In this project I am concerned with the extent to which conceptual engineering happens in domains outside of philosophy, and if so, what that might look like. Specifically, I’ll argue that...

Appropriation art involves the use of pre-existing works of art with little to no transformation. Works of AA fail to satisfy established criteria for originality, such as creative labour and transformative use. As such, appropriation artists are often subject to copyright lawsuits and defend their work under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law. In legal cases regarding AA and fair use, judges lack a general principle whereby they can determine whether or not the offending party has ‘transformed’ the (...) original work. Further, it is not the case that there is some antecedent fact that could determine the outcome one way or another. I diagnose debates surrounding the transformative nature of works of AA as cases of ‘metalinguistic negotiation’ over what concepts we should attach to terms like ‘copy’, ‘transformative’, and ‘work of art’. (shrink)

Disability is primarily a social phenomenon -- a way of being a minority, a way of facing social oppression, but not a way of being inherently or intrinsically worse off. This is how disability is understood in the Disability Rights and Disability Pride movements; but there is a massive disconnect with the way disability is typically viewed within analytic philosophy. The idea that disability is not inherently bad or sub-optimal is one that many philosophers treat with open skepticism, and sometimes (...) even with scorn. The goal of this book is to articulate and defend a version of the view of disability that is common in the Disability Rights movement. To be physically disabled is not to have a defective body, but simply to have a minority body. (shrink)

Metaphysical orthodoxy maintains that the relation of ontological dependence is irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive. The goal of this paper is to challenge that orthodoxy by arguing that ontological dependence should be understood as non- symmetric, rather than asymmetric. If we give up the asymmetry of dependence, interesting things follow for what we can say about metaphysical explanation— particularly for the prospects of explanatory holism.

A new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.

This chapter contains sections titled: Rosen's Argument Objections to Rosen's Argument The Significance of the Narrower Conclusion My Proposed View Objections to the Proposed View Understanding My Disagreement with Rosen Conclusion.

In this text, the authors examine the relationship between political and feminist theory, characterizing and criticizing liberalism and communitarianism from a feminist perspective.

Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', not in (...) a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater. (shrink)

The Hard Problem is surrounded by a vast literature, to which it is increasingly hard to contribute to in any meaningful way. Accordingly, the strategy here is not to offer any new metaphysical or ‘in principle’ arguments in favour of the success of materialism, but to assume a Type Q(uinian) approach and look to contemporary consciousness science to see how the concept of consciousness fares there, and what kind of explanations we can hope to offer of it. It is suggested (...) that while they will be materialist explanations, they will not be of the form that many scientists and philosophers would have us believe, but instead prompt a very different set of expectations and research projects. (shrink)

On Friday 17 August 2012, members of the feminist collective Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail after their staging of a musical protest in a Russian Orthodox church. This article analyses Western news media responses to the Pussy Riot affair. It first examines how the event has resonated across various news media, activist, and social media networks. Focusing on the phrase, ‘We are all Pussy Riot’, which became a Twitter hashtag following the incarceration of Pussy Riot members, (...) I argue that narratives of feminist return (Hemmings, 2011) and of US exceptionalism have shaped the eventfulness of the Pussy Riot affair in the West. While not dismissing the activism of Pussy Riot, this article asserts that the discourses of transnational solidarity and feminist renewal that the arrests engendered rely on the perceived whiteness and non-Western identities of the members who were incarcerated. (shrink)

An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena--including money, gender, urban life, and technology--that subsequently became established arenas of inquiry in cultural theory. It further ignores his philosophical impact on thinkers as diverse as Benjamin, Musil, and Heidegger. Integrating intellectual biography, philosophical interpretation, and a critical examination of the history of academic disciplines, this book (...) restores Simmel to his rightful place as a major figure and challenges the frameworks through which his contributions to modern thought have been at once remembered and forgotten. (shrink)

Models of risk-taking as used in the social sciences may be improved by including concepts from life history theory, particularly environmental unpredictability and life expectancy. Community college students completed self-report questionnaires measuring these constructs along with several well-known correlates. The frequency of risk-taking was higher for those with higher future unpredictability beliefs and shorter lifespan estimates (as measured by the Future Lifespan Assessment developed for this study), and unpredictability beliefs remained significant after accounting for standard predictors, such as sex and (...) temperament. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying concepts from life history theory to enhance our understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

The target paper (building on Ginsburg and Jablonka in JTB 381:55–60, 2015, The evolution of the sensitive soul: Learning and the origins of consciousness, MIT Press, USA, 2019) makes a significant and novel claim: that positive cases of non-human consciousness can be identified via the capacity of unlimited associative learning (UAL). In turn, this claim is generated by a novel methodology, which is that of identifying an evolutionary ‘transition marker’, which is claimed to have theoretical and empirical advantages over other (...) approaches. In this commentary I argue that UAL does not function as a successful transition marker (as defined by the authors), and has internal problems of its own. However, I conclude that it is still a very productive anchor for new research on the evolution of consciousness. (shrink)

