Epistemic paternalism is the thesis that a paternalistic interference with an individual's inquiry is justified when it is likely to bring about an epistemic improvement in her. In this article I claim that in order to motivate epistemic paternalism we must first account for the value of epistemic improvements. I propose that the epistemic paternalist has two options: either epistemic improvements are valuable because they contribute to wellbeing, or they are epistemically valuable. I will argue that these options constitute the (...) foundations of a dilemma: either epistemic paternalism collapses into general paternalism, or a distinctive project of justified epistemic paternalism is implausible. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a definition of paternalism must meet certain methodological constraints. Given the failings of descriptivist and normatively charged definitions of paternalism, I argue that we have good reason to pursue a normatively neutral definition. Archard's 1990 definition is one such account. It is for this reason that I return to Archard's account with a critical eye. I argue that Archard's account is extensionally inadequate, failing to capture some cases which are clear instances of paternalism. I (...) refine each of his three conditions, ultimately providing an improved definition of paternalistic interference. This revised definition meets specific methodological constraints, offering a definition that is both neutral between anti- and pro-paternalistic intuitions, but that also explains why paternalism is normatively significant. Specifically, this definition captures the conflict between interfering with an individual's choices and treating the individual benevolently, without making paternalism permissible or impermissible by definition. (shrink)

In medical practice, the doctrine of informed consent is generally understood to have priority over the medical practitioner’s duty of care to her patient. A common consequentialist argument for the prioritisation of informed consent above the duty of care involves the claim that respect for a patient’s free choice is the best way of protecting that patient’s best interests; since the patient has a special expertise over her values and preferences regarding non-medical goods she is ideally placed to make a (...) decision that will protect her interests. In this paper I argue against two consequentialist justifications for a blanket prioritisation of informed consent over the duty of care by considering cases in which patients have imperfect access to their overall best interests. Furthermore, I argue that there are cases where the mere presentation of choice under the doctrine of informed consent is detrimental to patient best interests. I end the paper by considering more nuanced approaches to resolving the conflict between informed consent and the duty of care and consider the option of permitting patients to waive informed consent. (shrink)

Medical practitioners are duty-bound to tell their patients the truth about their medical conditions, along with the risks and benefits of proposed treatments. Some patients, however, would rather not receive medical information. A recent response to this tension has been to argue that that the disclosure of medical information is not optional. As such, patients do not have permission to refuse medical information. In this paper I argue that, depending on the context, the disclosure of medical information can undermine the (...) patient’s ability to exercise her autonomy or have therapeutically detrimental effects. In the light of these insights I go on to develop a context-sensitive approach to medical disclosure. The advantage of this account is that it addresses concerns on both sides of the debate; whilst it acknowledges that patients do not have an exercisable ‘right not to know,’ it allows that in some cases medical information ought to be withheld. (shrink)

A governing principle in medical ethics is respect for patient autonomy. This principle is commonly drawn upon in order to argue for the permissibility of assisted dying. In this paper I explore the proper role that respect for patient autonomy should play in this context. I argue that the role of autonomy is not to identify a patient’s best interests, but instead to act as a side-constraint on action. The surprising conclusion of the paper is that whether or not it (...) is in the best interests for the patient to die is a morally objective matter. This allows for the possibility that it can be in the best interests of the patient to die even if she autonomously considers it to be in her best interest to continue living. I argue that concerns about ‘mandatory’ euthanasia can be met when patient autonomy is respected as a side-constraint on action. Ultimately, this means that assisted dying is permissible, not because the autonomous patient views her suffering to be unbearable, but because it is in her objective best interests and she permitted it via her consent. (shrink)

On the 13th June 2014, the Centre for the Humanities and Health (CHH) at King’s College London hosted a one-day workshop on ‘Parentalism and Trust.’ This workshop was the sixth in a series of workshops whose aim is to provide a new model for high-quality open interdisciplinary engagement between medical professionals and philosophers. The term ‘Parentalism’ rather than paternalism is chosen and used throughout because of some of the derisory and unfortunate gender connotations associated with paternalism (and/or its counterpart ‘maternalism’). (...) Medical Parentalism is the position that unwanted interference with a patient’s choices and actions in order to protect and promote her best interests is morally justified. Whilst there are many problems with its justification and implementation, the workshop addressed how such interference depends on a trusting relationship between the doctor and patient, and the extent to which parentalist interferences might undermine this trust. (shrink)

On 27 September 2013, the Centre for the Humanities and Health (CHH) at King's College London hosted a 1-day workshop on ‘Medical knowledge, Medical Duties’. This workshop was the fifth in a series of five workshops whose aim is to provide a new model for high-quality, open interdisciplinary engagement between medical professionals and philosophers. This report identifies the key points of discussion raised throughout the day and the methodology employed.

