This article addresses tensions within the emerging field of animal studies, which have arisen in the process of trying to craft an ethics that is not grounded in humanist rights-frameworks, by--firstly--mapping how these debates are manifested and--secondly--positing Cary Wolfe’s concept of "affirmative biopolitics" as means of overcoming these conceptual rifts. Building on work that attributes these tensions to the influence of posthumanism, it argues that the embrace of posthumanist thought has marginalised critique by framing perspectives such as ecofeminism and critical (...) animal studies as irredeemably humanist. To counter this marginalisation, Wolfe’s recent work on biopolitics is used to create a much-needed conversation between these perspectives. Debates surrounding veganism provide a route into instigating this dialogue, due to it being a contested practice that crystallises the differences between "mainstream" and critical animal studies. This framing of veganism not as a totalising practice but as a form of "affirmative biopolitics," however, is not solely intended to highlight affinities between apparently antagonistic perspectives, but offered as a contribution to broader debates about how a "posthumanist ethics" could be enacted in practice. (shrink)

Where society is viewed as an association of equal and autonomous persons, the work of caring for dependents, "love's labors", figure neither in political ...

Does life have meaning? What is flourishing? How do we attain the good life? Philosophers, and many others of us, have explored these questions for centuries. As Eva Feder Kittay points out, however, there is a flaw in the essential premise of these questions: they seem oblivious to the very nature of the ways in which humans live, omitting a world of co-dependency, and of the fact that we live in and through our bodies, whether they are fully abled or (...) disabled. Our dependent, vulnerable, messy, changeable, and embodied experience colors everything about our lives both on the surface and when it comes to deeper concepts, but we tend to leave aside the body for the mind when it comes to philosophical matters. Disability offers a powerful challenge to long-held philosophical views about the nature of the good life, what provides meaning in our lives, and the centrality of reason, as well as questions of justice, dignity, and personhood. These concepts need not be distant and idealized; the answers are right before us, in the way humans interact with one another, care for one another, and need one another--whether they possess full mental capacities or have cognitive limitations. We need to revise our concepts of things like dignity and personhood in light of this important correction, Kittay argues. This is the first of two books in which Kittay will grapple with just how we need to revisit core philosophical ideas in light of disabled people's experience and way of being in the world. Kittay, an award-winning philosopher who is also the mother to a multiply-disabled daughter, interweaves the personal voice with the philosophical as a critical method of philosophical investigation. Here, she addresses why cognitive disability can reorient us to what truly matters, and questions the centrality of normalcy as part of a good life. With profound sensitivity and insight, Kittay examines other difficult topics: How can we look at the ethical questions regarding prenatal testing in light of a new appreciation of the personhood of disabled people? What do new possibilities in genetic testing imply for understanding disability, the family, and bioethics? How can we reconsider the importance of care, and how does it work best? In the process of pursuing these questions, Kittay articulates an ethic of care, which is the ethical theory most useful for claiming full rights for disabled people and providing the opportunities for everyone to live joyful and fulfilling lives. She applies the lessons of care to the controversial alteration of severely cognitively disabled children known as the Ashley Treatment, whereby a child's growth is halted with extensive estrogen treatment and related bodily interventions are justified. This book both imparts lessons that advocate on behalf of those with significant disabilities, and constructs a moral theory grounded on our ability to give, receive, and share care and love. Above all, it aims to adjust social attitudes and misconceptions about life with disability. (shrink)

'...a challenging and useful book, both because it provokes a careful scrutiny of one's own basic ideas regarding evolutionary theory, and because it cuts across so many biological disciplines.' -The Quarterly Review of Biology 'In my view, this work exemplifies Theoretical Biology at its best...here is rampant speculation that is consistently based on cautious reasoning from the available data. Even more refreshing is the absence of sloganeering, grandstanding, and 'isms'.' -Biology and Philosophy 'Epigenetics is fundamental to understanding both development and (...) gene expression, and not surprisingly, evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated with its proper place in evolutionary theory...Enter Jablonka and Lamb, who provide a thoughtful review of the recent molecular literature and suggest a number of potential consequences.' -EvolutionSince first publication of this controversial book, much of the initial opposition to the ideas it contained has been replaced by a general, although often grudging, acceptance of them. Advances in knowledge, especially at the molecular level, have enhanced general awareness and interest in epigenetics and the evolution of systems that store and transmit information and put any of the authors' speculations on a more solid basis. This paperback edition contains a new Preface that sets out the major changes in the scientific world and in the authors' own thinking that have occurred since the book was published. A new Appendix provides a selected bibliography of the many books and articles about epigenetic inheritance and its role in evolution that have appeared since first publication. (shrink)

