Older adults prefer positive over negative information in a lab setting, compared to young adults. The extent to which OA avoid negative events or information relevant for their health and safety is not clear. We first investigated age differences in preferences for fear-enhancing vs. fear-reducing news articles during the Ebola Outbreak of 2014. We were able to collect data from 15 YA and 13 OA during this acute health event. Compared to YA, OA were more likely to read the fear-enhancing (...) article, select hand-sanitizer over lip balm, and reported greater fear of Ebola. We further investigated our research question during the COVID-19 pandemic with 164 YA and 171 OA. Participants responded to an online survey about the COVID-19 pandemic across 13 days during the initial peak of the pandemic in the United States. Both YA and OA preferred to read positive over negative news about the coronavirus, but OA were even more likely than YA to prefer the positive news article. No age differences in the fear of contraction were found, but OA engaged in more health-protective behaviors compared to YA. Although OA may not always report greater fear than YA or seek out negative information related to a health concern, they still engage in protective health behaviors. Thus, although positivity effects were observed in attention and emotional reports, OA still modified their behaviors more than YA, suggesting that positivity effects did not hamper OA ability to respond to a health crisis. (shrink)

The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercised by people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea of practical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, and connected with an idea of agents’ knowledge. Some defence of the claim is provided.

The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercised aby people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea of practical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, and connected with an idea of agents' knowledge. Some defence of the claim is provided.

We focus on moral climates through case studies of three state owned enterprises (SOEs) in a South China City. In Company A, a shipbuilding company, the general manager persuaded the supervisory bureau to allow him to replace the old top management team with managers chosen on merit, and who supported his desire for reforms. He exercised transformational leadership, established internal rule of law, cultivated a spirited moral climate, and achieved turnaround. At Company B, a financial services conglomerate, the general manager (...) exploited strong political connections, enfeebled the governance structures, and with two subsidiary barons proceeded to milk company resources. That, and a large contingent of sleeping incumbents (idle protégés), bred a moral climate overrun by corruption, dereliction of duty and hubris. Bankruptcy was not averted. Hotel X, a subsidiary of company B, was a partial machine bureaucracy; its moral climate characterised by punishment avoidance and lack of spirit. A headquarters power bloc and the sleeping incumbents whom they protected prevented a law abiding, equity sensitive general manager from improving performance, and he lost heart. From these cases, we build a model of the relationship between moral leadership, institutional superstructure, internal governance and control systems, enterprise moral atmosphere, and performance. (shrink)

By now it goes without saying that cinema is and has always been a synesthetic experience. But what exactly do we mean when we say that? The paper develops a phenomenology of “cinematic synesthesia” that draws upon three recent developments: first, the neuroscientific “neonatal synesthesia hypothesis”; second, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on child psychology and translator Talia Welsh’s contextualization of that work within recent developmental psychology; and third, Dylan Trigg’s concept of a “darkened phenomenology” that accounts for the radically “unhuman.” These (...) conceptual lenses are trained on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, whose legendary impact stems from its perplexing tangle of the sensory with the cognitive, the unconscious with the conscious, the individual with the collective, and the past with the present. (shrink)

This article connects the theory of Hannah Arendt and the philosophy of Stanley Cavell to the questions of what thinking is and how it appears on film. It focuses on two theatrical trials: Adolph Eichmann’s trial (1961) and the ending sequence in Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) in which the questions of thought and thoughtlessness are at stake. Whereas Arendt considers the ways that thinking poses challenges to representation (there is, she writes, a “scarcity of documentary (...) evidence”), Cavell turns to cinema and the camera’s “knowledge of the metaphysical restlessness” that becomes manifest when the mind thinks and the body fidgets. He goes so far as to argue that cinema may even “prove thinking.” Though they arrive at opposite conclusions, Cavell and Arendt share a critique of modern subjectivity that these trials bring to light: reason has replaced thinking and skepticism of the world has replaced consciousness in it. But film, as read through Cavell, may reveal a crisis of altogether different order. It is not that thinking cannot be represented, as Arendt argues; in the age of cinema, thinking cannot be concealed. If anything, thoughtlessness defies representation. (shrink)

