The inner ache: an experiential perspective on IonelinessThis paper examines the various theoretical approaches that have informed both the conceptualizations and the research approaches to investigations of loneliness. A focus on phenomenological and existential perspectives of loneliness can assist in an understanding of what is essentially a subjective distressing experience. The elderly, particularly those residing in nursing homes, are vulnerable to feelings of existential loneliness because following busy lives, often they are left without meaningful roles. Concomitant to this sense of (...) loss of meaning is an alteration in the perception of lived time. It is the purpose of this paper to stimulate research into what is a common but profoundly distressing experience. (shrink)

This case study explores the use of collaborative book clubs and word sorts to influence teacher positionality in an undergraduate social studies methods course for pre-service teachers. Drawing upon existing literature that suggests the effectiveness of dialogue as a means of navigating prior beliefs and the benefits of collaborative spaces for teachers to engage in collegial discussions, the study utilized books surrounding socio-political themes and educational inequalities to prompt conversation among participants. Results of the study suggest that dialogic and collaborative (...) activities like word sorts and book clubs provide productive opportunities for pre-service teachers to (re)negotiate their positionalities and grapple with their existing assumptions as they learn and co-construct meaning from and with one another. At the same time, the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of privilege and identity seem to remain somewhat unexamined and the teachers remain hesitant about the practical reality of working to dismantle inequalities in their own classrooms. (shrink)

Environmental Ethics is a systematic account of values carried by the natural world, coupled with an inquiry into duties toward animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is illustrated by and integrated with numerous actual examples of ethical decisions made in encounters with fauna and flora, endangered species, and threatened ecosystems. The ethics developed is informed throughout by ecological science and evolutionary biology, with attention to the logic of moving from what is in nature to what ought (...) to be. The ethical theory is applied in detail to social, public, and business policy. Written in an engaging style, using diagrams and figures as well as numerous case studies, Environmental Ethics prods the reader into concrete application and invites reader participation in the ethical discussions. The ethics concludes by exploring the historical experiences of personal residence in a surrounding environment. Here is an adventure into what it means to live as responsible human beings in the community of life on Earth. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

Alongside the major narratives of ethics in the tradition of Western philosophy, a reader with an eye to the vague and the peripheral, to the turbulent and shifting, will uncover minor lines of thinking--and with them, new histories and thus new futures. Minor Ethics develops a new approach to reading texts from the history of philosophical ethics. It aims to enliven lines of thought that are latent and suppressed within the major ethical texts regularly studied and taught, and to include (...) texts and ideas that have been excluded from the canon of Western ethics. The editors and contributors have put Gilles Deleuze's concepts--such as affect, assemblage, and multiplicity--into conversation with a range of ethical texts from ancient thought to the present. Rather than aiming for a coherent whole to emerge from these threads, the essays maintain a vigilant alertness to difference, to vibrations and resonances that are activated in the coupling of texts. What emerges are new questions, new problems, and new trajectories for thinking, which have as a goal the liberation of ethical questioning. Minor Ethics takes up a range of canonical ethical questions and thinks through concrete ethical problems relating to drug addiction, environmental responsibility, xenophobia, trauma, refugees, political parties, and cultural difference. The responses to these concerns demonstrate the minoritarian promise of the opening up of ethical thinking. (shrink)

The current breakdown in the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world is evident in the crisis of anthropogenic climate change. This critical situation has prompted intellectuals to think through a proper name for our contemporary era. Some opt for the “Anthropocene,” the era of humans, which highlights the uniquely human role in planetary destruction. Others prefer the “Capitalocene” to emphasize capitalism’s role in the crisis. Still others argue that our era is marked by an age of (...) information, which the author labels the “Pliroforicene” since pliroforia roughly means “information” in ancient Greek. Having discussed the pros and cons of these labels, the author discusses conscious rebellions against the Capitalocene and the Pliroforicene through the lenses of the work of sociologist Erik Olin Wright and philosopher Richard Polt. The author then argues that Martin Heidegger’s concept of Gelassenheit, which is defined as a comportment towards beings in which one is open to the ways in which they reveal themselves as they are rather than subsuming them into one’s own interests, may prove to play a crucial role in our contemporary era, regardless of what we call it since it allows us to respect the integrity of things. (shrink)

