In the past two decades, African American filmmakers like Spike Lee have made significant contributions to the dialogue about race in the United States by adapting techniques from classic _film noir _to black American cinema. This book is the first to examine these artistic innovations in detail from a philosophical perspective informed by both cognitive film theory and critical race theory. Dan Flory explores the techniques and themes that are used in black _film noir _to orchestrate the audience’s emotions (...) of sympathy and empathy felt toward morally complex characters whom people might not typically find appealing in real life, such as thugs, drug dealers, or murderers. Using an approach that combines the cognitive insights of theorists like David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, and Murray Smith with the reflective Wittgensteinian methods for considering film employed by Stanley Cavell, Stephen Mulhall, and William Rothman, Flory shows how these films scrutinize the state of race in America, induce their viewers to do so as well, and illuminate the ways in which categories of race have defined and continue to direct much of our vision of the moral self and what counts as appropriate moral sensibility. (shrink)

In the past two decades, African American filmmakers like Spike Lee have made significant contributions to the dialogue about race in the United States by adapting techniques from classic _film noir _to black American cinema. This book is the first to examine these artistic innovations in detail from a philosophical perspective informed by both cognitive film theory and critical race theory. Dan Flory explores the techniques and themes that are used in black _film noir _to orchestrate the audience’s emotions (...) of sympathy and empathy felt toward morally complex characters whom people might not typically find appealing in real life, such as thugs, drug dealers, or murderers. Using an approach that combines the cognitive insights of theorists like David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, and Murray Smith with the reflective Wittgensteinian methods for considering film employed by Stanley Cavell, Stephen Mulhall, and William Rothman, Flory shows how these films scrutinize the state of race in America, induce their viewers to do so as well, and illuminate the ways in which categories of race have defined and continue to direct much of our vision of the moral self and what counts as appropriate moral sensibility. (shrink)

The exchange between Peter Park, Dan Flory and Leah Kalmanson on Park’s book Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon took place during the APA’s 2016 Central Division meeting on a panel sponsored by the Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies. After having peer-reviewed the exchange, JWP invited Sonia Sikka and Mark Larrimore to engage with these papers. All the five papers are being published together in this issue.

Dan Flory; Race, Rationality, and Melodrama: Aesthetic Response and the Case of Oscar Micheaux, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 63, Issue 4.

This article explores mainstream audience reactions concerning race and how they intersect with late 1950s Westerns known as the Ranown cycle. Synthesizing ideas from critical philosophy of race, philosophy of film, cognitive film theory, and philosophy of emotion, I analyze how these films elicit racialized reactions of sociomoral disgust toward Native American characters. Because such responses are not ordinarily processed through higher-level forms of cognition, I argue that these embodied, affective, implicit reactions are key to understanding how films like those (...) in the Ranown cycle convey feelings, perspectives, and ideas concerning race, with important implications for ideology as well as philosophizing about film. (shrink)

This article uses Carl Plantinga’s and Noël Carroll’s theorizations regarding cinematic disgust to analyze Carl Franklin’s 1995 film noir, Devil in a Blue Dress. Plantinga argues for a link between disgust and ideology that helps to reveal deeper cultural significance in film, which Carroll’s work likewise supports. Plantinga further argues that disgust in art may be strangely attractive as well as repulsive, thereby eliciting reflection. I argue that combining these elements with philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s explanation of how moral revolutions (...) happen by means of honor codes helps to clarify not only viewer sympathy and solidarity for this film’s African-American protagonist, but also viewer moral disgust at another important white character’s racism. In particular, the film encourages its more thoughtful white viewers to reconsider as well as potentially change their affective responses, ideological predispositions, and habits of perception and attention regarding race, thereby facilitating fundamental moral change and even the possibility of moral revolution. (shrink)

