Is there a principled way to understand what liberal democratic states owe, as a matter of justice, to the victims of disasters? This article shows what is normatively special and distinctive about disasters and argues for the view that there are substantial duties of justice for liberal democratic states. The article rejects both a libertarian and a utilitarian approach to this question and, based on broadly Rawlsian principles, argues for a ‘political definition’ of disasters that is concerned with the restoration (...) of citizens' dignity and their capacities for effective citizenship. (shrink)

Research into voice perception benefits from manipulation software to gain experimental control over acoustic expression of social signals such as vocal emotions. Today, parameter-specific voice morphing allows a precise control of the emotional quality expressed by single vocal parameters, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre. However, potential side effects, in particular reduced naturalness, could limit ecological validity of speech stimuli. To address this for the domain of emotion perception, we collected ratings of perceived naturalness and emotionality on (...) voice morphs expressing different emotions either through F0 or Timbre only. In two experiments, we compared two different morphing approaches, using either neutral voices or emotional averages as emotionally non-informative reference stimuli. As expected, parameter-specific voice morphing reduced perceived naturalness. However, perceived naturalness of F0 and Timbre morphs were comparable with averaged emotions as reference, potentially making this approach more suitable for future research. Crucially, there was no relationship between ratings of emotionality and naturalness, suggesting that the perception of emotion was not substantially affected by a reduction of voice naturalness. We hold that while these findings advocate parameter-specific voice morphing as a suitable tool for research on vocal emotion perception, great care should be taken in producing ecologically valid stimuli. (shrink)

The book addresses Merleau-Ponty's so-called ontology of the flesh, a rather obscure expression that the book explains in depth by drawing from Merleau-Ponty's lecture courses, published in the last years. In light of these publications, the book shows the importance and the novelty of Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy, which until recently has been seldom addressed in its entirety. Thanks to the knowledge of the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's now published body of work and of the as yet unpublished texts, as well (...) as a scholarship acquired through more than 20 years spent working on these themes, the author of the book is able to offer a groundbreaking interpretation of one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, whose philosophical relevance is now widely acknowledged both in Europe and the USA, and whose scholarship is fast growing, while at the same time still lacking an overall systematic assessment, which this book aims to provide. (shrink)

This article explores how certain feminine voices are adapted or ‘naturalized’ in audiovisual translation in order to conform to the intended audience’s assumed gender beliefs and values. Using purposefully selected examples from the American series Sex and the City, the author analyses elements pertaining to American feminism and how they are rendered in the French dubbing and subtitles. While the subtitles retain most references, the dubbing reveals a marked tendency to delete, weaken and transform allusions to American feminist culture as (...) well as female achievements in the public sphere and feminist ideology. These findings are discussed in relation to the history, place and representation of women and feminism in France. The case study suggests that integrating a feminist approach in audiovisual translation research could help women’s studies detect the unspoken gender values of the cultures for which audiovisual translation is produced. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Hegel’s account of nature’s autonomy and argues for its significance for his understanding of human autonomy and the relation between nature and spirit. It argues that Hegel treats the actualization of nature’s autonomy—epitomized by the phenomena of animal voice and birdsong—as a vital component of the actualization of free human spirit. Drawing on this analysis, the article then offers an ecological gloss on Hegel’s interest in the progressive actualization of freedom in the modern world. It concludes (...) by sketching a Hegelian account of what it might mean to listen to nature’s voices. (shrink)

Ilya Prigogine was not a systematic author: his ideas, covering a wide arch of areas, are dispersed in his many writings. In particular, his philosophical thought has to be reconstructed mainly on the basis of his works in collaboration with Isabelle Stengers: La Nouvelle Alliance ( 1979 ), Order out of Chaos ( 1984 ), and Entre le Temps et l’Éternité ( 1988 ). In this paper I undertake that reconstruction in order to argue that Prigogine’s position, when read in (...) the light of Putnam’s internalist realism, can be characterized as an ontological pluralism. The main aim of this work is to show the striking parallelism between the philosophical views of Prigogine and Stengers and those of Hilary Putnam in Reason , Truth and History ( 1981 ). This task will lead me to critically review Prigogine’s general scientific program: the attempt to establish the foundations of objective irreversibility. (shrink)