Neil Manson and Onora O’Neill have recently defended an original theory of informed consent in their book Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics (2007). The development of their ‘waiver’ model is premised on the failings of the theory of informed consent as disclosure, which is rejected on two counts: firstly, the disclosure model’s implicit reliance upon a ‘conduit-container’ model of communication means that the regulatory requirements of informed consent can rarely be achieved; secondly, the model’s purported ethical justification via a principle (...) of respect for patient autonomy is presented as being vacuous. Despite having laudable motivations for rethinking informed consent, I argue that their theory of informed consent as waiver can be criticised on similar grounds. In order to support this thesis I object that Manson and O’Neill’s developed theory of agential communication is too intricate to easily meet the demands of informed consent as waiver. Secondly, I show that the model appears to be implicitly reliant upon a principle of respect for patient autonomy. Hence, despite improving upon the doctrine of informed consent, the waiver model needs further elucidation in order to avoid the problems mounted against the disclosure model. (shrink)

The acquisition of fully informed consent presents a central ethical problem for the procurement and storage of human tissue in biobanks. The tension lies between the apparent necessity of obtaining informed consent from potential research subjects and the projected future use of the tissue. Specifically, under the doctrine of informed consent medical researchers are required to inform their potential research subjects about the relevant risks and purposes of the proposed research (Declaration of Helsinki, 2008, “Section 24.” Accessed November 1, 2009. (...) http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html). However, because human tissue – when stored in biobanks – can be put to multifarious uses, the information that medical researchers are expected to divulge to their subjects is epistemologically inaccessible. Biobank researchers are thus thought to be unable to obtain informed consent from their subjects, making the practice ethically suspicious. We propose that such suspicions of ethical failure should be reconsidered by presenting two possible solutions. Firstly we argue that the epistemological difficulty might be partially solved by adopting the “waiver model” of informed consent. Secondly, we put forward an argument that individual consent can be supplemented by group ethical models. We thus conclude that while informed consent is problematic for biobank researchers, alternative ethical solutions are available. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain (at least in part) why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

Long-lasting interference effects in picture naming are induced when objects are presented in categorically related contexts in both continuous and blocked cyclic paradigms. Less consistent context effects have been reported when the task is changed to semantic classification. Experiment 1 confirmed the recent finding of cumulative facilitation in the continuous paradigm with living/non-living superordinate categorization. To avoid a potential confound involving participants responding with the identical superordinate category in related contexts in the blocked cyclic paradigm, we devised a novel set (...) of categorically related objects that also varied in terms of relative age – a core semantic type associated with the adjective word class across languages. Experiment 2 demonstrated the typical interference effect with these stimuli in basic level naming. In Experiment 3, using the identical blocked cyclic paradigm, we failed to observe semantic context effects when the same pictures were classified as younger–older. Overall, the results indicate the semantic context effects in the two paradigms do not share a common origin, with the effect in the continuous paradigm arising at the level of conceptual representations or in conceptual-to-lexical connections while the effect in the blocked cyclic paradigm most likely originates at a lexical level of representation. The implications of these findings for current accounts of long-lasting interference effects in spoken word production are discussed. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel account of how active forgetting underpins Nietzsche’s conception of health. Recent work has focused on what active forgetting is but does not explain how this process facilitates what Nietzsche calls ‘spiritual health’. I show that active forgetting – unlike Freudian repression or sublimation – preserves spiritual health when it is challenged by experiential content such as trauma, and that it allows for the incorporation of such experiences. I offer a reconstruction of active forgetting which makes (...) reference to the use of therapeutic narratives, which although neither necessary nor sufficient for active forgetting can aid and optimize this process in the face of traumatic experiences. My account provides a complex and clear distinction between forgetting and narrativization, in keeping with Nietzsche’s comments on the utility of adversity and the importance of resilience in relation to spiritual health. (shrink)