This article examines Noël Carroll’s theory of solidarity from a critical race theoretical perspective. Using recent work in philosophy of film, philosophy of emotion, and critical philosophy of race, it argues his theory pays insufficient attention to both the role disgust plays in generating solidarity and the role race plays in generating disgust. Numerous and significant examples are cited to support these claims. The article also suggests implicit bias and embodied affect figure into character allegiance more seriously than Carroll’s theory (...) indicates. These weaknesses arguably affect related theories in both philosophy of film and cognitive film theory, such as those advanced by A. W. Eaton, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Murray Smith, and Carl Plantinga. The result is a call for revision of Carroll’s and these other thinkers’ theories, as well as a call for deeper investigation into disgust, race, and their importance in generating character allegiance. (shrink)

This collection fills a gap in the current literature in philosophy and film by focusing on the question: How would thinking in philosophy and film be transformed if race were formally incorporated moved from its margins to the center? The collection’s contributors anchor their discussions of race through considerations of specific films and television series, which serve as illustrative examples from which the essays’ theorizations are drawn. Inclusive and current in its selection of films and genres, the collection incorporates dramas, (...) comedies, horror, and science fiction films into its discussions, as well as recent and popular titles of interest, such as _Twilight_, _Avatar_, _Machete_, _True Blood_, and _The Matrix _and _The Help_. The essays compel readers to think more deeply about the films they have seen and their experiences of these narratives. (shrink)

Du début du xxe siècle aux années 1950, en Égypte, le geste de se dénuder se politise. Cet article s’intéresse à la façon dont des militantes et artistes mobilisent le dénudement dans leurs répertoires d’actions et dans leurs stratégies rhétoriques à des fins nationalistes ou féministes. Cette recherche propose ainsi un panorama chrono-thématique des questions relatives à la corporalité féminine, mises au-devant de la scène par ces femmes engagées. Des années 1900 aux années 1920, l’étude se focalise sur les corps (...) féminins dans la rue, visibles, mobilisés et révélés au nom du « bien-être de l’humanité ». Puis, pour évoquer le tournant des années 1920 et 1930, l’analyse porte sur les corps dans les sports ou à la plage, exposés et « bons » pour la nation. Enfin, la réflexion se déploie sur les « beaux » dénudements et la patrie dans les arts, la mode et les concours de beauté, du milieu des années 1930 aux années 1950. (shrink)

L'économie solidaire est dépendante de la sphère publique au sens d'espace de communication. Il est en effet nécessaire d'avoir des échanges démocratiques dans ce type de relation sociale, car la solidarité implique que soient pris en compte tous les points de vue, et en particulier celui des populations démunies avec leur participation. L'économie libérale est le contraire : seul le point de vue de la rentabilité à travers la « main invisible du marché » est pris en compte et pas (...) les autres. En conséquences, l'économie solidaire implique que l'espace public s'étende du politique à l'économique.The civil solidarity-based economy depends on the public sphere for its role as a sphere of communication. Democratic exchanges are necessary in this type of social relation because solidarity implies that all viewpoints should be heard particularly those of disadvantaged population groups. The liberal economy is the opposite of this as only the “profitability” viewpoint and the “invisible hand of market forces” are taken into account and all others ignored. Consequently, the civil and solidarity-based economy means that the public sphere is extended from the political to the economic sphere. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage a reçu le prix Jean Maitron en 2008. La préface d’Yvette Roudy explique à la fois le sous-titre « parcours d’une féministe » et l’orientation de cette biographie faite du point de vue de l’action de Marie-Thérèse Eyquem, parvenue dans la seconde partie de sa vie à la tête du Mouvement démocratique féminin dans le sillage de François Mitterrand. C’est sans doute la similitude de leur « jeunesse française » – conservatrice, catholique, et engagée dans le régime de (...) Vichy – qui expliq... (shrink)

It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that parents ought to consider (...) and treat their children as equals by virtue of loving them. Parental love is the basis of filial equality. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel theory of the meaning of moral equality. This theory has two original and significant implications: first, it shows—contra what is commonly held in the literature—that adults and children are not always each other’s equals; rather, the former are sometimes inferior and sometimes superior to the latter, depending on the interest at stake. Second, it reveals that human beings’ comparative moral status changes across time, and what matters is that they are each other’s equals at simultaneous (...) segments of their lives. (shrink)

