Drone warfare disrupts the generally understood experience of war, and drone operators’ distance from the battlefield has called into question the authenticity of their experiences as participants in conflict. This article examines the autobiographies of three US military drone operators, analysing how the narration is discursively oriented to particular spatial and ideological perspectives. It argues that the linguistic construction of point of view in each text reflects a dynamic and sometimes paradoxical relationship between drone operators and their distance from the (...) battlefield. Observing the position and shifting of deictic centres, the analysis draws parallels between spatial perspective, ideology, and the social identities of drone operators and victims of drone strikes. It concludes by reflecting on the variety of discursive strategies employed across these texts, and considers this variation itself to be an emerging trend in the discourse of drone warfare. (shrink)

In Real Hallucinations, Matthew Ratcliffe offers a philosophical examination of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how it is shaped by relations with other people. He focuses on the seemingly simple question of how we manage to distinguish among our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. To answer this question, he first develops a detailed analysis of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought (...) insertion (somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's). He shows how thought insertion and many of those experiences labeled as "hallucinations" consist of disturbances in a person's senseof being in one type of intentional state rather than another. Ratcliffe goes on to argue that such experiences occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. In so doing, he considers forms of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The overall position arrived at is that experience has an essentially temporal structure, involving patterns of anticipation and fulfillment that are specific to types of intentional states and serve to distinguish them phenomenologically. Disturbances of this structure can lead to various kinds of anomalous experience. Importantly, anticipation-fulfillment patterns are sustained, regulated, and disrupted by interpersonal experience and interaction. It follows that the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole. (shrink)

Multiple acoustic dimensions signal speech categories. However, dimensions vary in their informativeness; some are more diagnostic of category membership than others. Speech categorization reflects these dimensional regularities such that diagnostic dimensions carry more “perceptual weight” and more effectively signal category membership to native listeners. Yet perceptual weights are malleable. When short-term experience deviates from long-term language norms, such as in a foreign accent, the perceptual weight of acoustic dimensions in signaling speech category membership rapidly adjusts. The present study investigated whether (...) rapid adjustments in listeners’ perceptual weights in response to speech that deviates from the norms also affects listeners’ own speech productions. In a word recognition task, the correlation between two acoustic dimensions signaling consonant categories, fundamental frequency and voice onset time, matched the correlation typical of English, and then shifted to an “artificial accent” that reversed the relationship, and then shifted back. Brief, incidental exposure to the artificial accent caused participants to down-weight perceptual reliance on F0, consistent with previous research. Throughout the task, participants were intermittently prompted with pictures to produce these same words. In the block in which listeners heard the artificial accent with a reversed F0 × VOT correlation, F0 was a less robust cue to voicing in listeners’ own speech productions. The statistical regularities of short-term speech input affect both speech perception and production, as evidenced via shifts in how acoustic dimensions are weighted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn by Paul WeithmanMatthew ArboWhy Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn Paul Weithman New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 379 pp. $65.00In Why Political Liberalism? Paul Weithman takes a bifocal look at political liberalism in the Rawlsian tradition. First he interrogates the rationale for John Rawls’s “political turn” from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism. Second, he explores the (...) viability of political liberalism in contemporary Western societies. The soundness of the former—the logic of Rawls’s argument, that is—validates the workability of the latter. Weithman argues that the monumental turn in Rawls’s thought is based first on his dissatisfaction with how Theory of [End Page 203] Justice treated the principle of stability, failing as it did to show that “members of a [well-ordered society] would all judge it good to preserve their ‘firm good will’” (369). Liberalism emerged as a potential answer to the question of stability by further elaborating the criteria for fairness and reasonableness in a civil society composed of citizens desirous of justice and who maintain for themselves a “sense” of justice. Weithman affirms Rawls’s explanation of how the virtue of justice is displayed in fairness and reasonableness. Just how monumental this shift turns out to be, however, depends a great deal on how compelling one finds “justice as fairness” to be.In recent decades, reasonable doubts have been expressed over the viability of Rawls’s liberal dictum: whether liberty and equality are mutually reinforcing or parasitic, or whether fairness is too morally opaque to shoot for as a political ideal. Weithman seems to believe the principle sound; it is, after all, merely a descriptive explanation of how justice is upheld politically, not a prescriptive project. Rawls concerned himself with the stability and endurance of political liberalism and with how to achieve fair and rational equilibrium. Why Weithman believes the project of Rawlsian liberalism to be fruitful, or at least philosophically successful, is due at least in part to its repeated appeal to reasonableness—that is, the rational promotion of equal liberty for all citizens. Political liberalism, as a theory, affirms and encourages all that the West values in civil society: We must desire and actively support justice for it to be preserved.This book is intended primarily for Rawls scholars. Weithman assumes his reader to have “fairly sophisticated” acquaintance with Rawls’s major theories and texts, and thus also assumes proficiency in symbolic logic and analytic methods. Weithman furnishes a way around this demand for analytic aptitude from all readers, however, by inviting those “uninterested in textual exegesis” and “content with a general understanding” of why Rawls made his turn to “read selectively” from chapters 3 through 9 (15). Be that as it may, all eleven chapters of this text are dense, rigorous, and tightly argued—standard industry practice in contemporary analytic philosophy. If one can also forebear the methodological vices of analytic philosophy, its propensity for tedious detail and narrowness, then one will eventually enjoy unexpected clarity on the subject under consideration. It will be of value to scholars with interests in the development of Rawlsian thought, the conditions for the possibility of political liberalism, and theories of justice Rawls’s account of liberalism seeks to elucidate.I doubt one unconvinced by Rawls’s political vision will undergo intellectual conversion upon reading Weithman’s Why Political Liberalism?, but that is not the point. His aim is to defend Rawls’s political turn and the project of political liberalism broadly construed. Defense of the former is done rather successfully; defense of the latter may require more voices than Weithman’s. [End Page 204]Matthew ArboUniversity of EdinburghCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The language of morality and legality infuses every aspect of the Middle East conflict. From repeated assertions by officials that Israel has “the most moral army in the world” to justifications for specific military tactics and operations by reference to self-defense and proportionality, the public rhetoric is one of legal right and moral obligation. Less often heard are the voices of those on the ground whose daily experience is lived within the legal quagmire portrayed by their leaders in such uncompromising (...) terms. This Article explores the opaque normative boundaries surrounding the actions of a specific group within the Israeli military, soldiers returning from duty in Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. By examining interviews with these soldiers by an Israeli NGO, it identifies different narratives of legality and illegality which inform their conduct, contrasting their failure to adhere to conventional legal discourses with the broader “legalization” of military activities. Seeking an explanation for this disjunction, it explores the ways in which the soldiers’ stories nonetheless reflect attempts to negotiate various normative and legal realities. It places these within the legal landscape of the Occupied Palestinian Territories which has been normatively re-imagined by various forces in Israeli society, from the judicially-endorsed discourse of deterrence manifested in the day-today practices of brutality, intimidation and “demonstrating power,” to the growing influence of nationalist-religious interpretations of self-defense and the misuse of post-modernist theory by the military establishment to “smooth out” the moral and legal urban architectures of occupation. The Article concludes by considering the hope for change evident in the very act of soldiers telling ethically-oriented stories about their selves, and in the existence of a movement willing to provide the space for such reflections in an attempt to confront Israeli society with the day-to-day experiences of the soldier in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (shrink)

Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana (c. 450 CE) is the author of the Commentary on Nyāya (Nyāya-bhāṣya), the first full commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra of Gautama (c. 150 CE), which is itself the foundational text of the school of philosophy called “Nyāya.” The Nyāya tradition is home to a number of leading voices within the classical Indian philosophical scene and is celebrated in later doxographies as one of the six “orthodox” systems of Hindu thought. Given the way that sūtra texts and their first (...) commentaries are profoundly intertwined, Vātsyāyana’s work provides a formative vision of Nyāya’s self-conception as a philosophical system as well as interpretive strategies, central lines of argumentation, and determinations of importance that later Naiyāyikas (Nyāya philosophers) often take to be as much as a given as the original text itself. Along with its sustained defense of metaphysical realism across various fronts, Nyāya is best known for its achievements in epistemology and logic, and as indicated by the title of this chapter, the lens through which we will explore Vātsyāyana’s thought is his theory of knowledge. We will give special attention to his account of the nature and importance of cognition as a guide to action and will illustrate the way in which this theme informs a number of apparently distinct elements of his project including his realism, his account of epistemic entitlement, and his notion of philosophy’s contribution to living well. (shrink)

This article argues that the turn to the animal is a return to mythology. By reading multispecies scholarship as narrativization of contemporary mythology, I claim that the field voices anxieties about human futures through figures of animal others. Multispecies ethnography implicitly grapples with an apocalyptic mythos prevailing in the wake of modernity’s seemingly abandoned dreams. I reconsider the cultural function of multispecies research through two moves. First, I read Thom van Dooren’s Theory, Culture & Society article on ‘Authentic Crows’ as (...) such a quasi-allegorical account. Second, I develop how animal anthropology captures the contemporary mythos in an ‘affirmationist’ register that counters the pessimistic affect of late industrialism. Ultimately, the critical politics of such research may be redeemed through efforts to work closely with scientists and to render explicit the accounts’ situatedness within late-industrial mythology. (shrink)

Philosophers, political theorists, and the general public are increasingly concerned with the moral complexities of riots, especially those that occur in overtly political circumstances within democratic societies. Many believe the riots can play no constructive role in a democracy, but recently some theorists have argued that riots can be morally justifiable forms of political protest. To adjudicate this important issue, we think a better account is needed of the ways in which riots can be politically communicative, and this paper aims (...) to supply such an account. We start from the assumption that some riots are protests and then use speech-act theory to develop an account of the complex illocutionary logic of riotous protests. We argue that political riots, like all political protests, have a vocative element that is often overlooked. This element is what Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to when he described political riots as “the voice of the unheard” through which rioters demand recognition as equal participants in democratic decision making. An appreciation of the communicative structure of political riots, in particular their vocative dimension, provides a way of understanding the constructive role they can play in democratic deliberation. (shrink)

Different translations of Plutarch's De Pythiae oraculis 404B reflect an interpretative difficulty not yet adequately thematized by exegetes. Plutarch's dialogues on the Delphic oracle describe two perspectives on mantic inspiration: possession prophecy, where the god takes over the prophetess as a passive apparatus, and stimulation prophecy, where the god incites the prophecy, but the prophetess delivers the oracle through her own faculties. Plutarch understands the Pythia at Delphi to exhibit stimulation prophecy, not possession. One of his metaphors for inspiration comes (...) from the theatre: the god ‘puts the oracle into the Pythia's mouth, like an actor speaking through the mask’ (De Pyth. or. 404B [Russell]). Some translators take the metaphor as describing possession prophecy (Goodwin), while others take it as stimulation prophecy (Babbitt)—in other words, it may describe the view Plutarch affirms or the view he rejects. This article assesses the two alternatives, concluding that the theatre metaphor describes possession prophecy. (shrink)

