Hierarchical expansions of the theory of natural selection exist in two distinct bodies of thought in evolutionary biology, the group selection and the species selection traditions. Both traditions share the point of view that the principles of natural selection apply at levels of biological organization above the level of the individual organism. This leads them both to considermultilevel selection situations, where selection is occurring simultaneously at more than one level. Impeding unification of the theoretical approaches of the multilevel selection traditions (...) are the different goals of investigators in the different subdisciplines and the different types of data potentially available for analysis. We identify two alternative approaches to multilevel situations, which we termmultilevel selection [1] andmultilevel selection [2]. Of interest in the former case are the effects of group membership onindividual fitnesses, and in the latter the tendencies for the groups themselves to go extinct or to found new groups (i.e., group fitnesses). We argue that: neither represents the entire multilevel selection process; both are aspects of any multilevel selection situation; and both are legitimate approaches, suitable for answering different questions. Using this formalism, we show that: multilevel selection [2] does not require emergent group properties in order to provide an explanatory mechanism of evolutionary change; multilevel selection [1] is usually more appropriate for neontological group selection studies; and species selection is most fruitfully considered from the point of view of multilevel selection [2]. Finally we argue that the effect hypothesis of macroevolution, requiring, in selection among species, both the absence of group effects on organismic fitness (multilevel selection [1]), and the direct determination of species fitnesses by those of organisms, is untestable with paleontological data. Furthermore, the conditions for the effect hypothesis to hold are extremely restrictive and unlikely to apply to the vast majority of situations encountered in nature. (shrink)

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions---these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and (...) explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds. Frontmatter Preface, page 9 Introduction: At the Limit, page 13 I THE TOPOGRAPHY OF WONDER, page 21 II THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS, page 67 III WONDER AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS, page 109 IV MARVELOUS PARTICULARS, page 135 V MONSTERS: A CASE STUDY, page 173 VI STRANGE FACTS, page 215 VII WONDERS OF ART, WONDERS OF NATURE, page 255 VIII THE PASSIONS OF INQUIRY, page 303 IX THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ANTI-MARVELOUS, page 329 Epilogue, page 365 Photo Credits, page 369 Notes, page 373 Bibliography, page 451 Index, page 499. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize Structured Propositionalism, the most widely held theory of the nature of propositions according to which they are structured entities with constituents. I argue that the proponents of Structured Propositionalism have paid insufficient attention to the metaphysical presuppositions of the view – most egregiously, to the notion of propositional constituency. This is somewhat ironic, since the friends of structured propositions tend to argue as if the appeal to constituency gives their view a dialectical advantage. I criticize (...) four different approaches to providing a metaphysics of propositional constituency: set-theoretic, mereological, hylomorphic, and structure-making. Finally, I consider the option of taking constituency in a deflationary, metaphysically ‘lightweight’ sense. I argue that, though invoking constituency in a lightweight sense may be useful for avoiding the ontological problems that plague the ‘heavyweight’ conception, it no longer proffers a dialectical advantage to Structured Propositionalism. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper, I argue that Scott Soames’ theory of naturalized cognitive propositions faces a serious objection: there are true propositions for which NCP cannot account. More carefully, NCP cannot account for certain truths of mathematics unless it is possible for there to be an infinite intellect. For those who reject the possibility of an infinite intellect, this constitutes a reductio of NCP.

The dominant account of propositions holds that they are structured entities that have, as constituents, the semantic values of the constituents of the sentences that express them. Since such theories hold that propositions are structured, in some sense, like the sentences that express them, they must provide an answer to what I will call Soames’ Question: “What level, or levels, of sentence structure does semantic information incorporate?”. As it turns out, answering Soames’ Question is no easy task. I argue in (...) this paper that the two most promising ways of answering it, the Logical Form Account and the LF Account, are both unsatisfactory. This result casts doubt on the very idea that propositions are structured. (shrink)

There’s been a recent surge of interest among analytic philosophers of religion in divine ineffability. However, divine ineffability is part of a traditional conception of God that has been widely rejected among analytic philosophers of religion for the past few decades. One of the main reasons that the traditional conception of God has been rejected is because it allegedly makes God too remote, unknowable, and impersonal. In this paper, I present an account of divine ineffability that directly addresses this concern (...) by arguing that the deepest knowledge of God’s nature that we can attain is personal, rather than propositional. On this view, it is precisely because knowledge of God’s nature is personal that it cannot be linguistically expressed and communicated. (shrink)

Philosophy is shaped by life and life is shaped by philosophy. This is reflected in The Philosophical I, a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by prominent philosophers.

