This article introduces and explores the concept of emotional consumption through an analysis of an exotic dance club in the New England area. Through understanding how regular customers consume the services offered in an exotic dance club, I show how consuming service labor differs dramatically from consuming objects of exchange. Emotional consumption involves psychosocial dynamics, which emerge from the intersubjective relationships between the consumer and the dancer who is providing a service. In this exchange, the consumer engages in an interaction (...) where the boundary between pure economic exchange begins to merge with a sense of relationality. (shrink)

A prolific discourse on the sexualisation of girls has developed in the Anglophone west. Since 2006, at least six governmental policy papers, four think tank reports, ten parenting manuals as well as over a thousand newspaper articles have been published on the topic. Deconstructing popular feminist narratives, one finds that beneath calls for protection there often resides a deeply ambivalent construction of the middle-class white girl. I argue that these narratives are beset by a melancholic subtext, one that is fuelled (...) by care and a desire for the future as well as an undercurrent of suspicion, anger and resentment. (shrink)

Durocher and colleagues argue that Norman Daniels’s notion of just health could provide a useful framework for decreasing inequities in access to assistive technology. I argue that it would provide limited help for two reasons. First, Daniels’s reliance on normal species functioning as the goal of health care and his assumptions regarding the impact of normal species functioning on reasonable life projects create substantial difficulties for application to assistive technology. Second, although Daniels’s requirements for distributive justice provide a critical starting (...) point for any discussion of health equity, these requirements appear already met within current assistive technology funding schemes. (shrink)

Andy Egan has presented a dilemma for decision theory. As is well known, Newcomb cases appear to undermine the case for evidential decision theory. However, Egan has come up with a new scenario which poses difficulties for causal decision theory. I offer a simple solution to this dilemma in terms of a modified EDT. I propose an epistemological test: take some feature which is relevant to your evaluation of the scenarios under consideration, evidentially correlated with the actions under (...) consideration albeit, causally independent of them. Hold this feature fixed as a hypothesis. The test shows that, in Newcomb cases, EDT would mislead the agent. Where the test shows EDT to be misleading, I propose to use fictive conditional credences in the EDT-formula under the constraint that they are set to equal values. I then discuss Huw Price’s defence of EDT as an alternative to my diagnosis. I argue that my solution also applies if one accepts the main premisses of Price’s argument. I close with applying my solution to Nozick’s original Newcomb problem. (shrink)

I take issue with two claims of DeRose: Conditionals of deliberation must not depend on backtracking grounds. ‘Were’ed-up conditionals coincide with future-directed indicative conditionals; the only difference in their meaning is that they must not depend on backtracking grounds. I use Egan’s counterexamples to causal decision theory to contest the first and an example of backtracking reasoning by David Lewis to contest the second claim. I tentatively outline a rivaling account of ‘were’ed-up conditionals which combines features of the standard (...) analysis of counterfactuals with the contextual relevance of the corresponding indicative conditionals. (shrink)

Levenstein et al. aptly highlight some of the foundational issues in theoretical neuroscience, such as the role of abstraction and idealization in providing scientific explanations and understanding, and distinguishing under which conditions neuroscientific models provide genuine explanations, or mere descriptions, predictions, or control. -/- The authors rightly emphasize that philosophers of science can also gain valuable insights from the vast body of neuroscience literature, by employing methods of digital humanities, such as text mining, in line with the cognitive metascience approach (...) (Miłkowski, 2023). -/- Conversely, neuroscientists can benefit from the latest research in philosophy of science, particularly on the epistemic norms of diverse kinds of explanations in neuroscience, e.g., topological (Kostić, 2020), computational (Miłkowski, 2013; Chirimuuta, 2018), dynamical (Favela, 2020), and functional (Egan, 2017). Understanding the diverse goals of theories is conducive to fruitful exploratory and explanatory scientific practice. Some forms of scientific understanding are not always grounded in explanations, but also in diverse theoretical representations, e.g., diagrams, taxonomies, and diagnostic manuals (Miłkowski, 2023). Philosophical theories of understanding can also integrate different kinds of explanations in a single framework (Khalifa et al., 2022). -/- The need for these interdisciplinary connections is particularly vivid in the case of network models that are increasingly being used in neuroscience (Kostić et al., 2020), and especially when it comes to evaluating their explanatory power (Kostić, 2020; Kostić and Khalifa, 2023). -/- In conclusion, we strongly support Levenstein et al.'s call for greater collaboration between philosophers of science and neuroscientists on the foundational issues in neuroscience. Embracing this interdisciplinary approach is essential for advancing our knowledge of the brain and its function. (shrink)