Lucan's "Bellum Civile" is a poem filled with ethical contradictions. This paper contends that at least some of these contradictions can be traced to competing views regarding the composition of the community in civil war: the view that one's opponent is a civis and the view that he is a hostis are available simultaneously. Therefore the position that it is morally wrong to attack a member of one's own community competes with the position that it is morally right to use (...) violence against an enemy. The Pompeians tentatively and rather sporadically embrace the former view, while the latter view is more strongly characteristic of the Caesarians; the outcome of the battle of Pharsalus accords with this distribution of ethical stances. Yet these conflicting discourses and opposing views of the community are present not only in the voices of the various characters, but also in the narrative voice itself; such contradictions even within a single voice are inevitable artifacts of civil war as Lucan represents it. By portraying this competition in ethical discourses as he does, Lucan makes his civil war a context in which he can recreate and participate in the ideological struggles of Neronian Rome. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Patricia Kelly, Ressourcement Theology:A Review EssayMatthew K. MinerdIntroductionAlthough now over seventy years in the past, the theological and ecclesiastical events of the 1940s, most often styled under some banner akin to "the crisis over the nouvelle théologie," leading up to the promulgation of the encyclical Humani Generis, retain a currency and interest to this very day. No doubt, the later influence of many of the so-called nouveaux théologiens leading (...) up to, during, and following the Second Vatican Council has contributed to the continued currency of their thought and the debates connected to it. Numerous monographs continue to be written concerning themes of "ressourcement," theological reform, and engagement with the world, all of which were dear to many of those who were embroiled in the philosophical and theological controversies of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, increased interest in certain long-buried conservative Thomist thinkers from this same era has led to renewed consideration regarding the concerns that they expressed at the time. In fact, it would seem that today, in 2022, the evaluation expressed in Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method by Fr. Gerald McCool (from a perspective rather different from my own) remains true, as the Church continues to live in the midst of an ongoing crisis of modernity that places us in tight continuity with so much of the past several centuries of European Christian intellectual history:In contemporary Catholic theology, the relationship between apologetics, or fundamental theology, and speculative theology is as much [End Page 353] an issue as it was in the nineteenth century.... And in contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between positive theology and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics.... The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theology's response to post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present.1The great crisis of the 1940s—whether we name it nouvelle théologie, after the reform-advocates of the era, or dialogue theologique, in honor of the Toulouse Dominicans' attempt to present a Scholastic position between, on the one hand, Fr. Chenu's and Congar's view of what the Saulchoir should be, and, on the other hand, the more-conservative Thomism of Frs. Garrigou-Lagrange, Gagnebet, and Gillon in Rome2—was and remains, in the words of Etienne Fouilloux, "the only theological debate of real [quelque] importance, at least in France, from the condemnation of Modernism to the time of the Second Vatican Council."3 And like any truly great event or crisis in intellectual-spiritual culture, it remains with us today in its fruits, both resolved and unresolved.Thus, when a new work is published dedicated to these events and the figures involved therein, the Catholic intellectual world should take heed, for our own self-understanding—whatever sui iuris Church in which we are ascribed—is at stake. Hence, the arrival of the collection of translations by Dr. Patricia Kelly of the University of St. Andrews is an event to be welcomed, even if elements of its publication also give rise to concern. This volume, Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook,4 gathering together essays by various parties involved on both sides of the specifically Francophone debates over theological method and truth that came to a head in the 1940s, provides the reading public with a dual "service": it presents in English a [End Page 354] number of texts not heretofore available, while also, unfortunately, bearing witness to the academic prejudices lingering against the authors writing from Rome and Toulouse concerning certain veins of thought in theological methodology during the inter-war and immediate post-war era. Although my review will be somewhat negative on certain points—both for technical textual reasons and because of the slanted narrative presented by Dr. Kelly—I wish only the best to her and her work, hoping that the concerns that I voice can serve as a springboard to dialogue, not retrenchment... (shrink)

This article reflects on the relative silence of African farmers within debates around the potential for genetically modified crops to transform agriculture on the continent. It proposes two strategies for amplifying these voices—one focused on research methodologies, the other on outreach—in order to transform the conversation around GM’s potential in Africa into one that revolves around farmer preferences and priorities.

Patients with psychotic disorders experience a range of reality distortions. These often include auditory-verbal hallucinations, and thought insertion to a lesser degree; however, their mechanisms and relationships between each other remain largely elusive. Here we attempt to establish a integrative model drawing from the phenomenology of both AVHs and TI and argue that they in fact can be seen as ‘spectra’ of experiences with varying degrees of agency and ownership, with ‘silent and internal own thoughts’ on one extreme and ‘fully (...) external and clearly audible voices’ in the absence of a speaker on the other. We believe a spectral model will add emphasis to the continuity of experience and help to better understand how one type of psychotic symptom may interact with another, and put forward the argument that the experience of TI itself is not sufficient to classify as a delusion. In addition we aim to discuss some of the conceptual issues surrounding AVHs and TI with first-person accounts and current philosophical and neuropsychological theories in mind. We propose that the mechanisms behind AVHs and TI are more complex than source-monitoring deficits; indeed, to understand such phenomena one must appreciate that their very ‘existence’ and ‘reality’ as experienced by the individual have much deeper implications and meaning, both philosophically and clinically. (shrink)