This chapter examines the way the two main philosophies of Heidegger and Derrida, come into critical contact with each other. Derrida represents his own thinking as a development of Heideggerian thought. The chapter discusses Derrida's engagement with Heidegger spanned nearly his entire philosophical career. Derrida's exploration of Heidegger's spiritual idiom, while somewhat unusual, is not unconnected with his other writings on Heidegger. Through tracing Heidegger's spiritual idiom, Derrida seeks to bring out what is at stake in those aspects of Heidegger's (...) thought he finds uncertain or, to put it more bluntly, questionable. In tracing Derrida's reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit, then, one shall in effect be crossing two pathways. One uses the medium of spirit to introduce certain critical questions for Heideggerian philosophy, specifically questions that relate to the political and geo political aspects of Heidegger's work. (shrink)

Pyrrhonian skeptics, according to Sextus Empiricus, suspend judgment in the face of equally strong oppositions, but they also continue to investigate. This joint characterization has puzzled scholars: Why keep investigating if the evidence demands epochē? On this point, Sextus has been accused of muddled thinking at best and incoherence at worst. In this paper, I explain how investigative activity harmonizes with the suspensive mindset. My interpretation helps to explain several puzzling features of Pyrrhonian philosophy in addition to the idea that (...) one can both suspend judgment and continue investigating. (shrink)

Scientists, philosophers, and policymakers disagree about how to define microaggression. Here, we offer a taxonomy of existing definitions, clustering around (a) the psychological motives of perpetrators, (b) the experience of victims, and (c) the functional role of microaggression in oppressive social structures. We consider conceptual and epistemic challenges to each and suggest that progress may come from developing novel hybrid accounts of microaggression, combining empirically tractable features with sensitivity to the testimony of victims.

In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as reflecting disagreements (...) over these principles. Finally, we shift our attention away from traditional discussions of distributive justice, highlighting the importance of concerns about risk imposition, special duties, and social roles in explaining debates over the COVID-19 vaccine. We conclude that the normative complexity this article highlights deepens the need for decision-making bodies to be sensitive to public input. (shrink)

Understanding in Epistemology Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship … Continue reading Understanding in Epistemology →.

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

Microaggressions are seemingly negligible slights that can cause significant damage to frequently targeted members of marginalized groups. Recently, Scott O. Lilienfeld challenged a key platform of the microaggression research project: what’s aggressive about microaggressions? To answer this challenge, Derald Wing Sue, the psychologist who has spearheaded the research on microaggressions, needs to theorize a spectrum of aggression that ranges from intentional assault to unintentional microaggressions. I suggest turning to Bonnie Mann’s “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies” for inspiration. Building from Mann’s (...) richer theoretical framework will allow Sue to answer Lilienfeld’s objection and defend the legitimacy of the concept, ‘microaggression’. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief analysis of the problems facing Bonnett's attempt to articulate a richer conception of thinking. Bonnett states, authentic thinking and understanding require that one become the originators and authors of their own thinking, as against merely reflecting the thoughts of others. In order to deflect the criticism that the account is promoting a self‐centred view of thinking, Bonnett introduces the concept of self referencing, which he describes as the determination to understand what one learns in terms (...) of one's own experiences. Bonnett states, the discipline and rigour of poetic thinking are rooted in the underlying sense of personal responsibility. One of the main flaws with Bonnett's account is that he simply does not engage in a careful enough reading of the philosophical accounts of thinking he draws upon, especially the Heideggerian accounts of being in the world and truth. (shrink)

This chapter explores the similarities that exist between two accounts of thinking presented by philosophers who are usually held to belong to differing, even conflicting, philosophical traditions. These are the accounts of Gilbert Ryle and Martin Heidegger. By situating Ryle in relation to Heidegger, the chapter seeks to show that there is an alternative reading of Ryle and one that problematises any straightforward understanding of him as a partisan of the rationalistic account. Ryle's first criticism takes issue with the way (...) Heidegger turns knowledge into a derivative mode of experience through his account of being in the world. According to Ryle, Heidegger is fundamentally mistaken in doing so, quite simply because knowledge is in fact a precondition for having a relation to things in the world in the first place. Heidegger draws a distinction between two differing conceptions of truth: aletheia and adequatio. (shrink)