In classical logic, the proposition expressed by a sentence is construed as a set of possible worlds, capturing the informative content of the sentence. However, sentences in natural language are not only used to provide information, but also to request information. Thus, natural language semantics requires a logical framework whose notion of meaning does not only embody informative content, but also inquisitive content. This paper develops the algebraic foundations for such a framework. We argue that propositions, in order to embody (...) both informative and inquisitive content in a satisfactory way, should be defined as non-empty, downward closed sets of possibilities, where each possibility in turn is a set of possible worlds. We define a natural entailment order over such propositions, capturing when one proposition is at least as informative and inquisitive as another, and we show that this entailment order gives rise to a complete Heyting algebra, with meet, join, and relative pseudo-complement operators. Just as in classical logic, these semantic operators are then associated with the logical constants in a first-order language. We explore the logical properties of the resulting system and discuss its significance for natural language semantics. We show that the system essentially coincides with the simplest and most well-understood existing implementation of inquisitive semantics, and that its treatment of disjunction and existentials also concurs with recent work in alternative semantics. Thus, our algebraic considerations do not lead to a wholly new treatment of the logical constants, but rather provide more solid foundations for some of the existing proposals. (shrink)

Television content that contains non-stereotypical representations of ethnic minorities and models positive intercultural interactions may potentially aid in reducing the prejudices of its viewers. However, the exact effect has yet to be demonstrated. Furthermore, the cognitive mechanisms behind such an effect remain unclear. This article tests hypotheses derived from social identity theory and social learning theory that attribute this effect to the identification patterns with ingroup and outgroup characters in television drama. In an experiment, participants either watched episodes of a (...) multicultural drama or a regular soap series. Results showed that viewers of multicultural drama had lower perceptions of ethnic threat. Moreover, this effect was mediated by identification with characters, namely, increased identification with outgroup and lowered identification with ingroup characters resulting in lower ethnic threat. The results suggest that short term viewing effects are best explained with social identity theory. The implications for long term effects and the possible role of social learning are analyzed in the discussion. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of reasoning with evidence in order to determine the facts in a criminal case. The focus is on the process of proof, in which the facts of the case are determined, rather than on related legal issues, such as the admissibility of evidence. In the literature, two approaches to reasoning with evidence can be distinguished, one argument-based and one story-based. In an argument-based approach to reasoning with evidence, the reasons for and against the occurrence of (...) an event, e.g., based on witness testimony, are central. In a story-based approach, evidence is evaluated and interpreted from the perspective of the factual stories as they may have occurred in a case, e.g., as they are defended by the prosecution. In this paper, we argue that both arguments and narratives are relevant and useful in the reasoning with and interpretation of evidence. Therefore, a hybrid approach is proposed and formally developed, doing justice to both the argument-based and the narrative-based perspective. By the formalization of the theory and the associated graphical representations, our proposal is the basis for the design of software developed as a tool to make sense of the evidence in complex cases. (shrink)

This paper provides a complete characterization of epistemic models in which distributed knowledge complies with the principle of full communication (van der Hoek et al., 1999; Gerbrandy, 1999). It also introduces an extended notion of bisimulation and corresponding model comparison games that match the expressive power of distributed knowledge operators.