_A deeply researched and poignant reflection on the practice of forgiveness in an unforgiving world__ “Broad in its philosophical sweep and fine in its literary analysis, this work redefines forgiveness as the modest yet heroic ability to hold pain and anger together with hope and nonviolence.”—Joie Szu-Chiao Chen, _Lion’s Roar__ Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument (...) of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief. It is an act of mourning irrevocable wrong, of refusing the false promises of violent redemption, and of living in and with the losses we cannot recover. Drawing on novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison, and on texts from the early Christian to the postmodern, Potts diagnoses the real dangers of forgiveness yet insists upon its enduring promise. Sensitive to the twenty-first-century realities of economic inequality, colonial devastation, and racial strife, and considering the role of forgiveness in the New Testament, the Christian tradition, philosophy, and contemporary literature, this book heralds the arrival of a new and creative theological voice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral ScienceMatthew K. MinerdAmong the various types of law discussed in St. Thomas's theological "treatise on law"—questions 90–108 of Summa theologia [ST] I-II—the classification known as the "law of nations" (ius gentium) holds an ambiguous epistemological position. Marking a kind of halfway point between the natural law and civil law, it seems to straddle both domains. In fact, in a particularly important text dedicated (...) to this topic in the ST (I-II, q. 95, a. 4), Aquinas classes the ius gentium as being closely connected to the natural law, though in a way that is somewhat derivative, not as immediately flowing from human nature (especially in its animality) as does the natural law, but also not as marked by human contingency as is human civil law.As was recently discussed in a well-documented and insightful article by Barrett H. Turner in The Thomist, there have historically been two main lines of Thomist interpretation concerning the exact character of the "law of nations." Very broadly stated, what he refers to as the "Salamancan" line, indebted to Francisco de Vitoria, "interprets Thomas's doctrine of the ius gentium as a body of universal positive institutions (that is, specifications, determinationes) added to the natural law by agreement of the human race."1 [End Page 1043] This position, which would be common for several centuries among members of the Thomist school, would locate the law of nations essentially in the domain of nearly universally adopted customs and institutions, not strictly deduced from the natural law, but rather grounded on "the quasi-political authority of the entire human race, which promulgates the ius gentium by customs whose utility for attaining the ends of the natural law under a certain set of social conditions is easily recognized by rational creatures."2Turner calls the other line of thought "Maritain's Neo-Thomist Line,"3 an outlook that would be shared with various nuances by thinkers like Jean-Marie Aubert, Yves Simon, Marie-Michel Labourdette, John Finnis, and others. Setting aside my qualms about his appellation "neo-Thomist," which does more to obscure than to illumine (for it covers a host of Thomistic figures who have significantly different views on what constitutes "Thomism"), Turner does fairly lay out the major lines of Jacques Maritain's position, which is most directly articulated in Man and the State and La loi naturelle ou loi non-écrite.4 Basing himself on his particular view of knowledge of the natural law through connaturality,5 Maritain contrasted this sort of moral cognition with that which develops in the line of conceptual articulation, thus having a different "gnoseological" character from our knowledge of the natural law, while nonetheless still sharing the same "ontological" foundation. Such conceptually articulated law would be the ius gentium.Rather than add my voice to the dialectic of the various thinkers arrayed by Turner into the two aforementioned camps, I would like to propose a slightly different approach to the "moral epistemology of the law of nations," though one that I believe lies in line with the best aspects of Maritain's approach. Continuing a series of reflections that I have undertaken [End Page 1044] concerning moral epistemology during the past few years,6 I propose that it is most helpful to consider the "law of nations" as being a form of reasoning pertaining to what Scholastic vocabulary would refer to as "moral science,"7 namely discursive philosophical reasoning concerning the essences, properties, effects, and various other essential relationships that belong to a human acts, morally considered (the principal subject of moral philosophy), along with other subjects that are studied in relation to this principal subject (e.g., the principles of human acts, most particularly, the structure of human acts and the moral virtues). Moral science is the activity of reasoning that can be undertaken by knowing agents living together in community, seeking to discursively articulate and explain the moral truth that forms the essential basis for the contingent determinations that will then be codified in particular civil laws, the latter of which are not concerned with questions like "what are the ultimate foundations for property... (shrink)

A question facing nearly all private firms is whether they may keep employee pay secret. Many think it is obvious that firms are obligated to disclose a good deal of pay information once we properly appreciate the severity of pay discrimination in our economy and the autonomy-related interests that would be served by pay disclosure. This article puts forth a dissenting voice against the vast majority of recent commentary. It exploits a fissure between reasons we have to support certain (...) coercive regulations and reasons firms have to act in the absence of such regulation. While acknowledging that we may need transparency regulations for firms that fail to act morally, it argues that otherwise moral firms need not disclose pay on the surveyed grounds. (shrink)

