Barresi & Moore's account predicts that infants deprived of visual input will be delayed in achieving social understanding, a hypothesis that receives some support from studies of language use. by blind children. It is proposed that recently developed false belief and appearance/reality tasks be used to explore this issue further. Three possibly distracting conceptual issues are also discussed.

Glenberg offers two different accounts of embodied conceptualization. The first fails in cases where no direct bodily interaction is possible. The second fails in cases where the object in question cannot serve as a discriminative stimulus; moreover, it yields inappropriate content even in cases where it can be applied. Glenberg 's disregard for the conceptual agenda set by the social world is also disquieting.

Social-cognitive psychologists' problem orientation is, in itself, no threat to the generation of normatively neutral general theory. What would put general theory at risk is, rather, the reliance on a valence-balancing explanatory heuristic. Fortunately, social-cognitive research communities have resources to override this heuristic and utilize more epistemically effective cultural tools.

User intentions invoked to account for the distinctive way in which public-language natural-kind terms gather their extensions are inapplicable in the case of Millikan's substance concepts. I suggest that theoretical justification is preferable and available and raise exploratory questions about the applicability of the notion of substance concepts to the genesis of self concepts.

Introducing The Rational Imagination, Ruth Byrne tells us that rational thought has turned out to be “more imaginative than cognitive scientists...supposed,” and—more to the point here—that “[I]maginative thought is more rational than scientists imagined”. It would be unwise to take this mini-manifesto too seriously. The claim to which Byrne actually gives sustained attention is less philosophically sexy and more solidly empirical. This book is primarily concerned with experimental evidence in support of the thesis that the particular counterfactual conjectures people entertain—‘If (...) Mary had asked Peter to pick the peppers, he would have picked the peppers’—are governed by the same small set of psychological principles that influence inferential reasoning about them—‘Peter didn’t pick the peppers? Well, then, it stands to reason that Mary didn’t ask him to’. Byrne conjectures that this same small set of principles might also help in understanding how people creatively generate new members of a category, interpret novel phrases like ‘cactus fish’, and solve insight problems. By contrast, Byrne’s discussion of criteria for the rationality of counterfactual thought comes close to the end of the book and is notably modest and tentative. Perhaps counterfactual thought counts as rational if it is capable of producing the “best” judgments; perhaps the best counterfactual judgments are those that strike us as most plausible; perhaps plausibility is a hallmark of rationality because it is grounded in recognition of “fault lines in reality”. On the other hand, perhaps not. Counterfactual thoughts that paralyze people with regret are often compellingly plausible. Despite their plausibility, Byrne characterizes such “dysfunctional” counterfactuals as “irrational.” Perhaps this can be harmonized by the competence/performance distinction; perhaps a canny reader would be better advised to settle for the psychology. (shrink)

Adam Zeman has given us an intriguing book, one that, on principle, eludes easy categorization. On the one hand, like any user’s guide, Consciousness provides information ranging from the most basic to the highly specialized, plus a fifteen page glossary of technical terms. Like any manual, Consciousness is no cosy cover-to-cover read; in a preliminary note, Zeman considerately suggests selective strategies. For all that, the User’s Guide is far from being a typical manual or, for that matter, a standard text (...) of any sort. Zeman sees the study of consciousness as positioned on “a fault line in human thought...between the sciences and the arts” and hopes “to mediate between...scientists and philosophers [who have]...an interest in consciousness”. Beyond interpreting the work of each community to the other, Zeman wants to challenge their entrenched separation. Late in the book, he wistfully conjures up sophisticated alien intelligences who report with bemusement a “curious” division between arts and sciences observed among earthlings. Readers who pick up Consciousness: A user’s guide should be prepared for a highly personal vade mecum. (shrink)

Like the ring of fire around the Pacific, conceptual fracture between everyday acceptance of mentality and allegiance to the physical arouses uneasy attention. Theorists have dedicated impressive ingenuity to domestication of belief/desire psychology within a physical worldview; they have enthusiastically welcomed its demise in the wake of inevitable falsification by future science. At least one philosopher has urged that we cross our fingers when attributing intentional states. Rejecting assumptions common to these responses, Scott Sehon proposes that the claims of commonsense (...) psychology cannot and therefore need not be vindicated by inclusion among the truths of physical science, nor can they be threatened by conflict with its findings. Facts about mind are in this sense “foundationless” but still “firm,” by virtue of making possible a view of each other as persons. Central to Sehon’s brief is his proposal that CSP explanations of human behavior are teleological rather than causal, answering questions about the purposes of agents rather than the antecedents of their actions. Sehon takes up a wide range of related issues—Jerry Fodor’s brand of functionalism, Lynne Rudder Baker’s nonreductive “Practical Realism,” relations between global supervenience and entailment, and between causal explanation and Humean moral theory. Sehon does not, however, discuss either consciousness or intentionality beyond noting briefly that the first is very likely apt for reduction, the second, almost certainly not. (shrink)

It speaks to the illogic of our public life that the slogan “All Lives Matter” has come to stand directly against “Black Lives Matter” within contemporary discourse on race. Carol Wayne White’s Black Lives and Sacred Humanity, among its other achievements, confirms the absurdity of such an opposition. White shows how historic efforts to defend and define the humanity of African Americans offer a vision in which all human lives do not simply matter but are in fact sacred within (...) nature. White’s effort to marshal elements within the black tradition to develop her notion of sacred humanity succeeds; in fact, the entailments of her arguments go further still. In addition to undermining the binary of black lives/all... (shrink)

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

López-Escobar, E. G. K. Introduction.--Kueker, D. W. Back-and-forth arguments and infinitary logics.--Green, J. Consistency properties for finite quantifier languages.--Cunningham, E. Chain models.--Gregory, J. On a finiteness condition for infinitary languages.

