It is no accident that white privilege designed to be both be invisible and weightless to white people. Alison Bailey’s “On White Privilege and Anesthesia: Why Does Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack Feel Weightless?” extends a weighty invitation white readers to complete the unpacking task McIntosh (1988) began when she compared white privilege to an “invisible and weightless knapsack.” McIntosh focuses primarily making white privilege visible to white people. Bailey’s project continues the conversation by extending a ‘weighty invitation’ to white readers (...) to explore why the metaphorical knapsack, despite the weight of its contents, feels weightless. Here’s the short answer. The knapsack only feels weightless because white people have become anesthetized us to our own brokenness. We are more comfortable considering what white privilege does for us than what it does to us. People of color feel the weight of whiteness every day. The weighty invitation invites white readers to become sensitive to our own insensitivity. To do this Bailey (1) explores white resistance to unpacking the weight; (2) people of color’s testimonies to the daily impact of the weight on their bodies; and (3) how the anesthesia of white privilege distorts our humanity. The article concludes with a McIntosh style list of that the anesthesia of privilege distorts white people’s humanity. (shrink)

Most traditional accounts of Aristotle's theory of ethical education neglect its cognitive aspects. This book asserts that, in Aristotle's view, excellence of character comprises both the sentiments and practical reason. Sherman focuses particularly on four aspects of practical reason as they relate to character: moral perception, choicemaking, collaboration, and the development of those capacities in moral education. Throughout the book, she is sensitive to contemporary moral debates, and indicates the extent to which Aristotle's account of practical reason provides an (...) alternative to theories of impartial reason. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida is one of the most prolific and influential contemporary French intellectuals. Twenty-two essays and excerpts from Derrida's writings over the last twenty-five years are gathered in this accessible introduction, _A Derrida Reader_. The book's five sections are carefully introduced by the editor, and each selection of Derrida's work is presented succinctly in context. A general introduction to the volume by Peggy Kamuf provides an original interpretation and overview of Derrida's work and philosophy.

The Music Instinct Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and what is still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity. --from publisher description.

A new edition of this bestseller, the only book to cover this range of ethical issues with attention both to the roundedness and individual integrity of each religious tradition and to focused issues which are of contemporary interest. The format of the book has not changed. It provides for parallel study of the values held by different communities, exploring the ethical foundations of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each section introduces a different religion and sets the wider context (...) within which more specific questions can be asked. Individual topics can be accessed and understood not only within a tradition as a whole but also across traditions through careful indexing. The following topics are then addressed as appropriate to the given traditions: Religious Identity and Authority Personal and Private? Marriage and Family Influence on and Use of Time and Money Quality and Value of Life Questions of Right and Wrong Equality and Difference National Divisions, War and Peace Global Issues Key features * Each section is written by a specialist in that religious tradition, who in some cases is also an 'insider' and in the other cases has worked closely and in a respected and respectful way with members of that tradition. * Individual topics can be accessed and understood not only within a tradition as a whole but also across traditions through careful indexing * Additions to the text include subsections on reproduction, vegetarianism, just war and terrorism; and new material on weapons of mass destruction and pre-emptive strikes and genetic modification. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers seek to understand how real-world systems work and could work better. Any modeling method devised for such purposes must simplify reality. Ideally, however, the modeling method should be flexible as well as logically rigorous; it should permit model simplifications to be appropriately tailored for the specific purpose at hand. Flexibility and logical rigor have been the two key goals motivating the development of Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE), a completely agent-based modeling method characterized by seven specific modeling principles. (...) This perspective provides an overview of ACE, a brief history of its development, and its role within a broader spectrum of experiment-based modeling methods. (shrink)

Nurses working in a newborn intensive care unit report that treatment decision disagreements for infants in their care may lead to ethical dilemmas involving all health-care providers. Applying Rest’s Four-Component Model of Moral Action as the theoretical framework, this study examined the responses of 224 newborn intensive care unit nurses to the Nurses Ethical Involvement Survey. The three most frequent actions selected were as follows: talking with other nurses, talking with doctors, and requesting a team meeting. The multiple regression analysis (...) indicates that newborn intensive care unit nurses with greater concern for the ethical aspects of clinical practice (p =.001) and an increased perception of their ability to influence ethical decision making (p =.018) were more likely to display Nurse Activism. Future research is necessary to identify other factors leading to and inhibiting Nurse Activism as these findings explained just 8.5% of the variance. (shrink)