This article will examine the phase of Nishida’s thought in which he turns to the historical world and present the benefits of this turn to his overall philosophical project. In “The Philosophy of History in the ‘Later’ Nishida,” Woo-Sung Huh claims that Nishida Kitaro’s attempt to integrate history into his earlier writings on self-consciousness is a “wrong turn.” I will demonstrate how Huh’s criticism of Nishida’s writings on history stems from Huh’s own ontological assumption that consciousness and the historical world (...) occupy distinct realms. Leveling this criticism against Nishida causes the reader to miss Nishida’s greatest insight, namely that there is no such distinction; there is only one reality of consciousness and materiality. Nishida’s emphasis on the historical world makes his earlier claim that consciousness is inseparable from things more robust. I will argue that by expanding his earlier focus on consciousness to include the formative power of created physical objects and human bodies on consciousness, Nishida’s philosophy is actually strengthened. (shrink)

This essay addresses various moral objections to polyamory and argues that none succeeds. Brake also argues that in some respects polyamory can be superior to monogamy given that polyamorists often endorse ideals such as radical honesty, non-possessiveness, and rejection of jealousy. Moreover, Brake argues that the effects of polyamory in a society in which it is widespread can be very beneficial.

When future generations come to analyze and survey twentieth-century philosophy as a whole, Bertrand Russell’s logic and theory of knowledge is assured a place of prime importance. Yet until this book was first published in 1969 no comprehensive treatment of his epistemology had appeared. Commentators on twentieth-century philosophy at the time assumed that Russell’s important contributions to the theory of knowledge were made before 1921. This book challenges that assumption and draws attention to features of Russell’s later work which were (...) overlooked. The analysis starts with Russell’s earliest views and moves from book to book and article to article through his enormous span of writing on the problems and theory of knowledge. The changes in ideas as he developed the theory are traced, and the study culminates in a statement of his latest views. His work is seen in a continuity in which the changes were part of the development of his mature thought, and the total evaluation and interpretation clarify many of the common misunderstandings of his philosophy. This is naturally of interest to all philosophers, and for students this is the answer to inevitable questions on the nature of Russell’s ideas and their evolution. (shrink)

This response to Kariyawasam and Rai affirms their critique of the pathologization of trans youth but forecasts a foreseeable negative outcome of their proposed elimination of diagnosis as a prerequisite to gender-affirming care (GAC) — the risk of removing GAC entirely from the medical sphere and compromising the wellbeing of those transgender individuals for whom GAC is deeply affirming. We suggest an ethical framework of GAC that expands past a focus on autonomy to incorporate a principle of respect for persons (...) that affirms the dignity and diversity of trans youth — recognizing the need to facilitate both medical assistance and social change. (shrink)

Feminist scholarship has increasingly turned towards the ocean as a conceptual apparatus in which to think through the complex philosophical and ethical dilemmas of the Anthropocene. Responding to the ebbs, flows and transformations of the oceanic turn, our article outlines our interactions with four decorator crabs. It begins by situating our experience of thinking-with these crabs as a feminist practice of care within the conceptual context of the ocean. Our article then draws on the knowledge that arose out of our (...) fertile entanglements with the crabs to propose that: 1) the aquarium, with its colonial histories of subjugation, is a fertile space to re-image human–aquatic relationalities, revealing the fallacy of human control over ‘nature’ and emphasising the agency of marine worlds; 2) Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality is a powerful way to think through the consequences of an acidifying ocean, both for ourselves and for our shelled companions; and 3) remediation is a radical approach to taking seriously the materiality of watery worlds. The objective of the article is to craft a practice of material feminism that entangles our more-than-human bodies to learn-with decorator crabs. In doing so, we show that the aquarium is a potent space of transformation that allows us to imagine new and distinctly feminist entanglements that dismantle hierarchies. We show that thinking-with the materiality of marine worlds is a series of remediations, both material and discursive, that dissolve the boundaries between entities, creating an embodied environmental ethics that is necessary as a feminist challenge to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

There is a lack of writing on the issue of the education rights of people with disabilities by authors of any theoretical persuasion. While the deficiency of theory may be explained by a variety of historical, philosophical and practical considerations, it is a deficiency which must be addressed. Otherwise, any statement of rights rings out as hollow rhetoric unsupported by sound reason and moral rectitude. This paper attempts to address this deficiency in education rights theory by postulating a communitarian theory (...) of the education rights of people with disabilities. The theory is developed from communitarian writings on the role of education in democratic society. The communitarian school, like the community within which it nests, is inclusive. Schools both reflect and model the shape of communitarian society and have primary responsibility for teaching the knowledge and virtues which will allow citizens to belong to and function within society. Communitarians emphasise responsibilities, however, as the corollary of rights and may require the individual good to yield to the community good when the hard cases arise. The article not only explains the basis of the right to an inclusive education, therefore, but also engages with the difficult issue of when such a right may not be enforceable. (shrink)

This paper considers several philosophers’ efforts to explain the metaphysical orientations of historical narratives, ones which expose the lack of common ground in modes of establishing truth and documenting change. Although philosophers have been writing about history since before Plato’s time, this brief inquiry is primarily restricted to Hegel, Maritain, R. G. Collingwood, and W. H. Walsh. The relation between history and the concept of civilization reveals a major complication for establishing historical truth – the fact of multiple meanings for (...) the concept of civilization. (shrink)