We offer obeisances to Lord Śiva, guru of knowledge, lord of the dance, who purifies by the very utterance of his name, who transcends all dualities. May he grant us permission to argue with his devotees. May he also give us his blessings to convince them.Properly speaking, comparative philosophy does not lead toward the creation of a synthesis of philosophical traditions. What is being created is not a new theory but a different sort of philosopher. The goal of comparative philosophy (...) is learning a new language, a new way of talking. The comparative philosopher does not so much inhabit both of the standpoints represented by the traditions from which he draws as he comes to inhabit an.. (shrink)

This book explains why universities, and academics within them, must engage with the diversity of knowledges and knowers that exist in the world. Through philosophical perspectives, theoretical frameworks and practical examples from around the world, the book searches for opportunities for renewal and inclusion in universities. It explains how higher education can better serve the purposes of social justice by re-evaluating the types of knowledge it promotes. Going beyond the identification and analysis of injustices in ways of knowing in academia, (...) the book offers insights and examples of practices in teaching, research and work with the community which aim to move towards justice on an epistemic level. It argues that inclusion in the domain of knowledge can lead to the generation of knowledges and understandings that are more robust and better equipped to address the pressing needs of the plural worlds outside the university. Contributions are included from authors working in varied disciplinary and cultural contexts in universities, who describe and explicate their work towards identifying epistemic injustice and finding spaces to advance knowledge justice in theory and in practice. The book will be beneficial to academics and those with an interest in the role of universities in serving the public good. (shrink)

This article explores gender differences in three varieties of economic activities that supplement regular employment and housework: entrepreneurial moonlighting, self-provisioning, and casual exchanges with the members of other households. Drawing on data gathered through a random survey and interviews conducted with a white, rural, working-class population, gender differences were found in the content of these activities, their location, the time devoted to them, the degree to which they were delineated from other activities, and the opportunities they provided for sociability. These (...) differences are shown to have consequences for the internal gendered dynamics of the household and for the reinforcement of some kinds of male privilege. (shrink)

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

As the initial book in the Feminist Constructions series, Feminists Doing Ethics broaches the ideas of critiquing social practice and developing an ethics of universal justness. The essays collected within explore the intricacies and impact of reasoned moral action, the virtues of character, and the empowering responsibility that comes with morality. These and other essays were taken from Feminist Ethics Revisited: An International Conference on Feminist Ethics held in October of 1999. Waugh and DesAutels bring to light in these pages (...) work discussed at this conference that extends our understanding of morality and ourselves. Visit our website for sample chapters! (shrink)