In AFTERLIVES OF AFFECT, Watson considers the life and work of Mayanist Linda Schele (1942 - 1988) as an entry point to discuss the nature of cultural inquiry and the metaphor of decipherment in anthropology. Watson figures Schele as a trickster guide in his experimental, person-centered ethnography, reanimating the work of decipherment and drawing upon an "affect of discovery" that better expresses the affective engagement of anthropologists and their subject of study. Through her archive, Watson finds an archaeologist wholly animated (...) by her fieldsite and immersed in a more "spiritual science," though nonetheless still imbricated in a system of settler-colonial knowledge production. By holding Schele's work in conversation with both her own interlocutors and prominent voices in the field today, Watson refocuses on anthropologists who are engaged as individuals; carrying their own attachments with them as they describe, interpret, and decipher what they observe, and in doing so, positions affective engagement as a constitutive element in a more reflexive anthropology. The book is organized into six chapters that progress thematically through Schele's life and Watson's autoethnographic reflections on his own research. In Sacrilege (chapter 1), Watson draws together moments throughout his research where he felt his exhumation of Schele's work veered too closely to disturbing what was laid to rest-much like Schele's own work, which relied on the unearthing of sites long laid to rest, reanimating long-dead Mayan rulers and artists. The chapter sets the tone of the work as always toeing the line and risking the introduction of the mystical and affective into scientific interpretation-edgewalking with Schele. In Animals (chapter 2), Watson draws upon metaphors in the animal world, as did Schele when she sought inspiration for her next moment of insight; spider webs present a Geertzian metaphor for webs of signification, while rabbits are trickster guides, a transtemporalizing technology, drawing Schele (and Watson) forward and back through time. Through these reflections, Watson builds iteratively on arguments throughout the book that return to themes more recognizable in contemporary theory conversations: more-than-human worlds, the question of modernity, and the social conditions of knowledge production. This book will be of interest to readers in anthropology, especially those engaged in the ontological turn and more-than-human worlds, as well as the history of anthropology and anthropology theory more broadly. This book will also be of interest to readers in science studies, the posthumanities, and affect theory. (shrink)

British biologist and science populariser J. B. S. Haldane was known as a contrarian, whose myriad ideas and beliefs would shift to oppose whomever he chose to argue with. Yet Haldane's support for synthetic food remained remarkably stable throughout his life. This article argues that Haldane's engagement with synthetic food during the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by his frustration with the status and direction of scientific research in Britain. Drawing upon the Haldane Papers, I reconstruct how Haldane's interest in (...) synthetic food emerged from the biochemical and physiological optimism of the early 20th century. His mid-20th-century writings were an opportunity for Haldane to voice his political opinions. He attempted to erase the conceptual divide between farm and factory, maintained that food shortages were a capitalist construct, and criticised British colonialism. By pointing out the failure of existing economic systems and governments to develop synthetic food, Haldane made the case that food production should be placed under the control of biologists. (shrink)

The New Beginning Movement (NBM) (1971–1978) in Trinidad functioned as a voice of direct democracy and workers self-management through popular assemblies, and as a global coordinating council of a Pan-Caribbean International with linkages across the region, in Britain, the United States, and Canada. A crucial philosophical and strategic leaven in the 1970 Black Power Revolt led by Geddes Granger’s and Dave Darbeau’s National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and the 1975 United Labour Front (ULF) in Trinidad, NBM aspired to interpret (...) Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians equally, and on their own autonomous terms, toward self-directed emancipation. Led by Bukka Rennie, Wally Look Lai, and Franklyn Harvey, NBM was inspired by C.L.R. James’s intellectual legacies. Through publications such as New Beginning, Caribbean Dialogue, and The Vanguard, these partisans advocated labor’s self-emancipation and critical perspectives on capitalism and state power, and exposed the limits of elite party politics and representative government. (shrink)

Flamm examines a dominant theme in Santayana’s philosophy: the spiritual life. He puts Santayana’s philosophy in dialogue with the novella Soul (Dzhan) by Andrey Platonov and examines the various ways Santayana associates crying with a materialist conception of the spiritual life.The association of crying and spiritual life is conspicuous enough in Santayana’s writings to merit exploration. In an astonishing variety of rhetorical modes Santayana writes of the various “cries” of spirit, of psyche, of soul, and of the human heart, emphasizing (...) the idea that it is through moral suffering that humans come to spiritual understanding (Some examples: “An impetuous spirit when betrayed by the world will cry …” (LR2, Chapter VIII, “Ideal Society,” p. 121); “the universal need and cry of human souls …” (LR3, Chapter XII, “Charity,” pp. 130–31); “spirit is physically the voice of the soul crying in the wilderness” (RB/RE, “The Nature of Spirit,” p. 568); “our very soul begins to cry for help” (RB/RE “On Cosmic Animism,” p. 576); “pain,” the “first form of distraction” in the psyche causes it to “awake with a sharp cry, a conscious protest” (RB/RE, “Distraction,” p. 679)). Santayana goes so far in one context to suggest that crying experiences testify to the existence of matter (“The more ecstatic or the more tragic experience is, the more unmistakably it is the voice of matter.” “Cross Lights,” SE, p. 25). In this chapter I link the various ways Santayana associates crying and spiritual life with the novella Soul (Dzhan) by Andrey Platonov (Andrey Platonov (1899–1951) was a Russian author whose works during the Stalinist era were heavily censored and banned and have only recently (relative to their importance, as of the late 1990s) begun appearing in approved English translations. I am a lover of Russian literature and no expert, but am prepared to agree with poet-translator Robert Chandler, who claimed (before he died in 2007) that Russians will come one day to recognize Platonov as their “greatest prose writer” (Chandler’s exquisite co-translation of Platonov’s Soul was chosen in 2004 as “best translation of the year from a Slavonic language” by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages)). Santayana in dialogue with Platonov offers a radiant picture of the materialist conception of spiritual life. (shrink)