Returning to John P. Reeder's 1978 essay on “Religious Ethics as a Field and Discipline,” this essay explores debates surrounding the original intentions for the Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE) and for the field of religious ethics, as these have played out over the decades among an influential group of scholars involved with the JRE since its inception: Arthur Dyck, Ronald Green, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout. While the JRE and its founding mission are in need of ongoing critique (...) and transformation, we might well still affirm the journal's ongoing importance as a site for the negotiation of a commons, the identification of possibilities for shared life, imagined beyond exclusion and domination. (shrink)

Moral exemplarism, which insists on the centrality of particular embodiments of exemplary virtue to the moral life, is currently receiving significant attention within moral philosophy as well as theological and religious ethics. This introductory essay situates the contributions made by this focus issue on moral exemplarity in relation to the history of attention to moral exemplars, the twentieth‐century turn to virtue, philosopher Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory, Stanley Hauerwas’s particularist embrace of Christian discipleship, Foucauldian turns to critique and self‐cultivation, (...) and the significance of exemplars in Jeffrey Stout’s democratic piety. Arguing for the critical importance of articulating the authority of exemplars, this essay points to the ways in which the present focus can assist us to navigate between the shoals of nostalgic deference to tradition and dismissive critiques of authoritarianism. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists—whether human or nonhuman. The new faith says science, not man, is the measure of all things. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of (...) some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism. The many prominent Anglo-American philosophers appearing in this book—Akeel Bilgrami, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, John Dupré, Jennifer Hornsby, Erin Kelly, John McDowell, Huw Price, Hilary Putnam, Carol Rovane, Barry Stroud, and Stephen White—do not march in lockstep, yet their contributions demonstrate mutual affinities and various unifying themes. Instead of attempting to force human nature into a restricted scientific image of the world, these papers represent an attempt to place human nature at the center of renewed—but still scientifically respectful—conceptions of philosophy and nature. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Stanley Hauerwas has not taken up many of the topics normally associated with virtue ethics, has explicitly distanced himself from the enterprise known as “virtue ethics,” and throughout his career has preferred other categories of analysis, ranging from character and agency to practices and liturgy, it is nevertheless clear that his work has had a deep and transformative impact on the recovery of virtue within Christian ethics, and that this impact has largely to do with (...) the ways in which his thought resists normalization. This essay traces the evolution of Hauerwas's reflections on virtue and the virtues over the course of his career, with special attention to how this has been bound up with an increasingly emphatic theological particularism that has remained ambivalent between what I term “comprehensive” versus “exclusive” particularism. I argue that it is important to distinguish between these, and suggest that grasping the destructive tendencies of “exclusive” particularism should cement our commitment to shouldering the responsibilities associated with comprehensive particularism. (shrink)