"I remember this paper I wrote on existentialism. My teacher gave it back with an F. She'd underlined true and truth wherever it appeared in the essay, probably about twenty times, with a question mark beside each. She wanted to know what I meant by truth." --Danielle Egan.

This article interprets Hegel's hierarchical theory of race as an application of his general views about the metaphysics of classification and explanation. We begin by offering a reconstruction of Hegel's hierarchical theory of race based on the critical edition of relevant lecture transcripts: we argue that Hegel's position on race is appropriately classified as racist, that it postulates innate mental deficits of some races, and that it turns racism from an anthropological into a metaphysical doctrine by claiming that the division (...) of humankind into races (at least in the Old World) is not a brute fact, but follows a ‘higher necessity’. We then summarize our interpretation of the relevant metaphysical background to this theory. On our reading, Hegel postulates an essentialist form of explanation that explains given kinds as stages in a teleological, non-temporal process through which the nature of a superordinate kind is realized. We argue that Hegel's views about a hierarchical and necessary division of humankind into races are an application of this model to the case of human diversity, motivated by explanatory considerations and subject to confirmation bias. By way of conclusion, we address two possible attempts to ‘save’ Hegelian philosophy from its racist baggage. (shrink)

The standard assumption for what perception must do in order to represent a “higher level” content—say, tiger—is that it must represent the kind as such. I argue that this “as such condition” is not constitutive of what it means for a content to be “higher‐level”, and that embracing it produces a range of unfortunate dialectical consequences. After offering this critique, I give an alternative construal, the “extended perceptual space” view of higher‐level contents. This view captures the phenomena targeted by the (...) “higher‐level content” thesis, is empirically supported, and avoids the negative dialectical consequences of the as such condition. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that that the primary goal of statues honouring public figures is to create and shape a collective identity. The way that these statues further the goal of identity is not by holding up the subjects of the statues as admirable but rather by asserting that the subjects were in some way objectively important and central to some group surrounding the statue. I will look at the defences for keeping statues of and awards named after John (...) A. Macdonald and show that the primary concern is not with defending the character of Macdonald but rather that removing him is ‘erasing history’. These defences are not about defending Macdonald as a person but rather defending a conception of the Canadian identity that requires Macdonald play a central role. Against these defences of Macdonald, I show that the ‘objective history’ case for him and other such similar figures fails. In the particular case of Macdonald, it fails because he was actually not that important for Canadian history. In the general case of negative public figures, I provide a short defence of how group identities are not static and not unchangeably rooted in a single historically based articulation. (shrink)

Scientific malpractice is not just due to researchers having bad intentions, but also due to a lack of education concerning research integrity practices. Besides the importance of institutionalised trainings on research integrity, research supervisors play an important role in translating what doctoral students learn during research integrity formal sessions. Supervision practices and role modelling influence directly and indirectly supervisees’ attitudes and behaviour toward responsible research. Research supervisors can not be left alone in this effort. Research institutions are responsible for supporting (...) supervisors in being more aware of their RI function, and in supporting responsible supervision practices to have a positive cascading effect on supervisees’ research practices. We interviewed 22 European research supervisors to investigate how they perceive their role as research integrity trainers and their real-life supervision practices. Moreover, we investigated their points of view concerning the role of research institutions in supporting supervision practices. Although there are different commonalities in supervisors’ perception of their research integrity-related role, differences are emphasised depending on the supervisors’ characteristics such as academic domain, seniority, working country and gender. In addition, supervisors’ way of mentoring depend also on supervisees’ learning curve. Overall, all supervisors agreed on institutions playing an important role in support their supervision effort and practices. This study aims to be a starting point for better understanding research integrity supervision practices and the role of institutions in supporting them. Moreover, it puts the basis to further investigate differences in supervision practices depending on supervisors’ characteristics. (shrink)

