Mary Astell’s theory of friendship has been interpreted either as a version of Aristotelian virtue friendship, or as aligned with a Christian and Platonist tradition. In this paper, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship is determinedly anti-Aristotelian; it is a theory of spiritual friendship offered as an alternative to Aristotelian virtue friendship. By grounding her conception of friendship in a Christian–Platonist metaphysics, I show that Astell rejects the Aristotelian criteria of reciprocity and partiality as essential features of the friendship (...) bond and that she develops a theory of friendship that is neither reciprocal nor partial. Further, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship advances her feminist aims by providing a justification for female–female spiritual bonds in contradistinction to female–male marriage bonds. Astell argues that the female–female bond of spiritual friendship is sanctioned by God, and is, therefore, a divinely authorized alternative to the male–female bond of marriage. Through her theory of spiritual friendship, Astell marks out a central place for female–female bonds and provides women with a justification for resisting marriage. (shrink)

This book does several things, and it does them all well. Yolton firmly contextualizes the debates about perception within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while showing how these debates are often repeated in contemporary philosophy of mind. Along the way, he provides novel interpretations of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant that are clearly and convincingly presented. Perhaps the most important feature of his treatment is that it so vividly shows the Moderns grappling with issues about perception that continue to (...) plague us. The uniting theme of the work is Yolton’s insistence that direct realism and representationalism are compatible. Yolton’s defense of direct realism is largely motivated by the thesis that many philosophers incorrectly take a representational theory of mind to necessitate indirect realism. This mistake arises, according to Yolton, because they suppose that the representations themselves become the objects of perception and therefore stand between the perceiver and the world of objects. Yolton’s argument that the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were struggling to establish two interactive relations between perceivers and the physical world underlies his compatibility thesis: There is a physical and causal relationship and, more importantly, there is what Yolton calls a “cognitive” or “semantic” relationship. The latter relationship holds the key to the compatibility of representationalism with direct realism. (shrink)

There are many reasons to include texts written by women in early modern philosophy courses. The most obvious one is accuracy: women helped to shape the philosophical landscape of the time. Thus, to craft a syllabus that wholly excludes women is to give students an inaccurate picture of the early modern period. Since it seems safe to assume that we all aim for accuracy, this should be reason enough to include women writers in our courses. This article nonetheless offers an (...) additional reason: when students are exposed to philosophical texts written by women, they learn that women have been, are, and can be philosophers. Given how underrepresented women are in philosophy, this finding is significant. If we aim to change the face of philosophy—so that it includes more women—we must include texts written by women in our syllabi. The article considers various obstacles faced by those who work to respond to this call to action. (shrink)

Berkeley apologizes in the Principles for his apparent verbosity. After all, "to what purpose is it to dilate on that which may be demonstrated . . . in a line or two . . . ?" . His justification for his prolixity is that "all men do not equally apprehend things of this nature; and I am willing to be understood by every one" .A willingness to be understood by everyone is surely an intellectual virtue and suggests good will on (...) the part of an author. In this excellent collection of twelve essays, some arising from a 2003 conference commemorating the 250 th anniversary of Berkeley's death, Berkeley's good will is richly rewarded. The essays cover many topics—representation, skepticism, self-consciousness, mathematics, human agency and liberty, as well as fire and light in Berkeley's Siris. In all cases, they offer fresh readings of Berkeley's philosophy.Several of the essays focus with fine precision on commonly discussed topics. Among these is Charles McCracken's contribution, "Berkeley's Realism." McCracken claims not that Berkeley is not a realist, but that, given a certain. (shrink)

This paper considers Anselm’s Proslogion argument against a background of historical events that include philosophical disputes between Christian and Jewish polemicists. I argue that the Proslogion argument was addressed, in part, to non-Christian theists and that it offered a response to Jewish polemicists who had argued that the Christian conception of God as an instantiated unity was irrational. Anselm is not trying to convince atheists that there really is a God. He is arguing that the Christian conception of God is (...) logically coherent. (shrink)

The idea of the missing shade of blue presents a difficulty for Hume's first principle that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspond...