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis (...) of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed. (shrink)

When do we judge that someone was forced to do what they did? One relatively well-established finding is that subjects tend to judge that agents were not forced to do actions when those actions violate norms. A surprising discovery of Young & Phillips 2011 is that this effect seems to disappear when we frame the relevant ‘force’-claim in the active rather than passive voice ('X forced Y to φ ' vs. 'Y was forced to φ by X'). Young and (...) Phillips found a similar contrast when the scenario itself shifts attention from Y (the forcee) to X (the forcer). We propose that these effects can be (at least partly) explained by way of the role of attention in the setting of quantifier domains which in turn play a role in the evaluation of ‘force’- claims. We argue for this hypothesis by way of an experiment which shows that sequences of active vs. passive ‘force’-claims display the characteristic “stickiness” of quantifier domain expansion, using a paradigm which we argue provides a useful general paradigm for testing quantifier domain hypotheses. Finally, we sketch a semantics for ‘force’ which we argue is suitable for capturing these effects. (shrink)

Our extant texts never give a fully comprehensive or representative impression of classical literature. Fragments are valuable because they tell—or hint at—a different story. They represent vestigial traces of a counterfactual alternative version of literary history, and they offer tantalizing glimpses of voices or varieties of human experience that were (accidentally or deliberately) excluded from the classical canon. To ‘think fragmentarily’ is to think beyond the canon and to question traditionally dominant modes of thought. This article uses a neglected fragment (...) of Damoxenus (fr. 3 PCG) as a case study for ‘fragmentary thinking’. This extraordinary fragment reveals that Damoxenus’ comedy dramatized a homosexual love story, in sharp contrast to the familiar heteronormative marriage plots of Menander and other Greek and Roman comic playwrights. Careful examination of a single fragment can prompt us to re-examine conventional scholarly narratives of sexuality in New Comedy. (shrink)

With everything from answers to frequent new-teacher questions and warnings of common new teacher pitfalls to specific strategies and veteran tricks useful for clawing back precious hours of the day, Matthew Johnson gives clear tips and clear reasons for them in a straightforward, jargonless voice and a mixture of practicality and philosophy.

This paper explores two different methods of reading ‘Derrida’s own conscience’ – that is, of raising the question of ethics and obligation in deconstruction. The two readings under discussion here are staged by Jean-Luc Nancy in his seminal essay ‘The Free Voice of Man’. In the first half of the paper, I engage in a reading of Nancy’s essay in which I seek not only to highlight Nancy’s double formulation of the place of ethics in deconstruction, but also to (...) re-mark the transition in Derrida’s writings from the priority of the question to an emphasis on a call that precedes the question. In order to further explore this displacement of the priority of the question, the second half of the essay takes up an analysis of Derrida’s employment of the motif of ‘ Viens ’ (‘Come’) in his essay ‘On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy’. I suggest that ‘ Viens ’ should be read as Derrida’s formulation of: (1) another response, beyond questioning, to a call that precedes any question; (2) another thought of conscience and obligation; and (3) a thought of the trace of alterity at the very heart of conscience that signals the impossibility of any form of good conscience. Key Words: apocalypse • call • conscience • ethics • question • Viens. (shrink)

The Hebrew Bible is a richly crafted text, teeming with wonderful examples of narrative artistry, not only of how it arranges words, but how it arranges sounds. If the structure of the narrative can help us interpret possible meanings, then it would seem that the phonetic elements of the text can also assist us in the larger task of interpretation . This article gives an example of how the rhythmic repetition of sound elements contribute to interpretation through the example of (...) the richly alliterative phrase, peru urbu umil’u. The article examines its occurrences in Genesis. It is found ten times , five in the Primeval History, five in the Patriarchal History. Close readings of these occurrences are used to show how the rhythmic arrangement of sounds contributes to the development of the themes at critical junctures of the narrative. When the phrase ‘be fruitful and multiply’ is found in direct speech by God to a human, the phrase is endowed with a tremendous amount of alliteration; when the phrase is found in human speech there is a great deal less. In this example, then, it would seem alliteration is being used to distinguish human from divine speech. As modern readers, it is very easy for us to forget the oral context in which these stories emerged, that most people heard, rather than read, them. So it seems completely reasonable to suggest that, in this one example, phonetic artistry is being used to make it easier for the listener of the text to understand that he has just heard the voice of God. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 1, Page 51-63, January 2022. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, have historically experienced research as another means of colonialization and oppression. Although there are existing frameworks, guidelines and policies in place that respond to this history, the risk of exploitation and oppression arising from research still raises challenging ethical questions. Since the 1990s the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia has developed specific sets of guidelines that govern research with these (...) populations in an attempt to redress injustices of the past. The current guidelines: Ethical Conduct in Research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and Communities: Guidelines for Researchers and Stakeholders, 2018, emphasis six core values which are bound together by “spirit and integrity.” The values are reflected through respect for cultural inheritance, and genuine negotiation of partnerships between researchers, other stakeholders, and communities. We examine whether these guidelines can lead to research and research practices that redress some of the ongoing traumas of colonialization and racism. We draw upon Margaret Urban Walker’s formulation of restorative justice, based upon her “pragmatics of repair” which relies upon “voice, validation and vindication” and at its core, the restoration of relationships. (shrink)

