The feminist philosopher and social scientist shows how "gendering" has affected the social and natural sciences as she reconciles the long-standing dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative methods and demonstrates the tandem use of both experimental and intuitive approaches.

By classic results in social choice theory, any reasonable preferential voting method sometimes gives individuals an incentive to report an insincere preference. The extent to which different voting methods are more or less resistant to such strategic manipulation has become a key consideration for comparing voting methods. Here we measure resistance to manipulation by whether neural networks of varying sizes can learn to profitably manipulate a given voting method in expectation, given different types of limited information about how other voters (...) will vote. We trained over 70,000 neural networks of 26 sizes to manipulate against 8 different voting methods, under 6 types of limited information, in committee-sized elections with 5-21 voters and 3-6 candidates. We find that some voting methods, such as Borda, are highly manipulable by networks with limited information, while others, such as Instant Runoff, are not, despite being quite profitably manipulated by an ideal manipulator with full information. For the two probability models for elections that we use, the overall least manipulable of the 8 methods we study are Condorcet methods, namely Minimax and Split Cycle. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

This article explores the themes of trust and ethical conduct in social research, with particular attention to the trust that can develop between the members of a research team as well as between researchers and the researched. The authors draw upon a three-year empirical study of destinations and outcomes for young people excluded from alternative educational provision. They also make reference to a contemporary exposition of Aristotle's writing on friendship in order to explore two sets of relevant distinctions that have (...) a bearing upon our understanding of relationships that emerge in the context of social research projects. These distinctions are between impartiality and selectivity on the one hand, and between universality and particularity on the other. The authors attempt to demonstrate that these distinctions influence the development of trust and the conduct of ethical research, arguing that the latter is not synonymous with compliance to ethical guidelines. (shrink)

"Deleuze plonge la critique kantienne transcendantale dans le bain dissolvant d'un empirisme renouvelé. Ce livre se propose de restituer cette entreprise, et d'analyser l'étonnante création de ce concept, que Deleuze mène depuis ses premières monographies jusqu'à Différence et Répétition dans un dialogue fécond avec l'histoire de la philosophie. Par quelles opérations de distorsion et de collage, Deleuze compose-t-il l'empirisme de Hume, la théorie du signe comme force de Nietzsche, le virtuel et les multiplicités de Bergson, les modes de Spinoza, les (...) individualisations impersonnelles de Simondon pour renouveler la théorie kantienne du transcendantal? C'est tout l'objet de cette enquête, qui permet d'entrer dans le laboratoire du penseur, pour saisir la philosophie se faisant, mais qui permet également d'expliquer l'insistance du transcendantal dans toute son oeuvre"--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level introduction to the topic of propaganda. We survey a number of the most influential accounts of propaganda, from the earliest institutional studies in the 1920s to contemporary academic work. We propose that these accounts, as well as the various examples of propaganda which we discuss, all converge around a key feature: persuasion which bypasses audiences’ rational faculties. In practice, propaganda can take different forms, serve various interests, and produce a variety of effects. Propaganda can aim (...) to affect not only audiences’ beliefs and attitudes, but also their emotions and moods, and in turn how audiences subsequently reason or act. While propaganda is often thought of as false or misinformation, it can instead involve framing effects (“The war on drugs”), covert messaging (“There are Muslims among us”), emotionally charged slogans (“Make America Great Again”), or myths (“The American dream”). These forms of propaganda mislead audiences, not by introducing false information, but by making some beliefs and values, rather than others, salient. In fact, propaganda can even employ straightforwardly true claims (again, as in “There are Muslims among us”) and seemingly objective bureaucratic reports (“Crime has risen 4.2%”). To understand how these and other mechanisms enable propaganda to persuade by arational means, further study is needed. To that end, throughout the chapter we identify a number of places where the study of meaning and communication can help elucidate propaganda, as well as the places where propaganda issues challenges for the study of meaning. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of time when living with severe incurable disease. A phenomenological and philosophical approach of description and deciphering were used. In our modern health care system there is an on-going focus on utilizing and recording the use of time, but less focus on the patient’s experience of time, which highlights the need to explore the patients’ experiences, particularly when life is vulnerable and time is limited. The empirical (...) data consisted of 26 open-ended interviews with 23 participants receiving palliative care at home, in hospital or in a nursing home in Norway. The theoretical frameworks used are mainly based upon K. Martinsens philosophy of care, K. E. Løgstrup phenomenological philosophy, in addition to C. Saunders’ hospice philosophy, L. Feigenberg’s thanatology and U. Qvarnström’s research exploring patient’s reactions to impending death. Experience of time is described as being a movement that moves the individual towards death in the field of opposites, and deciphered to be a universal, but a typical and unique experience emerging through three integrated levels: Sense of time; where time is described as a movement that is proceeding at varying speeds. Relate totime; where the awareness of limited life changes the understanding of time to be more existential. Being in time; where limited time seems to clarify the basic living conditions and phenomena of life. The existence of life when the prospect of death is present is characterized by emotional swings that move within polarizing dimensions which is reflected in the experience of time illustrated as the moves of the pendulum in a grandfather clock. The diversity of the experience of time is oscillating between going fast or slow, being busy or calm, being unpredictable but predictable, safe or unsafe and between being good or bad, depending on the embodied situation of the individual. (shrink)

