In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In this provocative book, Susan Bordo untangles the myths, ideologies, and pathologies of the modern female body. Bordo explores our tortured fascination with food, hunger, desire, and control, and its effects on women's lives.

The Flight to Objectivity offers a new reading of Descartes' Meditations informed by cultural history, psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology, and feminist thought.

Considering everything from Nike ads, emaciated models, and surgically altered breasts to the culture wars and the O.J. Simpson trial, Susan Bordo deciphers the hidden life of cultural images and the impact they have on our lives. She builds on the provocative themes introduced in her acclaimed work _Unbearable Weight_—which explores the social and political underpinnings of women's obsession with bodily image—to offer a singularly readable and perceptive interpretation of our image-saturated culture. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish (...) between appearance and reality, she argues, we need to rehabilitate the notion that not all versions of reality are equally trustworthy. Bordo writes with deep compassion, unnerving honesty, and bracing intelligence. Looking to the body and bodily practices as a concrete arena where cultural fantasies and anxieties are played out, she examines the mystique and the reality of empowerment through cosmetic surgery. Her brilliant discussion of sexual harassment reflects on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy as well as the film _Disclosure_. She suggests that sexuality, although one of the mediums of harassment, is not its essence, and she calls for the recasting of harassers as bullies rather than sex fiends. Bordo also challenges the continuing marginalization of feminist thought, in particular the failure to read feminist work as cultural criticism. Finally, in a powerful and moving essay called "Missing Kitchens"—written in collaboration with her two sisters—Bordo explores notions of bodies, place, and space through a recreation of the topographies of her childhood. Throughout these essays, Bordo avoids dogma and easy caricature. Consistently, and on many levels, she demonstrates the profound relationship between our lives and our theories, our feelings and our thoughts. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore whether the ethical positions of students are firmly entrenched when they enter college, or do they change due to maturity, experience to ethical discussions in coursework, work experience, or a combination of factors. This study compared the ethical attitudes of freshmen and junior accounting majors, and graduate MBA students when confronted with two ethical dilemmas. Undergraduates were found to be more justice oriented than their MBA counterparts, who were more utilitarian in their ethical approach. While (...) males tended to be more utilitarian, they were also more tentative and neutral in their responses. Females expressed more definite ethical positions than males when assessing specific ethical behaviors. Prior exposure to ethics via coursework or employment did not significantly affect ethical attitudes. (shrink)

Contributors are Susan Bordo, Stanley Clarke, Erica Harth, Leslie Heywood, Luce Irigaray, Genevieve Lloyd, Mario Moussa, Eileen O'Neill, Adrianna Paliyenko, Ruth Perry, Mario Sáenz, Karl Stern, Thomas Wartenberg, and James Winders.

Given the proliferation of research regarding the ethical development of students in general, and business students in particular, it is difficult to draw conclusions from the contradictory results of many studies. In this meta-analysis of empirical studies from 1985 through 1994, the relationships of gender, age and undergraduate major to the ethical attitudes and behavior of business students are analyzed. The results indicate that female students exhibit stronger ethical attitudes than males. The same is also true for older versus younger (...) students. However, the relationship with undergraduate major is still difficult to interpret. (shrink)

Putting classical art to the side for the moment, the naked and near-naked female body became an object of mainstream consumption first in Playboy and its imitators, then in movies, and only then in fashion photographs. With the male body, the trajectory has been different. Fashion has taken the lead, the movies have followed. Hollywood may have been a chest-fest in the fifties, but it was male clothing designers [e.g., Calvin Klein] who went south and violated the really powerful taboos--not (...) just against the explicit depiction of penises and male bottoms but against the admission of all sorts of forbidden "feminine" qualities into mainstream conceptions of manliness. . . . Images of masculinity that will do double (or triple or quadruple) duty with a variety of consumers, straight and gay, male and female, are not difficult to create in a culture like ours, in which the muscular, male body has a long and glorious aesthetic history. (shrink)

On July 4, 1990, while on a morning walk in southern France, Susan Brison was attacked from behind, severely beaten, sexually assaulted, strangled to unconsciousness, and left for dead. She survived, but her world was destroyed. Her training as a philosopher could not help her make sense of things, and many of her fundamental assumptions about the nature of the self and the world it inhabits were shattered.At once a personal narrative of recovery and a philosophical exploration of trauma, (...) this book examines the undoing and remaking of a self in the aftermath of violence. It explores, from an interdisciplinary perspective, memory and truth, identity and self, autonomy and community. It offers imaginative access to the experience of a rape survivor as well as a reflective critique of a society in which women routinely fear and suffer sexual violence.As Brison observes, trauma disrupts memory, severs past from present, and incapacitates the ability to envision a future. Yet the act of bearing witness, she argues, facilitates recovery by integrating the experience into the survivor's life's story. She also argues for the importance, as well as the hazards, of using first-person narratives in understanding not only trauma, but also larger philosophical questions about what we can know and how we should live.Bravely and beautifully written, Aftermath is that rare book that is an illustration of its own arguments. (shrink)

My response to the preceding commentaries draws on recent events such as the Thomas/Hill hearings to illustrate some of my central arguments in “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy.” I also attempt to clarify frequently misunderstood aspects of my use of gender as an analytical category, and discuss why, in my opinion, we should continue to care about the “maleness” of philosophy.