In the past few years, the United States has seen violent street protests in response to police killing unarmed people of color, angry protests by university students concerned about the racist legacy of their institutions, and verbally disruptive protests inside rallies of the (then) Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. Some of these acts of protest have been clearly legal, protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; others, by contrast, have not, but may nevertheless be be defensible (...) acts of politically motivated disobedience. We are interested here in both legal and illegal acts of protest, but our focus here will be primarily on the latter, for the philosophical literature on protest has focused mostly on illegal cases. Elsewhere, we argue that a fruitful avenue for exploring these issues is to take a speech-act theoretic approach to them. In this paper we compare and contrast this approach with more prominent views of protest (viz., liberal and republican views of civil disobedience). Our goal is to explore the variety of ways in which political dissent, even when it is illegal, may be justified. (shrink)

Despite having international and national legislative frameworks and policies that guarantee children’s rights and encourage their participation in matters affecting them, consulting children has received scant scholarly attention in the African context. Notwithstanding this state of affairs, it is important to ask whether, in keeping with growing progressive practices, having children as active researchers is a feasible goal to achieve and, if so, how might this be possible. Drawing on Swartz and Nyamnjoh’s framework of research existing along an emancipatory continuum, (...) we argue for practical, methodological interventions to bridge the researcher–researched divide. We show, using four case studies, how giving children a voice – a key feature of emancipatory research – as participants in educational research has the potential to afford them space to co-enact the research and develop their sense of agency. The four case studies were drawn from investigations of lived experiences of orphaned children and conceptions of education quality in South Africa; consulting children about sex and HIV/AIDS education in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya; a study of a community-based peer education programme in South Africa and language and mathematics skills assessments in a large-scale study. Within each case, we evaluate the extent to which the research methods used aims for and achieves children’s participation and emancipation and offer ways to overcome challenges for adopting emancipatory approaches in the schooling sector from ethical, policy and political perspectives. The article concludes with recommendations for implementing emancipatory methodologies in educational research involving children. (shrink)

Social media has revolutionized the way information is distributed throughout society, as folks continue to rely entirely on these apps for information on current events, health protocols, and socio-political discussions. However, these containers of knowledge do not appear in the same shape for every user; Algorithms, informed by capitalist agendas, determine what information sifts through its networks and to whom. Data scientists, researchers, and activists have dissected the hidden mechanics fueling these popular platforms, inciting critical conversations around the harmful biases (...) embedded in algorithms. These studies often skim the surface of how these algorithms digitally marginalize people of color, if acknowledging it at all. Even fewer have attempted to examine the role these algorithms play in the social activism and digital community organizing happening amongst communities of color via social media. Referring to indigenous scholar Marisa Elena Duarte’s book Network Sovereignty as a framework of thought, this paper roots itself in the notion that technology is an extension of the agenda utilizing it. Through dissecting the algorithmic structures of popular social platforms among communities of color, this paper examines how social media distributes information within its networks and how its encoded biases silence Black, brown, and indigenous voices. This paper also provides insight into how BIPOC content-creators, when informed on how the algorithms work, can use these platforms to their advantage and effectively facilitate socio-political discourse online; Changing the narrative of social networks from being yet another landscape of white supremacy to instead a communal canvas for radical change. (shrink)

This book proposes a way to think and speak about God in and through our contemporary, secular society, bridging the theist/atheist divide by considering the divine through the lens of aesthetics. It represents a timely contribution to Continental philosophy of religion that includes some of the most respected and important voices in the field.

Everyone is talking about food. Chefs are celebrities. "Locavore" and "freegan" have earned spots in the dictionary. Popular books and films about food production and consumption are exposing the unintended consequences of the standard American diet. Questions about the principles and values that ought to guide decisions about dinner have become urgent for moral, ecological, and health-related reasons. In _Philosophy Comes to Dinner_, twelve philosophers—some leading voices, some inspiring new ones—join the conversation, and consider issues ranging from the sustainability of (...) modern agriculture, to consumer complicity in animal exploitation, to the pros and cons of alternative diets. (shrink)

Youth forums are a favoured means for encouraging youth participation. Taking many forms, they usually describe groups of young people who come together in committees to discuss issues relating to their communities. Adults establish many youth forums largely because they are perceived to provide tangible opportunities deemed to enable ongoing participation rather than because of demand from young people themselves. Recent evidence suggests, however, that youth forums are often an inappropriate way of engaging many young people, especially those who are (...) traditionally hardest to reach. This paper explores the ethical and methodological challenges facing those agencies who wish to behave in an inclusive manner, yet in so doing establish structures and bureaucracies that sideline many young people, further obfuscating their voices in local decision making. Alternative ways forward for engaging young people are suggested. (shrink)

A good therapeutic relationship in mental health services is a predictor of positive clinical outcomes for people who seek help for distressing experiences, such as voice hearing and paranoia. One factor that may affect the quality of the therapeutic relationship and raises further ethical issues is the impact of the clinical encounter on users’ sense of self, and in particular on their sense of agency. In the paper, we discuss some of the reasons why the sense of epistemic agency (...) may be especially fragile in young people with unusual experiences and beliefs. We argue that it is important to identify and avoid behaviours that can undermine young people’s contributions as epistemic agents in the clinical encounter. (shrink)

This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'--an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. Coming from both (...) well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings. (shrink)