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in (...) the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? This paper argues that so often we treat early modern women philosophers’ texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of the analytic tradition, and in so doing, we may be triggering our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect. (shrink)

This book does several things, and it does them all well. Yolton firmly contextualizes the debates about perception within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while showing how these debates are often repeated in contemporary philosophy of mind. Along the way, he provides novel interpretations of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant that are clearly and convincingly presented. Perhaps the most important feature of his treatment is that it so vividly shows the Moderns grappling with issues about perception that continue to (...) plague us. The uniting theme of the work is Yolton’s insistence that direct realism and representationalism are compatible. Yolton’s defense of direct realism is largely motivated by the thesis that many philosophers incorrectly take a representational theory of mind to necessitate indirect realism. This mistake arises, according to Yolton, because they suppose that the representations themselves become the objects of perception and therefore stand between the perceiver and the world of objects. Yolton’s argument that the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were struggling to establish two interactive relations between perceivers and the physical world underlies his compatibility thesis: There is a physical and causal relationship and, more importantly, there is what Yolton calls a “cognitive” or “semantic” relationship. The latter relationship holds the key to the compatibility of representationalism with direct realism. (shrink)

Unreason will arm readers with scientific knowledge to curb the misinformation and misconceptions that increasingly threaten our civil discourse. Even further, these essays present a way for us to be better citizens, equipped to deal with the winds of misinformation and disinformation swirling about us and better able to look ahead to a world where science and reason-indeed just good old common sense-can prevail.

Bioethics needs an expanded moral vision. It is now time for bioethics to take full account of the problems of health disparities and structural injustice that are made newly urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change. Nancy M. P. King, Gail E. Henderson, and Larry R. Churchill make the case for a more social understanding and application of justice, a deeper humility in assessing expertise in bioethics consulting, a broader and more relevant research agenda, and (...) greater appreciation of the profound health implications of global warming. (shrink)

Should you wash your hands? -- Are workarounds ethical? -- Turfing, bending, and gaming -- Dirty hands and the semiclear conscience -- Problems of humanity -- Ethics without heroics : foreseeing moral problems in complex systems.

To what extent does perceptual language reflect universals of experience and cognition, and to what extent is it shaped by particular cultural preoccupations? This paper investigates the universality~relativity of perceptual language by examining the use of basic perception terms in spontaneous conversation across 13 diverse languages and cultures. We analyze the frequency of perception words to test two universalist hypotheses: that sight is always a dominant sense, and that the relative ranking of the senses will be the same across different (...) cultures. We find that references to sight outstrip references to the other senses, suggesting a pan-human preoccupation with visual phenomena. However, the relative frequency of the other senses was found to vary cross-linguistically. Cultural relativity was conspicuous as exemplified by the high ranking of smell in Semai, an Aslian language. Together these results suggest a place for both universal constraints and cultural shaping of the language of perception. (shrink)

How fixed are the happenings in Nature and how are they fixed? One - very orthodox - account teaches that the sciences offer general truths that we combine with local facts to derive our expectations about what will happen, either naturally or when we build a device to design, be it a laser, a washing machine, an anti-malarial bed net, or an auction for the airwavse. Nancy Cartwright offers a different picture, one in which neither we nor Nature have (...) such nice rules to go by. This volume includes her Paul Carus Lectures plus four additional papers that further develop some of the central ideas. Cartwright offers an original view on the age-old question of scientific realism in which our knowledge is genuine, yet our scientific principles are neither true nor false but are, rather, templates for building good models. (shrink)

This paper opens a critical conversation about the ethics of international bioethics conferencing and proposes principles that commit to being anti-discriminatory, global, and inclusive. We launch this conversation in the Section, Case Study, with a case example involving the International Association of Bioethics’ (IAB’s) selection of Qatar to host the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics. IAB’s choice of Qatar sparked controversy. We believe it also may reveal deeper issues of Islamophobia in bioethics. The Section, Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing, sets (...) forth and defends proposed principles for international bioethics conferencing. The Section, Applying Principles to Site Selection applies the proposed principles to the case example. The Section, Applying Principles Beyond Site Selection addresses other applications of the proposed principles. The Section, Objections responds to objections. We close (in the Section, Conclusion) by calling for a wider discussion of our proposed principles.One-Sentence Capsule Summary: How should bioethicists navigate the ethics of global bioethics conferencing? (shrink)

Nancy Fraser’s powerful new book documents the “movements of feminism” and the shifts in the feminist imaginary since the 1970s. Fraser follows the history of feminism from the ferment of the New Left, during which “Second Wave” feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation alongside other social movements, to its emersion in identity politics following the decline of its initial utopian energies. Alongside this detailed history, Fraser recognizes the need for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism to respond to the (...) crisis in neoliberalism. She argues for a feminism that could join other egalitarian movements in struggles aimed at subjecting capitalism to democratic control, while retrieving the core utopian insights of feminism’s earlier phases. (shrink)

We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and (...) independence when framing such an investigation to achieve robust unbiased results. (shrink)

Charlemagne's monogram -- Introduction -- The problem of consciousness -- The earliest vision -- Truth, being, and mind -- The Kehre -- The essence of truth -- The later Heidegger -- Reading Heidegger after Heidegger -- Being not a soul but the unmediated discovery of being.