Este trabajo constituye una primera aproximación a la teoría del origen en común tal como aparece en On the Origin of Species, de Charles Darwin. Luego de exponer las diferencias entre esta teoría y la teoría de la selección natural y la teoría de la evolución, se presentan algunos debates en torno a la determinación de homologías, el vocabulario de la teoría y su ley fundamental. Finalmente, se discute la TOC-teoricidad de los términos involucrados y los candidatos a especializaciones de (...) TOC. (shrink)

En este trabajo discutimos la extensión de la influencia que el pensamiento de Richard Owen tuvo sobre el de Charles Darwin. Además, se intentará mostrar lo heterogéneo de tal influencia, que va desde teorías específicas a giros retóricos. Esta influencia es en muchos casos subestimada, dando la sensación de que la novedad darwiniana consistió únicamente en mirar con ojos desprejuiciados lo que los otros no habían visto. Esta visión resulta injusta con Owen, y también con el esfuerzo conceptual llevado adelante (...) por Darwin con las piezas brindadas por sus precursores. Finalmente, este es un caso interesante para entender el tipo de novedad aportada por las revoluciones científicas y el modo sofisticado en que tal novedad se sustenta sobre el trabajo de los enfoques previos. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article advances a novel way of understanding humor and stand-up comedy. I propose that the relationship between the comedian and her audience is understood by way of trust, where the comedian requires the trust of her audience for her humor to succeed. The comedian may hold the trust of the audience in two domains. She may be trusted as to the form of the humor, such as whether she is joking. She may also be trusted as to the (...) content of the joke. This approach has two distinct virtues. The first is that it makes sense of partial successes. These are cases where the humor neither completely succeeds nor fails because the audience does not fully trust the comedian. The second is that it explains intuitions about ethically dubious humor and why certain classes of humor, especially those dealing in racialized and gendered identities, are more readily accepted from humorists of those identities. (shrink)

The rise of China, along with problems of governance in democratic countries, has reinvigorated the theory of political meritocracy. But what is the theory of political meritocracy and how can it set standards for evaluating political progress? To help answer these questions, this volume gathers a series of commissioned research papers from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, historians and social scientists. The result is the first book in decades to examine the rise of political meritocracy and what it will (...) mean for political developments in China and the rest of the world. Despite its limitations, meritocracy has contributed much to human flourishing in East Asia and beyond and will continue to do so in the future. This book is essential reading for those who wish to further the debate and perhaps even help to implement desirable forms of political change. (shrink)

In the wake of political evil on a large scale, what does justice consist of? Daniel Philpott takes up this question in Just and Unjust Peace. While scholars have written about many aspects of dealing with past injustice, no general ethic has emerged. Philpott seeks to provide a holistic model that delivers concrete ethical guidelines for societies striving to build peace.

Since their publication, the Muhammad cartoons featured in Jyllands Posten and Charlie Hebdo have become a symbol of free speech and Western values. These cartoons used provocation as a tool to discuss the limits of free speech and the scope of social self-censorship. In a just society, should the possibility of laughter be distributed equally? Should cartoonists and editors only publish jokes that are universally laughable? What is the proper reaction to these kinds of provocative jokes once the possibility of (...) censorship is ruled out in a liberal context? Is counterspeech or even cancellation a legitimate response? (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotny explores one of the most controversial topics of Suarez's philosophy: "beings of reason." Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle.

In the wake of political evil on a large scale, what does justice consist of? Daniel Philpott takes up this question in Just and Unjust Peace.