BackgroundUpper limb impairment is common after stroke, and many will not regain full upper limb function. Different technologies based on surface electromyography (sEMG) have been used in stroke rehabilitation, but there is no collated evidence on the different sEMG-driven interventions and their effect on upper limb function in people with stroke.AimSynthesize existing evidence and perform a meta-analysis on the effect of different types of sEMG-driven interventions on upper limb function in people with stroke.MethodsPubMed, SCOPUS, and PEDro databases were systematically searched (...) for eligible randomized clinical trials that utilize sEMG-driven interventions to improve upper limb function assessed by Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA-UE) in stroke. The PEDro scale was used to evaluate the methodological quality and the risk of bias of the included studies. In addition, a meta-analysis utilizing a random effect model was performed for studies comparing sEMG interventions to non-sEMG interventions and for studies comparing different sEMG interventions protocols.ResultsTwenty-four studies comprising 808 participants were included in this review. The methodological quality was good to fair. The meta-analysis showed no differences in the total effect, assessed by total FMA-UE score, comparing sEMG interventions to non-sEMG interventions (14 studies, 509 participants, SMD 0.14, P 0.37, 95% CI –0.18 to 0.46, I255%). Similarly, no difference in the overall effect was found for the meta-analysis comparing different types of sEMG interventions (7 studies, 213 participants, SMD 0.42, P 0.23, 95% CI –0.34 to 1.18, I273%). Twenty out of the twenty-four studies, including participants with varying impairment levels at all stages of stroke recovery, reported statistically significant improvements in upper limb function at post-sEMG intervention compared to baseline.ConclusionThis review and meta-analysis could not discern the effect of sEMG in comparison to a non-sEMG intervention or the most effective type of sEMG intervention for improving upper limb function in stroke populations. Current evidence suggests that sEMG is a promising tool to further improve functional recovery, but randomized clinical trials with larger sample sizes are needed to verify whether the effect on upper extremity function of a specific sEMG intervention is superior compared to other non-sEMG or other type of sEMG interventions. (shrink)

This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)

Institutional economics and discourse theory stand unconnected next to each other, in spite of the fact that they both ask for the legitimacy of institutions (normative) and the functioning and effectiveness of institutions (positive). Both use as theoretical constructions rational individuals and the concept of consensus for legitimacy. Whereas discourse theory emphasizes the conditions of a legitimate consensus and could thus enable institutional economics to escape the infinite regress of judging a consensus legitimate, institutional economics has a tested social science (...) paradigm (rational choice) of explaining and predicting the functioning of institutions. The article outlines a theoretical synthesis of the two theories by finding points in common and possibilities of fruitful combinations concerning the problem of legitimacy, institutional design and effectiveness of legal norms. (shrink)

Cherche à mettre en évidence les principes théoriques qui peuvent être au fondement de toute recherche ou réflexion en sociologie de la musique.

Analyzing Oppression asks: why is oppression often sustained over many generations? The book explains how oppression coercively co-opts the oppressed to join their own oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist it. It finally explores the possibility of freedom in a world actively opposing oppression.