This article explores the relation between two different modes of cosmology: the social and the scientific. Over the twentieth century, scientific understandings of the dimensions and operations of the physical universe changed dramatically, significantly prompted by astronomical and astrophysical research undertaken at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California. Could those understandings be readily translated into social theory? Studies across a range of disciplines have intimated that the scientific cosmos might be less essential to the worlds of meaning and belonging (...) that people and communities compose around themselves than more local and relational models of an ordered whole. The article applies that proposition to the Mount Wilson Observatory itself, arguing that the observatory’s founder, George Ellery Hale, and his acolytes were deeply invested in practices of terrestrial place-making, the politics of belonging, and the cadences of civilizational time as applied to their city and its region. Moreover, they struggled to construct a philosophy integrating the cosmos they were seeking to fix at home with the contortions and careering trajectories of the universal whole. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the close association between withholding and withdrawing futile life-sustaining medical treatments and assisting patients with hastening ending their lives. Section 12.2 sets forth a definition of medical futility and places this concept in the broader context of bioethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Section 12.3 draws out futility’s ethical implications and considers the view that physicians are ethically permitted to refrain from medically futile treatments, should be encouraged to refrain, or have a duty to refrain. (...) Section 12.4 examines ethical arguments that physicians also have a positive duty to assist patients with terminal conditions who are imminently dying to end their lives. It explores ethical arguments for assisted dying that appeal to the physicians’ significant responsibility and relationship with patients, the claimed moral equivalence of actions and omissions, and the medical goal of helping patients have a peaceful and dignified death. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Getting Under Her Skin Revolutionary Politics and Feminist Body Consciousness Homosociality Skinship Bonding, and Corporeal Feminism Meeting Narrative Needs Pricks as Needles Odd Girls Out ‘By the Father's Hand’: The Tattoo Taboo, Public Anxiety, and India(n) Ink The Skin She's In: Keeping Tattooing Personal and Political.

Medical error is a leading problem of health care in the United States. Each year, more patients die as a result of medical mistakes than are killed by motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. While most government and regulatory efforts are directed toward reducing and preventing errors, the actions that should follow the injury or death of a patient are still hotly debated. According to Nancy Berlinger, conversations on patient safety are missing several important components: religious voices, traditions, (...) and models. In After Harm, Berlinger draws on sources in theology, ethics, religion, and culture to create a practical and comprehensive approach to addressing the needs of patients, families, and clinicians affected by medical error. She emphasizes the importance of acknowledging fallibility, telling the truth, confronting feelings of guilt and shame, and providing just compensation. After Harm adds important human dimensions to an issue that has profound consequences for patients and health care providers. (shrink)

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge (...) bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well. (shrink)

This is the first English translation published of Jean-Luc Nancy's acclaimed consideration of the law's most pervasive principles in the context of actual systems and contemporary institutions, power, norms, laws.

Why mediation? -- What makes bioethics mediation unique? -- Before you begin a bioethics mediation program -- The stages of bioethics mediation -- Techniques for mediating bioethics disputes -- How to write a bioethics mediation chart note -- Mediation with a competent patient : Mr. Samuels's case -- Mediation with a dysfunctional family : Mrs. Bates's case -- A complex mediation with a large and involved family : Mrs. Leonari's case -- Discharge planning for a dying patient : a role-play (...) -- An at-risk pregnancy : a role-play -- HIV and postsurgical complications in the ICU : a role-play -- Treating the dying adolescent : a role-play -- She didn't mean it : a role-play -- Don't tell mama : a role-play -- An at-risk pregnancy : a role-play transcript -- HIV and postsurgical complications in the ICU : a role-play transcript -- She didn't mean it: a role-play transcript -- Don't tell mama : a role-play transcript. (shrink)