I have sketched the well-known distinction between facts and evidence not to defend or attack it , but rather as a preface to a key episode in the history of the conceptual categories of fact and evidence. My question is neither, “Do neutral facts exist?” nor “How does evidence prove or disprove?” but rather, “How did our current conceptions of neutral facts and enlisted evidence, and the distinction between them, come to be?” How did evidence come to be incompatible with (...) intention, and is it possible to imagine a kind of evidence that is intention-laden?It is my claim that partial answers to these questions lie buried in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature on prodigies and miracles. I shall argue that during this period prodigies briefly became the prototype for a new kind of scientific fact, and that miracles briefly exemplified a form of evidence patent to the senses and crucially dependent on intention. Both conceptions diverge sharply not only from current notions of facts and evidence, but also from medieval views on the nature of prodigies and miracles. Prodigies were originally closely akin to portent, divine signs revealing God’s will and things to come; miracles were more intimately associated with the private experience of grace than with the public evidence of the senses. Prodigies were transformed from signs into nonsignifying facts, and miracles into compelling evidence, as part of more sweeping changes in natural philosophy and theology in the mid-seventeenth century. Lorraine Daston is professor of history of science at the University of Göttingen, Federal Republic of Germany. She is the author of Classical Probability in the Enlightenment and is currently at work on a history of scientific objectivity. (shrink)

The Theistic Argument from Intentionality (TAI) is a venerable argument for the existence of God from the existence of eternal truths. The argument relies, inter alia, on the premises that (i) truth requires representation, and that (ii) non-derivative representation is a function of, and only of, minds. If propositions are the fundamental bearers of truth and falsity, then these premises entail that propositions (or at least their representational properties) depend on minds. Although it is widely thought that psychologism—the view that (...) the fundamental truth-bearers are mind-dependent—was refuted by Frege, a psychologistic view of propositions has been undergoing a revival. However, this new psychologism suffers from a problem of scarcity—finite minds cannot generate enough thoughts to play the role of fundamental truth-bearers. This objection paves the way for a revised version of the TAI: only an infinite mind can furnish enough thoughts to play the role of propositions. (shrink)

The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technology. The single mother Marie’s adoption of the Arkangel system has invited overwhelmingly negative moral evaluation from philosophers. But what accounts for the moral failure of a loving and concerned parent? Is it all about her flawed character, or are there situational factors at work? In the article, I first foreground the slipperiness of technology implicated in Albert Borgmann’s notion of the “device paradigm” and Hans Jonas’s analysis (...) of modern technology. Then I analyze the character of the Arkangel system in the light of the two philosophers’ works and show how the technology turns Marie into a failing parent. In the end, I offer tentative answers to the two questions; the answers shall also shed light on the problem of under-parenting driven by digital technology. (shrink)

This paper proposes the idea of thinking about practical rationality in terms of self-regulation and defends the thesis that self-regulation is a virtue, insofar as we have reason to think it is our highest form of practical rationality. I argue that understanding self-regulation as a virtuous form of practical reasoning is called for given the kinds of limitations we face in developing agency and pursuing our goals, and presents us with several advantages over traditional understandings of practical rationality.

