This article offers a critique of moral individualism. I introduce the topic of moral individualism by discussing how its characteristic assumptions play an organizing role in contemporary conversations about how animals should be treated. I counter that moral individualism fails to do justice not only to our ethical relationships with animals but also to our ethical relationships with human beings. My main argument draws on elements of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of psychology, and in presenting the argument I address the case (...) of human beings before returning to the case of animals. Given that moral individualists frequently defend what I call the ethical view of animals, i.e., the view that animals are in themselves proper objects of ethical concern, it is worth stressing that it is no part ofmy project to undermine this view. On the contrary, the critique of moral individualism I develop makes available a better understanding of what is right about the idea that animals as such merit certain forms of respect and attention. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss and evaluate different arguments for the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I conclude that essentialist arguments from the nature of natural kinds fail to establish that essences are ontologically more basic than laws, and fail to offer an a priori argument for the necessity of all causal laws. Similar considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints on property identity across (...) possible worlds. None of my arguments preclude the possibility that the laws may turn out to be metaphysically necessary after all, but I argue that this can only be established by a posteriori scientific investigation. I therefore argue for what may seem to be a surprising conclusion: that a fundamental metaphysical question – the modal status of laws of nature – depends on empirical facts rather than purely on a priori reasoning. (shrink)

Lakoff (1993) argued that basic level conceptual metaphors are grounded in human experience, and are therefore likely to be found widely across different languages and cultures. However, other mappings may not be shared. It is well documented that many metaphorical expressions vary across languages, and a number of researchers have argued cultural motivations for this. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences in metaphor are that different cultures hold different attitudes to metaphor vehicles, or that the source domain entities and events are (...) more salient in one culture than another. However, the corpus data discussed here suggest that rather than being a synchronic reflection of culture, metaphorical expressions are to some extent a cultural reliquary, and an incomplete one. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relationship between dispositions and laws and the prospects for any analysis of talk of laws in terms of talk of dispositions. Recent attempts at such a reduction have often been motivated by the desire to give an account of ceteris paribus laws and in this they have had some success. However, such accounts differ as to whether they view dispositions as properties fundamentally of individuals or of kinds. I argue that if dispositions are properties of individuals, (...) we cannot give a complete account of ceteris paribus laws. Alternatively, if dispositions are properties of kinds, any reductive analysis of laws would require an extension of the notion of the dispositional beyond its usual meaning so that in effect there can be no reduction of laws to dispositions as traditionally understood. An attempt to reduce the nomological to the dispositional is therefore not the way to provide a unified account of traditional and ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

In September 2000, the self-styled “anthropological journalist” Patrick Tierney began to make public his work claiming that the Yanomamö people of South America had been actively—indeed brutally—harmed by the sociobiological anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the geneticist-physician James Neel. Following a florid summary of Tierney’s claims by the anthropologists Terence Turner and Leslie Sponsel, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) saw fit to take Tierney’s claims seriously by conducting a major investigation into the matter. This paper focuses on the AAA’s problematic actions (...) in this case but also provides previously unpublished information on Tierney’s falsehoods. The work presented is based on a year of research by a historian of medicine and science. The author intends the work to function as a cautionary tale to scholarly associations, which have the challenging duty of protecting scholarship and scholars from baseless and sensationalistic charges in the era of the Internet and twenty-four-hour news cycles. (shrink)

The aims of this paper are twofold: (i) to bring out how Cora Diamond's essays on ethics represent a shift in perspective when considered against the backdrop of dominant trends in contemporary moral philosophy and thereby (ii) to shed light on and indicate strategies for combating sources of philosophical resistance to her ethical project.

Dietrich von Hildebrand, widely regarded as one of the great Catholic philosophers of the 20th century, is well-known for his numerous books, but, until this present work, not much has been known of his remarkable and inspiring life. Written by his wife, Alice, also a highly respected Catholic thinker, this is a fascinating, moving and, at times, gripping account of a truly great man of the Church who suffered much for the faith. Based on a very long "letter" Dietrich (...) wrote to his wife late in his life, it tells his story from his glorious youth with a unique intellectual and cultural formation, his coversion to Catholisism, his great passion for truth and beauty, his extensive writing on Christian philosophy and theology, and his steadfast, determined opposition to Nazism that made him a marked man who miraculously escaped execution. A powerful biography of a relentless fighter against injustice, a devoted son of the Church, a man who had the "soul of a lion". Illustrated. (shrink)

Sentences of the form ‘Fs are Gs’ can express laws of nature, weaker Special Science laws, and also regularities which are not a part of any explicit science. These so-called generic sentences express nomic relationships which may have exceptions. I discuss the kinds of regularities expressed by generic sentences and argue that since they play a similar role in determining our ability to categorise and reason about the world, we should look for a unified treatment of them.

