Many anglophone scholars take the early Confucians to be virtue ethicists of one kind or another. A common virtue ethical reading of one of the most influential early Confucians, namely Mengzi, ascribes to him the view that moral actions are partly (or entirely) moral because of the state from which they are performed, be it the agent’s motives, emotions, or their character traits. I consider whether such a reading of the Mengzi is justified and I argue that it is not. (...) I argue that there is no reason to believe that Mengzi distinguishes the moral value of actions that are performed from virtuous and non-virtuous states. Given this, virtue (as a feature of agents) is normatively posterior to virtuous actions. I conclude, first, that this poses a challenge to a wide range of common interpretations of the Mengzi, be they virtue ethical or otherwise, and second, that there might be conceptual space for an account of virtue ethics that rejects the normative priority of virtue over virtuous actions. (shrink)

El presente trabajo describe y analiza, desde una perspectiva de género, el escenario laboral de una cárcel de mujeres en Argentina: la Unidad Penitenciaria N° 4 de la ciudad de Santa Fe. Partimos de considerar la articulación entre trabajo y género en la prisión como un dispositivo de gobierno —que funciona de modos tanto represivos como orientados a la producción de determinadas formas de subjetividad— que se constituye, al mismo tiempo, como un sitio potencial para el desarrollo de formas diversas (...) de agenciamiento de las mujeres detenidas. En esta dirección, nos enfocamos, primero, en el modo en que el trabajo vehiculiza imágenes sobre las mujeres detenidas y su “corrección”. En segundo lugar, analizamos los diversos usos y sentidos que las mujeres detenidas hacen del trabajo y de los ingresos allí obtenidos. A partir de ello, mostramos en primer lugar de qué manera el trabajo hace visible el tipo de subjetividad que la institución penitenciaria intenta construir, caracterizada no sólo por exigencias de conformidad a modelos tradicionales de feminidad sino también por el intento de construir subjetividades (micro) emprendedoras y proactivas. Al mismo tiempo, mostramos cómo las mujeres detenidas se valen tanto de la oferta institucional como de una serie de nichos que crean por fuera de esta para construir espacios de agenciamiento que, con ciertos límites, les permiten hacer frente a algunas de las privaciones operadas por la pena privativa de la libertad y por la subordinación de género más en general. (shrink)

Descartes's concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy's subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes's view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled with the body, (...) and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate. Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen's book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes's views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests. (shrink)

In this chapter I give an account of the epistemology underlying the concept of “extension” in the Mengzi, an early Confucian text written in the fourth century BCE. Mengzi suggests in a conversation with King Xuan of Qi that a solution to the King’s problem of how one comes to act in a kingly manner is that one engages in “extension”. I argue that a long-standing scholarly debate on the exact nature of Mengzian “extension” can be resolved by closely investigating (...) the epistemological assumptions that must be in place for “extension” to be a viable solution to King Xuan’s problem. More specifically, my argument is that knowledge of a certain kind, namely knowing-to, is both necessary and sufficient for extension to take place. In other words, for a person S to extend X, where X is a capacity for action, S at least needs to have knowing-to. (shrink)

This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, ...

The Confucian philosopher Mengzi believes that ‘extending’ one's kindness facilitates one's moral development and that it is intimately tied to performing morally good actions. Most interpreters have taken Mengzian kindness to be an emotional state, with the extension of kindness to centrally involve feeling kindness towards more people or in a greater number of situations. I argue that kindness cannot do all the theoretical work that Mengzi wants it to do if it is interpreted as an emotion. I submit that (...) Mengzi's notion of extending kindness is best understood as the exercise of a capacity for intelligently performing kind actions. (shrink)

Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472 – 1529) is famously associated with the view that knowledge and action are unified (zhī xíng hé yī 知行合一). Call this the Unity Thesis. Given standard assumptions about what it means for a person to know, it may seem that the Unity Thesis is clearly false: I can know that p without currently acting in p-related ways, and I can know how to φ without currently φ-ing. My aims in this paper are, first, to draw on (...) recent work in epistemology to explain and defend the Unity Thesis and, second, to argue that it offers us an attractive conceptual alternative to a standard way of thinking about the nature of intentional action. The first step of my argument draws on the idea that what distinguishes intentional actions from bodily events is the presence of knowing-to – that is, an agent is φ-ing intentionally if and only if she is currently doing something because she knows to do it as a way for her to φ. Such a notion of knowing-to allows us to explain otherwise puzzling features of the Unity Thesis, including the claim that knowing and acting occur simultaneously. In the second step, I argue that the Unity Thesis can help us avoid various long-standing issues in the philosophy of action, including the problem of deviant (formal) causation. (shrink)

