Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, has proved a problematic ‘classic text’ for feminism. This paper focuses on the liberal concept of self‐ownership to show how the Vindication both confronts and perpetuates the dilemmas of ‘liberal feminism’. Self‐ownership is not a term used by Wollstonecraft herself, but I make use of it in this paper because I believe it captures what she means by ‘independence’, arrived at by a combination of reflection, self‐government and labour. (...) It implies a natural right to resist oppression and arbitrary government and so reaches the heart of Wollstonecraft's argument against patriarchy as a particular form of arbitrary power. As Alan Ryan argues, ‘each of us is obliged to obey the government so long as it upholds our natural rights, but if it violates them, we are not obliged to obey’. As a liberal concept, self‐ownership is fraught with ambiguity for feminism. Donna Dickenson argues that it can be interpreted both as ‘masculinist through and through’ and as ‘the essence of feminism’. Its very ambiguity makes it an appropriate conceptual lens through which to view Wollstonecraft's own contradictory arguments. (shrink)

Looking at scholarship on both old' and new' slavery, Laura Brace assesses the work of Aristotle, Locke, Hegel, Kant, Wollstonecraft and Mill, and explores the contemporary concerns of human trafficking and the prison industrial complex to consider the limitations of new slavery' discourse.

This paper explores the gendering of civil society by focusing on the moral campaigns against wet nursing and in favour of maternal feeding in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, drawing attention to the overlap between the family and market society. It argues that the organization of sexual difference is central to the social world and to the idea of civil society in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Men enjoyed the benefits of ethical incorporation into a rich version of civil (...) society and withheld worth from women's participation in the market. Women who immersed themselves in the world of exchange were stigmatized as mercenaries and freelance hustlers, so that they could not achieve ethical incorporation except as natural mothers in the nether world of the family. (shrink)

This article explores the British anti-slavery writings of the mid- to late 18th century, and the meanings which they gave to the idea of owning a property in the person. It addresses the construction of a particular moral and political landscape where freedom was understood as both a kind of property and as non-domination, and slavery was constructed as a form of theft, and as the exercise of arbitrary power. This created a complex moral space, where possession, commerce, savagery, tyranny (...) and the emergence of race were all caught up with each other and entangled with the concept of consent. The article concludes with the suggestion that our current understandings of slavery continue to be informed by our notions of contract and consent, and so by conceptions of freedom and ownership that take us back to the tensions and debates of the 18th century. (shrink)

Scientists typically use a variety of representations, including different kinds of figures, to present and defend hypotheses. In order to understand the justification of scientific hypotheses, it is essential to understand how visual representations contribute to scientific arguments. Since the logical understanding of arguments involves the truth or falsity of the representations involved, visual representations must have the capacity to bear truth in order to be genuine components of arguments. By drawing on Goodman's analysis of symbol systems, and on Tarski's (...) work on truth, I show that the figures used in science meet this criterion. (shrink)

According to Weyl, “‘inexhaustibility’ is essential to the infinite”. However, he distinguishes two kinds of inexhaustible, or merely potential, domains: those that are “extensionally determinate” and those that are not. This article clarifies Weyl's distinction and explains its enduring logical and philosophical significance. The distinction sheds lights on the contemporary debate about potentialism, which in turn affords a deeper understanding of Weyl.

Philosophers of perception have a notoriously difficult time trying to account for hallucinatory experiences. One surprisingly quite popular move, and one that cross-cuts the representationalism/relationalism divide, is to say that hallucinations involve an awareness of uninstantiated properties. In this paper, I provide a new argument against this view. Not only are its proponents forced to classify many hallucinations as veridical, such experiences turn out to be necessarily veridical. In addition, I show that representationalists who endorse the uninstantiated property view must (...) reject the common fundamental kind claim and adopt disjunctivism, and naïve realists/relationalists must radically modify their disjunctivism: The distinction between ‘veridical’ and ‘hallucinatory’ will no longer track a metaphysical distinction between the relevant experiences. (shrink)

One way to discuss personal identity is by distinguishing between specific and numerical types of similar things. Some of the ways in which the individuality of each clone comes out are found in the alterations they make to their alphanumeric designations, uniforms, and living environments. In his important article “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Harry G. Frankfurt explains that what makes humans unique according to his concept of personhood is their “capacity for reflective self‐evaluation.” The (...) activation of the Fett clones' inhibitor chips with Order 66 represents the intention of the Empire to deprive all the chipped clones of their freedom of action and will. As Frankfurt states, “Suppose, however, that he enjoys both freedom of action and freedom of the will. Then he is not only free to do what he wants to do; he is also free to want what he wants to want.”. (shrink)