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series—and the seminars on which they are based—brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This fourth volume in the series, _Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic_, focuses on questions revolving around the concepts of the aesthetic, the anti-aesthetic, and the political. (...) The book is about the fact that now, almost thirty years after Hal Foster defined the anti-aesthetic, there is still no viable alternative to the dichotomy between aesthetics and anti- or non-aesthetic art. The impasse is made more difficult by the proliferation of identity politics, and it is made less negotiable by the hegemony of anti-aesthetics in academic discourse on art. The central question of this book is whether artists and academicians are free of this choice in practice, in pedagogy, and in theory. The contributors are Stéphanie Benzaquen, J. M. Bern­stein, Karen Busk-Jepsen, Luis Camnitzer, Diarmuid Costello, Joana Cunha Leal, Angela Dimitrakaki, Alexander Dumbadze, T. Brandon Evans, Geng Youzhuang, Boris Groys, Beáta Hock, Gordon Hughes, Michael Kelly, Grant Kester, Meredith Kooi, Cary Levine, Sunil Manghani, William Mazzarella, Justin McKeown, Andrew McNamara, Eve Meltzer, Nadja Millner-Larsen, Maria Filomena Molder, Carrie Noland, Gary Peters, Aaron Richmond, Lauren Ross, Toni Ross, Eva Schürmann, Gregory Sholette, Noah Simblist, Jon Simons, Robert Storr, Martin Sundberg, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Rebecca Zorach. (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness or subjective experiencing is a rapidly expanding research program engaging philosophers of mind, psychologists, cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, evolutionary biologists and biosemioticians. Here we outline an evolutionary approach that we have developed over the last two decades, focusing on the evolutionary transition from non-conscious to minimally conscious, subjectively experiencing organisms. We propose that the evolution of subjective experiencing was driven by the evolution of learning and we identify an open-ended, representational, generative and recursive form of associative (...) learning, which we call Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL), as an evolutionary transition marker of minimal consciousness. This evolutionary marker provides evidence that the evolutionary transition to consciousness has gone to completion and allows reverse-engineering from this learning capacity to the system that enables it – making possible the construction of a toy model of UAL. The model allows us to identify some of the key processes and structures that constitute minimal consciousness, points its taxonomic distribution and the ecological context in which it first emerged, highlights its function and suggests a framework for exploring developmental and evolutionary modifications of consciousness. We point to ways of experimentally testing the relationship between UAL and consciousness in human and in non-human animals and discuss the theoretical and ethical implications of our approach. The framework we offer allows the exploration of the evolutionary changes in agency, value systems, selective processes and goals that were involved in the transition to subjective experiencing from a perspective that resonates with the approaches of bio-semioticians. (shrink)

The main thrust of my argument was that ad hoc su gge s ti ons of ch a ri ty cannot replace a systematic and theoreti c a lly inform ed approach to poverty rel i ef . Ch a ri t a ble don a ti on som eti m e s h elps—and som etimes harm s — but is no general solution to global poverty, and can be po s i tively dangerous wh en pre s en (...) ted as such. We need to consider, and often choose, other routes to helping the poor—including ethical to u rism and fair trade in lu x u ry goods. We will not be able to invest in such feasible routes if we give away all our extra income, as Singer recommends. Sticking to donation above all, when a combination of other strategies is necessary, is highly likely to harm the poor. Si n ger doe s n’t re a lly en ga ge my argumen t . In s te ad , he cari c a tu res our “f u n d a m ental disa greem en t” :a pp a ren t ly, Si n ger rej ects va ri o u s policies because he takes into account the “f act s” ; wh ereas Ku per is the one seeking a “f a i t h ,” a “po l i tical ph i l o s ophy. . . i m mune to ref ut a ti on on the basis of evi den ce .” Anyon e who has re ad my arti cle (pp. 1 07 - 2 0) must fin d this puzzling. The arti cle explains at len g t h wh i ch kinds of b ack ground theories help us to d i s cern and re s pon s i bly con s i der the rel eva n t f act s . I show that Si n ger sel ects and uses fact s u n c ri ti c a lly prec i s ely because he has no po l i tical econ omy, no po l i tical soc i o l ogy, and no t h eory of ju s ti ce . We are seri o u s ly misled if we do not draw adequ a tely on the wi s dom and.. (shrink)