This chapter examines Mencius’s views on knowledge and how they might contribute to contemporary debates in epistemology. For this purpose, I focus on three features that I take to be characteristic (although not exhaustive) of Mencian epistemology: first, Mencius’s views on knowing things; second, the role that wisdom or intellectual virtue plays in acquiring knowledge; and third, Mencius’s views on “knowing-to”, a kind of knowledge conceptually distinct from knowing-that and knowing-how. I argue that the views we find in the Mencius (...) on these matters are relevant to contemporary debates on the nature of objectual knowledge, on the role of intellectual virtue in knowing, and on the relation between know-how and intelligent action. (shrink)

Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critique describes how women of diverse backgrounds perceive their mentoring experiences or the lack of mentoring experiences in the academy. This book provides a space for envisioning strategies and practices to improve mentoring practices and the collegiate environment.

Books 31 to 40 of Livy's history chart Rome's emergence as an imperial nation and the Romans tempestuous involvement with Greece, Macedonia and the near East in the opening decades of the second century BC; they are our most important source for Graeco-Roman relations in that century. Livy's dramatic narrative includes the Roman campaigns in Spain and against the Gallic tribes of Northern Italy; the flight of Hannibal from Carthage and his death in the East; the debate on the Oppian (...) law; and the Bacchanalian Episode. (shrink)

Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye toward the kinds of social orders such practices produce. This article focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques from information technology production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always, however, produce subjects. This article argues (...) that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introductory Remarks The Cartesian Background Impressions and Ideas Passions as Reflective Impressions Direct and Indirect Passions Association and the Individuation of Passions Perception and Perceiving Passions and Moral Sentiments Notes References Further reading.

Passages from the recently excavated Guodian manuscripts bear a surprising resemblance to a position ascribed to Gaozi and his followers in the Mengzi at 6A4-5, namely that righteousness is “external.” Although such a resemblance has been noted, the philosophical implications of it for the debate between Gaozi and Mengzi and, by extension, for Mengzian ethics have been largely unexplored. I argue that a Guodian-inspired reading of 6A4-5 is one that takes the debate to be about whether standing in certain family (...) relations makes a difference to whether one’s actions are righteous. Gaozi denies that it does, holding the view that one’s family relations, i.e., relations internal to the household, are irrelevant when it comes to matters of righteousness, while Mengzi disagrees, arguing that all relational properties, including family relations, are just as much reason-giving properties for performing righteous actions as they are in the case of performing benevolent actions. I argue that such a Guodian-based reading provides us a simple, yet explanatorily powerful reading of 6A4-5 that has broader implications for Mengzian ethics and our understanding of the early Chinese intellectual milieu in general. (shrink)

Hume is famous for his criticism of substantial minds, free will, and self-consciousness—central elements in traditional philosophical accounts of persons. His empiricism dissolves self-inspecting minds into heaps of distinct perceptions and turns cognitive faculties into successions of causally related, discrete impressions and ideas. Whatever regularities the complex ideas and their bundles or heaps display are explained by laws of association of ideas, which are supposed to play the same role in the mental world as Newton’s laws of gravitation play in (...) physical nature. This paper explores some strands of the new science of man proposed in Hume’s Treatise, in particular his account of personal identity.. (shrink)

In the study of special languages and translation, the legal field is often insulated from other domains. This is primarily due to the extreme system dependence of the terminology of law, which results from a lack of a common legal system of reference throughout the world. The abstract nature of this human-made field and its dynamicity in view of the continuously evolving case law and constant changes in legislation make it difficult to illustrate its complex ontology through traditional terminology management (...) techniques. Therefore, this paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to constructing the ontology of legal concepts based on structural constituents from frame semantics and comparative law. Frames allowing for the representation of interconnected knowledge segments evoked by legal concepts and the distinction between micro- and macro-dimensions in legal comparison research make it possible to capture the complex ontology of legal terminology evoked in a specific point in time and a determined legal context. The ontological knowledge structure will be exemplified by terms from German social, commercial, employment, and tax law. (shrink)

The quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is important for children’s development. One instrument that was developed to assess an aspect of ECEC quality is the Classroom Assessment Scoring System for pre-kindergarten children (CLASS Pre-K). We examined the factorial validity of the instrument using data from 177 German preschool classrooms. The three-factor teaching through interaction model (Hamre et al., 2013) was contrasted to a one-factor, a two-factor, and a bifactor model as proposed by Hamre et al. (2014). Our (...) results indicated that the three-factor structure with the domains of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support fit the data best. The fit of the teaching through interaction model was satisfying after adding a cross-loading of the dimension language modeling on emotional support, and two correlated residuals. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity are provided. In terms of factor structure and pattern score comparisons, the results were similar to previous U.S. and German studies. The discussion concerns the justifiability of the factor model revisions and draws directions for further research. We concluded that our study offers further evidence of the applicability of the CLASS Pre-K for the assessment of teacher-child interaction quality in the German context. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the status of Descartes' notion of the mind-body union as an object of knowledge in the framework of his new philosophy of nature, and argues that it should be taken seriously as representing a third kind of real thing or reality—that of human nature. Because it does not meet the criteria of distinctness that the two natures composing it—those of thinking minds and extended bodies— meet, the phenomena referred to it, which are objects of psychology as (...) traditionally understood, fall outside the scope of clear and distinct perception required for knowledge. The prospects for rationalist psychology are bleak, since because of the mind-body union so little of the contents of the human mind are accessible to rational inspection or introspection. Mechanistic natural philosophy on the other hand gives us knowledge only of the physiological and corporeal aspects of the phenomena Descartes classifies as mental. What pertains to the mind-body union can only be known through the senses, moreover, we learn to conceive the mind-body union only through daily experience (“usant seulement de la vie et des conversations ordinaries”, AT 3, 695). I discuss the nature of this experience, and the sense in which Cartesian psychology without being part of his philosophy of nature in the strict sense of the term, can still be seen as a naturalist undertaking in a more traditional sense of nature where life, sentience, reasoning and rational action are all seen as natural phenomena. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s therapy of passions and method of salvation through knowledge and love of God. His optimism about this method is perplexing: it is not even clear how his God, who is unlike any traditional notion of divinity, can be loved. Sorting out Spinoza’s view involves distinguishing an ethics of bondage from another of freedom, and two corresponding notions of love of God. The paper argues that the highest kind of love—‘pure intellectual love of God’—should not be understood (...) as an affect at all, but instead as unimpeded intellectual activity. This suggestion requires reconsidering Spinoza’s account of cognition, particularly his use of the Cartesian notions of objective and formal reality which are not only central to his theory of ideas but constitute the foundations of his salvation project. (shrink)

This paper examines Descartes's third primary notion and the distinction between different kinds of knowledge based on different and mutually irreducible primary notions. It discusses the application of the notions of clearness and distinctness to the domain of knowledge based on that of mind-body union. It argues that the consequences of the distinctions Descartes is making with regard to our knowledge of the human mind and nature are rather different from those that have been attributed to Descartes due to the (...) influential Rylean picture of Cartesian mind-body dualism. (shrink)

There are two main strands in the afterlife of Descartes’s famous redefinition of mind in terms of thinking likely to color one’s reading of his notion of mind or self. The one stressed most by his posterity and developed from early on in the empiricist tradition sees consciousness as its main characteristic. The other focuses on reason and rationality. This paper discusses the textual support for the first reading promoted by Ryle and his followers and aligns itself with the second (...) arguing that it is the exercise of its rational, cognitive capacities that are essential to the Cartesian mind and not consciousness, which is merely a presupposition for its rational activity. It examines the interrelation and respective roles of awareness on the one hand, and reason on the other in Descartes’s account of mind or self. But it also suggests that the role given by Descartes to the will in judgment and his separation of will and intellect into two distinct powers may be seen as contributing to a transformation of the very notion of reason and of self as a cognitive and moral agent. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Kant's and Bolzano's differing perspectives on ordinary natural language. I argue that Kant does not see ordinary language as providing semantically organized content and that, as a result, Kant does not believe that ordinary language is sufficiently well-developed to support philosophical analysis and definition. By contrast, for Bolzano, the content given in ordinary language are richly structured entities he calls 'propositions in themselves'. This contrast in views is used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's belief (...) that definition is impossible for philosophical concepts. It is also used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's methods of exposition of philosophical concepts. (shrink)