""Serious philosophy is not an attempt to construct a system of beliefs, but the activity of awakening, the conversation passionately pursued. Only if professional philosophy reclaims this paradigm and finds ways to embody it, will it achieve an active place in the thought and life of our culture."" --James Conlon, ""Stanley Cavell and the Predicament of Philosophy."" This book is a collection of serious philosophical essays that aim to awaken readers, teachers, and students to a desire for conversation passionately (...) pursued. The essays in this volume speak about sex, movies, poetry, and politics, in short, about those things contemporary Americans passionately discuss. These are the subjects that were taught for forty-three years in James Conlon's classroom at Mount Mary University, a Catholic urban university for women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This volume celebrates Conlon's work while calling to all who continue to teach and learn about philosophy in contemporary times with the message that relevant philosophy deals with life as it is lived in the moment. ""Dr. Conlon made it his life's work to bring to consciousness an often unconscious awareness that accepts the way things are as the measure of what is real, normative, and moral. His commitment to awakening people to the wonder of common experience made a profound contribution to the mission of Mount Mary. The essays in this volume are a testament to the way he engaged students in the process of living a fully human life."" --Joan Penzenstadler, SSND, Mount Mary University ""True to the spirit of Professor Conlon's teaching, this collection illustrates how his approach made philosophy a genuine dialogue, brought diverse viewpoints and perspectives to bear on any problem, and engaged generations of women in the philosophical conversation."" --Kathleen Poorman Dougherty, Alma College ""This collection of always thoughtful and often provocative essays by James Conlon, his colleagues, and students honors Conlon's decades-long career at Mount Mary University dedicated to teaching the practice of philosophy... Both new and experienced teachers of philosophy will find insights and inspiration in this volume!"" --Donna Engelmann, Alverno College ""Just in Time celebrates the work of the philosopher James Conlon. It also honors the pedagogy of inquiry that has had a profound impact on the students he taught for over 40 years. Conlon's essays are paired with ones from his students and colleagues--testaments to the influence that his teaching has had. Readers will be challenged to pursue passionate conversations and inspire others to engage in thoughtful inquiry about the relevant topics of today."" --Eileen Schwalbach, Former president, Mount Mary University Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Mary University. She is the author of Thinking Woman: A Philosophical Approach to the Quandary of Gender and the editor of The Devil's Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition. James Conlon is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Mount Mary University where he taught for forty-three years. He is the author of numerous philosophical articles. (shrink)

Contemporary literature in philosophy of action seems to be divided overthe place of action in the natural causal world. I think that a disagreementabout ontology underlies the division. I argue here that human action isproperly understood only by reference to a category of process or activity,where this is not a category of particulars.

Jason Stanley presents a startling and provocative claim about knowledge: that whether or not someone knows a proposition at a given time is in part determined by his or her practical interests, i.e. by how much is at stake for that person at that time. In defending this thesis, Stanley introduces readers to a number of strategies for resolving philosophical paradox, making the book essential not just for specialists in epistemology but for all philosophers interested in philosophical methodology. (...) Since a number of his strategies appeal to linguistic evidence, it will be of great interest to linguists as well. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

The Mask of Enlightenment is the most detailed textual and thematic study of Nietzsche's most important but least understood works: Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book Nietzsche was laying the groundwork for a fundamental philosophical and political revolution on a global scale. One of the difficulties that the text poses is Nietzsche's prophetic style; Stanley Rosen unweaves the complex threads that form the rhetorical voices of the work, and so explains the style in an accessible manner. He rejects recent (...) sceptical, deconstructionist interpretations of Nietzsche, and reveals a coherence underlying the multiple and apparently incompatible intentions embedded in the text. Nietzsche is a figure whose influence on contemporary thought in the humanities and social sciences continues to be enormous. This book is sure to become the definitive study of Zarathustra, and will have a broad appeal to philosophers and students of modern philosophy, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. (shrink)

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have significantly impacted on the politics of health research and the field of bioethics. In the globalHIVepidemic,CSOs have served a pivotal stakeholder role. The dire need for development of new prevention technologies has raised critical challenges for the ethical engagement of community stakeholders inHIVresearch. This study explored the perspectives ofCSOrepresentatives involved inHIVprevention trials (HPTs) on the impact of premature trial closures on stakeholder engagement. Fourteen respondents fromSouthAfrican and internationalCSOs representing activist and advocacy groups, community mobilisation initiatives, (...) and human and legal rights groups were purposively sampled based on involvement inHPTs. Interviews were conducted fromFebruary‐May 2010. Descriptive analysis was undertaken across interviews and key themes were developed inductively.CSOrepresentatives largely described positive outcomes of recent microbicide andHIVvaccine trial terminations, particularly inSouthAfrica, which they attributed to improvements in stakeholder engagement. Ongoing challenges to community engagement included the need for principled justifications for selective stakeholder engagement at strategic time‐points, as well as the need for legitimate alternatives toCABs as mechanisms for engagement. Key issues forCSOs in relation to research were also raised. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

Reissued with a new preface, this famous collection of essays covers a remarkably wide range of philosophical issues, including essays on Wittgenstein, Austin, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of language, and extending beyond philosophy into discussions of music and drama. Previous edition hb ISBN (1976): 0-521-21116-6 Previous edition pb ISBN (1976): 0-521-29048-1.

