On a version of consent theory that tempts many, predatory sexual relations involving significant power imbalances (e.g. between professors and students, adults and teenagers, or employers and employees) are wrong because they violate consent-centric norms. In particular, the wronged party is said to have been incapable of consenting to the predation, and the sexual wrong is located in the encounter’s nonconsensuality. Although we agree that these are sexual wrongs, we resist the idea that they are always nonconsensual. We argue instead (...) that it is possible for students, teenagers, employees, etc. to fully consent to sexually predatory encounters; denying as much renders survivors of predation vulnerable to compounding harms. Survivors face a dilemma: give up either their understanding of their experience as wrong, or their self-conception as an agent capable of consenting. We call the latter phenomenon agential demotion. (shrink)

Many extant theories of placebo focus on their causal structure wherein placebo effects are those that originate from select features of the therapy (e.g., client expectations or “incidental” features like size and shape). Although such accounts can distinguish placebos from standard medical treatments, they cannot distinguish placebos from everyday occurrences, for example, when positive feedback improves our performance on a task. Providing a social-epistemological account of a treatment context can rule out such occurrences, and furthermore reveal a new way to (...) distinguish clinical placebos from standard medical treatments. (shrink)

Disclosure in clinical practice is aimed at promoting patient autonomy, usually culminating in patient choice (e.g., to consent to an operation or not, or between different medications). In medical ethics, there is an implicit background assumption that knowing more about (X) automatically translates to greater, or more genuine, autonomy with respect to one's choices involving (X). I challenge this assumption by arguing that in rare cases, withholding information can promote a patient's autonomy (understood as the capacity for rational choice in (...) alignment with one's values and goals). (shrink)

This essay examines the development of descartes' literary aspirations, and the temporal and ironic structures of the "discourse" and "meditations". descartes emerges as an ingenious philosophical stylist, with complicated debts to montaigne. his texts are shown to employ a 'rhetoric of edification', embodying the view that metaphysical wisdom can be achieved only through a lengthy apprenticeship to error.

A groundbreaking study of deafness, by a philosopher who combines the scientific erudition of Oliver Sacks with the historical flair of Simon Schama. There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others? In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Ree tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the (...) present. Ree explores the great debates about deafness between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right. I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey,taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, talking parrots, and silent films. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is as learned and informative as it is delightful to read. (shrink)

This book contains the first English translations of The Origin of the Moral Sensations and Psychological Observations the two most important works by the German philosopher Paul Re. These essays present Re's moral philosophy, which ...

The stunning debut of Jonathan Rée, the Simon Schama of philosophy. 'I See A Voice is a joy to read: bold, crisp in style, effortlessly erudite, slyly humorous, passionate and humane.' Roy Porter, Independent 'Rée writes with such clarity and elegance that his prose is a pleasure to read. His exploration of the world of the deaf demonstrates that their tragic deprivation of one sense illumines our understanding of the others. His study of sign language gives us unparalleled insight into (...) the nature of spoken language... this book is not only a fascinating history of the belated correction of our misperceptions of the deaf, but a demonstration that philosophy really can advance our understanding of the world and ourselves.' Anthony Storr, Literary Review 'Some philosophers take difficulty and try to make it simple, but Rée takes what is apparently mundane and undeniably everyday and makes it hard and wonderful. Reading his book, I had to sit at a table, with a pen and notebook, jotting down things I had never thought about before - asking myself how it was that I had lived with this commonsense all my life, yet never been in possession of its meanings... Rée treats philosophy the way Adam Phillips treats psychoanalysis: he scrutinises the everyday and the commonplace and charges them with significance. Psychoanalysis and the writings of Freud flood into his text, along with the poetry of Wordsworth, the writings of Proust, his own poignant memories of things past. The melancholy richness of his writing soaks up the culture of the late twentieth century: its emphasis on subjectivity and uncertainity; its sense of the individual; its receptivity to other forms; its confessionalism and belief in self scrutiny... in his passionate, fascinating philosophical history of language, deafness and the senses.' Nicci Gerrard, Observer. (shrink)

What is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who make (...) true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

On its first appearance in 1960, the _Concise Encyclopedia_ _of Western Philosophy_ established itself as a classic; this third edition builds on its original strengths but brings it completely up to date. The _Concise Encyclopedia_ offers a lively, readable, comprehensive and authoritative treatment of Western philosophy as a whole, incorporating scintillating articles by many leading philosophical authors. It serves not only as a convenient reference work, but also as an engaging introduction to philosophy.