical approach proposes to the ways in which neoliberalism harms humans and societies.

Cognitive Penetration holds that cognitive states and processes, specifically propositional attitudes (e.g., beliefs), sometimes directly impact features of perceptual experiences (e.g., the coloring of an object). In contrast, more traditional views hold that propositional attitudes do not directly impact perceptual experiences, but rather are only involved in interpreting or judging these experiences. Understandably, Cognitive Penetration is controversial and has been criticized on both theoretical and empirical grounds. I focus on defending it from the latter kind of objection and in doing (...) so, highlight important features of Cognitive Penetration mechanisms and effects. I first sketch promising criteria for Cognitive Penetration and then address widespread Replication and Demonstration worries about purported instances of it. Next, I present one of the most compelling Cognitive Penetration studies and address specific objections against it and others. I demonstrate that each of these objections misunderstands important features of either Cognitive Penetration mechanisms or the specific studies to which they are applied. Ultimately, I conclude that multiple key studies are not undermined by these objections and con- tinue to provide support for Cognitive Penetration. Correcting these misunderstandings bolsters empirical support for Cognitive Penetration and contributes to a better understand- ing of the mechanisms involved in perceptual processing. (shrink)

A philosopher examines the complicated phenomenon of gaslighting “Gaslighting” is suddenly in everyone’s vocabulary. It’s written about, talked about, tweeted about, even sung about (in “Gaslighting” by The Chicks). It’s become shorthand for being manipulated by someone who insists that up is down, hot is cold, dark is light—someone who isn’t just lying about such things, but trying to drive you crazy. The term has its origins in a 1944 film in which a husband does exactly that to his wife, (...) his crazy-making efforts symbolized by the rise and fall of the gaslights in their home. In this timely and provocative book, Kate Abramson examines gaslighting from a philosophical perspective, investigating it as a distinctive moral phenomenon. Gaslighting, Abramson writes, is best understood as a form of interpersonal interaction, a particular way of fundamentally undermining someone. The gaslighter, Abramson argues, aims to make his target experience herself as incapable of reasoning, perceiving, or reacting in ways that would allow her to form appropriate beliefs, perceptions, or emotions in the first place. He seeks not only to induce in her this unmoored sense of herself but also to make it a reality. Using examples and analysis, Abramson gives an account of gaslighting and its immorality, and argues that such a discussion can help us understand other aspects of social life—from racism and sexism to the structure of interpersonal trust. (shrink)