Zachariah's description of a wonderful fornicating life for Sam and Dean captures some truth but it also misses the importance women play in shaping the Winchesters' moral decisions. In general, important women in the lives of Sam and Dean fall into three broad categories: mothers, lovers, and monsters. Sam and Dean are all too familiar with this philosophy of utilitarianism. Many times they have sacrificed relationships with women for the sake of their mission. Throughout Supernatural the objectification of the Winchesters (...) is contrasted with a happy domestic life. Sam and Dean are mistaken in thinking that their only value resides in the roles they play in the larger battles of good and evil; if they looked deeper they would see that they both would prefer a loving relationship with a woman. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason remains one of the most opaque of Kant's published writings. Though this opacity belongs, partly, to the text itself, a key claim of this article is that this opacity stems also from the narrow lenses through which his readers view this text. Often read as part of Kant's moral philosophy or his universal history, the literature has thus far neglected a different vantage point on the Religion, one that does not refute the utility (...) of these lenses but complements them. This paper places the Religion alongside parts of Kant's corpus that it is less typically paired with, namely his natural history writings—in particular, his writings on the concept of race and the development of the human races. I argue that by doing so, we can shed much light on Kant's infamous claim that there is a radical evil in the human species. More precisely, we will come to appreciate that this evil is not, as it is usually understood, a static property or fixed characteristic of human beings. Instead, radical evil concerns a dynamic, changing defect in human nature that increasingly threatens our aspirations to collective moral perfection. (shrink)

Welches Verhältnis besteht zwischen „Bild" und menschlichem Denken? Welche Rolle spielt das Konzept der „Form" im menschlichen Wissen? Forscher aus Philosophie, Kulturwissenschaften, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Ästhetik, Literatur, Anthropologie, Mathematik und Biologie untersuchen aus historischer und theoretischer Perspektive den Zusammenhang zwischen der Aktivität des Denkens und den Konzepten von Bild und Form.

The Fold is a book of practical philosophy that takes a radical new approach to aesthetics. Laura U. Marks calls this philosophy "enfolding-unfolding aesthetics," based in ideas derived from Gilles Deleuze and others (G.F.W. Leibniz, David Bohm, and Édouard Glissant) that the universe is folded in on itself. She proposes a theory of mediation as contact and connection across the folds and a set of embodied methods for detecting such cosmic connections. In drawing out this aesthetics, Marks considers the (...) embodied and sensuous dimensions of engaging with audiovisual works and works of art-dimensions that Marks suggests are composed of the very folds that compose everything and everyone: all living beings, from humans to particles, sandwiches to stars, technologies, thoughts and images, in the present, the past, and the future. Making use of art and film, with a focus on African diaspora and Arab cinema, Marks opens ways to strengthen connections to the cosmos and to better trace processes of becoming that are immanent within the fold. (shrink)

The volume provides a thorough look into Marina Sbisà’s distinctive, Austinian-inspired approach to speech acts. By gathering original essays from a world-class lineup of philosophers of language, linguists, social epistemologists, action theorists, and communication scholars, the collection provides the first comprehensive critical treatment of Sbisa’s outstanding contribution to speech act theory.

Recent debates in metaphysics have highlighted the significance of type theories, such as Simple Type Theory (STT), for our philosophical analysis. In this chapter, I present the salient features of a constructive type theory in the style of Martin-Löf, termed CTT. My principal aim is to convey the flavour of this rich, flexible and sophisticated theory and compare it with STT. I especially focus on the forms of quantification which are available in CTT. A further aim is to argue that (...) a comparison between a plurality of theories is beneficial to the philosophical analysis. We may, for example, discover helpful features of one theory that we may want to import into another context, thus enriching our repertoire of formal tools. Or, through comparison with a less well-known theory, we may gain a better understanding of the characteristics of the theories we are familiar with. As argued in this chapter, CTT has much to offer in all of these respects. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionImmanent authorship: From the Living Theatre to Cage and Goat IslandDisorganizing language, voicing minority: From Artaud to Carmelo Bene, Robert Wilson & Georges LavaudantImmanent imitations, animal affects: From Hijikata Tatsumi to Marcus CoatesPaying attention, participating in the whole: Allan Kaprow alongside Lygia ClarkEthical durations, opening to other times: Returning to Goat Island with WilsonIn-Conclusion: What 'good' is immanent theatre? Immanence as an ethico-aesthetic valueCodaBibliographyIndex.