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In 1809--the year of Charles Darwin's birth--Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published Philosophie zoologique, the first comprehensive and systematic theory of biological evolution. The Lamarckian approach emphasizes the generation of developmental variations; Darwinism stresses selection. Lamarck's ideas were eventually eclipsed by Darwinian concepts, especially after the emergence of the Modern Synthesis in the twentieth century. The different approaches--which can be seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive--have important implications for the kinds of questions biologists ask and for the type of research they conduct. (...) Lamarckism has been evolving--or, in Lamarckian terminology, transforming--since Philosophie zoologique's description of biological processes mediated by "subtle fluids." Essays in this book focus on new developments in biology that make Lamarck's ideas relevant not only to modern empirical and theoretical research but also to problems in the philosophy of biology. Contributors discuss the historical transformations of Lamarckism from the 1820s to the 1940s, and the different understandings of Lamarck and Lamarckism; the Modern Synthesis and its emphasis on Mendelian genetics; theoretical and experimental research on such "Lamarckian" topics as plasticity, soft (epigenetic) inheritance, and individuality; and the importance of a developmental approach to evolution in the philosophy of biology. The book shows the advantages of a "Lamarckian" perspective on evolution. Indeed, the development-oriented approach it presents is becoming central to current evolutionary studies--as can be seen in the burgeoning field of Evo-Devo. Transformations of Lamarckism makes a unique contribution to this research. (shrink)

The semantic concept of information is one of the most important, and one of the most problematical concepts in biology. I suggest a broad definition of biological information: a source becomes an informational input when an interpreting receiver can react to the form of the source (and variations in this form) in a functional manner. The definition accommodates information stemming from environmental cues as well as from evolved signals, and calls for a comparison between information‐transmission in different types of inheritance (...) systems—the genetic, the epigenetic, the behavioral, and the cultural‐symbolic. This comparative perspective highlights the different ways in which information is acquired and transmitted, and the role that such information plays in heredity and evolution. Focusing on the special properties of the transfer of information, which are very different from those associated with the transfer of materials or energy, also helps to uncover interesting evolutionary effects and suggests better explanations for some aspects of the evolution of communication. (shrink)

In this article I examine the proposition that severe cognitive disability is an impediment to moral personhood. Moral personhood, as I understand it here, is articulated in the work of Jeff McMahan as that which confers a special moral status on a person. I rehearse the metaphysical arguments about the nature of personhood that ground McMahan’s claims regarding the moral status of the “congenitally severely mentally retarded” (CSMR for short). These claims, I argue, rest on the view that only intrinsic (...) psychological capacities are relevant to moral personhood: that is, that relational properties are generally not relevant. In addition, McMahan depends on an argument that species membership is irrelevant for moral consideration and a contention that privileging species membership is equivalent to a virulent nationalism (these will be discussed below). In consequence, the CSMR are excluded from moral personhood and their deaths are less significant as their killing is less wrong than that of persons. To throw doubt on McMahan’s conclusions about the moral status and wrongness of killing the CSMR I question the exclusive use of intrinsic properties in the metaphysics of personhood, the dismissal of the moral importance of species membership, and the example of virulent nationalism as an apt analogy. I also have a lot to say about McMahan’s empirical assumptions about the CSMR. (shrink)

Current knowledge of the genetic, epigenetic, behavioural and symbolic systems of inheritance requires a revision and extension of the mid-twentieth-century, gene-based, 'Modern Synthesis' version of Darwinian evolutionary theory. We present the case for this by first outlining the history that led to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution. In the second section we describe and compare different types of inheritance, and in the third discuss the implications of a broad view of heredity for various aspects of evolutionary theory. We end with (...) an examination of the philosophical and conceptual ramifications of evolutionary thinking that incorporates multiple inheritance systems. (shrink)

According to the most important theories of justice, personal dignity is closely related to independence, and the care that people with disabilities receive is seen as a way for them to achieve the greatest possible autonomy. However, human beings are naturally subject to periods of dependency, and people without disabilities are only “temporarily abled.” Instead of seeing assistance as a limitation, we consider it to be a resource at the basis of a vision of society that is able to account (...) for inevitable dependency relationships between “unequals” ensuring a fulfilling life both for the carer and the cared for.**. (shrink)

