Thus far, little attention has been paid by Foucauldian scholars to the role of laughter in our subjectivation and normalization, nor to the possible roles of laughter practices in political resistance. Yet, there is a body of references to laughter in both Foucault’s own work and that of his contemporary commentators, subtly indicating that it might be a tool for challenging normalization through transgression. I seek to negotiate the different functions that our laughter practices can have, proposing that laughter is (...) a worthy site of exploration for Foucauldian feminists in particular. Examining the differential norms, requirements, and sanctions around laughter shows that we are shaped as gendered subjects through the regulation of laughter’s timing and its bodily presentation. I argue that the contemporary state of laughter practices works to uphold docile femininity, using tools such as compulsory happiness and labelling feminists as killjoys. In brief, this article interrogates the ways in which cultivating different laughter practices can function as a path for Foucauldian-feminist political resistance. (shrink)

This paper focuses around women in the food chain, not in terms of agriculture and development, but as food ourselves. I start from the work of Eva-Maria Simms and Val Plumwood, who examine being eaten by non-human animals, and by human infants and fetuses. I use Simms’s and Plumwood’s examples to argue that in viewing our human selves as edible creatures, we not only distance ourselves from the role of "eater" in the masculinist domination framework but reject and break down (...) the very dichotomy of eater/eaten, predator/prey, diner/dinner. Through the work of Maurice-Merleau Ponty, I argue that our being edible is the obverse of our being consumers: it is this fact which is proven or fulfilled when the consumer is consumed. I then suggest that seeing ourselves as edible is both a call to a greater onto-ecological understanding and to a new understanding of the life/death/life cycle: as an asymmetrical yet symbiotic relationship between organic, decaying, and nourishing bodies. (shrink)

Introduction: The man who drank the hemlock -- Socrates' philosophy -- Politics and society -- Plato and others : who created the death of Socrates? -- 'A Greek chatterbox' : the death of Socrates in the Roman Empire -- Pain and revelation : the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus -- The apotheosis of philosophy : from enlightenment to revolution -- Talk, truth, totalitarianism : the problem of Socrates in modern times.

Whether religious and other voluntary associations should reflect public values is a subject of controversy. Corey Brettschneider argues that the state should assert its own values of free and equal citizenship, deliberately attempting to transform the beliefs of illiberal groups through court decisions and through selective withdrawal of tax exemptions. I argue, however, that as long as individuals and groups comply with the law, it is not the business of the state to change their beliefs. Moreover, public authority itself does (...) not always exemplify his preferred values. Second, although I oppose direct funding for organizations that oppose public values, determining which organizations espouse the “right” values accords too much power to public authority. Moreover, many associations evolve over time. Finally, the true threat lies in practices that voluntary associations may seek to impose on the larger community. (shrink)

This collection of new essays treats the historical, philosophical, and literary dimensions of Simone de Beauvoir's thought, and celebrates the 50th anniversary of her most influential book, The Second Sex. A team of distinguished philosophers and literary critics locate her work in the intellectual and political upheavals that marked Paris in the 1930s and 1940s; analyse her philosophical links to 17th-century rationalism, and to Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Simone Weil, and Heidegger; and study the connections between her philosophical and literary (...) writings. Above all, the collection tackles the relationship between theory and concrete situation with fresh insight and renewed urgency. (shrink)

Cartesian method both organizes and impoverishes the domains to which Descartes applies it. It adjusts geometry so that it can be better integrated with algebra, and yet deflects a full-scale investigation of curves. It provides a comprehensive conceptual framework for physics, and yet interferes with the exploitation of its dynamical and temporal aspects. Most significantly, it bars a fuller unification of mathematics and physics, despite Descartes' claims to quantify nature. The work of his contemporaries Galileo and Torricelli, and of his (...) successor Newton, illustrates conceptual possibilities Descartes left aside, due to his attachment to method. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory —that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules , and American Beauty , and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The basic (...) idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity . What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings , the true elixir of life. (shrink)

The question of how and why mathematics can be applied to physical reality should be approached through the history of science, as a series of case studies which may reveal both generalizable patterns and salient differences in the grounds and nature of that application from era to era. The present examination of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy Part II, reveals a deep ambiguity in the relation of Euclidean geometry to res extensa, and a tension between geometrical form and 'common motion of (...) parts' as principles of individuation for matter in Cartesian physics. (shrink)

The existence of mathematical objects may be explained in terms of their occurrence in problems. Especially interesting problems arise at the overlap of domains, and the items that intervene in them are hybrids sharing the characteristics of both domains in an ambiguous way. Euclid's geometry, and Leibniz' work at the intersection of geometry, algebra and mechanics in the late seventeenth century, provide instructive examples of such problems and items. The complex and yet still formal unity of these items calls into (...) question certain tenets of Resnik's structuralism, and of the reductive projects of the logicists. (shrink)

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential (...) to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the formulation of group theory; and geometry, transformed by Riemann, lay at the heart of topology, which in turn transformed much of modern mathematics. Using complex numbers as my case study, I argue that the best way to teach students mathematics is through a repertoire of modes of representation, which is also the best way to make mathematical discoveries. (shrink)

Human culture is uniquely complex compared to other species. This complexity stems from the accumulation of culture over time through high- and low-fidelity transmission and innovation. One possible reason for why humans retain and create culture, is our ability to modulate teaching strategies in order to foster learning and innovation. We argue that teaching is more diverse, flexible, and complex in humans than in other species. This particular characteristic of human teaching rather than teaching itself is one of the reasons (...) for human’s incredible capacity for cumulative culture. That is, humans unlike other species can signal to learners whether the information they are teaching can or cannot be modified. As a result teaching in humans can be used to support high or low fidelity transmission, innovation, and ultimately, cumulative culture. (shrink)