One day, Matthew Eaton was walking through an impromptu animal shelter display at his local pet store when suddenly an eight-month-old kitten dug his claws into Eaton’s flesh. Eaton recognized that the “eyes of this cat and the curve of his claw” compelled a response analogous to those found in the writings of Buber, Levinas, and Derrida. And not just Eaton but a whole community of theologians have found themselves in an encounter with particular places and animals that demands (...) rich theological reflection. Eaton enlisted fellow editors Harvie and Bechtel to collect the essays in this volume, in which theologians listen to horses, rats, snakes, cats, dogs, and the earth itself, who become new theological voices demanding a response. In this volume, the voice of the more-than-human world is heard as making theology possible. These essays suggest that what we say theologically represents not simply ideas of our own making subsequently superimposed onto the natural world through our own discovery, but rather flow from an expressive Earth. With additional contributions from: Kimberly Carfore Lisa E. Dahill Celia Deane-Drummond Heather Eaton Nathan Kowalsky Abigail Lofte Jame Schaefer Cristina D. Vanin Mark Wallace Grace Y. Kao Chris Carter John Berkman Laura Hobgood. (shrink)

People of the Big Voice tells the visual history of Ho-Chunk families at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond as depicted through the lens of Black River Falls, Wisconsin studio photographer, Charles Van Schaick. The family relationships between those who “sat for the photographer” are clearly visible in these images—sisters, friends, families, young couples—who appear and reappear to fill in a chronicle spanning from 1879 to 1942. Also included are candid shots of Ho-Chunk on the streets of (...) Black River Falls, outside family dwellings, and at powwows. As author and Ho-Chunk tribal member Amy Lonetree writes, “A significant number of the images were taken just a few short years after the darkest, most devastating period for the Ho-Chunk. Invasion, diseases, warfare, forced assimilation, loss of land, and repeated forced removals from our beloved homelands left the Ho-Chunk people in a fight for their culture and their lives.” The book includes three introductory essays and 300-plus duotone photographs and captions in gallery style. Unique to the project are the identifications in the captions, which were researched over many years with the help of tribal members and genealogists, and include both English and Ho-Chunk names. (shrink)

ObjectivesThe end of life is an ethically challenging time requiring complex decision-making. This study describes ethical frameworks among physician trainees, explores how these frameworks manifest and relates these frameworks to experiences delivering end-of-life care.DesignWe conducted semistructured in-depth exploratory qualitative interviews with physician trainees about experiences of end-of-life care and moral distress. We analysed the interviews using thematic analysis.SettingAcademic teaching hospitals in the United States and United Kingdom.ParticipantsWe interviewed 30 physician trainees. We purposefully sampled across three domains we expected to be (...) associated with individual ethics in order to elicit a diversity of ethical and experiential perspectives.ResultsSome trainees subscribed to a best interest ethical framework, characterised by offering recommendations consistent with the patient’s goals and values, presenting only medically appropriate choices and supporting shared decision-making between the patient/family and medical team. Others endorsed an autonomy framework, characterised by presenting all technologically feasible choices, refraining from offering recommendations and prioritising the voice of patient/family as the decision-maker.ConclusionsThis study describes how physician trainees conceptualise their roles as being rooted in an autonomy or best interest framework. Physician trainees have limited clinical experience and decision-making autonomy and may have ethical frameworks that are dynamic and potentially highly influenced by experiences providing end-of-life care. A better understanding of how individual physicians’ ethical frameworks influences the care they give provides opportunities to improve patient communication and advance the role of shared decision-making to ensure goal-aligned end-of-life care. (shrink)

This article focuses on a set of problems involving a controversial portion of the HHA that describes the performance of the Delian chorus in a rare instance of early performance criticism. First, the two variants for a key noun in line 162, bambaliastus and krembaliastus, are discussed. Skepticism is expressed about the applicability to this scene of the first variant. On the contrary, krembaliastus——the suitability of which has not been discussed in detail, even by scholars who seem to have favored (...) it——can make good sense. Literary and iconographic evidence makes it plausible that krembaliastus denotes the act of generating through percussion devices called krembala rhythmic patterns meant to govern stylized movement, what the Greeks called schêêmata. The marked term krembaliastus was probably employed to evoke a characteristic trait of the highly skilled Deliades. Furthermore, as vocal and kinetic activities were inextricably linked in choral practices, they are ultimately conceptualized as part of the same unified expressive mechanism. The author also questions the conventional interpretation of mimeisthai as ““mimicking,”” instead reading it as ““representation,”” involving the evocation of the essence of an entity but not necessarily exact reproduction of its formal details. Finally the essay argues that the Delian chorus' art of ““knowing how to represent the voices and the rhythmic patterns of all people”” designates the perfection of choral performance, as an all-inclusive enactment that forms a powerful trans-local bond. (shrink)

MacIntyre argues that management embodies emotivism, and thus is inherently amoral and manipulative. His claim that management is necessarily Weberian is, at best, outdated, and the notion that management aims to be neutral and value free is incorrect. However, new forms of management, and in particular the increased emphasis on leadership which emerged after MacIntyre’s critique was published, tend to support his central charge. Indeed, charismatic and transformational forms of leadership seem to embody emotivism to a greater degree than do (...) more Weberian, bureaucratic forms of management; hence, MacIntyre’s central contention about our emotivistic culture seems to be well founded. Having criticised the details but defended the essence of MacIntyre’s critique of management, this paper sketches a MacIntyrean approach to management and leadership by highlighting the affinities between MacIntyre’s political philosophy and Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership. (shrink)

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world. -/- This book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic (...) future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind's relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and more. (shrink)

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.