Having encountered landmines in offering a critique of philosophy based on my experience as the mother of a cognitively disabled daughter, I ask, “Should I continue?” I defend the idea that pursuing this project is of a piece with the invisible care labor that is done by people with disabilities and their families. The value of attempting to influence philosophical conceptions of cognitive disability by virtue of this experience is justified by an inextricable relationship between the personal, the political, and (...) the philosophical. If one grants that the “special relationship” between mother and child requires moral recognition, then I need first to make vivid the case that this relationship in the case of a child who lacks some “normal capacities” is indistinguishable from any mother‐child relationship. If this is so, then I believe I can make a case that has as its conclusion that the moral personhood of even the severely cognitively disabled must be granted. Moreover, such recognition, I argue, necessitates the recognition of others who bear no special relationships to the child. (shrink)

In the modern age, the political secret has acquired a bad reputation. With modern democracy’s ideal of transparency, political secrecy is identified with political crime or corruption. The article argues that this repression of secrecy in modern democracies falls short of a substantial understanding of the structure and workings of political secrecy. By outlining a genealogy of political secrecy, it elucidates the logic as well as the blind spots of a current culture of secrecy. It focuses on two fundamental logics (...) of secrecy, deduced from the Latin terms ‘ arcanum’ and ‘ secretum’. Whereas the logic of arcanum regards secrecy as a legitimate dimension of government, a modern logic of secretum is marked by an inextricable dialectics between the withdrawal and communication of knowledge, between secrecy and publicity. Here, the secret is not so much a piece of withheld knowledge as a ‘secrecy effect’ that binds the realm of secrecy to the public sphere by a dialectics of permanent suspicion and scandal. Instead of falling into the trap of this ‘secrecy effect’ it is worth taking a closer look at the tradition of thought on the arcana imperii, from Tacitus to early modern doctrines of raison d’état to Carl Schmitt. What this tradition deals with is the functionality of secrecy and its complicated relation to the law. The arcana tradition elaborates the crucial point of secrecy: its potential, but also its profound ambivalence. Secrecy opens up a discretionary space of action exempt from the rule of law, and, according to Carl Schmitt, ignores the law so as to allow it to become effective. Secrecy serves to protect and stabilize the state, but at the same time it opens a space of exception from the rule of law that breeds violence, corruption and oppression. Instead of seeing secrecy as the opposite of a political culture of transparency, it is more productive to regard secrecy as transparency's complement – a counterpart, however, that is marked by the profound paradox of being both a consolidation of and a threat to democracy. (shrink)

In this commentary I expand on the first of Noble’s illusions, the selection metaphor. Building on my work with Simona Ginsburg on the evolution of minimal consciousness, I argue that the existence of some complex sensory and motor patterns in the living world can be accounted for only through the evolution of conscious choice.

The essays of this volume consider how acknowledgement of the fact of dependency changes our conceptions of law, political theory, and morality, as well as our very conceptions of self.

Current knowledge of the genetic, epigenetic, behavioural and symbolic systems of inheritance requires a revision and extension of the mid-twentieth-century, gene-based, 'Modern Synthesis' version of Darwinian evolutionary theory. We present the case for this by first outlining the history that led to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution. In the second section we describe and compare different types of inheritance, and in the third discuss the implications of a broad view of heredity for various aspects of evolutionary theory. We end with (...) an examination of the philosophical and conceptual ramifications of evolutionary thinking that incorporates multiple inheritance systems. (shrink)

In our target article, “Learning and the evolution of conscious agents” we outlined an evolutionary approach to consciousness, arguing that the evolution of a form of open-ended, representational, and generative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL) drove the evolution of consciousness. Our view highlights the dynamics and functions of consciousness, delineates its taxonomic distribution and suggests a framework for exploring its developmental and evolutionary modifications. The approach we offer resonates with biosemioticians’ views, but as the responses to our target article show, (...) our proposal also faces challenges and has led to suggestions that extend, develop and qualify it. Our response to the 14 varied and rich commentaries starts with the recurring and deep question raised by many of them – the relation between life and sentience. We explore this question by introducing and expanding on “vivaciousness”, a term we coined to describe the turbulent, flexible exploration-stabilization processes inherent in the living condition, as well as addressing the related concepts of Umwelt and selfhood. We then consider the question of the adequacy of unlimited associative learning (UAL) as an evolutionary transition marker (ETM) of minimal consciousness (rather than as a marker of a complex form of sentience), and the possible precursors of sentience. The engagement with these broad themes is entangled with a discussion of evolutionary transitions, constitutive emergence and the function/s of consciousness. The suggestions of our commentators, urging us to explore new concepts and new avenues of research within the framework of a richer view of evolution are then discussed. We end by briefly considering what we regard as a conceptual lacuna, which is leading to the indiscriminate use of the term “sentience” and which awaits further investigation. (shrink)