Decisions concerning proof of facts in criminal law must be rational because of what is at stake, but the decision‐making process must also be cognitively feasible because of cognitive limitations, and it must obey the relevant legal–procedural constraints. In this topic three approaches to rational reasoning about evidence in criminal law are compared in light of these demands: arguments, probabilities, and scenarios. This is done in six case studies in which different authors analyze a manslaughter case from different theoretical perspectives, (...) plus four commentaries on these case studies. The aim of this topic is to obtain more insight into how the different approaches can be applied in a legal context. This will advance the discussion on rational reasoning about evidence in law and will contribute more widely to cognitive science on a number of topics, including the value of probabilistic accounts of cognition and the problem of dealing with cognitive biases in reasoning under uncertainty in practical contexts. (shrink)

Bex analyzes the case with an informal version of his hybrid theory, which combines scenario construction and argumentation. Arguments based on evidence can be used to reason about alternative scenarios. Bex claims that his hybrid theory provides the best of both worlds by combining cognitively feasible story‐based reasoning with more detailed rational argumentation. However, like the argument‐based approach, the hybrid theory does not provide a systematic account of uncertainty.

In this paper, we present a particular role for abductive reasoning in law by applying it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the (...) particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of action-based alternating transition systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example. (shrink)

In this paper, we continue our research on a hybrid narrative-argumentative approach to evidential reasoning in the law by showing the interaction between factual reasoning (providing a proof for ‘what happened’ in a case) and legal reasoning (making a decision based on the proof). First we extend the hybrid theory by making the connection with reasoning towards legal consequences. We then emphasise the role of legal stories (as opposed to the factual stories of the hybrid theory). Legal stories provide a (...) coherent, holistic legal perspective on a case. They steer what needs to be proven but are also selected on the basis of what can be proven. We show how these legal stories can be used to model a shift of the legal perspective on a case, and we discuss how gaps in a legal story can be filled using a factual story (i.e. the process of reasoning with circumstantial evidence). Our model is illustrated by a discussion of the Dutch Wamel murder case. (shrink)

We consider semi‐algebraic sets and properties of these sets that are expressible by sentences in first‐order logic over the reals. We are interested in first‐order properties that are invariant under topological transformations of the ambient space. Two semi‐algebraic sets are called topologically elementarily equivalent if they cannot be distinguished by such topological first‐order sentences. So far, only semi‐algebraic sets in one and two‐dimensional space have been considered in this context. Our contribution is a natural characterisation of topological elementary equivalence of (...) regular closed semi‐algebraic sets in three‐dimensional space, extending a known characterisation for the two‐dimensional case. Our characterisation is based on the local topological behaviour of semi‐algebraic sets and the key observation that topologically elementarily equivalent sets can be transformed into each other by means of geometric transformations, each of them mapping a set to a first‐order indistinguishable one. (shrink)

Language was never studied by linguists (or philologists) alone. The greater part of the languages of the world was first known in the West through the reports of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators, and what they documented reflected their specific interests. Missionaries wrote catechisms, primers, dictionaries, and Bible translations (especially Lord's Prayers); for explorers and administrators, language was one aspect among many to cover in their accounts of faraway regions. Peoples were identified by their language; toponyms served for geographic description; (...) names of plants and animals were gathered together with specimens and images of plants and animals. In this context, linguistic materials were equally described as “specimens.” This article investigates the various ways in which language material was used and conceived of as a specimen, and the global trajectories of these “specimens.” Especially the role of naturalist explorers deserves closer attention in this regard. What they did, throughout the late 18th and 19th century, was gathering language material as one kind of specimen among others, Forster in the Pacific, Humboldt, Martius, and d'Orbigny in South America, and Peters in Mozambique. Two large‐scale expeditions from the mid‐19th century stand out as examples: the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), whose collections later filled the Smithsonian Institution, and the Austrian‐Hungarian Novara expedition (1857–1859). (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 47 Heft: 1 Seiten: 129-142.

In Storybrooke, the city in which Once Upon a Time takes place, live many characters of fantastic stories. A plethora of princesses resides in this town, and their history, like their representation, undergoes important variations. Moving away from the role of “damsel in distress” often found in fairy tales and their adaptations, Emma, Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood, gain independence and freedom. However, clichés are tough and heroines often get involved in stereotypical love stories, where motherhood seems to (...) be the only possible destiny. Between literary revivals and mutations, we are now going to study these female figures and their evolution through two forms: the tale and the series. (shrink)