Introduction -- Ethics and research -- Twenty questions : ethical research dilemmas and PHD students -- Research pitfalls for new entrants to the academy -- Scientists behaving badly: insights from the fraud triangle -- Slicing and dicing : ex ante approaches -- Slicing and dicing : ex post approaches -- Retraction : mistake or misconduct? -- Double-blind review in the age of google and powerpoint -- Ethics in research scenarios : what would you do? -- Thought leader : Michael A. (...) Hitt on ethics in research -- Ethics and teaching -- Beyond course content : ethical dilemmas in teaching -- Teaching and ethics : a critical incident -- Peer pressure or, I thought i was out of high school -- Teaching versus preaching: conversational ethics in the classroom -- My students want to friend me! boundaries and relationships with social networks -- What do we do when students despair? : considering pedagogical caring -- From content to relationship -- It's not just rate my professor anymore! : ethics and student evaluations -- Student recommendations : to give, or not to give, that is the question -- Thought leader : Robert A. Giacalone on "broken when entering" -- Ethics in professional life -- Codes and conflicts of interest -- When is a job offer really a job offer in the academy? -- Attending professional meetings -- Peer reviewing -- Managing university service work -- Tribalism -- Outside appointments -- Consulting -- Media engagement -- Thought leader : Andrew H. van de Ven on ethics and professional life -- Conclusions -- Connecting the dots : themes, practices and considering what's next -- Index. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting on the often-favored approach in the analytic tradition that locates fictional characters, events, and narratives as sources of readers’ emotions, I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis by accounting for how literary devices trigger non-cognitive emotions. I argue that giving more expansive consideration to literary devices by which authors present content facilitates a better understanding of how fiction engages emotion. In doing so, I also explore the (...) somatic dimension of reading fiction. (shrink)

Abstract Taking my point of entry from George Eliot's reference to ?the power of Ignorance?, I analyse some manifestations of that power as she portrays it in the life of a young woman of affluence, in her novel Daniel Deronda. Comparing and contrasting this kind of ignorance with James Mill's avowed ignorance of local tradition and custom in his History of British India, I consider how ignorance can foster immoral beliefs which, in turn, contribute to social-political arrangements of dominance and (...) subordination. Yet I ask, too, how judgements of culpability can be sustained when ignorance is culturally induced. (shrink)

I struggle mamereTo bringYour wordsInto nokum'sCabinBut the wordsAre in battleCompetingfor my mindI am a mixed-blood woman raised in Canada where my two ancestries have competing worldviews, from social, political, and religious ideology to ancient philosophies. These mixed ancestries also come with different social expectations. In the social-political world of Native Studies where I walk daily, my French grandmother, mamere, is argued as coming from a world of privilege because she was white-skinned, and my Cree grandmother, nokum is thought to come (...) from a world of oppression because she was dark-skinned. Yet both my grandmothers experienced abuse and prejudice. How and where the abuses originated may be different, but they did occur. I have a lot to learn from my grandmothers, but it has taken me many years of inner conflict, self-righteousness, and pain to get to this understanding. To acknowledge both grandmothers having been oppressed means I cannot continue to think of the world in simplistic, binary terms of colonizer/colonized. I must legitimize the equality of suffering in both cultures. Indeed, my worldviews had been turned upside down as I began to identify with the feminist movement, nonetheless it is nokum's world that was shattered, demeaned, and distorted, so it is her world I bring to you today with this story. Another day I may talk about my mamere's patriarchal world, but today is for nokum. (shrink)

There is a growing interest in the role of non-cognitive affective responses in the philosophical literature on fiction and emotion. This flurry of scholarly interest is partly a reaction to cognitivist accounts of fiction and emotion that have been found to be inadequate. The inadequacy is particularly salient when this approach is employed to account for narrative horror. Cognitivist conceptions of the emotion engendered by narrative horror prove to be too restrictive. Cognitivist accounts also fail to give the formal devices (...) and stylistic elements deployed in narrative horror a proper place within the spectator’s emotional engagement with it. In this paper I propose an alternative conception of the emotion “horror” that incorporates non-cognitive affective responses. I argue that this conception of “horror” is more fine-grained than the one characterized as a cognitivist approach. It captures more literary examples of the horror experience and it accommodates better the fear of the unknown. It also makes possible an aesthetics of horror in which formal devices and stylistic elements are given their proper place. (shrink)

Feminist affiliation has long been suspect among Native American women whose memories survive the dishonor of colonialism. The idea of common struggles is simultaneously repugnant and alluring. Sadly, this has led to much confusion and rejection between Aboriginal women. I suggest “a return to reciprocity” to understand and come to terms with feminist rejection or affiliation. If we cannot come together, the fracturing that began with European ideology will continue to fragment and destroy the fabric of Native cultures.

Here I discuss some epistemological questions posed by projects of attempting to think globally, in light of the impossibility of affirming universal sameness. I illustrate one strategy for embarking on such a project, ecologically, in a reading of an essay by Chandra Talpade Mohanty. And I conclude by suggesting that the North/South border between Canada and the U.S.A. generates underacknowledged issues of cultural alterity.