Seen through the quest for a new metaphysics, the visual arts were interpreted in the framework of the particular sense of progress that the generation of György Lukács developed in the first decade of the twentieth century. They saw Impressionism as the veritable symptom of the deficiencies of their age and dreamed of a great, solid, lasting new Hungarian culture which would transcend the fragmentariness, sociological interests, and ethereality of Impressionism. Although exhibitions of contemporary modernist art were organized in Budapest (...) and the Nagybánya artists' colony was in contact with the living French art, the nascent aesthetic theory, first of all that of Lukács, based the appreciation of Post-Impressionism on ideological considerations rather than the artistic particularities of the artists. Central to this aesthetic was the notion of greatness and a sense of metaphysics derived from German idealist philosophy and applied to the art of Cézanne, Gauguin, and the Budapest group The Seekers (founded in 1909, renamed, in 1911, as The Eight), all of whom were appreciated for features pointing in the direction of a new Classicism. (shrink)

Through a series of essays contributed by clinicians, medical historians, and prominent moral philosophers, Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral ...

Building on Dor’s theory of language as a social technology for the instruction of imagination, I suggest that autobiographical memory evolved culturally as a response to the problems of false memory and deliberate deceit that were introduced by that technology. I propose that sapiens’ linguistic communication about past and future events initially occurred in small groups, and this helped to correct individual memory defects. However, when human groups grew in size and became more socially differentiated, and movement between groups prevented (...) story-verification, misattributions of events became more common. In such conditions individuals with better autobiographical memory had an advantage because they could evaluate their own contents and sources of information, as well as that of others, more accurately; this not only benefitted them directly, but also improved their reliability as social partners. Autobiographical memory thus evolved in the context of human linguistic communication through selection for communicative reliability. However, the advantages of imagination, which enables forward-planning and decision-Making, meant that memory distortions, although controlled and moderated by autobiographical memory, could not be totally eradicated. This may have driven the evolution of additional forms of memory control involving social and linguistic norms. I interpret the language and the social norms of the Pirahã as the outcome of the cultural-evolutionary control of memory distortions. Some ways of testing aspects of this proposal are outlined. (shrink)

Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. The argument is illustrated with analysis of metaphors from literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.

This book provides a philosophical theory explicating the cognitive contribution of metaphor. Metaphor effects a transference of meaning, not between two terms, but between two structured domains of content, or ‘semantic fields’. Semantic fields, construed as necessary to a theory of word-meaning, provide the contrastive and affinitive relations that govern a term’s literal use. In a metaphoric use, these relations are projected into a second domain which is thereby reordered with significant cognitive effects. The book provides a revision and refinement (...) of ‘the semantic theory of metaphor’. Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the book aims to forge a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. It illustrates the thesis with sensitive and systematic analyses of metaphors found in literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language. Keywords:,, . (shrink)

Veit suggests that the challenge of coordinating movement in multicellular organisms led to the evolution of a prioritizing value system, which rendered organisms complex enough to be sentient and drove the Cambrian explosion, while the absence of this evaluation system led to the demise of Ediacaran animals. In this commentary we criticize Veit’s terminology and evolutionary proposals, arguing that his terminology and evolutionary scenarios are problematic, and put forward alternative proposals. We suggest that sentience is a system property, and that (...) the evolution of sentience was the outcome of the evolution of open-ended associative learning, which included the coevolution of sensory, motor, memory, and value subsystems. We suggest that these coevolutionary system dynamics were a factor in the Cambrian explosion and contributed to the extinction of the Ediacaran biota. (shrink)

In his target article, Koonin discusses the insights into the evolution of bacterial genomes provided by the CRISPR-Cas system. This evolved defense system is based on intrinsic processes of genome engineering which, as he argues, enable Lamarckian inheritance. In this commentary I discuss some historical and conceptual issues that pertain to Koonin’s analysis of this aspect of the CRISPR-Cas system, extending and qualifying his discussion.