Since the development of assisted reproductive technologies, infertile individuals have crossed borders to obtain treatments unavailable or unaffordable in their own country. Recent media coverage has focused on the outsourcing of surrogacy to developing countries, where the cost for surrogacy is significantly less than the equivalent cost in a more developed country. This paper discusses the ethical arguments against international surrogacy. The major opposition viewpoints can be broadly divided into arguments about welfare, commodification and exploitation. It is argued that the (...) only valid objection to international surrogacy is that surrogate mothers may be exploited by being given too little compensation. However, the possibility of exploitation is a weak argument for prohibition, as employment alternatives for potential surrogate mothers may be more exploitative or more harmful than surrogacy. It is concluded that international surrogacy must be regulated, and the proposed regulatory mechanism is termed Fair Trade Surrogacy. The guidelines of Fair Trade Surrogacy focus on minimizing potential harms to all parties and ensuring fair compensation for surrogate mothers. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of place in painting. This role is multiple – at once attracting our look but also locatory of whatever is displayed in the painting itself and attracting our attention to it as a place distinct from the place where we are painting it or viewing it. Examined here is also the role of the lived body in the apprehension of place in painting: a corporeal animating force that animates a genuinely lived place as it is (...) set forth or intimated in paintings of seen, remembered, or imagined places. Such placially specific paintings are at once a commentary and a continuation on how we experience places in the context of the lived world. Included are analyses of three placially oriented paintings of my own as well as one by de Kooning – all in an effort to show the multivalence of place in painting. (shrink)

Through extensive training, experts acquire specialized knowledge and abilities. In this paper, I argue that experts also acquire specialized visual experiences. Specifically, I articulate and defend the account that experts enjoy visual experiences that represent gestalt properties through perceptual learning. I survey an array of empirical studies on face perception and perceptual expertise that support this account. I also look at studies on perceptual adaptation that some might argue present a problem for my account. I show how the data are (...) subject to an interpretation that is friendly to it. Last, I address two theoretical objections to the claim that visual experiences represent gestalt properties. (shrink)

Although the Libertarian Party has gained traction as the third biggest political party in the United States, the philosophical grounding of the party, which is exemplified by Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory is inherently flawed. Libertarianism’s emphasis on a free market leads to gross inequalities since it has no regard for sacred rights other than one’s right to freedom from interference from the government beyond what is essential for societal functioning. I argue that Nozick’s entitlement theory leads to indirect injustice and (...) is therefore an unfitting philosophical theory, which means that the Libertarian Party’s platform is flawed. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 30-31.

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der Sorge um (...) sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

In the heart of southeast Texas, an industrial powerhouse often referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', the oil refineries and petrochemical plants stand as stalwart testaments to the region's economic evolution. Interestingly, before the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the lumber and cattle industries powered this region's economy. A profound shift occurred when the Lucas Gusher, a fountain of oil spurting thousands of feet into the air, struck the lands of Spindletop Hill on January 10, 1901. This remarkable discovery of (...) the Spindletop oilfield on a slat dome formation south of Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry and fundamentally transformed the region's geopolitical, economic, and cultural landscapes. People from all over the country relocated to Gladys City and Beaumont in search of work and new opportunities, creating a boomtown as the town's population swelled from 10,000 to 50,000. The newfound urbanization brought by the oil industry transformed the town and the surrounding areas, creating a ripple effect across the region that would be felt for generations to come. The surge in oil-driven economic activity transmuted the region into a vibrant nexus of commerce, with the oil industry emerging as a critical architect of growth and advancement. This newfound affluence incited by the petroleum sector ushered in an era of economic diversification, laying the groundwork for industrialization’s further evolution. The Spindletop Oil Fields not only underscored the United States’ ascent as the foremost petroleum-producing nation but also signaled the nation’s initiation into the Petroleum Age. It was Spindletop that solidified its position as America’s first significant oil field, becoming an enduring symbol of its industrial might. By 1985, over 153,000,000 barrels of oil had been produced and extracted from the Spindletop oil fields, underscoring the magnitude of this extraordinary resource. (shrink)