This paper is a defense of what I call The Simple View, according to which propositions are simple, fine-grained, abstract entities that have truth-conditions essentially and fundamentally. The Simple View has two controversial implications: (i) propositions do not (literally) have constituents or parts, and (ii) propositions’ having truth-conditions is a brute fact about them. I criticize the Simple View’s two competitors, the Possible Worlds View and the Structured View, for failing to provide a plausible ontology of propositions and failing to (...) explain the propositional features they set out to explain. I then consider three versions of the Simple View, developed by George Bealer, Trenton Merricks, and Peter van Inwagen, and argue that Bealer’s view is the most promising. (shrink)

Lapsing into nonsense is an occupational hazard of philosophy. But, unless they’ve been drinking, the sort of nonsense that philosophers are liable to lapse into is (usually) not pure gibberish—rather, it’s nonsense that often has the illusion of making sense. Such nonsense is sometimes accompanied by what Gareth Evans (1982) called “illusions of thought”: cognitive events that seem to have content, but don’t. In this paper we defend the existence of deceptive nonsense and illusions of thought by (i) providing positive (...) arguments for their existence, (ii) a framework for thinking about them, and (iii) responses to some important arguments against them. (shrink)

Feminist affiliation has long been suspect among Native American women whose memories survive the dishonor of colonialism. The idea of common struggles is simultaneously repugnant and alluring. Sadly, this has led to much confusion and rejection between Aboriginal women. I suggest “a return to reciprocity” to understand and come to terms with feminist rejection or affiliation. If we cannot come together, the fracturing that began with European ideology will continue to fragment and destroy the fabric of Native cultures.

I evaluate post-Quinean naturalized epistemology as a resource for postcolonial and feminist epistemology. I argue that naturalistic inquiry into material conditions and institutions of knowledge production has most to offer epistemologists committed to maintaining continuity with the knowledge production of specifically located knowers. Yet naturalistic denigrations of folk epistemic practices and stereotyped, hence often oppressive, readings of human nature challenge the naturalness of the nature they claim to study. I outline an ecologically modelled epistemology that focuses on questions of epistemic (...) responsibility and community, while refusing the reductivism of totalizing theory, and producing realistic moral-epistemic analyses of specific, local epistemic resources to ground its normative injunctions. (shrink)

This paper attempts to construct a concept of moral autonomy thai is compatible with a relationally-based or care-based ethical theory. After critiquing the traditional liberal identification of the ethical self with an abstract rational self detached from community and historical narrative, I argue that the ethical self emerges in a dialectical relation with the community itself. Essentially, I argue for a concept of autonomy that will be analyzed as a critical perspective from within a community rather than as a privileged (...) view from outside. Central to this argument is an understanding of the nature and role of moral conversation in the regeneration of community. The nature of that conversation is examined. (shrink)

This article advances an account of the nonhedonic values of horror fiction (including film). It is motivated by cases in which consuming horror fosters what theorists of education call "transformative learning" in adult students, which is a more shocking and disturbing experience than pleasurable. I first present two cases in which Polanski's Repulsion (1968) and Browning's Freaks (1932) disrupted and modified two students' experience of madness and abnormality respectively. Then I draw on Dewey's "aesthetic experience", Foucault's "experience book" and O'Leary's (...) approach to the value of fiction to give the transformative experience in question a philosophical underpinning. In the second half of the paper, I offer a close reading of Bloch's Psycho (1959), with the aim of demonstrating that it has the potential to transform the everyday experience of madness in readers. (shrink)

In this article I contend that John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism has been widely misunderstood, and hence the importance of his philosophical project has been diminished. This misunderstanding arises primarily from misconceptions regarding Mill's definition of pleasure. However, these misconceptions may be successfully resolved by reflecting on Mill's educational roots and his commitment to Greco-Roman philosophy. In particular, I hold that a deeper understanding of Mill's philosophical progenitors (i.e., Aristotle and Epicurus) would lead us to conclude that for Mill the 'pleasures' (...) of the Utilitarian project are in the final analysis nothing other than the 'pleasures' of the mind and conscience. Thus, by following Mill's line of reasoning and adhering to some of the salient points of his work, specifically in Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, we may reach a richer and more nuanced understanding of his impressive philosophical project. (shrink)

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in and likelihood of co-occurrence —determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech-to-meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision (...) that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time-sensitive co-occurrence-driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general-to-specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation. (shrink)

Ethical naturalists, who reject strong reductivist positions, hold a plausible theory that is a version of realism. In the thesis I provide a critical response to the skeptical attacks levied against these ethical naturalists. In particular, I examine the criticisms that J. L. Mackie and Simon Blackburn have put forward concerning the ethical naturalist's treatment of the concept of supervenience. I argue that the naturalist's position on supervenience can be defended against these criticisms.