The Giving Voice to Values pedagogy and curriculum is described as an example of a powerful leverage point in the integration of business ethics and values-driven leadership across the business curriculum. GVV is post-decision-making in that it identifies an ethical course of action and asks practitioners to identify who are the parties involved and what’s at stake for them; what are the main arguments to be countered; and what levers that can be used to influence those who are in (...) disagreement. The internalization of GVV’s constructs allows faculty to comfortably raise and endorse ethics as part of the natural order of business decision-making because the stakes of doing so have been normalized. Methods for introducing and using GVV in undergraduate through MBA courses are given. An illustration is given for economics courses. (shrink)

To better understand the knowledge of language we study how it interacts with other kinds of knowledge in the performance of different abilities and their corresponding knowledge structures, for example in reading and writing or in comparing prose and singing. The more difficult study is to gain a better understanding of how language emerged in our species. Comparative research with other species focused on communication, especially when expression is vocal and reception is auditory, may help us to formulate the right (...) questions. In the comparisons in which the mechanisms of communication and aspects of the underlying knowledge are learned, another dimension of the research program presents itself. A recent survey of the field by Nicolas Mathevon maps out some of the main results of this research in The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate (2023). The following review essay will be selective, as the survey is wide-ranging and covers related topics that will take us too far, even though they are, ultimately, related. (shrink)

Ranging from the ancient world to the recent past, and drawing on non-European traditions of thought, this study voices current concerns about the natural world and discusses the relationship of human beings to their environment.

This volume presents readings in philosophy from around the world and across history, from the Buddha to bell hooks, organized around traditional Anglo-European philosophical themes such as freedom and the existence of God. An introductory section discusses the nature of philosophy and gives advice on reading philosophical texts, and introductions to selections provide background and questions for thought.

Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences examines the long-recognized and striking similarities between features of mental disorders and features of religions. Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained in terms of the cultural activation of humans' natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language (...) processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity. (shrink)

Abstract:Ecofeminism refers to a broad range philosophical and political movements that call attention to the link between social oppression and environmental destruction. Despite their relevance and potential theoretical and practical utility, ecofeminisms are largely absent from extant approaches to environmental governance (E-Governance). In addition to calling attention to the absence of ecofeminist voices in this arena, this paper explores the consequences of said exclusion and assesses the potential for ecofeminism to inform and ultimately improve E-Governance initiatives. I find that E-Governance (...) research often disregards or fails to explicitly acknowledge and incorporate the inseparable and mutually reinforcing nature of social and environmental forms of domination and oppression. The consequences of this are twofold. First, many extant approaches forgo any opportunity to leverage the resolution of social inequities as a potential mechanism for reducing environmental harm. Second, initiatives that appear to be equity-driven often emerge as paternalistic and perpetuate the marginalization of oppressed groups. Accordingly, I develop and apply a novel collection of ecofeminist-informed design principles for evaluating, informing, and improving existing E-Governance initiatives. Ultimately, this paper yields fresh insight into the way ecofeminist voices can help researchers, communities, and societies transform how they think about societal interactions with the environment and equips E-Governance with the capacity to challenge social and environmental exploitation simultaneously. (shrink)

An historian and cultural critic explores the relationships between psychology, ecology, and new scientific insights into systems in nature. Drawing on our understanding of the evolutionary, self-organizing universe, Roszak discusses our rootedness in the greater web of life and explores the relationship between our own sanity and the larger-than-human world.

Most empirical research examining physician views on physician-assisted suicide has used quantitative methods to characterize positions and identify predictors of individual attitudes. This approach has generated limited information about the nature and depth of sentiments among physicians most impassioned about PAS. This study reports qualitative data provided by 909 physicians as part of a larger survey regarding attitudes toward and experiences with PAS and palliative care. Emergent themes illustrate important clinical, social, and ethical considerations in this area. The data illustrate (...) the diverse and ardent responses that PAS evokes among certain physicians. The role of physicians' personal values is central to discussions about legalization of PAS. Polarized views such as those expressed by physicians in this study are not likely to be reconciled, thereby constraining the development of public policy regarding PAS. (shrink)

Participatory deliberation, whereby diverse experts and publics collectively engage in decision‐making, can ensure a more informed and just decision by centering historically marginalized perspectives and engaging a spectrum of value systems. Broad and diverse participation is crucial for the equitable distribution of risks and benefits resulting from complex and uncertain decisions such as environmental gene editing. From an ethical position that gives intrinsic value to the nonhuman and recognizes the interconnectedness of species across generations, we argue that deliberation over environmental (...) gene editing must include the voice of nature and the voice of future generations. Inclusion of these key participant groups can encourage reflection on the human relationship with nature and help safeguard intergenerational equity of decisions reached. By drawing from the legal rights of nature movement, the Boardman River Dams Project, and methods for representative participation, we offer strategies for inclusion of nonhuman nature and future generations in deliberative processes about environmental gene editing and other crucial decisions about our shared environments. (shrink)