Among the various human forms alluded to in the Hebrew prayer, mental retardation appears to be one of the most difficult to celebrate. It is the disability that other disabled persons do not want attributed to them. It is the disability for which prospective parents are most likely to use selective abortion (Wertz 2000). And it is the disability that prompted one of the most illustrious United States Supreme Court Justices to endorse forced sterilization, because "three generations of imbeciles are (...) enough." The mentally retarded have at times been objects of pity, compassion, or abuse by their caretakers and society at large. But they have rarely been seen as subjects, as citizens, as persons with equal entitlement to fulfillment. (shrink)

In his theory of evolution, Darwin recognized that the conditions of life play a role in the generation of hereditary variations, as well as in their selection. However, as evolutionary theory was developed further, heredity became identified with genetics, and variation was seen in terms of combinations of randomly generated gene mutations. We argue that this view is now changing, because it is clear that a notion of hereditary variation that is based solely on randomly varying genes that are unaffected (...) by developmental conditions is an inadequate basis for evolutionary theories. Such a view not only fails to provide satisfying explanations of many evolutionary phenomena, it also makes assumptions that are not consistent with the data that are emerging from disciplines ranging from molecular biology to cultural studies. These data show that the genome is far more responsive to the environment than previously thought, and that not all transmissible variation is underlain by genetic differences. In Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005) we identify four types of inheritance (genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbol-based), each of which can provide variations on which natural selection will act. Some of these variations arise in response to developmental conditions, so there are Lamarckian aspects to evolution. We argue that a better insight into evolutionary processes will result from recognizing that transmitted variations that are not based on DNA differences have played a role. This is particularly true for understanding the evolution of human behavior, where all four dimensions of heredity have been important. (shrink)

Companies increasingly recognize the importance of communicating corporate social responsibility including their engagement toward employees, the community, the environment and other stakeholder groups to attract applicants. The positive findings on the effect of CSR on applicants’ reactions are commonly based on the assumption that companies send a clear signal about their commitment to CSR. However, communication is always contextualized and has become more ambiguous through the increased availability of information online. External stakeholders including actual and potential applicants are confronted with (...) inconsistencies between the way companies communicate CSR activities and their overall CSR performance. Drawing on signaling theory, this article raises the question of how the interaction between strong CSR communication and low CSR performance influences organizational attractiveness. We propose that low CSR performance dampens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Hence, the inconsistency between CSR communication and CSR performance decreases organizational attractiveness. To test our hypotheses, we scraped 67,189 posts published on corporate Facebook career pages by 58 Fortune 500 companies from the time they began their respective career page until June 2018. Surprisingly, our results show that a low CSR performance strengthens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Thus, inconsistencies between CSR communication and CSR performance seem to lead to positive evaluations among applicants. (shrink)

In this article I examine the proposition that severe cognitive disability is an impediment to moral personhood. Moral personhood, as I understand it here, is articulated in the work of Jeff McMahan as that which confers a special moral status on a person. I rehearse the metaphysical arguments about the nature of personhood that ground McMahan’s claims regarding the moral status of the “congenitally severely mentally retarded” (CSMR for short). These claims, I argue, rest on the view that only intrinsic (...) psychological capacities are relevant to moral personhood: that is, that relational properties are generally not relevant. In addition, McMahan depends on an argument that species membership is irrelevant for moral consideration and a contention that privileging species membership is equivalent to a virulent nationalism (these will be discussed below). In consequence, the CSMR are excluded from moral personhood and their deaths are less significant as their killing is less wrong than that of persons. To throw doubt on McMahan’s conclusions about the moral status and wrongness of killing the CSMR I question the exclusive use of intrinsic properties in the metaphysics of personhood, the dismissal of the moral importance of species membership, and the example of virulent nationalism as an apt analogy. I also have a lot to say about McMahan’s empirical assumptions about the CSMR. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Any scholar undertaking to add yet another book title to the already virtually uncontrollable bibliography on Plato needs justification. ...

In this paper it will be shown that the Beth definability property corresponds to surjectiveness of epimorphisms in abstract algebraic logic. This generalizes a result by I. Németi (cf. [11, Theorem 5.6.10]). Moreover, an equally general characterization of the weak Beth property will be given. This gives a solution to Problem 14 in [20]. Finally, the characterization of the projective Beth property for varieties of modal algebras by L. Maksimova (see [15]) will be shown to hold for the larger class (...) of semantically algebraizable logics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction What Is the Problem? Why Try to Change the Profession? The Challenges Epistemic Responsibility and Credibility Why the Personal Is Philosophical Is Political References.