This chapter considers a thinker Jacques Derrida, who in some ways inherits the Heideggerian legacy and yet also problematises and puts it to work in new ways. Like Heidegger, the insights raised by Derrida's philosophy in respect to the nature of human thinking come by way of his exploration of the relation between thought and language. Derrida in many ways comes close to one of the key accounts of language afforded by Ordinary Language philosophy, namely that of John Austin. The (...) chapter shows how Derrida's own account of language enables such a surpassing and demonstrates that this is not by way of any bizarre, farfetched man oeuvres but is rather the result of a commitment to remaining faithful and attentive to the actual workings of language. It explores Derrida's account of signification as it develops from his critical confrontation with structuralism and De Saussure. (shrink)

This chapter considers certain key features of Austin's philosophy. It discusses the under recognised affinities that exist between the work of Derrida and Austin, particularly concerning their philosophical methods and their respective attempts to work against the traditional, representation list account of language. The chapter exemplifies the manner in which Derrida nevertheless presents himself as going beyond Austin's philosophy in certain crucial ways, by attending to the criticisms he levels at Austin in his paper ‘Signature Event Context’. It describes Derrida's (...) account by assessing whether his critique of Austin holds, a task that is aided by an exploration of Stanley Cavell's critique of Derrida's reading of Austin. Finally, through appraising Cavell and Derrida's readings of Austin, the chapter argues that Derrida's critique can in fact be defended and in a manner that serves understand Derrida's account of language and thought in certain significant ways. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Starting with service robotics and industrial robotics, this paper aims to suggest philosophical reflections about the relationship between body and machine, between man and technology in our contemporary world. From the massive use of the cell phone to the robots which apparently “feel” and show emotions like humans do. From the wearable exoskeleton to the prototype reproducing the artificial sense of touch, technological progress explodes to the extent of embodying itself in our nakedness. Robotics, indeed, is inspired by biology in (...) order to develop a new kind of technology affecting human life. This is a bio-robotic approach, which is fulfilled in the figure of the cyborg and consequently in the loss of human nature. Today, humans have reached the possibility to modify and create their own body following their personal desires. But what is the limit of this achievement? For this reason, we all must question ourselves whether we have or whether we are a body. (shrink)

Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter or body of information—demands of us. Here is the (...) plan. After some ground clearing in §1, §2 outlines and motivates a plausible working model—moderate factivity—for characterising the sense in which objectual understanding should be regarded as factive. §3 shows how the datum that we can understand false theories can, despite initial suggestions to the contrary, be assimilated straightforwardly within the moderate factivity model. §4 highlights how the inverse kind of case to that explored in §3—viz., a variant of Lackey’s creationist teacher case—poses special problems for moderate factivity. With reference to recent work on moral understanding by Hills, §5 proposes a solution to the problem, and §6 attempts to diagnose why it is that we might originally have been led to draw the wrong conclusion. (shrink)

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time—the so‐called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non‐causal signal, would occur. We demonstrate for (...) the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. (shrink)

In this study, we analyzed the academic integrity policies of colleges in Ontario, Canada, casting a specific lens on contract cheating. We extracted data from 28 individual documents from 22-publicly-funded colleges including policies and procedures (n = 27) and code of conduct (n = 1). We analyzed the characteristics of the documents from three perspectives: (a) document type and titles; (b) policy language; and (c) policy principles. Then we examined five core elements of the documentation including (a) access; (b) approach; (...) (c) responsibility; (d) detail; and (e) support. Key findings revealed that specific and direct language pertaining to contract cheating was largely absent from the policy documents, that underlying policy principles lacked clear definition, and that exemplary policy has yet to be developed in this context. We conclude with recommendations for increased policy research in the area of academic integrity and a call for policy revision in Canadian higher education institutions to more explicitly address the issue of contract cheating, as well as provide more support to students and other campus stakeholders to better understand how contract cheating impacts and impedes teaching and learning. (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and diplomacy (...) were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 74-89, March 2021.