No one denies that people adapt what they say and how they interpret what is said to them, depending on their interactive partners. What is controversial is when and how they do so. Several psycholinguistics research programs have found what appear to be failures to adapt to partners in the early moments of processing and have used this evidence to argue for modularity in the language processing architecture, claiming that the system cannot take into account a partner’s distinct needs or (...) knowledge early in processing. We review the evidence for both early and delayed partner‐specific adaptations, and we identify some challenges and difficulties with interpreting this evidence. We then discuss new analyses from a previously published referential communication experiment (Metzing & Brennan, 2003) demonstrating that partner‐specific effects need not occur late in processing. In contrast to Pickering and Garrod (2004) and Keysar, Barr, and Horton (1998b), we conclude that there is no good evidence that early processing has to be be “egocentric,”“dumb,” or encapsulated from social knowledge or common ground, but that under some circumstances, such as when one partner has made an attribution about another’s knowledge or needs, processing can be nimble enough to adapt quite early to a perspective different from one’s own. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams.Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is (...) necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those rare books that fruitfully combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world. It is both an object lesson in reaching across academic barriers and a demonstration of how the best of feminist philosophy can be in conversation with the best of “mainstream” philosophy—as well as affect the lives of real people. (shrink)

Dehaene (this volume) articulates a naturalistic approach to the cognitive foundations of mathematics. Further, he argues that the ‘number line’ (analog magnitude) system of representation is the evolutionary and ontogenetic foundation of numerical concepts. Here I endorse Dehaene’s naturalistic stance and also his characterization of analog magnitude number representations. Although analog magnitude representations are part of the evolutionary foundations of numerical concepts, I argue that they are unlikely to be part of the ontogenetic foundations of the capacity to represent natural (...) number. Rather, the developmental source of explicit integer list representations of number are more likely to be systems such as the object–file representations that articulate mid–level object based attention, systems that build parallel representations of small sets of individuals. (shrink)

We surveyed 1005 postdoctoral fellows by questionnaire about ethical matters related to biomedical research and publishing; 33% responded. About 18% of respondents said they had taken a course in research ethics, and about 31% said they had had a course that devoted some time to research ethics. A substantial majority stated willingness to grant other investigators, except competitors, access to their data before publication and to share research materials. Respondents’ opinions about contributions justifying authorship of research papers were mainly consistent (...) but at variance with those of many biomedical journal editors. More than half said they had observed what they considered unethical research practices. To increase the chances of getting a grant funded, 27% said they were willing to select or omit data to improve their results; to make publication of their work more likely or to benefit their career, 15% would select or omit data and 32% would list an undeserving author. Of respondents who thought they had been unfairly denied authorship on a paper, or been listed with or asked to list an undeserving author, 75% said they would be willing to list an undeserving author (P<0.001). Having taken a course dealing with research ethics had no effect on stated willingness to select or omit data or to fabricate data in the future, but was positively associated with willingness to grant undeserved authorship (P<0.04). Although these results do not controvert research demonstrating the effectiveness of ethics courses during professional education, they indicate that the research environment is a powerful component of a trainee’s experience and ethical development. (shrink)

The rhetoric of reconciliation is common in situations where traditional judicial responses to past wrongdoing are unavailable because of corruption, large numbers of offenders, or anxiety about the political consequences. But what constitutes reconciliation?

The book examines current debates about the emergence of an international legal norm of democratic governance and also considers some of the wider theoretical issues to which those debates give rise. It asks should international law seek to promote democratic political arrangements? If so, on what basis, and using which of the many competing conceptions of democracy?

Demonstrates the unique, pervasive, and overwhelmingly important role of other people within our lived experience. Drawing on the original phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Simone de Beauvoir, and John Russon, as well as recent research in child psychology, The Other in Perception argues for perception’s inherently existential significance: we always perceive a world and not just objective facts. The world is the rich domain of our personal and interpersonal lives, and central to this world is the role of (...) other people. We are “paired” with others such that our perception is really the enactment of a coinhabiting of a shared world. These relations with others shape the very way in which we perceive our world. Susan Bredlau explores two uniquely formative domains in which our pairing relations with others are particularly critical: childhood development and sexuality. It is through formative childhood experience that the essential, background structures of our world are instituted, which has important consequences for our developed perceptual life. Sexuality is an analogous domain of formative intersubjective experience. Taken as a whole, Bredlau demonstrates the unique, pervasive, and overwhelmingly important role of other people within our lived experience. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker?s research carefully negotiates the fields of ethics and epistemology, and the places and points where they overlap and intersect. Her 2007 text Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing is particularly noteworthy in this regard. It seamlessly integrates these research areas and, in so doing, turns a critical eye on the common assumption that feminist epistemology, characterized by its focus on the role of gender oppression within knowledge practices, is a marginal field of social epistemology. Fricker challenges (...) her readers to consider the thesis that social and feminist epistemologies are more thoroughly interconnected than is traditionally assumed. (shrink)