This article studies the narratives of voices identifying the harrowing aftermath of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, and the representations of the contemporary effects of partition in Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice Candy Man. The narrative unfolds past experiences through the eyes of different characters and surroundings from different social, political and religious backgrounds. The novel vividly portrays the horror of violence during the partition, as communities that once coexisted peacefully become engulfed in a whirlwind of hatred and bloodshed. (...) Sidhwa’s polyphonic narrative experiences reflect the multifaceted nature of violence, from communal riots to personal tragedies creating a poignant portrayal of human suffering and resilience. The theme of partition, violence, and memory permeates throughout the novel, encapsulating the socio-political upheavals that marked the birth of two nations – India and Pakistan. This paper, therefore, attempts to analyse the novel in order to understand the ideas of the ‘polyphonic narrative’ of Mikhael Bakhtin’s theory and many other postcolonial critic’s ideas. For portraying the human experience amidst a backdrop of partition and historical turmoil in shaping narratives as presented in the text by applying the theoretical framework of Postcolonial theory. (shrink)

Drawing on Arabic data sets, this study examines reported speech in naturally occurring conversations. Building on earlier work in discourse analysis, the study demonstrates how reported speech is a multiparty social field in which much of the reporting involves not only speech but also intricate forms of voice patterns and embodied reenactments. The study argues that speakers create an integrated complex of reporting, including multimodal utterances that go beyond the stream of speech to include relevant nonlinguistic sounds and embodied (...) gestures. Analysis also shows that participants engage in verbal and nonverbal forms of stance toward the reported activities. The speaker makes certain these stance displays are available to the addressees to achieve co-participation. In contrast to studies which restrict analysis to linguistic phenomena, this study approaches reported speech as a fine performance in which different kinds of semiotic resources are brought together. (shrink)

Análisis de un corpus de textos míticos relatados por exmineros de la zona del carbón de la Región del Biobío (Chile). En primer lugar se observa en los textos seleccionados (casos y leyendas) la memoria sensorial como proceso de actualización psicológica cognitiva y semiótica. En segundo lugar se analizan los discursos míticos desde dos perspectivas: la teoría semiótica de los signos naturales de Umberto Eco y la semiosis de Charles Morris. Finalmente, el trabajo aporta diferencias estructurales entre estas dos superestructuras (...) discursivas orales utilizadas por los informantes: el caso y la leyenda. This article is related to the field of oral literature. It is focused on a theoretical and analytical approach in the corpus of mythical texts narrated by former miners from the Coal District of the Bío-Bío Region (Chile). Firstly, sensory memory is found in the texts as a process of updating (cognitive and semiotic psychology). Secondly, the mythical discourses are analyzed from two perspectives: the semiotics theory of natural signs of Umberto Eco and the semiosis of Charles Morris. Finally, this work shows structural differences between these two superstructures used by the informant miners: the case and the legend. (shrink)

Four prominent views of the nature and methods of clinical ethics (especially in consultation forums) are reviewed; each is then submitted to a criticism intended to show both weaknesses and strengths. It is argued that clinical ethics needs to be responsive to the specific complexities of clinical situations. For this, the need for an expanded notion of practical reason within unique situations is emphasized, one whose aim is to facilitate decision-making on the part of those directly responsible for them and (...) consonant with their own respective moral frameworks and conceptions of what is most worthwhile. Keywords: Casuistry, clinical ethics, consultation, decision-making, dialogue, facilitator, practical reason, relationships CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In everyday life, people grasp mainly short term events of their natural surroundings, since our perception of broad and long term behavior of natural systems has been, and still is, rather limited. Throughout our history there are numerous cases of unheeded environmental warnings. This paper provides an overview of earlier era forewarnings, to illustrate how understanding of past responses to natural predicaments may help enhance future curriculum and policy discussions.