Cover -- THE WORLD ON EDGE -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Prelude -- PART 1 Sorting Out Edges -- Preface to Part One -- 1. Borders and Boundaries -- Interlude I A Panoply of Edges -- 2. Edges and Surfaces, Edges and Limits -- Interlude II Cusps, Traces, Veils -- 3. Edges of Places and Events -- Interlude III Frames in/of Painting -- PART 2 Constructed versus Naturally Given Edges -- Preface to Part Two (...) -- 4. Natural versus Artifactual Edges -- 5. Wild Edges -- Interlude IV Listening to Edges in Music -- 6. Landscape Edges -- 7. Intermediate Edges: Parks, Gardens, Neighborhoods, Streets -- PART 3 Edges of Body and Psyche, Earth and Sky -- Preface to Part Three -- 8. At the Edges of My Body -- 9. Being on Edge and Falling Apart -- 10. From Earth's Edge to the Sky and Beyond -- PART 4 Parting Thoughts -- A Last Lesson: Not to Put Too Fine an Edge on Things -- Postlude: Why Edges Matter in Their Very Heterodoxicality -- Epilogue: Life on the Edge of Danger, Disaster, and Doom -- Afterword/Foreword: Thinking Edges, Edges of Thinking -- Index. (shrink)

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Education identifies and confronts key ethical issues generated over years of AI research, development, and deployment in learning contexts. Adaptive, automated, and data-driven education systems are increasingly being implemented in universities, schools, and corporate training worldwide, but the ethical consequences of engaging with these technologies remain unexplored. Featuring expert perspectives from inside and outside the AIED scholarly community, this book provides AI researchers, learning scientists, educational technologists, and others with questions, frameworks, guidelines, policies, and (...) regulations to ensure the positive impact of artificial intelligence in learning. (shrink)

Cecilia Sjöholm reads Hannah Arendt as a philosopher of the senses, grappling with questions of vision, hearing, and touch even in her political work. Constructing an Arendtian theory of aesthetics from the philosopher's fragmentary writings on art and perception, Sjöholm begins a vibrant new chapter in Arendt scholarship that expands her relevance for contemporary philosophers. Arendt wrote thoughtfully about the role of sensibility and aesthetic judgment in political life and on the power of art to enrich human experience. Sjöholm draws (...) a clear line from Arendt's consideration of these subjects to her reflections on aesthetic encounters and works of art mentioned in her published writings and stored among her memorabilia. This delicate effort allows Sjöholm to revisit Arendt's political concepts of freedom, plurality, and judgment from an aesthetic point of view and incorporate Arendt's insight into current discussions of literature, music, theater, and visual art. Though Arendt did not explicitly outline an aesthetics, Sjöholm's work substantively incorporates her perspective into contemporary reckonings with radical politics and their relationship to art. (shrink)

This edited collection is the first of its kind to explore the view called perspectivism in philosophy of science. The book brings together an array of essays that reflect on the methodological promises and scientific challenges of perspectivism in a variety of fields such as physics, biology, cognitive neuroscience, and cancer research, just as a few examples. What are the advantages of using a plurality of perspectives in a given scientific field and for interdisciplinary research? Can different perspectives be integrated? (...) What is the relation between perspectivism, pluralism, and pragmatism? These ten new essays by top scholars in the field offer a polyphonic journey towards understanding the view called ‘perspectivism’ and its relevance to science. (shrink)

Some self-knowledge must be arrived at by the subject herself, rather than being transmitted by another’s testimony. Yet in many cases the subject interacts with an expert in part because she is likely to have the relevant knowledge of their mind. This raises a question: what is the expert’s knowledge like that there are barriers to simply transmitting it by testimony? I argue that the expert’s knowledge is, in some circumstances, proleptic, referring to attitudes the subject would hold were she (...) to reflect in certain ways. The expert’s knowledge cannot be transmitted by testimony because self-knowledge cannot be proleptic. (shrink)

Edward S. Casey invites us to rethink our emotions as fundamentally emerging from outside and around the self, redirecting our attention from the subjective sources of emotion to what reaches us from outside the domain of the subject.