At first glance, hate speech and microaggressions seem to have little overlap beyond being communicated verbally or in written form. Hate speech seems clearly macro-aggressive: an intentional, obviously harmful act lacking the ambiguity (and plausible deniability) of microaggressions. If we look back at historical discussions of hate speech, however, many of these assumed differences turn out to be points of similarity. The harmfulness of hate speech only became widely acknowledged after a concerted effort by critical race theorists, feminists, and other (...) activists. Before the 1990s, slurs were widely considered socially acceptable behavior: mere jokes that weren’t intended to be harmful. Authors like Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, and Charles Lawrence pushed back against this dismissal. In this chapter, I show that their arguments for the serious harmfulness of hate speech prefigure and provide support for current debates about the serious harmfulness of microaggressions. Exploring resonances with the 1980s hate speech debate will allow us to explain why microaggressions fall below the cutoff for legal liability but remain apt targets for moral blame. (shrink)

Is medicine an art or a science? The question was being asked 30 years ago and I hope it will continue to be asked in 30 years time. Today’s climate of evidence based medicine, research, and ever demanding and demanded counting of patients, staff, time, trolleys, and operations suggests that medicine is a science. A few brave people, often working in the field of palliative care, suggest otherwise. Jodi Halpern, psychiatrist, medical ethicist, and philosopher, argues that the traditional medical stance (...) of detached concern—that is, “not being moved or influenced emotionally …. (shrink)

We report the results of a cross-cultural investigation of person-body reasoning in the United Kingdom and northern Brazilian Amazon (Marajó Island). The study provides evidence that directly bears upon divergent theoretical claims in cognitive psychology and anthropology, respectively, on the cognitive origins and cross-cultural incidence of mind-body dualism. In a novel reasoning task, we found that participants across the two sample populations parsed a wide range of capacities similarly in terms of the capacities’ perceived anchoring to bodily function. Patterns of (...) reasoning concerning the respective roles of physical and biological properties in sustaining various capacities did vary between sample populations, however. Further, the data challenge prior ad-hoc categorizations in the empirical literature on the developmental origins of and cognitive constraints on psycho-physical reasoning (e.g., in afterlife concepts). We suggest cross-culturally validated categories of “Body Dependent” and “Body Independent” items for future developmental and cross-cultural research in this emerging area. (shrink)

"[N]o matter how much of a coalition space this is, it ain't nothing like the coalescing you've got to do tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday."This essay is a critical reflection on the centrality of coalitional politics for decolonial feminist philosophy. Decolonial feminisms emerge from multisited struggles with colonization and, as a result, are rich and heterogeneous.1 Thus, the starting point for decolonial feminists must be one that centers on coalitional politics. Women of color have long emphasized the importance of coalition (...) to collective struggle against a matrix of systems of oppression.2 However, the work of forging coalitions is just that, work. Indeed, the work of coalition building, as Bernice... (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

The ordination of women in the Church of England has had a long hard road. Other denominations, and other parts of the Anglican Communion took the step, but it was not until the 1990s that the first women priests were ordained in the Church of England itself. Even then, Emma Percy describes the situation as an ‘ambiguous welcome’. Careful provision has been made at every stage for those who not only will not accept women as priests, but require the (...) service of bishops who have not participated in the ordination of women. The path to acceptance for women bishops has also been lengthy and subject to the same caveats and provisions. Percy argues that this reveals an underlying failure to think theologically about gender. She recognizes that there are still profound inequalities in the Church’s treatment of women in leadership. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A division in scholarship on Rousseau’s Second Discourse turns on the issue of division itself. Some see Rousseau’s natural man collapsing the division between man and beast through suggesting that our origins might be in orangutans, while others see Rousseau depicting a rupture of the human being from the rest of the animal kingdom through the separation of the physical and the metaphysical. I argue that in looking to the natural scientific culture of Rousseau’s own time, one can see (...) that he is employing a uniquely informed vision of the human being that itself straddles this divide of interpretation through presenting man as both a naturally and mythically hybrid creature. To conclude, I claim that illuminating this hybrid identity of the human being also sheds new light on the kind of narrative Rousseau employs. His ‘hypothetical history’ is itself a hybrid of two distinct origin stories, mirroring the very argument Rousseau is making: that man is always a duplex of the animal and the spiritual. This moves beyond presenting Rousseau as a thinker of irresolvable paradoxes to seeing the Second Discourse as a resolved presentation of what it means to be a natural duplex. (shrink)