Although thousands of articles and books appear annually in the field of nursing ethics, the sheer volume of scholarly publications points to the need to provide assessment and focus, and that is what this book offers. Nursing and Healthcare Ethics documents the work of nurse scholars in ethics, and goes well beyond a mere documentation of what has transpired and a list of what can be done in the future. It creatively looks back to assess previous accomplishments and forward to (...) find new directions and strengthen future scholarly contributions in nursing ethics. Critical thinking activities, organized by the book s themes (such as vulnerability, care and caring, diversity and disparity, and pain and suffering) are examples of applying these scholarly insights into practice. This book is intended not only for undergraduate and graduate students in academic settings, but also for those in professional development programs. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult questions about how to make (...) a difference. Effective Altruism has arisen as an attempt to help answer these questions, encouraging people to give as much money as they can in the most effective ways to address human and animal suffering. But the Effective Altruists’ answers support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism. It brings together a diverse group of activists and scholars to explore Effective Altruism’s failure to meaningfully address forms of human and animal suffering. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how class and racial dynamics generate different styles of activism among women's movement organizations. Based on a comparative study of two feminist organizations—one composed of lower-class women of color and another of upper-class white women—it charts the formation of divergent types of gender politics. First, it explores how differences in the class and racial backgrounds of the memberships create distinct organizational needs; second, how these divergent political interests motivate contrasting organizational ideologies, activities, and structures; and finally how (...) they motivate different approaches to the wider women's movement. At the conclusion, implications are drawn for cross-class/race alliances among grassroots women's organizations. (shrink)

In just a few years, the book became an underground classic. Neither Man Nor Beast takes Adams' thought one step further.

Seamus heaney says that the best lyrics unite “reader and poet and poem in an experience of enlargement, of getting beyond the confines of the first person singular, of widening the lens of receptivity until it reaches and is reached by the world beyond the self.”1 In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,”2 the ferry crossing acts as a catalyst for meditations about the self, the interaction between self and other, their common experience of the physical world across time, and how to forge (...) bonds that overcome the intense separateness of each individual. From these meditations arise an apprehension of time that blends past, present, and future; philosophical speculations about individual human identity during corporeal.. (shrink)

Obtaining informed consent from patients prior to a medical or surgical procedure is a fundamental part of safe and ethical clinical practice. Currently, it is routine for a significant part of the consent process to be delegated to members of the clinical team not performing the procedure (eg, junior doctors). However, it is common for consent-taking delegates to lack sufficient time and clinical knowledge to adequately promote patient autonomy and informed decision-making. Such problems might be addressed in a number of (...) ways. One possible solution to this clinical dilemma is through the use of conversational artificial intelligence using large language models (LLMs). There is considerable interest in the potential benefits of such models in medicine. For delegated procedural consent, LLM could improve patients’ access to the relevant procedural information and therefore enhance informed decision-making.In this paper, we first outline a hypothetical example of delegation of consent to LLMs prior to surgery. We then discuss existing clinical guidelines for consent delegation and some of the ways in which current practice may fail to meet the ethical purposes of informed consent. We outline and discuss the ethical implications of delegating consent to LLMs in medicine concluding that at least in certain clinical situations, the benefits of LLMs potentially far outweigh those of current practices. (shrink)

The idea of transgender identity is less perceived as a mental illness but as a sexual health condition in many parts of the Western world, while it is seen as an anomaly in most parts of Africa. Transgender identity is a gender expression that differs from the naturally assigned sex. The widely accepted reason behind transgender is unsatisfactory feelings toward assigned sex by the individual. This work sets out to explore transgender identity and family life in Africa. Several works have (...) explored the concept but with less emphasis on family life as it relates to the African setting. Furthermore, this work sets out to demonstrate some implications of transgender identity in an ideal African family. In this work, we shall argue that once transgender identity is normalized in Africa, it will be a threat to family life. The arguments to be used are historical, analytical, descriptive as well as evaluative. (shrink)

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non-nomic matters of fact? Lange's criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of (...) primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a 'mixed' metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive. (shrink)

Pateman challenges the way contemporary society functions by questioning the standard interpretation of an idea that is deeply embedded in American and British political thought: that our rights and freedoms derive from the social contract explicated by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau and interpreted in the United States by the Founding Fathers. The author shows how we are told only half the story of the original contract that establishes modern patriarchy. The sexual contract is ignored and thus men's patriarchal right over (...) women is also glossed over. No attention is paid to the problems that arise when women are excluded from the original contract but incorporated into the new contractual order. One of the main targets of the book is those who try to turn contractarian theory to progressive use, and a major thesis of the book is that this is not possible. Thus those feminists who have looked to a more "proper" contract- one between genuinely equal partners, or one entered into without any coercion- are misleading themselves. In the author's words, "In contract theory universal freedom is always a hypothesis, a story, a political fiction. Contract always generates political right in the forms of domination and subordination." Thus the book is also aimed at mainstream political theorists, and socialist and other critics of contract theory. The author offers a sweeping challenge to conventional understandings- of both left and right- of actual contracts in everyday life: the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract, and the new surrogate mother contract. By bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the contradictions and paradoxes surrounding women and contract, and the relation between the sexes, she is able to shed new light on fundamental political problems of freedom and subordination. (shrink)

The notion that we should educate the whole child is a familiar one. This paper begins with a cautionary liberal view of the notion and considers the extent to which this caution is justified in education. It does so by extending the possible meaning of ‘wholeness’ as this applies to the child to include not only the senses of integration and coherence but also continuity and adequacy as well. With reference to four positions on how children should be treated and (...) educated, these additional senses are advanced in order to show that ‘educating the whole child’ can indeed be justified. (shrink)