I am a mixed blood woman raised in Canada with two ancestries, Ininiwak and French, that have competing worldviews from social-political and religious ideology to ancient philosophies. These mixed ancestries set me on numerous paths, ultimately leading me to philosophy. However, when did this path begin? No one in my immediate family entertained ideas of education, so I had no guidance or understanding of what university would mean. I came from an ancestry of hardworking men considered to be lower-class French (...) men and a time when women stayed home raising families. My other ancestry involved hunting, trapping, and fishing where there were no class distinctions and everyone worked together in order to survive. Women here were not restricted to the home but free to hunt, trap, and fish if that was their choice. One ancestry included transience, of employment and of values, and strict religious doctrine. My other ancestry held permanence, in land, employment, families, and in friendships, and faith was intrinsic to all life. The diversity within my worldviews, the hypocrisy witnessed, and the rejection of my matrilineal worldview/philosophy sent me along my philosophy journey and kept me there. I wanted to know who “this man was that owned my mother’s world.”. (shrink)

Preface to Volumes 1 and 2 Lorenz Krüger xv Introduction to Volume 1 Lorraine J. Daston 1 I Revolution 1 What Are Scientific Revolutions? Thomas S. Kuhn 7 2 Scientific Revolutions, Revolutions in Science, and a Probabilistic Revolution 1800-1930 I. Bernard Cohen 23 3 Was There a Probabilistic Revolution 1800-1930? Ian Hacking 45 II Concepts 4 The Slow Rise of Probabilism: Philosophical Arguments in the Nineteenth Century Lorenz Krüger 59 5 The Decline of the Laplacian Theory of Probability: A (...) Study of Stumpf, von Kries, and Meinong Andreas Kamlah 91 6 Fechner’s Indeterminism: From Freedom to Laws of Chance Michael Heidelberger 117 7 The Saint Petersburg Paradox 1713-1937 Gerard Jorland 157 8 Laplace and Thereafter: The Status of Probability Calculus in the Nineteenth Century Ivo Schneider 191 9 Emile Borel as a Probabilist Eberhard Knobloch 215 III Uncertainty 10 The Domestication of Risk: Mathematical Probability and Insurance 1650-1830 237 11 The Objectification of Observation: Measurement and Statistical Methods in the Nineteenth Century Zeno G. Swijtink 261 12 The Measurement of Uncertainty in Nineteenth-Century Social Science Stephen M. Stigler 287 IV Society 13 Rational Individuals versus Laws of Society: From Probability to Statistics Lorraine J. Daston 295 14 Decrire, Compter, Calculer: The Debate over Statistics during the Napoleonic Period Marie-Noelle Bourguet 305 15 Probability in Vital and Social Statistics: Quetelet, Farr, and the Bertillons Bernard-Pierre Lécuyer 317 16 Paupers and Numbers: The Statistical Argument for Social Reform in Britain during the Period of Industrialization Karl H. Metz 337 17 Lawless Society: Social Science and the Reinterpretation of Statistics in Germany, 1850-1880 Theodore M. Porter 351 18 Prussian Numbers 1860-1882 Ian Hacking 377 19 How Do Sums Count? On the Cultural Origins of Statistical Causality M. Norton Wise 395. (shrink)

Lorraine Daston's "Against Nature" seeks to explain why, in spite of compelling objections to the contrary, human beings continue to invest nature with moral authority. More specifically, she claims that our propensity to moralize nature is traceable in part to human nature. Though I criticize Daston for not paying adequate attention to John Stuart Mill's narrow sense of 'nature', I also highly recommend her book.