This book examines current debates about the emergence of an international legal norm of democratic governance and also considers some of the wider theoretical issues to which those debates give rise. It asks; should international law seek to promote democratic political arrangements? If so, on what basis, and using which of the many competing conceptions of democracy?

Quine and Putnam argued for mathematical realism on the basis of the indispensability of mathematics to science. They claimed that the mathematics that is used in physical theories is confirmed along with those theories and that scientific realism entails mathematical realism. I argue here that current theories of confirmation suggest that mathematics does not receive empirical support simply in virtue of being a part of well confirmed scientific theories and that the reasons for adopting a realist view of scientific theories (...) do not support realism about mathematical entities, despite the use of mathematics in formulating scientific theory. (shrink)

Academic accounting researchers often offer anecdotal evidence that the publishing process is rife with unfair and unethical practices, and similar contradictory evidence supports accounting journal editors' claims that the process is fair and ethical. This study compares the perceptions of accounting authors and editors on the ethicacy and frequency of specific author, editor and reviewer practices. Both authors and editors are in general agreement about the ethical nature of editors and author practices. However, there are significant differences between the groups (...) regarding reviewer behavior, and regarding the frequency of occurrence of questionable author, editor and reviewer practices. Additionally, the majority of authors believe that codes of publishing ethics are needed, while editors do not. Women authors are significantly more supportive of such ethical codes when compared to their male counterparts. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 27-29, August 2011.

The population of most non-dominant ethnic groups in the USA is growing dramatically. Faculty members are challenged to develop curricula that adequately prepare our future nurses. An increased focus on clinical ethics has resulted from the use of sophisticated technology, changes in health care financing, an increasing elderly population and the shift of care from inpatient to outpatient settings. Nurses frequently face situations demanding resolution of ethical dilemmas involving cultural differences. Nursing curricula must include content on both ethics and cultural (...) sensitivity. Active student participation is an important element providing a foundation for ethical practice. A proposed educational format was introduced with graduating baccalaureate students. In a pilot study, curricular content on cultural sensitivity and ethical practice was taught in separate modules. Students were then asked to identify and problem solve an ethical dilemma involving patients and professional caregivers from vastly different cultures. Course faculty members provided discussion questions to guide the students' thinking. (shrink)

I defend a form of preventive detention through the creation of an offence of ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’. This differs from alternative proposals and actual habitual offender laws that impose extra periods of incarceration on offenders after they have completed the sentence for their most recent crime or as a result of a certain number of prior convictions. I, instead, would make ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’ an offence itself. Persons to be preventively detained would be tried (...) and convicted of this offence. My approach would then have one significant advantage: provided the elements of being a PVDO could be rendered sufficiently determinate, punishing persons under such an offence would comport with central rule of law values, most importantly legality and fair notice, as well as principles of proportionality in sentencing. (shrink)

For ages, medicine has had poor access to the fetus inside the mother's womb. But in relatively recent years, the human body has become transparent. The latest breakthroughs of technology have made it possible, from the very beginning of pregnancy, to consider the fetus as an individual who can be examined and sampled. His or her physician may now establish a diagnosis and prognosis and prescribe a treatment in the same way as in traditional medicine.

The everyday experience of someone, or something, getting in one’s face reveals a depth that is the difference between a world that is intrusive and a world that is respectful. This depth, I argue, should be conceived, not in feet and inches, but in terms of violation and honor. I explore three factors that contribute to this depth’s emergence. First, I examine our body’s capacity, at the level of sense experience, for giving the world a figure/ground structure; this structure insures (...) that most of the world we are in constant contact with, nonetheless, keeps its distance as background. I demonstrate the importance of this figure/ground structure to the depth of our world by considering the experience of people with autism; for those with autism, this structure seems to be, if not entirely missing, at least substantially less robust than our own. Next, I examine our body’s ability, at the level of more personal experience, to handle the world; our handling of the world, which rests on the acquisition of specific skills, transforms things that could easily assault us into the usually motionless objects we tend to take for granted. I demonstrate the importance of these skills to the depth of our world by considering the experience of Gregg Mozgalla; until recently, Mozgalla, who has cerebral palsy, could only lurch, rather than walk, through the world. Finally, I draw on the work of the artist Mierle Ukeles to examine the maintenance work that other people, at a broader social level, perform; other’s maintenance work keeps in good condition a world that, by falling into bad condition, could easily intrude on us. (shrink)