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

The Buddhist jhanas--successive states of deep focus or meditative absorbtion--demystified. A very practical guidebook for meditators for navigating their way through these states of bliss and concentration. One of the elements of the Eightfold Path the Buddha taught is Right Concentration: the one-pointedness of mind that, together with ethics, livelihood, meditation, and so forth, leads to the ultimate freedom from suffering. The Jhanas are the method the Buddha himself taught for achieving Right Concentration. They are a series of eight successive (...) states, beginning with bliss and moving on toward radically nonconceptual states. The fact that they can usually be achieved only during prolonged meditation retreat tends to keep them shrouded in mystery. Leigh Brasington is here to unshroud them. He takes away the mystique and gives instructions for them in plain, accessible language, noting the various pitfalls to avoid along the way, and then providing a wealth of material on the theory of jhana practice--all geared toward the practitioner rather than the scholar. (shrink)

Catholic social teaching is the Church’s “best-kept secret,” as the saying goes, but is it becoming literally true? This paper tests the proposition that the US bishops are developing a pattern of obscuring or, in effect, hiding particular social teachings of the popes. The instances examined include the ideological error of single-issue advocacy; the meaning of the right to form labor unions; and the intrinsic value of nonhuman species and ecosystems. It would be true irony if the “best-kept secret” were (...) that the bishops were actually keeping a secret. The paper contends that this expression, now more than a metaphor, has acquired a double meaning to which one ought to attend, for papal social teaching should be openly embraced and handed on to the faithful. (shrink)

The papers in this collection on Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics by Charles, Rowe, McCabe, Whiting, and Buddensiek, offer new readings of Aristotle on the voluntary, friendship, and good fortune in the EE, by treating the EE on its own terms.

Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three (...) possible responses—libertarian, soft determinist, and free-will skeptic—and weighs the costs and benefits of each. (shrink)

La notion de mythe, dont la fortune a été brillante en sociologie, en anthropologie et en psychanalyse, ne peut laisser le juriste indifférent. Assurément, l'idée de rapprocher ces deux domaines peut paraître singulière, tant ils paraissent éloignés. Cependant, cette apparente altérité mérite d'être revisitée. Le retour au mythe, à travers une grille de lecture juridique, autorise une mise en perspective de la rationalité juridique contemporaine. Chaque mythe antique est en rapport avec la fondation du droit. Mais, le droit positif a (...) lui-même une dimension mythologique importante. En raison de sa fonction normative, il est pétri d'imaginaire et de fictions. Or, à une époque comme la nôtre, où les mythes et autres métarécits sont déconsidérés, assimilés à une pensée préscientifique, il faut peut-être reconnaître que ce sont ces métarécits qui donnent du sens et qui peuvent renforcer la légitimité du droit dans sa dimension instituante. Le droit ne peut conserver sa fonction anthropologique sans renouer avec ce qui le sous-tend, à savoir le mythe. (shrink)

The Equal Weight View holds that, when we discover we disagree with an epistemic peer, we should give our peer’s judgment as much weight as our own. But how should we respond when we cannot tell whether those who disagree with us are our epistemic peers? I argue for a position I will call the Earn-a-Spine View. According to this view, parties to a disagreement can remain confdent, at least in some situations, by fnding justifable reasons to think their opponents (...) are less credible than themselves, even if those reasons are justifable only because they lack information about their opponents. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? (...) What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising. (shrink)