Debates between Habermas and the poststructuralists - specifically, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard - over the nature of critiques of Enlightenment rationality and modernity are investigated in order to argue for an agenda for critical theory beyond the 'French Fries and the Frankfurter'.1 Part I interrogates key elements of Habermas' theory of communicative rationality in his reconstruction of Enlightenment modernity and his critique of the poststructuralists. This orients the discussion toward an evaluation of Habermas' neo-Kantianism, theory of language (discourse ethics), and (...) the 'critique' he employs in his bid to defend and complete the project of modernity. Key Words: critical theory • Derrida • Enlightenment modernity • Foucault • Habermas • Lyotard • Marx • postmodernism debates. (shrink)

Departing from an epistemological tradition for which knowledge properly achieved must be objective, especially in eschewing affect and/or special interests; and against a backdrop of my thinking about epistemic responsibility, I focus on two situations where care informs and enables good knowing. The implicit purpose of this reclamation of care as epistemically vital is to show emphatically that standard alignments of care with femininity—the female—are simply misguided. Proposing that the efficacy of epistemic practices is often enhanced when would-be knowers care (...) about the outcomes of investigation, I suggest that epistemic responsibility need not be compromised when caring motivates and animates research. Indeed, the background inspiration comes from the thought, integral to feminist and post-colonial theory and practice that, despite often-justified condemnations of research that serves "special interests," particularities do matter, epistemically. Such thoughts, variously articulated, are integral to enacting a shift in epistemology away from formal abstraction and toward engaging with the specificities of real-world, situated knowledge projects. They are not unequivocally benign, for villains too care about the outcomes of their projects. Hence multi-faceted engagements with epistemic practices and processes are urgently required across the social-political world. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a retrospective rereading of my work on epistemic responsibility in order to see why this inquiry has found only an uneasy location within the discourse of Anglo-American epistemology. I trace the history of the work's production, circulation and reception, and examine the feminist implications of the discussions it has occasioned.

I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.

I offer an examination of trust relations in scientific inquiry as they seem to contrast with a lack of trust in an example of knowledge imposed from above by an unaccountable institutional power structure. On this basis I argue for a re-reading of John Hardwig's account of the place of trust in knowledge, and suggest that it translates less well than social epistemologists and others have assumed into a model for democratic epistemic practice.

In this essay I take issue with entrenched conceptions of individual autonomy for how they block understandings of the implications of rape in patriarchal cultures both 'at home' and in situations of armed conflict. I focus on human vulnerability as it manifests in sedimented assumptions about violence against women as endemic to male-female relations, thwarting possibilities of knowing the specific harms particular acts of rape enact well enough to render intelligible their far-reaching social-political-moral implications. Taking my point of departure from (...) Debra Bergoffen's call for 'a new epistemology of rape', I consider what such a call can amount to within an instituted social imaginary where male domination and female subordination are taken for granted—naturalized. (shrink)

In this essay I explore some implications and effects of taken-for-granted expectations of achieved certainty as the only legitimate outcome of scientific and everyday inquiry. The analysis contrasts ubiquitous if often tacit expectations of certainty with a critique of how these very expectations can truncate productive engagement with matters ecological. The discussion focuses on the limited prospects of success in inquiry when certainty is the only putatively acceptable outcome, and it defends the value of situated quests for knowledge with their (...) reliance on hermeneutic understandings of place and process as these involve real human knowers. (shrink)

Julia Annas argues that Aristotle's understanding of the phenomenological experience of the virtuous agent corresponds to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of the ?flow,? which is a form of intrinsic motivation. In this paper, I explore whether or not Annas? understanding of virtuous agency is a plausible one. After a thorough analysis of psychological accounts of intrinsic and extrinsic states of motivation, I argue that despite the attractiveness of Annas? understanding of virtuous agency, it is subject to a serious problem: all (...) virtuous activities are not ones that we take pleasure in independently of their connection to ?virtue.? Moreover, somewhat sadly, we have no compelling reason to think that they can become so. Our psychology is not constituted to find the exercise of virtue, in all of its extensions, interesting and enjoyable, apart from its connection to virtue. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is, first, that ecological thinking—which takes its point of departure from specifically located, multifaceted analyses of knowledge production and circulation in diverse demographic and geographic locations—can generate more responsible knowings than the reductivism of the positivist post-Enlightenment legacy allows; and second, that ecological thinking can spark a revolution comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution, which recentered western thought by moving “man” to the center of the philosophical-conceptual universe. Kantian philosophy was parochial in the conception of “man” (...) on which it turned: a recognition central to feminist, Marxist, post-colonial and critical race theory. It promoted a picture of a physical and human world centered on and subservient to a small class and race of men who were uniformly capable of achieving a narrowly-conceived standard of reason, citizenship, and morality. As humanism vied with theism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so ecological thinking vies with capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here I outline its promise. (shrink)