Introduction -- Elucidating complexity theories -- Complexity in the natural sciences -- Complexity in social theory -- Towards transdisciplinarity -- Complexity in philosophy: complexification and the limits to knowledge -- Complexity in ethics -- Earth in the anthropocene -- Complexity and climate change -- American dreams, ecological nightmares and new visions -- Complexity and sustainability: wicked problems, gordian knots and synergistic solutions -- Conclusion.

Now in its second decade in the U.S., hospice has moved from a fringe alternative led by an idealistic group of volunteers and professionals to a mainstream, industry‐like approach to the care of the terminally ill. Success has brought uniformity and fiscal constraints, but the commitment to “low‐tech, high‐touch” care has not changed.

Jennifer Hornsby offers here detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation. In her distinctive view of questions about the mind's place in nature she argues for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism.

In this collection of original essays, international scholars put Asian traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, into conversation with one or more contemporary feminist philosophies, founding a new mode of inquiry that attends to diverse voices and the complex global relationships that define our world. -/- These cross-cultural meditations focus on the liberation of persons from suffering, oppression, illusion, harmful conventions and desires, and other impediments to full personhood by deploying a methodology that traverses multiple philosophical styles, historical (...) texts, and frames of reference. Hailing from the discipline of philosophy in addition to Asian, gender, and religious studies, the contributors offer a fresh take on the classic concerns of free will, consciousness, knowledge, objectivity, sexual difference, embodiment, selfhood, the state, morality, and hermeneutics. One of the first anthologies to embody the practice of feminist comparative philosophy, this collection creatively and effectively engages with global, cultural, and gender differences within the realms of scholarly inquiry and theory construction. -/- http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16624-9/asian-and-feminist-philosophies-in-dialogue. (shrink)

"This collection is obviously a labor of love. Fortunately, it is also a labor of editorial care and precision.

A disjunctivist conception of acting for reasons is introduced by way of showing that a view of acting for reasons must give a place to knowledge. Two principal claims are made. 1. This conception has a rôle analogous to that of the disjunctive conception that John McDowell recommends in thinking about perception; and when the two disjunctivist conceptions are treated as counterparts, they can be shown to have work to do in combination. 2. This conception of acting for reasons safeguards (...) the connection between considerations that move us to act in particular ways and considerations that favour our acting in particular ways. (shrink)