These notes of G. E. Moore's lectures for the three terms of 1934-1935 were compiled by Alice Ambrose, then Student of Newnham College, and Margaret Macdonald, then Fellow of Girton College. The lectures cover a wealth of interrelated topics, and provide instances of the analyses which made Moore «the father of the analytic school.» Since his analyses of such concepts as material objects, sense data, and truth rest on the ordinary use of expressions for these concepts, «ordinary language» philosophers (...) found in him their champion. Moore examines the views of Broad, Russell, F. P. Ramsey, W. E. Johnson, and John Wisdom. (shrink)

One of two commentaries on “Normalizing Atypical Genitalia: How a Heated Debate Went Astray,” by Josephine Johnston, from the November‐December 2012 issue.

This book offers inspiration and support to female faculty members in higher education who are at various stages of their professional development. Twenty-four educators share both their intuitive voices and practical knowledge on the topics of career development, balancing personal and professional life, cultural and individual identity, and spirituality.

The method chosen here draws on concepts borrowed from sociology and anthropology. This double conceptual approach is necessary for a society divided between values inherited from medieval Christianity and precapitalist practices. Seventeenth-century France did not think of itself as a class society but as a society of orders. Since sociology is a system of knowledge whose concepts are taken from an imaginary construct, it is thus more suited to analyzing bourgeois society than societies in transition.6 In trying to measure the (...) past with the aid of tools forged in and for contemporary societies, the sociologist runs the risk of only measuring an artifact, produced by his theories in the field of history. Hence the need for the anthropological concepts, including the notion of exchange, among others, whether material , symbolic , or sexual .This approach will bring to light the contradictions underlying the society of the ancient régime. Whereas an ordinary sociohistorical approach views the reign of Louis XIV as unified under a dogmatic classicism, the socioanthropological approach stresses the tensions and oppositions running through this society. Classicism appears then as a façade covering up the change that it cannot imagine. This “spectacle”7 makes it possible to unite contradictory social practices, both those produced by consumption and which originate in the medieval economy and those belonging to the early accumulation of capital which sketch future bourgeois economic practices. 6. See Cornelius Catoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey .7. See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, rev. English ed. . Jean-Marie Apostolidès is professor of French literature at Stanford University. His publications include Le roi-machine, Les metamorphoses de Tintin, and Le prince sacrifié. Alice Musick McLean, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, is specializing in medieval narrative and the literature of the fantastic. (shrink)

Nirvana is often considered the quintessential goal of the Buddhist path. In this article, I focus on one aspect of the conceptualization of nirvana that becomes apparent through an analysis of its occurrence in early Indian epigraphy. Surveying pre-Gupta inscriptions, it becomes clear that the aspiration for nirvana has one recurring feature attached to it; the aspiration of the donor for the attainment of nirvana — whether for themselves or others — occurs when the donation is connected in some way (...) or another to the relics or figural or non-figural representations of the historical Buddha. This suggests that the idea of being in the Buddha’s presence grew in importance in relation to the efficacy of religious practice in this period. The same ideas can be seen emerging in the later canonical Pali Apadana, and connect to developments in the emergence of Mahayana. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa trazer diferentes olhares sobre a concepção de aprendizagem, a partir de encontros produzidos num espaço de formação de professores. Com a temática da Invenção de Virgínia Kastrup, ensaiamos outros modos de pensar o aprender, deixando de ser concebido exclusivamente como resolução de problemas, para modos que envolvam o compartilhamento de experiências de problematização, abertura, ética e produção de diferença.

An alternative interpretation of Gangestad & Simpson's findings features the assumption that only a subgroup of those men who are low in fluctuating asymmetry are typically available for short-term mating. In general, these philandering men do not offer higher genetic quality than men who are securely attached to long-term mates.