Apart from references to perception, words such as see and listen have shared, non-literal meanings across diverse languages. Such cross-linguistic meanings have not been systematically investigated as they appear in their natural home — informal spoken interaction. We present a qualitative examination of the semantic associations of perception verbs based on recorded everyday conversation in thirteen diverse languages. Across these diverse communities, spontaneous interaction provides evidence for two commonly-discussed extensions of perception verbs — perception~cognition, hearing~linguistic communication — as well as (...) illustrating other meanings and functions that have been less appreciated heretofore. The range of usage that is readily observable in informal conversation makes it clear that this type of data must take center stage for the empirically grounded study of semantics. Moreover, these data suggest that commonalities in polysemous meanings may rely not only on universal cognition, but also on the universal exigencies of social interaction. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger's recently published Black Notebooks. Nancy refers to a philosophical or "historial" anti-Semitism marked, nonetheless, by the "banality" of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. Heidegger's thought is placed in the broader context of the European (especially Christian) impulse toward new beginnings.

A topic of special importance when it comes to responsibility and implicit bias is responsibility for knowledge. Are there strategies for becoming more responsible and respectful knowers? How might we work together, not just as individuals but members of collectives, to reduce the negative effects of bias on what we see and believe, as well as the wrongs associated with epistemic injustice? To explore these questions, Chapter 9 introduces the concept of epistemic responsibility, a set of practices developed through the (...) cultivation of basic epistemic virtues, such as open-mindedness, epistemic humility, and diligence that help knowers seek information about themselves, others, and the world. (shrink)

Questions of whether anything exceeds reasonable sense and meaning have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. These questions have even continued in postmodern thought as well as in liberatory philosophies in which many kinds of events and lineages are experienced and seen as beyond philosophy. In this cowritten text, distinguished philosophers Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott pay particular attention to lineages and their dynamism as they develop the idea of things beyond philosophy, beyond norms. This is not a history (...) of philosophy or a critical study of a particular philosopher but a way to engage experience around dimensions of events that are beyond measuring, counting, meaning, and value. These attunements, they assert, are vitally important for the ways people orient themselves in the world and comport themselves in it. Tuana and Scott build on the alternatives to normative ethics that they find in the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Anzaldúa. They urge attunement to the world as a way to speak about what is impossible to give voice to, to live in the spaces between speech and the unspeakable, and to conceptualize and articulate the boundaries of rational sensibility. (shrink)

In Doing, Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the most prominent and lucid articulators of contemporary French theory and philosophy, examines the precarious but urgent relationship between being and doing. His book is not so much a call to action as a summons to more vigorous thinking, the examination and reflection that must precede any effective action. The first section of the book considers this matter tersely: Jean-Luc Nancy's quickness of language and grace of humor lead the reader carefully past (...) the dangers of oversimplification, toward a general awareness of meaningful being. In the last section, Nancy examines the realities of terrorist actions--specifically those that shocked Paris a few years ago, and more generally the frightening world of politics without conscience, where conscience is the root of all thinking. (shrink)

Ego Sum proposes a provocative and unprecedented reading of Descartes. By paying attention to mode of presentation of Descartes's philosophy, Nancy challenges our common understanding of the Cogito and shows how Descartes's ego is not the self-certain, self-transparent Subject of metaphysics but a mouth that opens to utter: ego sum.

Bousculant peuples, pensées, régulations et représentations, deux séismes secouent le monde mondial. L'un est fait d'attentats, l'autre de coups et de coûts écotechniques. Une évidence surnage, une double question : "Que faire?" et "Quelle politique?". Les deux restent sans réponse parce qu'elles ne sont pas justes. Le "faire" lui-même doit être interrogé sur sa portée ; la "politique" doit être repensée dans sa notion. Tout le faire s'est englouti dans le flux du "produire". La "politique" a été emportée par le (...) même flux — ou bien son nom s'est chargé tantôt d'opprobre et tantôt d'emphase magique. Il faut se délivrer des confusions. L'action la plus urgente, dont toute autre dépend, consiste à parler net et à penser clair. Ce qui nous bouscule porte plus qu'une révolution : une mutation dans laquelle se dessine, encore invisible, la forme d'une résolution. Celle qui décidera d'un nouveau monde. Politique ou pas, religieux ou pas, économique ou pas, il est déjà en train de se faire, ce nouveau monde. Il ne se fait pas comme une production mais comme se font les vies, collectives et personnelles, comme se font les vallées et les montagnes, les pensées et les poèmes : par les lentes et profondes poussées des désirs de l'existence. (shrink)