Contemporary industrialized societies have been confronted with the fact and consequences of women's increased participation in paid employment. Whether this increase has resulted from women's desire for equality or from changing economic circumstances, women and men have been faced with a crisis in the organization of work that concerns dependents, that is, those unable to care for themselves. This is labor that has been largely unpaid, often unrecognized, and yet is indispensable to human society.

Arlie Hochschild glosses the practice of women migrants in poor nations who leave their families behind for extended periods of time to do carework in other wealthier countries as a “global heart transplant” from poor to wealthy nations. Thus she signals the idea of an injustice between nations and a moral harm for the individuals in the practice. Yet the nature of the harm needs a clear articulation. When we posit a sufficiently nuanced “right to care,” we locate the harm (...) to central relationships of the migrant women. The “right to (give and receive) care” we develop uses a concept of a relational self drawn from an ethics of care. The harm is situated in the broken relationships, which in turn have a serious impact on a person’s sense of equal dignity and self-respect, particularly since the sacrifice of central relationships of the migrant woman allows others (mostly women) to maintain these same relationships. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some of the solutions we need to consider. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s name has become almost synonymous with militant atheism. Born into a pious Christian family, this son of a Lutheran pastor declared himself the Antichrist. But could this have been yet another of his masks of hardness? Nietzsche rarely revealed his innermost self in the published writings, and this can be gleaned mainly from his private letters and the accounts of friends. These sources bring to light the philosopher’s inner struggle with his own, deeply religious nature.Losing his father at a (...) young age was a calamity from which Nietzsche never recovered, and I argue that his famous thought-image “God is dead” was a transfiguration of the painful memory of this loss. In this essay, I trace Nietzsche’s tortuous path from an ardent devotee of God to a vociferous critic of Christianity, a path that was punctuated with veiled longings for a loving deity. Deep in his heart, he remained faithful to Christian ideals. Rather like Cordelia, the only truly loving daughter of King Lear, Nietzsche refused to utter words of intense affection and reverence, as these had been blatantly devalued and corrupted. Instead, he adopted a mask of a wrongdoer and a blasphemer who took not the punishment but the guilt.Nietzsche’s attitude to religion is discussed from the perspective of his life, his personality, and his mental condition. The discussion draws on psychoanalytical concepts of Freud, Erikson, Winnicott and Kohut. This is not an exclusive reading, but complementary to other studies in this field. (shrink)

This essay is an interpretation of Nietzsche’s enigmatic idea of the Eternal Return of the Same in the context of his life rather than of his philosophy. Nietzsche never explained his ‘abysmal thought’ and referred to it directly only in a few passages of his published writings, but numerous interpretations have been made in secondary literature. None of these, however, has examined the significance of this thought for Nietzsche, the man. The idea belongs to a moment of ecstasy which Nietzsche (...) experienced during the summer of 1881 in Sils-Maria, in the Swiss Alps. Like Dante, in ‘the middle of life’, he walked down the wooded Alpine slope and entered his own Inferno. On the anniversary of long-buried loss and pain, his psyche was temporarily flooded by archetypal imagery. This event is interpreted in the light of Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion, the uncanny, and the oedipal confrontation with the unconscious. From the turbulent and frightful experience, a symbol of transfiguration emerged in the shape of Eternal Return. Its likeness to Mandala, a Jungian archetype of wholeness and the self, is striking. In the years that followed, Nietzsche produced his greatest works that assured him an unassailable place in Western philosophy. And yet, there was something disturbing about this dream-thought, and Nietzsche shuddered at any mention of the thought. Linking it with the head of Medusa in his unpublished notes, he hinted at its petrifying quality. The beguiling beauty of Medusa makes her an ambiguous symbol of exhilaration, as well as terror. Under her captivating gaze, a hero’s journey towards selfhood becomes a journey into the night of madness. (shrink)

I explore what and when hypocrisy is a moral wrong by interrogating the case of hypocrisy of Julien in Stendhal's The Red and The Black. I conclude hypocrisy is most morally vexed in those sphere where sincerity is required.

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 292-309, Fall 2021.