Fifteenth century Scotland relied upon matrimonial diplomacy to create ties with mainland Europe and further solidify their alliances with the French and Burgundian courts. Studies of matrimonial diplomacy often solely focus on the political lead-up to the marital alliances, rather on the fates of the individual women who were thrust into foreign courts to sink or swim. Focusing on six key examples of Scottish royal women of the fifteenth century in comparison with the feminine ideals of Christine de Pizan’s The (...) Treasure of the City of the Ladies and the popular memory of St. Margaret, this paper attempts to address how the Scottish royal women of the fifteenth century worked within societal expectations to solidify their powerbase and create a role for themselves at court. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionMargaret Olivia Little (bio)Increasingly, conversations in bioethics include questions or claims about the contribution that feminist analyses might offer the field. In March 1995, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics devoted its annual Advanced Bioethics Course to an exploration of feminist approaches to bioethics. This special issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, which supplements the September 1995 issue on principlism and several alternative approaches to health care ethics, (...) grew out of that course, containing articles written by those who presented its central lectures.The first article serves as an introduction to the topic. I take seriously the often-asked questions of why and in what way feminism should be thought relevant to bioethics. Appreciating feminism’s distinctive contribution to the field requires appreciating some of the central themes common to virtually all feminist theory. Accordingly, I set out and develop two themes that are basic to feminism; I then give several examples of how various bioethical issues might be framed and analyzed differently when approached with awareness of these tenets. Feminist theory offers a critical tool for bioethics, I argue, both by revealing androcentric reasoning that can affect—sometimes subtly and sometimes crudely—substantive analyses of bioethical issues, and by helping us to re-think and refine aspects of ethical theory that form the conceptual tools of use to bioethicists.In the second article, Alisa Carse and Hilde Lindemann Nelson take up one of the most famous theories associated with feminist philosophy, the “ethic of care,” inspired originally by Carol Gilligan’s work. While the ethic is much touted, it is also much criticized—sometimes, importantly, from distinctly feminist angles. Carse and Nelson deepen the debate by suggesting directions that a sophisticated version of the theory should take. They address four common criticisms of the care approach, some from “mainstream” theorists and some from feminist voices, and then outline how the ethic can be developed to answer these concerns.It is often pointed out that feminism is not a monolithic theory. While the diversity of approaches and policy recommendations contained within feminism is in many ways a healthy one, such diversity can be frustrating and potentially undermining of feminism’s contribution to fields such as bioethics. In the third article, Rosemarie Tong discusses the differences and commonalities among various feminist theories, with an eye [End Page vii] toward developing a strategy that feminists might take in their attempts to advance conversations in bioethics. She first provides a lucid outline of the three main branches of feminist theory—liberal, cultural, and radical—and illustrates their distinct approaches by contrasting how each would approach the controversial topic of “surrogate” or contract motherhood. Having highlighted the differences among the three approaches, she then indicates their shared theoretical base. She ends by suggesting strategies that feminists might want to take, in light of these common factors, to maximize the influence their voices can and should have in bioethics.One question commonly asked is what difference feminism’s distinctive theoretical approach makes when applied to the concrete issues bioethicists have traditionally discussed. In the fourth article, James Lindemann Nelson considers a topic of central importance to modern bioethics, the distribution of scarce health care resources, and demonstrates how differently we might analyze the issue if we view it through the lens of feminist theory. More specifically, he examines the work of several sophisticated, mainstream authors writing on the subject, such as Frances Kamm, Norman Daniels, Dan Brock, and Ezekiel Emanuel, and indicates various places in which a feminist analysis will reveal problems in the analyses that might otherwise remain hidden—problems, for instance, in methodology, in how the issues are framed, in the conceptions of justice employed, and in the relative insensitivity to questions about power distribution. At the same time, Nelson explores ways in which such mainstream work offers material that is valuable to a feminist picture of allocation questions. In the end, he urges, both sides have lost by the lack of dialogue between them.In the final article, Karen Rothenberg discusses the intersection of bioethics, feminist theory, and the law. She traces how the differences among the three central camps of feminist theory yield different theories of feminist jurisprudence... (shrink)

In this essay I examine Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer prizewinning play, Wit, to explore the numerous connections drawn there between damage to bodies and damage to identities. In the course of this exploration I aim to get clearer about the kinds of illness, injury, or medical interventions that damage patients’ identities; how the damage is inflicted; and what might be done to repair identities that have been damaged in these ways. I argue that just as bodily illness and injury can (...) damage the identity-constituting narratives by which we understand ourselves and others, so too (as the play demonstrates) injurious identity-constituting narratives can result in bodily harm. Because identities are narrative constructions, the damage inflicted on them requires narrative repair. The defective stories must be uprooted and replaced, but the success of the repair depends on both the soundness of the replacement story and the willingness of others to take up the new story. (shrink)

Margaret Whitford's study provides the ideal introduction to Irigaray's thought, offering a sustained interpretation of her whole corpus, including previously untranslated French texts. Whitford suggests that Irigaray's work should be seen as "philosophy in the feminine," actively opposing the complicity of philosophy with other social practices which exclude or marginalize women.

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics (...) such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics. (shrink)

Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing is a technology which provides information about fetal genetic characteristics very early in pregnancy by examining fetal DNA obtained from a sample of maternal blood. NIPT is a morally complex technology that has advanced quickly to market with a strong push from industry developers, leaving many areas of uncertainty still to be resolved, and creating a strong need for health policy that reflects women’s social and ethical values. We approach the need for ethical policy-making by studying the (...) use of NIPT and emerging policy in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using an adapted version of constructivist grounded theory, we conducted interviews with 38 women who have had personal experiences with NIPT. We used an iterative process of data collection and analysis and a staged coding strategy to conduct a descriptive analysis of ethics issues identified implicitly and explicitly by women who have been affected by this technology. The findings of this paper focus on current ethical issues for women seeking NIPT, including place in the prenatal pathway, health care provider counselling about the test, industry influence on the diffusion of NIPT, consequences of availability of test results. Other issues gain relevance in the context of future policy decisions regarding NIPT, including funding of NIPT and principles that may govern the expansion of the scope of NIPT. These findings are not an exhaustive list of all the potential ethical issues related to NIPT, but rather a representation of the issues which concern women who have personal experience with this test. Women who have had personal experience with NIPT have concerns and priorities which sometimes contrast dramatically with the theoretical ethics literature. These findings suggest the importance of engaging patients in ethical deliberation about morally complex technologies, and point to the need for more deliberative patient engagement work in this area. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt by Tim MilnesMargaret WatkinsTim Milnes. The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 278. Hardback. ISBN: 9780198812739. $91.00.In his brief autobiography, “My Own Life,” Hume reports that “almost all [his] life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations” (E-MOL: xxxi). This is one (...) of at least ten places in this brief work in which he associates himself with “letters” or “literature”—as compared to at most four associations with philosophy. The moral to be inferred is not that Hume considered himself not to be a philosopher. Rather, he conceived of philosophy as a kind of literature. The Treatise was itself a “literary attempt.” Indeed, opposition between the “literary” and “philosophical” aspects of a text would have been foreign to Hume and his contemporaries—a notion for a later age, despite his occasional loose distinction between the relevant genres, as in his list of writings “historical, philosophical, or literary” in “My Own Life” (E-MOL: xxxvi).Yet despite Hume’s own understanding of the continuity between philosophy and literature, broadly conceived, it is still common for contemporary philosophers to ignore literary questions in their examination of Hume’s work, or to presume that one can easily distinguish the “philosophical” parts from the “literary” ones. Tim Milnes’s The Testimony of Sense is therefore a welcome addition to the Hume literature (pun intended). With a particular focus on the essay—a genre of great importance to Hume—Milnes contributes to the small set of engagements with Hume from the disciplinary perspective of English literature. With training in both philosophy and literature, as well as established expertise on Romanticism and its own essays, Milnes is well-qualified for the task. The Testimony of Sense includes sustained engagement with Hume’s contemporaries and successors, but for the purposes of this review, I engage the book primarily as a Hume scholar for Hume scholars.Milnes’s story plays out in three acts. The first establishes the need for public trust created by a skeptical crisis, itself a product of Hume’s criticism of the epistemic program of thinkers in the Cartesian and Lockean traditions. The second explains how the essays of the long eighteenth century constitute a response to that need in various ways. The third reveals in detail how the Romantic essayists, particularly William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, both respond to and deviate from the “neoclassical” essayists, typified by Hume and Samuel Johnson.The first chapter, “Self and Intersubjectivity,” lays the groundwork by articulating how Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart identify the need for what we now call intersubjectivity. Milnes describes the common thread as a kind of “natural transcendentalism.” In what sense are these thinkers properly understood as [End Page 175] transcendentalists? The central idea seems to be that all posit things other than reason as “conditions of meaningful thought” (72). For Hume, it is the social, linguistic experience of a community of virtuous judges. The intricate relations between self and other essential to such a community get “internalized within the specular drama of the impartial spectator” (72) in Smith’s writing, which itself takes part in the drama through his “halting, qualified syntax” that mimics “everyday speech” (44). Reid posits a “prescience” of trust, which grounds our reliance on both human testimony and the uniformity of nature, itself undergirded by the design of a benevolent God. Stewart, who posits axiomatic truths that help constitute the “stamina of intellect,” goes furthest, actually calling these truths transcendental (55). This chapter also puts these eighteenth-century thinkers in conversation with twentieth-century theorists, including Habermas, Davidson, and Rorty.Chapter 2, “The Subject of Trust,” deepens the analysis by situating these “natural transcendentalisms” in the broader enlightenment context. In contrast to Descartes, Bacon, and Locke, who were suspicious of our reliance on the opinions of others, the eighteenth-century thinkers understand trust as prior to reason in various ways—though not prior to solidarity. The particulars in each case depend on their responses to skepticism and their accounts of the relation between... (shrink)

This article argues that Hume's brief essay, "Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion," offers resources for three claims: (1) Delicate taste correlates with self-sufficiency and thus with a particularly Humean form of Magnanimity -- greatness of mind; (2) Delicate taste improves the capacity for profound friendships, characterized by mutual admiration and true compassion; and (3) magnanimity and compassion are thus not necessarily in tension with one another and may even proceed from and support harmony of character. These claims, in (...) turn, provide reasons to take seriously Hume's view that moral character depends, in part, on aesthetic character. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

Essays discuss cognition, perception, art, science, truth, metaphor, education, philosophy, and cognitive psychology.