In naturalistic settings, great apes exhibit impressive social intelligence. Despite this, experimental findings are equivocal about the extent to which they are aware of other minds. At the high level, there is only negative evidence that chimpanzees and orangutans understand the concept of belief, even when simplified non-verbal versions of the ‘location change’ false belief test are used (Call & Tomasello, 1999). More remarkably, even the evidence that they are aware of simpler mental states – such as seeing – is (...) equivocal and ‘decidedly mixed’ (Call & Tomasello 2005, p. 61). At best, there appear to be signature limits to simian capacities in this regard. In addition, there exists a range of proposals about what lies behind their particular form of social intelligence. Within the cognitivist camp, these range from positing a Naïve, Weak, or Minimal Theory of Mind (Bogdan 2009, Tomasello, Call and Hare 2003, Apperly and Butterfill 2009); Perceptual Mindreading (Bermúdez 2009); an Early Mindreading System (Nichols and Stich 2003); or a Theory of Behaviour (Povinelli and Vonk 2004). -/- In line with this experimental evidence, this contribution motivates a different explanatory possibility. It defends the view that the basic ways that apes and humans (both children and adults) engage with other minds is emotionally charged, enactive and non-representational. If true, this would be important for thinking about the moral status of animals capable of such mind minding. This is not only because it would identify an important cross species commonality, but also especially because it would promote the importance of non-cognitive aspects of such engagements. For example, it is at odds with the idea that having a ‘theory of mind’ is required for being phenomenally conscious (Carruthers 2000, 2005). (shrink)

In every domain of reasoning humans deploy an wide range of intuitive 'theories' about how the world works. So are we alone in trying to make sense of the world by postulating theoretical entities to explain how the world works, or do we share this ability with other species. This is the focus of this new book from Daniel Povinelli.

We point out some concepts that appear rather frequently in physics discussions, which, despite a seemingly innocent initial appearance, turn out to have important implicit implications that put into question the very assumption of their meaningfulness. The message of this essay is that, in order to avoid the ensuing confusions, their usage should be accompanied with clarifications that make them meaningful, and then to confront the often uncomfortable underlying assumptions required to do so. In particular, we will visit the notions (...) of novel physics occurring at a certain energy scale, or at certain distance from a black hole’s event horizon, and the various meanings of the word “fluctuations”. (shrink)

Příspěvek si klade dvojí cíl. V prvé řadě je jeho záměrem vyzdvihnout přínos monografie O revoluci pro celek myšlení Hannah Arendtové. Především pak nabízí interpretaci klíčového oddílu knihy, v němž spočívá vlastní jádro arendtovského návrhu „nové politické vědy“. Ústředním pro politický řád se ukazuje být rozdíl mezi pramenem moci a pramenem autority, která politickému řádu propůjčuje stabilitu. Příspěvek dokládá, že Arendtová v zakladatelském aktu politického společenství spatřuje dva „bludné kruhy“ – bludný kruh legitimity moci a bludný kruh legitimity zákonů. Zatímco (...) s prvním bludným kruhem si zdařilá americká revoluce věděla rady, druhý bludný kruh, který odkazuje k potřebě autority sankcionující pozitivní zákonodárství, ji uvedl do teoretických obtíží. Stať ukazuje, že Arendtová sama důsledně trvá na možnosti nalézt pramen autority výhradně v prostoru politického jednání. (shrink)

An expanded version of the theory of traditional referentiality suggests that the ambiguous glowing eyes of Iliad 1.200 are Achilles', not Athena's. The image "glowing eyes" bifurcates into two syntactic groups, a verb group and an adjective group, with different connotations. The verb group is associated with enraged mortals; the adjective group, vision and the divine. This division suggests that the verbally glowing eyes in Iliad 1.200 belong to Achilles and express his fury. Yet, colored by the adjective group, they (...) also imply Achilles' tragedy by indexing his vision, semi-divinity, and vitality at the moment when he seals his doom. (shrink)

Kunst schaffen -- Kunst rahmen -- Birgit Spalts reflektierende Urteilskraft -- Kunst einordnen -- Kunst: immanent.