This unique textbook--the first to offer balanced, comprehensive coverage of all major perspectives on the rational justification of religious belief--includes twenty-four key papers by some of the world's leading philosophers of religion. Arranged in six sections, each representing a major approach to religious epistemology, the book begins with papers by noted atheists, setting the stage for the main theistic responses--Wittgensteinian Fideism, Reformed epistemology, natural theology, prudential accounts of religious beliefs, and rational belief based in religious experience--in each case offering a (...) representative sample of papers by leading exponents, a critical paper, and a substantial bibliography. A comprehensive introductory essay and ample cross-references help students to contrast and evaluate the different approaches, while the overall arrangement encourages them to assess the full range of philosophical positions on the issue. Carefully selected to provide both a comprehensive overview of current work and a series of modern perspectives on many classic sources--Swinburne's detailed discussion of Hume's critique of the design argument, for example, as well as an entire section evaluating and extending Pascal's famous Wager--the essays also provide a uniquely readable survey that will be useful in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of religion and epistemology. (shrink)

This review essay examines three recent books addressing recurring or current controversies in public education. One is historically based, a second focuses on a range of questions, and the third concentrates on the single issue of school choice. All of them, however, may be read against a backdrop of tension among three enduring liberal democratic values: individualism, diversity and unity. Public education is surely aimed at individual success and at preparing future adults to make choices, ideally among a range of (...) opportunities. The existence of a multicultural society and the development of identity politics, however, mean that members of groups often wish to preserve their particular identities despite a common education. Finally, public education has been based on inculcating values that ostensibly we all share in common. Each of these aims may conflict with one or both of the others. Therefore, setting the proper course requires an ongoing attempt to strike the proper balance among them. It is within this framework that I examine these books. (shrink)

Exploiting the resources of phenomenal conservatism, Harold Netland has offered a “critical-trust” approach to assessing the veridicality of religious experience and to ascertaining its evidential force in relation to Christian theistic belief. I suggest that, if we give seemings carried in religious experience their epistemic due, it may turn out that religious experience is practically universal and that the potential defeat of justification for religious belief by disagreement among purported epistemic peers is itself defeated by the private character of seemings (...) in the religious experiences of believers. (shrink)

One theme of this special issue is an incitement to reconsider the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism. While their advocates sometimes come into conflict, there are also clearly b...

Despite having paved the way for face, womb and penis transplants, hand transplantation today remains a small hybrid of reconstructive microsurgery and transplant immunology. An exceptionally limited patient population internationally complicates medical researchers’ efforts to parse outcomes “objectively.” Presumed functional and psychosocial benefits of gaining a transplant hand must be weighed in both patient decisions and bioethical discussions against the difficulty of adhering to post-transplant medications, the physical demands of hand transplant recovery on the patient, and the serious long-term health (...) risks of immunosuppressant drugs. This paper relates five narratives of hand transplantation drawn from an oral history project to show how narrative methods can and should inform ethical evaluations and the clinical process of hand transplantation. The interviews with patients and their partners analyzed here lead us to suggest that qualitative accounts of patient experiences should be used to complement clinical case studies reported in medical journals and to help develop instruments to assess outcomes more systematically. (shrink)

In The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene’s metafictional commentary (indicated by the relentless presence of language and literature in the content of the novel) runs parallel to his commentary on the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist. Strikingly, written language, due to its own physical reality and the way in which it is treated in the novel, takes on sacramental characteristics. Both written language and the Eucharist are physical, and both make truth present. Through his use of physical texts to (...) indicate the true nature of each character and by aligning the written word with the Eucharist, Greene offers a complex exploration of the sacramental possibilities of literature and language, ultimately contending that language itself is sacramental. (shrink)

There has long been a curious fascination with eyes and mirrors as evident throughout art, film, and literature. From fantastical characters who shoot lasers from their eyes to those whose memories are altered visually, the way in which a story portrays the function of the eyes demonstrates the way the storyteller imagines the character's relationship to the world. Is the character powerful or powerless? Does she impact her world or is she impacted by that world? The storyteller's portrayal of vision (...) answers those questions and reveals deeper assumptions about the individual and her ability to move within and to know her world. While eyes are associated with interacting with this world, mirrors are distinctly associated with interacting with some other world. Mirrors function as portals to other worlds, windows that glimpse an alternate reality, or harmful traps that hide sinister intentions. How an author portrays eyes reveals how she understands the world, while how she portrays mirrors reveals how she imagines the unknown. (shrink)

Decades of research have focused on children's reasoning about math equivalence problems for both practical and theoretical insights. Not only are math equivalence problems foundational in arithmetic and algebra, they also represent a class of problems on which children's thinking is resistant to change. Feedback is one instructional tool that can serve as a key trigger of cognitive change. In this paper, we review all experimental studies on the effects of feedback on children's understanding of math equivalence. Meta-analytic results indicate (...) that feedback has positive effects for low-knowledge learners and negative effects for high-knowledge learners, and these effects are stronger for procedural outcomes than conceptual outcomes. Findings highlight the variable influences of feedback on math equivalence understanding and suggest that models of thinking and reasoning need to consider learner characteristics, learning outcomes, and learning materials, as well as the dynamic interactions among them. (shrink)