Predicativity is a notable example of fruitful interaction between philosophy and mathematical logic. It originated at the beginning of the 20th century from methodological and philosophical reflections on a changing concept of set. A clarification of this notion has prompted the development of fundamental new technical instruments, from Russell's type theory to an important chapter in proof theory, which saw the decisive involvement of Kreisel, Feferman and Schütte. The technical outcomes of predica-tivity have since taken a life of their own, (...) but have also produced a deeper understanding of the notion of predicativity, therefore witnessing the " light logic throws on problems in the foundations of mathematics. " (Feferman 1998, p. vii) Predicativity has been at the center of a considerable part of Feferman's work: over the years he has explored alternative ways of explicating and analyzing this notion and has shown that predicative mathematics extends much further than expected within ordinary mathematics. The aim of this note is to outline the principal features of predicativity, from its original motivations at the start of the past century to its logical analysis in the 1950-60's. The hope is to convey why predicativity is a fascinating subject, which has attracted Feferman's attention over the years. (shrink)

Laura Nader is a towering figure as anthropologist, teacher, and public intellectual. Her letters give a glimpse of academic life mostly unseen by academics and by the general public. The collection includes letters from academic colleagues, but it also contains correspondence from lawyers, politicians, citizens, people on death row, Peace Corps workers, members of the military, scientists, and more.

Insights into the intelligence throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and under our skin. Is there a way to understand the materials that surround us not as passive objects, but as other intelligences interacting with our own? In Parallel Minds, expert in materials science and nanotechnology Laura Tripaldi delivers not only detailed insights into the properties and emergent behaviors of matter as revealed by state-of-the-art chemistry, synthetic biology, and (...) nanotech, but also a rich philosophical reflection that crosses the frontier between nature and culture, where the most cutting-edge scientific syntheses resonate with ancient myth. The result is a technomaterial bestiary full of unexpected encounters with “strange minds”—from cobwebs to kevlar and carbon fibre, from centaurs to amoebas to arachnids, from polycephalic slime to resonating plasmons, from viruses to golems. Parallel Minds reveals the intelligence at large throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and even under our skin. Full of lateral ideas and unexpected images, Tripaldi’s book imbues the study and synthesis of materials with a new urgency. For not only do the materials that surround us participate actively in the construction of the world in which we live, but harnessing their ability to interact intelligently with their environment could be the key to the future of our species. (shrink)

This systematic review identifies and critically evaluates instruments that have been developed to measure clinical trial informed consent comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults.Literature searches were carried out on Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, CINHAL, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Cochrane Library for English language articles published between January 1980 and September 2008. Instruments were excluded if they focused on consent onto paediatric trials, the construct under study was primarily capacity or competency, or the instrument was developed specifically for psychiatric or cognitively-impaired populations. Instruments selected for (...) review were evaluated against the following criteria: (1) method of item generation; (2) type and format of test items; (3) administration and interpretation of test results; and (4) psychometric properties.Three instruments met our defined inclusion criteria: the Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (DICCT), the Quality of Informed Consent (QuIC) questionnaire and the Brief Informed Consent Protocol (BICEP). Each instrument varied in terms of content measured. Significantly, these are the first standardized instruments developed to assess comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Yet, each instrument had its own set of limitations such as the lack of generalizability and the absence of details pertaining to how test results should be used to guide clinical decision-making.Standardized clinical trial informed consent comprehension assessments have been developed to identify gaps in research participants' understanding and ensure that respect for patient autonomy is satisfied. (shrink)

In his Letter on the Blind, Denis Diderot describes, based on mathematical physics, a method for evaluating hypotheses in situations where certainty cannot be reached. This article's thesis is that the author of the Letter extends this method to metaphysical questions of finalism and idealism. Diderot presents each pair of antagonistic positions (finalism-antifinalism and idealism-realism) in such a way that readers are invited to carefully weigh the arguments and to choose the one that appears to be the best, or most (...) probable, position. (shrink)

We began writing the first edition of this textbook in 2006, soon after a wave of major corporate scandals had shaken the financial world. Headlines made the companies involved in these ethical scandals household names: Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, KPMG, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney. At that time, we suggested that, in light of such significant cases of financial fraud, mismanagement, criminality, and deceit, the relevance of business ethics could no longer be questioned.