Plato's great attempt to define the nature of the sophist -- the false image of the philosopher -- has perplexed readers from classical times to the present. The dialogue has been central in the ongoing debate about the theory of forms, and it remains a crucial text for Plato scholars in both the analytical and the phenomenological traditions. Stanley Rosen's book is the first full-length study of the Sophist in English and one of the most complete in any language. (...) He follows the stages of the dialogue in sequence and offers an exhaustive analysis of the philosophical questions that come to light as Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger pursue the sophist through philosophical debate. Rosen finds the central problem of the dialogue in the relation between original and image; he shows how this distinction underlies all subsequent technical themes and analyzes in detail such problems as non-being or negation and false statement. Arguing that the dialogue must be treated as a dramatic unity, he pays careful attention throughout to the setting, the events, the language used, and the relations between the natures of the speakers and the topics under discussion. Rosen's new approach to the technical issues in the dialogue will be of interest to Plato scholars of all schools, and his analysis of the sophistical dimension of the world will engage all who have puzzled over what it means to be a philosopher. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness by Jennifer McBrideGlen StassenThe Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness Jennifer McBride New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 310 pp. $74.00Jennifer McBride offers the brilliant proposal that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theme of repentance is the right ingredient for our pluralistic and democratic context, which needs a nontriumphal Christian witness. [End Page 199]My focus on (...) confession and repentance as a nontriumphal public witness is aimed... mostly at white Protestants who benefit in countless recognized and unrecognized ways from being part of the dominant culture, because this reflects my own social location and the churches and para-church groups in which I was raised. Bonhoeffer writes... from a position of social power and privilege and argues from that place that the acknowledgment of guilt is definitive for the church. My theology of public witness defines the church as the body called to repentance—as the body called, in the words of Bonhoeffer, to accept guilt or take responsibility for social sin.(9)McBride shows that “repentance” carries various connotations in Bonhoeffer’s writings. In Discipleship, he “links metanoia with the church’s conformation to the crucified Christ (a prevalent theme throughout his theology).” In Ethics, he links “repentance to the church’s this-worldly activity when he defines the church’s repentance as preparing this ‘penultimate’ world for its redemptive transformation.” In Letters and Papers from Prison, he defines metanoia as “living completely in” this world’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities, taking seriously the suffering of God in the world (14). “As the acceptance of divine judgment, repentance participates in the unfolding of redemption. Thus, it is... energized by hope for the world and humanity, animated by joyful expectation as much as lament, and oriented toward future transformation as much as past and present sin” (107). Interpreting repentance through the person of Christ directly challenges the common understanding that repentance primarily concerns one’s individual standing before God; instead, as participation in Christ, repentance constitutes existence for others. Her interpretation is far richer and more insightful than I can represent in a short review.McBride bases her argument on three dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s theology: Christology, this-worldliness, and ecclesiology (12). By “Christology,” she is pointing to “nothing other than the crucified Christ who accepts responsibility for sin” (139). By “this-worldliness,” we can also point to Christology, in Bonhoeffer’s incarnational theme of entering into the full dimensions of human life. McBride’s ecclesiology urges “that the church’s presence in public life be conformed to Christ’s mode of being in the world” (54).In his Ethics (134–45) Bonhoeffer wrote a profound confession of his own, the churches’ and nation’s guilt that was taken up by some churches and church groups after the war’s end, and then by President Richard von Weizsäcker and Chancellor Willy Brandt. This public repentance has been the key to healing within Germany and in its relation with other nations.McBride credits Larry Rasmussen and John de Gruchy for inspiring us to develop new implications of Bonhoeffer’s theological ethics for our different contexts. So she goes “beyond Bonhoeffer with Bonhoeffer.” [End Page 200]McBride appreciates the pioneering work of Christine Schliesser, Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty, for noticing that Bonhoeffer’s central concept of “acceptance of guilt has not been examined systematically by previous scholars.” She goes beyond Schliesser, emphasizing that as public witness, the church’s confession unto repentance consists of communal, more than individual, acceptance of guilt—“especially the myriad social/structural evils of our political, social, and economic systems.” She appreciates Stanley Hauerwas’s emphasis on ecclesiology but urges him to develop a theology of public witness that communicates that Christ and the church are for, not against, the world, with its pluralistic, not monolithic, culture. She appreciates Jim Wallis’s Call to Conversion, “a clear, detailed, and theologically sophisticated appeal for ecclesial conversion, especially in regard to poverty and war,” but criticizes God’s Politics for being insufficiently theological. She concludes with an ethnographic study of two emerging churches, Eleuthero in Maine... (shrink)

Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanylsis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple "mother goddesses" of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many "mothers" in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western (...) models without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a briefr comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America. _All the Mothers Are One_ makes a significant contribution to the growing debate concerning the role of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of culture and the study of cross-cultural human development. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is (...) most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics. (shrink)

This reissue of an American philosophical classic includes a new preface by Cavell, in which he discusses the work's reception and influence. The work fosters a fascinating relationship between philosophy and literature both by augmenting his philosophical discussions with examples from literature and by applying philosophical theories to literary texts. Cavell also succeeds in drawing some very important parallels between the British analytic tradition and the continental tradition, by comparing skepticism as understood in Descartes, Hume, and Kant with philosophy of (...) language as practiced by Wittgenstein and Austin. (shrink)