Resumen: La capacidad unificadora de una teoría científica es un rasgo usualmente contemplado a la hora de evaluar su adecuación. Kitcher ha elucidado satisfactoriamente tal noción mediante su enfoque de los patrones explicativos. Sin embargo, su perspectiva adolece de ciertas carencias. Concretamente, sostendremos que el requisito de rigurosidad de los patrones para evaluar la capacidad unificadora debe ser repensado, pues atenta contra la heterogeneidad característica de las diferentes aplicaciones de teorías unificadoras. A su vez, mostraremos cómo estas dificultades bien pueden (...) ser subsanadas desde el marco del estructuralismo metateórico sin por ello resignar ninguna de las acertadas intuiciones de Kitcher. -/- Palabras clave: Explicación, Kitcher, estructuralismo metateórico, unificación, unificación espuria. -/- Abstract: Kitcher has satisfactorily explicated unification using his particular approach to scientific explanation. However, we believe that his perspective has certain problems, which have been inherited by more recent approaches to the topic. Specifically, the requirement of stringency of patterns that Kitcher proposes to determine the unifying power of an explanatory pattern undermines the typical and peculiar heterogeneity we can find in different applications of unifying theories. We will show how this topic can be better addressed by the perspective built by metatheoretical structuralism without sacrificing any of Kitcher’s correct intuitions. -/- Keywords: Explanation, Kitcher, metatheoretical structuralism, spurious unification, unification. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is satire. This seems to excite many people, and over the past four years I have heard many variations of a similar refrain: “Oh, wow. You’re studying satire? That’s very topical. You must have a lot of material to work with.” There is a way in which this is true, though I suspect in a way that diverges from the way that most of my interlocutors believed. I suspect that the material they imagined me to (...) be working with was the output of Donald Trump, first a candidate for and now holder of the office of President of the United States. That is not the material I find interesting. More interesting to me is their statement. It evinces a number of beliefs that I find interesting, chief among them that Trump makes the current period particularly apt for satire, as if a doddery and incompetent ruling class is somehow a recent phenomenon. And I suspect that underneath this belief in the aptness of satire is a belief in the power of satire. Satire is somehow how people are going to strike back at the vice-governed fools who rule us. Those beliefs are the material I want to work with. This is my interest in satire, then: not so much what it is about satire that makes it powerful, but what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful? And what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful when there is pretty powerful evidence that it is not? Unfortunately, here is where I run into the problem that in a very important way I do not have a lot of material to work with. There is not an awful lot on satire within the analytic tradition: outside of a few references to satire, analytic discussions of satire are limited to two short articles. Accordingly, I have taken the task of my dissertation to be to create an account of satire that helps to bring forward why satire is a thing that people can imagine to be powerful, that they can imagine to be politically effective. My dissertation will effectively have two halves, one where I build my account and one where I begin to apply it. The purpose of applying my account, which will comprise the final two chapters, will not be to show its implications so much as how it can be used. My goal will not so much be to give definitive answers about the nature of satire, but rather to give a demonstration of how my account facilitates engaging questions about the role of satire in social and political context. (shrink)

A given explanatory theory T falls into circular reasoning if the only way to determine its explanandum is through the application of T. To find an underlying theory T′ that determines T′s explanandum helps us save T from this accusation of circularity. We follow the structuralist view of theories in presenting and dealing with this issue, by applying it to particular theories. More specifically, we focus on the relationship between the Darwinian theory of common ancestry and the determination of homologies.

The principle that each person is his own property occupies an almost axiomatic status in right-wing liberal thought as well as in some egalitarian theories. I reject any, full or partial, notion of property with respect to oneself by showing that any appeal and any justifiability which may be associated with self-ownership can at most serve to ground rights which are demonstrably non-property rights. As a contrast to self ownership, I introduce the non-proprietarian notion of Original Freedom. I compare the (...) two with respect to the control, income, and transfer aspects of ownership and suggest that Original Freedom is the more intuitively acceptable. (shrink)

Even if it is never possible to create a sentient robot that might lay claim to the status of personhood, a convincingly realistic robotic simulation of the human body could alter how human beings act towards one another. This article argues that the human face exerts a powerful influence over interpersonal interaction, creating empathetic connections that limit our capacity to engage in acts of cruelty; an ability to convincingly simulate the human face would detach it from the attribution of human (...) personhood and so encourage a dismissal of its affective charge. This possibility can be understood in the context of existing attempts to inoculate individuals against the appeal of the face so as to facilitate organised killing. (shrink)