This chapter analyzes the ethical issues that arise in the context of the use of physical enhancement techniques, i.e.techniques that aim at enhancing one or more physical functions of human beings. First, it discusses the different types of physical enhancement and points doping in sports is only a minor part of the whole enhancement field. Considerable attention is devoted to enhancement in sports, primarily because of the extensive extant literature. Then, the chapter moves on to problematize the concept of enhancement. (...) It shows that deciding whether something should count as an enhancement is not a matter for pure personal decision. The chapter engages with the ethical arguments put forward in the enhancement debate, showing that the validity of both the pro‐ and the anti‐enhancement arguments is context‐dependent and the growth hormone treatment can only be justifiably claimed if it aims at giving someone a height in the normal range. (shrink)

Educators are increasingly concerned with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in student writing. Much of the concern focuses on the issue of students using ChatGPT to complete their work. I introduce the CUPID model for instructors to use when thinking about how to pedagogically handle ChatGPT. The CUPID model lays out five general approaches: Catch, Utilize, Prevent, Ignore, and Disincentivize. I suggest that instructors should especially consider using certain assignments that fall under the approach “Disincentivize”. Philosophy instructors in particular (...) should assign more low-stakes writing, such as journals and reflection pieces. The adoption of low-stakes writing assignments aims to discourage students from relying on AI while promoting clarity of thought and deeper engagement with philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's main work in political philosophy, the _Social Contract_, contains two beginnings; on the one hand, it commences, quite conventionally, with a social contract between individuals, on the other hand it also states that a lawmaker needs to precede the agreement of such a contract. This curious co-existence of two beginnings in the text has usually been ignored or played down by interpreters. This article, on the other hand, presents a reading of their interplay inspired by Zizek's theory of (...) ideology. It demonstrates how one of the beginnings, if seen from this point of view, may be understood as the truth about the other, and how the figure of the lawmaker specifically reveals the text as torn apart by contradictory internal tendencies. (shrink)

A philosophical interpretation of the Corleone moral code as represented in the first Godfather film through the lenses of Aristotle and Nietzsche.

This book uses the framework of care ethics to articulate a novel theory of our epistemic obligations to one another. It presents an original way to understand our epistemic vulnerabilities, our obligations in education, and our care-duties toward others with whom we stand in epistemically vulnerable relationships. As embodied and socially interdependent knowers, we have obligations to one another that are generated by our ability to care-that is to meet each other's epistemic vulnerabilities. The author begins the book by arguing (...) that the same motivations that moved social epistemologists away from individualistic epistemology should motivate a move to a care-based theory. The following chapters outline our epistemic care-duties to vulnerable agents, and offer criteria of epistemic goodness for communities of inquiry. Finally, the author discusses the tension between epistemic care and epistemic paternalism. Epistemic Care will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education. (shrink)

Barz (2018) contends that there is no specification of the phenomenon of first-person authority that avoids falsity or triviality. This paper offers one. When a subject self-ascribes a current conscious mental state in speech, there is a presumption that what she says is true. To defeat this presumption, one must be able to explain how she has been led astray.

Dystopian and postapocalyptic narratives are often vectors for utopian hope in decidedly anti-utopian historical moments. The twenty-first century has, arguably, been such a moment. The association of utopianism with some of the most devastating political projects of the twentieth century, the plurality of existential threats looming over the globalized world, and the hegemony of global capitalism converge to form a cultural milieu inundated with grim visions of the future. These visions, however, have a stubborn tendency to gesture toward their negation: (...) the emancipated society. Optimism and pessimism are intermingled in contemporary narratives that frame the end of civilization as the precondition for a utopian... (shrink)

Perin argues that theSceptic is engaged in the search for truth and that since this is so, the Sceptic aims to satisfy certain basic rational requirements.