Trust is often an assumed outcome of participation in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as they directly connect producers with consumers. It is based on this potential for trust “between producers and consumers” that AFNs have emerged as a significant field of food studies analysis as it also suggests a capacity for AFNs to foster associated embedded qualities, like ‘morality’, ‘social justice’, ‘ecology’ and ‘equity’. These positive benefits of AFNs, however, cannot be taken for granted as trust is not necessarily an (...) outcome of AFN participation. Using Chinese case studies of AFNs, which are characterised by a distinct form of trust pressure—consumers who are particularly cynical about small scale farmers, food safety and the organic credentials of producers—this paper highlights how the dynamics of trust are in constant flux between producers and consumers. I suggest that it is the careful construction of the aesthetic and multi-sensory qualities of food, which is often celebrated via social media, that human centred relations in Chinese AFNs are mediated. This leads to two key conclusions: first, that the key variable for establishing trust is satisfying the consumer's desire for safe (i.e. "fresh") food; and second, the materiality of the food and the perception of foods materiality (especially through social media), must both be actively constructed by the farmer to fit the consumer's ideal of freshness. (shrink)

This is the first feminist special issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Introduction written by Brand [Weiser] and Korsmeyer with essays by Hilde Hein, Paul Mattick, Jr., Timothy Gould, Joanne B. Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Mary Devereaux, Noel Carroll, Flo Leibowitz, Anita Silvers, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Renee Cox, and Ellen Handler Spitz. A fuller publication from Indiana University Press followed in 1995 edited by Brand [Weiser] and Korsmeyer entitled, Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics.

This chapter defends a view of semantics on which developing a semantic theory closely resembles developing a scale of measurement. The view helps explain how semantics has made so much progress despite deep disagreements about the target of semantic theorizing (e.g., between those who maintain that semantics is characterizing something psychological, and those who maintain that it is characterizing something social), how appeals to set-theoretic abstracta make sense despite Benacerraf-style worries and despite the fact that set-theoretic entities fit badly with (...) standard (e.g., causal) metasemantic views, and why the threat of radical context sensitivity does not undermine the semantic project. (shrink)

This book provides the first intellectual history of cosmopolitan ideas in the early modern age. The roots of modern cosmopolitanism can be traced back to as early as the 1500s when a meta-narrative and awareness of the cosmopolitan idea came into existence. Unearthing occurrences of cosmopolitan language in popular media and analysing the writings of leading thinkers, Leigh T.I. Penman illustrates how cosmopolitanism was not, as previously thought, purely secular and inclusive but could be sacred and exclusive too. And, (...) significantly, this book reveals the extent to which these contesting ideas of cosmopolitanism influenced the modern concept of the cosmopolitan. (shrink)

Theological Determinism Theological determinism is the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world. While there is much debate about which prominent historical figures were theological determinists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Gottfried Leibniz all seemed to espouse the view at least at certain points in their … Continue reading Theological Determinism →.

Résumé La fondation anthropologique de la fonction critique – socialement endossée par l’imaginaire utopique – et son lien dynamique avec la tâche intégrative de l’idéologie permettent à Ricœur de repenser sur le plan socio-politique la double nécessité du soupçon et de l’espérance. En reliant l’analyse de la structure contradictoire et analogisante de l’imaginaire social aux perspectives antérieurement développées sur “la liberté selon l’espérance,” notre propos vise à expliciter ses enjeux émancipateurs. Les apories auxquelles les médiations symboliques contraignent l’agir doivent nourrir (...) la double nécessité d’un “devoir de vigilance” et d’une “timide espérance”: telle est à la fois la difficulté irréductible et la force critique de l’analyse ricœurienne de l’imagination socialisante. Mots-clés: imaginaire social, critique, idéologie, utopie, espérance.The anthropological foundation of the critical function—endorsed by the utopian imaginary—and its dynamic relation with the integrative task of ideology allow Ricœur to rethink, at a social and political level, the necessity of both suspicion and hope. Linking Ricœur’s analysis of the contradictory and analogizing structure of the social imaginary to perspectives on “freedom in the light of hope,” which were developed earlier, it is my intention to make explicit certain emancipatory issues. The aporiae to which symbolic mediations constrict acting must provide for the necessity of both an “obligation for vigilance” and a “tentative hope.” Such is the irreducible difficulty but also the critical force of Ricœur’s analysis of the socializing imagination. Keywords: Social Imaginary, Criticism, Ideology, Utopia, Hope. (shrink)