In recent decades, issues that reside at the center of philosophical and psychological inquiry have been absorbed into a scientific framework variously identified as "brain science," "cognitive science," and "cognitive neuroscience." Scholars have heralded this development as revolutionary, but a revolution implies an existing method has been overturned in favor of something new. What long-held theories have been abandoned or significantly modified in light of cognitive neuroscience? _Consciousness and Mental Life_ questions our present approach to the study of consciousness and (...) the way modern discoveries either mirror or contradict understandings reached in the centuries leading up to our own. Daniel N. Robinson does not wage an attack on the emerging discipline of cognitive science. Rather, he provides the necessary historical context to properly evaluate the relationship between issues of consciousness and neuroscience and their evolution over time. Robinson begins with Aristotle and the ancient Greeks and continues through to René Descartes, David Hume, William James, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Derek Parfit. Approaching the issue from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective, Robinson identifies what makes the study of consciousness so problematic and asks whether cognitive neuroscience can truly reveal the origins of mental events, emotions, and preference, or if these occurrences are better understood by studying the whole person, not just the brain. Well-reasoned and thoroughly argued, _Consciousness and Mental Life_ corrects many claims made about the success of brain science and provides a valuable historical context for the study of human consciousness. (shrink)

In recent years there have been growing calls for forging greater connections between education and cognitive neuroscience. As a consequence great hopes for the application of empirical research on the human brain to educational problems have been raised. In this article we contend that the expectation that results from cognitive neuroscience research will have a direct and immediate impact on educational practice are shortsighted and unrealistic. Instead, we argue that an infrastructure needs to be created, principally through interdisciplinary training, funding (...) and research programs that allow for bidirectional collaborations between cognitive neuroscientists, educators and educational researchers to grow. We outline several pathways for scaffolding such a basis for the emerging field of ‘Mind, Brain and Education’ to flourish as well as the obstacles that are likely to be encountered along the path. (shrink)

Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence, because it vigorously rejects every appeal to the beyond, is often presumed to be indifferent to the concerns of religion. This book argues against such a presumption. It does so, first of all, by emphasising how both Deleuze’s thought and the notion of religion are motivated by a demand to create new modes of existence, or to imagine and enact a future that would substantively break with the present configuration of being. If Deleuze’s thought and the (...) notion of religion intersect in this regard, then their divergence must be located elsewhere, namely in the distinction between immanence and transcendence. The book thus argues that the enemy of Deleuze’s thought is not religion in general but instead the specific operation of transcendence. Furthermore, it argues that since Deleuze’s thought is not simply anti-religious, it cannot be identified with secularism. Along these lines, the book shows how Deleuzian immanence is able both to oppose religious transcendence and to enter an allliance with immanent accounts of the name of God. The effect of this is to suspend the paralysing debate between religion and the secular in order to attend to the ways in which immanence – whether “religious” or “secular” – is able to break with the present and to create the future. (shrink)

This essay explores the long Western history of anxieties about feigned illness connected specifically to social policy. There is a remarkable consistency of such anxieties across time, as they appear in almost every major historical period in the West since the Middle Ages.

A Modern Legal Ethics proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. Daniel Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients' claims. Next, the book asks what it is like--not psychologically but ethically--to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Fidelity requires lawyers to lie and to (...) cheat on behalf of their clients. However, an ethically profound interest in integrity gives lawyers reason to resist this characterization of their conduct. Any legal ethics adequate to the complexity of lawyers' lived experience must address the moral dilemmas immanent in this tension. The dominant approaches to legal ethics cannot. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers' central place in political practice. Lawyerly fidelity supports the authority of adjudication and thus the broader project of political legitimacy. Throughout, the book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favor of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas. Moreover, because lawyers practice at the hinge of modern morals and politics, the book's interpretive insights identify--in an unusually pure and intense form--the moral and political conditions of all modernity. (shrink)

Preface to the Thematic Volume: Models and Theories in Biology.