Who gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it's become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of food deemed unhealthy--critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit (...) individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. Additionally, the book adopts a 'farm to fork' approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing policies that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. As well as offering a novel normative analysis of healthy eating policy, the authors offer a new theoretical framework that will be applicable to a wide range of public policy scenarios. (shrink)

Une morale pour les mortels est une etude d'ensemble de l'ethique de Platon et d'Aristote, a partir de la problematique philosophique qui lui donne corps: la mortalite de l'etre humain, source de ses desirs et de leur perpetuelle insatisfaction. Par contraste avec une morale du devoir, on decouvre ici une morale qui s'exprime par un il faut, poussant vers une fin qui puisse repondre au manque et au besoin qui marquent la condition humaine. A partir de cette problematique sont repris (...) et eclaires tous les concepts et theses classiques de l'ethique ancienne: la question de la mesure et de l'harmonie, la vertu dans son unite et sa pluralite, le bonheur, le bien, le plaisir, l'amitie, l'amour de soi, la volonte et les autres desirs, l'intention, l'action, et surtout la verite du paradoxe nul n'est mechant de plein gre, dont sont exposees la resistance face aux critiques d'Aristote et les consequences dans le domaine penal. L'ensemble met en valeur la specificite de l'etre humain decelee par les Anciens: qu'il soit un etre tout a la fois desirant et pensant. (shrink)

Anne Margaret Baxley offers a systematic interpretation of Kant's theory of virtue, whose most distinctive features have not been properly understood. She explores the rich moral psychology in Kant's later and less widely read works on ethics, and argues that the key to understanding his account of virtue is the concept of autocracy, a form of moral self-government in which reason rules over sensibility. Although certain aspects of Kant's theory bear comparison to more familiar Aristotelian claims about virtue, Baxley (...) contends that its most important aspects combine to produce something different - a distinctively modern, egalitarian conception of virtue which is an important and overlooked alternative to the more traditional Greek views which have dominated contemporary virtue ethics. (shrink)

Rape, claims Ann J. Cahill, affects not only those women who are raped, but all women who experience their bodies as rapable and adjust their actions and self-images accordingly. Rethinking Rape counters legal and feminist definitions of rape as mere assault and decisively emphasizes the centrality of the body and sexuality in a crime which plays a crucial role in the continuing oppression of women.

The aim of this article is to show the importance of moral sensitivity when including persons with dementia in research. The article presents and discusses ethical challenges encountered when a total of 15 persons with dementia from two nursing homes and seven proxies were included in a qualitative study. The examples show that the ethical challenges may be unpredictable. As researchers, you participate with the informants in their daily life and in the interviews, and it is not possible to plan (...) all that may happen during the research. A procedural proposal to an ethical committee at the beginning of a research project based on traditional research ethical principles may serve as a guideline, but it cannot solve all the ethical problems one faces during the research process. Our main argument in this article is, therefore, that moral sensitivity is required in addition to the traditional research ethical principles throughout the whole process of observing and interviewing the respondents. (shrink)

Introduction The mainstream view in philosophy of language is that sentence meaning determines truth-conditions. A corollary is that the truth or falsity of an utterance depends only on what words mean and how the world is arranged. Although several prominent philosophers (Searle, Travis, Recanati, Moravcsik) have challenged this view, it has proven hard to dislodge. The alternative view holds that meaning underdetermines truth-conditions. What is expressed by the utterance of a sentence in a context goes beyond what is encoded in (...) the sentence itself. Truth-conditional content depends on an indefinite number of unstated background assumptions, not all of which can be made explicit. A change in background assumptions can change truth-conditions, even bracketing disambiguation and reference assignment. That is, even after disambiguating any ambiguous words in a sentence and assigning semantic values to any indexical expressions in the sentence, truth-conditions may vary with variations in the background. (shrink)

This edition of the early diaries of Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), which are housed in the Carnap estate at the University of Pittsburgh, was published in two volumes by Felix Meiner Verlag Hamburg in 2021 and 2022. These are also the first two volumes of the Meiner Edition Schriften aus dem Nachlass von Rudolf Carnap. The title of these two volumes is succinctly Rudolf Carnap. Tagebücher (Rudolf Carnap. Diaries), supplemented by the respective indication of the volume. Volume 1 (approx. 600 pages) (...) comprises the diaries from 1908 to 1919, Volume 2 (approx. 900 pages) those from 1920 to 1935. With these volumes, the diaries of one of the central thinkers of the Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism become accessible to a wider circle of researchers and interested parties. While the diaries were previously only partially accessible, they have now for the first time been released in their entirety in the form of a proper text-critical edition. The editor is Christian Damböck with the collaboration of Brigitte Arden, Roman Jordan, Brigitte Parakenings and Lois M. Rendl. Text transcriptions of the originals, which Carnap had written in shorthand, served as the basis for the edition. The transcription was done by Brigitte Parakenings and Brigitte Arden, further editing by Lois M. Rendl and Roman Jordan. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of sensory experiences and their (...) capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects. (shrink)