Hume’s theory of justice, intricately linked to his account of moral development, is at once simplistic and mysterious, combining familiar conventionalistelements with perplexing, complicated elements of his rich moral psychology. These dimensions of his theory make interpreting it no easy task, although many have tried. Emerging from these many different attempts is a picture of Hume as defending an account of justice according to which justice consists of expedient rules designed to advance one’s self-interest. The mistake of this view, I (...) argue, lies in its narrow focus on the material rather than psychological effects of the conventions of justice. My goal here is to isolate the psychological effects of the rules of justice by analyzing the psychological transformation of the parties who morally commit to justice. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is, first, that ecological thinking—which takes its point of departure from specifically located, multifaceted analyses of knowledge production and circulation in diverse demographic and geographic locations—can generate more responsible knowings than the reductivism of the positivist post-Enlightenment legacy allows; and second, that ecological thinking can spark a revolution comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution, which recentered western thought by moving “man” to the center of the philosophical-conceptual universe. Kantian philosophy was parochial in the conception of “man” (...) on which it turned: a recognition central to feminist, Marxist, post-colonial and critical race theory. It promoted a picture of a physical and human world centered on and subservient to a small class and race of men who were uniformly capable of achieving a narrowly-conceived standard of reason, citizenship, and morality. As humanism vied with theism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so ecological thinking vies with capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here I outline its promise. (shrink)

The phrase “statements of fact” has a clear, unequivocal ring. It speaks of a stable place untouchable by contests in epistemology and in more secular places, around questions of constructivism, subjectivism, and the politics of knowledge. It offers fixity, a locus of constancy in a shifting landscape where traditional certainties have ceased to hold, maintains a vantage point outside the fray, where knowledge-seekers can continue to believe in some degree of “correspondence” between items of knowledge and events in the world. (...) Within the social institutions and practices where knowledge is an issue, it designates a secure starting place for deliberation, a way of ensuring that processes of decision-making remain cognizant of the “realities” they have to address.In the institutions of knowledge production and knowledgeable practice that generate the examples I appeal to in this essay – medicine and law – “statements of fact” appear to comprise an incontestable core around which interpretive strategies may indeed have to be enlisted, but which itself functions as a kind of interpretation-exempt zone. There are good reasons for its retaining that status, for resisting the instabilities and sheer whimsicalities that would follow from dislodging it. (shrink)

In characterizing cognitive activity as a creative synthesis of the imagination, Kant places the epistemological subject at the center of the cognitive process. This is wholly revolutionary in the history of epistemology. Yet, for all its revolutionary character, the concept of the creative synthesis falls short of providing an adequate context for an explication of the ways in which individual human knowers, as organic creatures, create the products we call knowledge. Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology, on the other hand, with its (...) acknowledged roots in, and avowed allegiance to, Kantian philosophy, goes much further toward a recognition of the importance of the person as knowing subject. For this reason, I shall argue, it offers a route toward a fuller, and better, understanding of the epistemological significance of the knower as person, while retaining and building upon what is best in Kant’s epistemological insights. (shrink)

This article advances an account of the nonhedonic values of horror fiction (including film). It is motivated by cases in which consuming horror fosters what theorists of education call "transformative learning" in adult students, which is a more shocking and disturbing experience than pleasurable. I first present two cases in which Polanski's Repulsion (1968) and Browning's Freaks (1932) disrupted and modified two students' experience of madness and abnormality respectively. Then I draw on Dewey's "aesthetic experience", Foucault's "experience book" and O'Leary's (...) approach to the value of fiction to give the transformative experience in question a philosophical underpinning. In the second half of the paper, I offer a close reading of Bloch's Psycho (1959), with the aim of demonstrating that it has the potential to transform the everyday experience of madness in readers. (shrink)