Abstract:While the medical ethics literature has well explored the harm to patients, families, and the integrity of the profession in failing to disclose medical errors once they occur, less often addressed are the moral and professional obligations to take all available steps to prevent errors and harm in the first instance. As an expanding body of scholarship further elucidates the causes of medical error, including the considerable extent to which medical errors, particularly in diagnostics, may be attributable to cognitive sources, (...) insufficient progress in systematically evaluating and implementing suggested strategies for improving critical thinking skills and medical judgment is of mounting concern. Continued failure to address pervasive thinking errors in medical decisionmaking imperils patient safety and professionalism, as well as beneficence and nonmaleficence, fairness and justice. We maintain that self-reflective and metacognitive refinement of critical thinking should not be construed as optional but rather should be considered an integral part of medical education, a codified tenet of professionalism, and by extension, a moral and professional duty. (shrink)

There are clear associations between the overall quantity of input children are exposed to and their vocabulary acquisition. However, by uncovering specific features of the input that matter, we can better understand the mechanisms involved in vocabulary learning. We examine whether exposure to wh-questions, a challenging quality of the communicative input, is associated with toddlers' vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills in a sample of low-income, African-American fathers and their 24-month-old children. Dyads were videotaped in free play sessions at home. (...) Videotapes were transcribed and reliably coded for sheer quantity of fathers' input as well as the number of wh-questions fathers produce. Children's productive vocabulary was measured at 24 months using the McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory MCDI, and children's verbal reasoning skills were measured 1 year later using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Results indicate that the overall quantity of father talk did not relate to children's vocabulary or reasoning skills. However, fathers' use of wh-questions related to both vocabulary and reasoning outcomes. Children's responses to wh-questions were more frequent and more syntactically complex, measured using the mean length of utterance, than their responses to other questions. Thus, posing wh-questions to 2-year-olds is a challenging type of input, which elicits a verbal response from the child that likely helps build vocabulary and foster verbal reasoning abilities. (shrink)

Doig, Meredith The promise from new Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, to make Victoria the 'education state' is welcome and timely.

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links between Plato’s and Kant’s philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant’s view of Achtung and Plato’s view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch’s view, arguing that it is more (...) compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant’s affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato’s and Murdoch’s vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers, the authors offer a program for organizing and leading human activity in all types of organizations, based a ...

Nineteenth-century optical toys that showcase illusions of motion such as the phenakistoscope, zoetrope, and praxinoscope, have enjoyed active “afterlives” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contemporary incarnations of the zoetrope are frequently found in the realms of fine art and advertising, and they are often much larger than their nineteenth-century counterparts. This article argues that modern-day optical toys are able to conjure feelings of wonder and spectacle equivalent to their nineteenth-century antecedents because of their adjustment in scale. Exploring a range (...) of contemporary philosophical toys found in arts, entertainment, and advertising contexts, the article discusses various technical adjustments made to successfully “scale up” optical toys, including the replacement of hand-spun mechanisms with larger sources of motion and the use of various means such as architectural features and stroboscopic lights to replace traditional shutter mechanisms such as the zoetrope’s dark slots. Critical consideration of scale as a central feature of these installations reconfigures the relationship between audience and device. Large-scale adaptations of optical toys revise the traditional conception of the user, who is able to tactilely manipulate and interact with the apparatus, instead positing a viewer who has less control over the illusion’s operation and is instead a captive audience surrounded by the animation. It is primarily through their adaptation of scale that contemporary zoetropes successfully elicit wonder as scientific spectacles from their audiences today. (shrink)

How Classification Works attempts to bridge the gap between philosophy and the social sciences using as a focus some of the work of Nelson Goodman. Throughout his long career Goodman has addressed the question: are some ways of conceptualizing more natural than others? This book looks at the rightness of categories, assessing Goodman's role in modern philosophy and explaining some of his ideas on the relation between aesthetics and cognitive theory. Two papers by Nelson Goodman are included in (...) the collection and there are analyses of his work by seven leading academics in anthropology, philosophy, sociology and musicology. (shrink)

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits (...) will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed. Key Words: attention; enumeration; information chunks; memory capacity; processing capacity; processing channels; serial recall; short-term memory; storage capacity; verbal recall; working memory capacity. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning_ offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.