Do sensory measurements deserve the label of “measurement”? We argue that they do. They fit with an epistemological view of measurement held in current philosophy of science, and they face the same kinds of epistemological challenges as physical measurements do: the problem of coordination and the problem of standardization. These problems are addressed through the process of “epistemic iteration,” for all measurements. We also argue for distinguishing the problem of standardization from the problem of coordination. To exemplify our claims, we (...) draw on olfactory performance tests, especially studies linking olfactory decline to neurodegenerative disorders. (shrink)

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this (...) paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction 3 Ch. 1 Kinds of Natural Philosophy 14 Ch. 2 Methods of Bookishness 49 Ch. 3 Modes of Argument 82 Ch. 4 Bodin’s Philosophy of Nature 116 Ch. 5 Theatrical Metaphors 153 Ch. 6 The Reception of the Theatrum 180 Epilogue: The Legacies of the Theatrum 225 Notes 233 Bibliography 331 Index 369.

Anne Conway was an extraordinary figure in a remarkable age. Her mastery of the intricate doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah, her authorship of a treatise criticising the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, and her scandalous conversion to the despised sect of Quakers indicate a strength of character and independence of mind wholly unexpected (and unwanted) in a woman at the time. Translated for the first time into modern English, her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is (...) the most interesting and original philosophical work written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Her radical and unorthodox ideas are important not only because they anticipated the more tolerant, ecumenical, and optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, but also because of their influence on Leibniz. This fully annotated edition includes an introduction which places Conway in her historical and philosophical contexts, together with a chronology of her life and a bibliography. (shrink)

Diderot avait une foi inebranlable dans le projet des lumieres qu'il incarnait en sa personne de directeur de l'encyclopedie. Mais parallelement a ses propres experiences d'ecrivain, de romancier et de dramaturge, Diderot portait un vif interet a l'art, a sa nature et a ses problemes. Les neuf Salons livres a la revue de son ami Grimm, la confidentielle et elitiste Correspondance litteraire, forment une oeuvre en soi monumentale qui, redigee durant vingt ans, ne temoigne pas seulement de la passion d'un (...) amateur pour l'art, mais de la reflexion esthetique infatigable du philosophe. L'oeuvre de Diderot apparait alors comme une etape decisive du dialogue aujourd'hui renoue entre la philosophie, l'art et l'esthetique. L'auteur parvient ainsi a degager et a interpreter une perspective actuelle a l'evolution des idees esthetiques du jeune Diderot, en s'inspirant par exemple des concepts de corps et de chair chez Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This book is the result of intensive and continued discussions about the social role of language and its conceptualisations in societies other than Northern (European-American) ones. Language as a means of expressing as well as evoking both interiority and community has been in the focus of these discussions, led among linguists, anthropologists, and Egyptologists, and leading to a collection of essays that provide studies that transcend previously considered approaches. Its contributions are in particular interested in understanding how the attitude of (...) the individual towards societal processes and strategies of norming is negotiated emotionally, and how individual interests and attitudes can be articulated. Discourses on public spaces are in the focus, in order to analyse those strategies that are employed to articulate dissent (for example, in the sense of face-threatening acts). This raises a number of questions on the spatial and public situatedness of emotions and language: How is the public space dealt with and reflected in language as property, heritage, and as a part of ascribed identities? Which role do emotions play in this space? How is emotion employed there as part of place making in relation to identity constructions? What is the connection between emotion, performance and emblematic spaces and places? Which opportunities of the violation of norms and transgression do such public spaces offer to actors and speakers? These questions intend to address the communicative representation of core cultural processes and concepts. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of privacy in occupational health services. Data were collected through in-depth theme interviews with occupational health professionals (n=15), employees (n=15) and employers (n=14). Our findings indicate that privacy, in this context, is a complex and multilayered concept, and that companies as well as individual employees have their own core secrets. Co-operation between the three groups proved challenging: occupational health professionals have to consider carefully in which situations and how much (...) they are entitled to release private information on individual employees for the benefit of the whole company. Privacy is thus not an absolute right of an individual, but involves the idea of sharing responsibility. The findings open up useful new perspectives on ethical questions of privacy and on the development of occupational health practices. (shrink)

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in (...) personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)