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain is the result of the critical and political commitment of various Latin American and Spanish philosophers who share a critical approach to the global “stealth revolution” in recent decades, where neoliberalism has forced the well-being and reproduction of life to adapt to a system devastating for both humans and non-humans. The authors voice the shared concern of contemporary Spanish and Latin American societies to build new (...) conceptions of the public and the common through mobilizing affects usually disavowed in political theory. If, in Ancient Greece, the idea of strengthening the most vulnerable and weakest was deplored as the art of sophists, this collection edited by Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid explores the other side of our social world to revive grassroots strategies of resistance and emancipation, which are able to bring about new distributions of power, welfare, and discursive legitimation and to extend our goal of creating a radically democratic world. (shrink)

While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason problem that afflicts Fitting-Attitude analyses of value. I argue that we can distinguish reasons of the right kind from reasons of the wrong kind by being clear about what our reasons are for. In Wrong Kind of Reason cases, our reason to have a certain affective attitude is a reason for an action, and it is this category-mistake that is the source of the problem.

The so-called bottoming-out problem is considered one of the most serious problems in Stuart Glennan's mechanistic theory of causality. It is usually argued that such a problem cannot be overcome with the acknowledgement of the non-causal character of fundamental phenomena. According to such a widespread view, in the mechanistic account causation must go all the way down to the bottom level; a solution to the bottoming-out problem, therefore, requires an appeal to an ancillary account of causation that covers fundamental phenomena. (...) In this paper I reconsider the arguments that led to this conclusion and criticize them. I argue that the no-causality-at-the-fundamental-level solution is in harmony with the causal anti-fundamentalism that characterizes the mechanistic theory. Moreover, contrarily to the dualistic solution put forward by Glennan, the no-causality-at-the-fundamental-level is not an ad-hoc solution.Finally, I provide the sketch for an account of the existence of an order in nature at the fundamental level that is consistent with the singularist and ontologically parsimonious spirit of the mechanistic account. (shrink)

Despite the centrality of the term within the title, the meaning of ?care? in residential child care remains largely unexplored. Shifting discourses of residential child care have taken it from the private into the public domain. Using a care ethics perspective, we argue that public care needs to move beyond its current instrumental focus to articulate a broader ontological purpose, informed by what is required to promote children's growth and flourishing. This depends upon the establishment of caring relationships enacted within (...) the lifespaces shared by children and those caring for them. We explore some of the central features of caring in the lifespace and conclude that residential child care is best considered to be a practical/moral endeavour rather than the technical/rational one it has become. It requires morally active, reflexive practitioners and containing environments. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Il n'est pas fruit du hasard cette rencontre qui a précédé l'édition de ce livre. Les rapports entre philosophes français et catalans viennent de loin. Le XIXe était modèle des "voyages philosophiques". Est parmi les plus connus celui de Cousin en Allemagne. Moins connus, mais également fructifères étaient ceux des philosophes exilés qui partirent sous les régimes de persécutions pour trouver en France non seulement un lieu d'accueil, mais également l'opportunité de confrontation de leurs idées avec celles des philosophes français. (...) De la même manière, certains exilés de la commune avaient trouvé un lieu d'accueil dans la Barcelone révolutionnaire des années républicaines. Ces rencontres n'ont jamais totalement fini de se produire au long du XXe siècle, période au cours de laquelle l'exil avait constitué la manière d'échapper à une morte sûre dans l'Espagne de la guerre civile. La période actuelle vit une nouvelle revitalisation des échanges, et ce livre en est un exemple."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Notre défi consiste à penser avec les lèvres, à faire sentir la portée de certaines philosophies contemporaines qui font jouer l'exigence d'avoir la bouche bien ouverte et des lèvres qui montrent les dents. Comment faire de la philosophie, non pas avec le langage, mais avec la langue, autrement dit avec sa matérialité et sa singularité? Ce livre ne traite pas du langage, de l'identité ou du sujet, ou peut-être que si, mais à partir des lèvres : il questionne la frontière, (...) l'altérité, le pouvoir, la jouissance, la littérature et ses politiques. Bref, il recherche le plaisir de faire de la philosophie en langues. (shrink)