Kriegel has recently developed an adverbial account of intentionality, in part to solve the problem of how we can think of non-existents. The view has real virtues: it endorses a non-relational conception of intentionality and is ontologically conservative. Alas, the view ultimately cannot replace the act-object model of intentionality that it seeks to, because it depends on the act-object model for its intelligibility at key points. It thus fails as a revisionistic theory. I argue that the virtues of adverbialism can (...) be had from within the act-object framework, provided we understand intentional objects correctly. I use Crane as a guide here, and build on his work on intentional objects. In the end, we can provide a suitable solution to the problem of thinking of non-existents within the act-object framework without adopting implausible ontological or metaphysical views. So, adverbialism is neither a possible stand-alone revisionary option nor a needed modif... (shrink)

Plants are commonly considered immobile, in contrast to humans and other animals. But vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world. How do plants as sessile, growing, decaying, and metamorphosing beings shape the places they inhabit, and how are they shaped by them? How do human places interact with those of plants-in lived experience; in landscape (...) painting; in cultivation and contemplation; in forests, fields, gardens, and cities? Examining these questions and many more, Plants in Place is a collaborative study of vegetal phenomenology at the intersection of Edward S. Casey's phenomenology of place and Michael Marder's plant-thinking. It focuses on both the microlevel of the dynamic constitution of plant edges or a child's engagement with moss and the macrolevel of habitats that include the sociality of trees. This compelling portrait of plants and their places provides readers with new ways to appreciate the complexity and vitality of vegetal life. Eloquent, descriptively rich, and insightful, the book also shows how the worlds of plants can enhance our understanding and experience of place more broadly. (shrink)

Innovative research on decision making under ‘deep uncertainty’ is underway in applied fields such as engineering and operational research, largely outside the view of normative theorists grounded in decision theory. Applied methods and tools for decision support under deep uncertainty go beyond standard decision theory in the attention that they give to the structuring of decisions. Decision structuring is an important part of a broader philosophy of managing uncertainty in decision making, and normative decision theorists can both learn from, and (...) contribute to, the growing deep uncertainty decision support literature. (shrink)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has initiated bundled payments for hip and knee total joint replacement in an effort to decrease healthcare costs and increase quality of care. The ethical implications of this program have not been studied. This article considers the ethics of patient selection to improve outcomes; specifically, screening patients by body mass index to determine eligibility for total joint replacement. I argue that this type of screening is not ethically defensible, and that the bundled payment (...) program as structured is likely to lead to unfair restrictions on who receives total joint replacements. (shrink)

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject (...) of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some. (shrink)

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Roman Catholic sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I show how women in the Global South draw on religious imagery to redefine cultural ideals of womanhood and family responsibility. By taking the religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the Congolese sisters I interviewed seemingly betray local expectations regarding women’s responsibility to reproduce and repair the clan. Although sisters’ vows subject them to social ridicule for violating cultural expectations to bear children and support (...) kin, they devise new strategies to negotiate the connection between womanhood and the maternal role of caregiver and nurturer outside of marriage and fertility. In social ministries that affirm their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others, the sisters realize these cultural ideals through a “spiritual motherhood” that transforms their traditional heteronormative obligations. Framing their decision to live outside accepted kinship structures in religious terms mutes the radicalness of this lifestyle and provides religious legitimation for what would otherwise be considered a selfish choice for a woman acting independent of family well-being. In this context, I demonstrate how doing religion is inseparable from doing gender as Catholic sisters embody alternative ways of being a woman in post-colonial Congolese society through their religious practices. (shrink)

This volume, the first to tackle Heidegger and music, features contributions from philosophers, musicians, educators, and musicologists from many countries throughout the world, utilizes Heidegger’s philosophy to shed light on the place of music in different contexts and fields of practice.