The Nature of Selection is a straightforward, self-contained introduction to philosophical and biological problems in evolutionary theory. It presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation and clarifies controversial issues concerning altruism, group selection, and the idea that organisms are survival machines built for the good of the genes that inhabit them. "Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philosopher and a knowledgeable student of contemporary evolutionary theory. (...) His book merits broad attention among both communities. It should also inspire others to continue the conversation."-Philip Kitcher, Nature "Elliott Sober has made extraordinarily important contributions to our understanding of biological problems in evolutionary biology and causality. The Nature of Selection is a major contribution to understanding epistemological problems in evolutionary theory. I predict that it will have a long lasting place in the literature."-Richard C. Lewontin. (shrink)

Continuous entities are accordingly distinguished by the feature that—in principle at least— they can be divided indefinitely without altering their essential nature. So, for instance, the water in a bucket may be indefinitely halved and yet remain water. Aristotle nowhere to my knowledge defines discreteness as such but we may take the notion as signifying the opposite of continuity—that is, incapable of being indefinitely divided into parts. Thus discrete entities, typically, cannot be divided without effecting a change in their nature: (...) half a wheel is plainly no longer a wheel1. Thus we have two contrasting properties: on the one hand, the property of being indivisible, separate or discrete, and, on the other, the property of being indefinitely divisible and continuous although not actually divided into parts. Still, one and the same object can, in a sense, possess both of these properties. For example, if the wheel is regarded simply as a piece of matter, it remains so on being divided in half. In other words, the wheel qua wheel is discrete, but as a piece of matter, it is continuous. Examples like this show that continuity and discreteness are complementary attributes originating through the mind's ability to perform acts of abstraction, the one arising by abstracting an object’s divisibility and the other its self-identity. In mathematics it is the concept of whole number, later elaborated into the set concept, that provides an embodiment of the idea of pure discreteness, that is, of the idea of a collection of separate individual objects, all of whose properties—apart from their distinctness—have been refined away. The basic mathematical representation of the idea of continuity, on the other hand, is the geometric figure, and more particularly the straight line. By their very nature geometric figures are continuous; discreteness is injected into geometry, the realm of the.. (shrink)

Disagreement is, for better or worse, pervasive in our society. Not only do we form beliefs that differ from those around us, but increasingly we have platforms and opportunities to voice those disagreements and make them public. In light of the public nature of many of our most important disagreements, a key question emerges: How does public disagreement affect what we know? This volume collects original essays from a number of prominent scholars--including Catherine Elgin, Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Michael (...) Patrick Lynch, and Duncan Pritchard, among others--to address this question in its diverse forms. The book is organized by thematic sections, in which individual chapters address the epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of dissent. The individual contributions address important issues such as the value of disagreement, the nature of conversational disagreement, when dissent is epistemically rational, when one is obligated to voice disagreement or to object, the relation of silence and resistance to dissent, and when political dissent is justified. Voicing Dissent offers a new approach to the study of disagreement that will appeal to social epistemologists and ethicists interested in this growing area of epistemology. (shrink)

Appeals to the idea of human nature are frequent in the voluminous literature on the ethics of enhancing human beings through biotechnology. Two chief concerns about the impact of enhancements on human nature have been voiced. The first is that enhancement may alter or destroy human nature. The second is that if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good because, for us, the good is determined by our nature. The first concern assumes (...) that altering or destroying human nature is in itself a bad thing. The second concern assumes that human nature provides a standard without which we cannot make coherent, defensible judgments about what is good. I will argue (1) that there is nothing wrong, per se, with altering or destroying human nature, because, on a plausible understanding of what human nature is, it contains bad as well as good characteristics and there is no reason to believe that eliminating some of the bad would so imperil the good as to make the elimination of the bad impermissible, and (2) that altering or destroying human nature need not result in the loss of our ability to make judgments about the good, because we possess a conception of the good by which we can and do evaluate human nature. I will argue that appeals to human nature tend to obscure rather than illuminate the debate over the ethics of enhancement and can be eliminated in favor of more cogent considerations. (shrink)

I discuss the relationship between the two forms of expressivism defended by Robert Brandom, on one hand, and philosophers in the Humean tradition, such as Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, on the other. I identify three apparent points of difference between the two programs, but argue that all three are superficial. Both projects benefit from the insights of the other, and the combination is in a natural sense a global expressivism.

To shield stakeholders from exploitation, society increasingly expects organizations to engage with stakeholders. While exploitation of stakeholders is of great concern, economic literature points to the costly nature of stakeholder engagement vis-à-vis alternative mechanisms that protect stakeholders, such as competitive markets. When the costs of stakeholder engagement outweigh the benefits, why would organizations engage with stakeholders? Through an analysis of the cooperative enterprise and a comparison with its capitalist counterpart, we theorize two additional reasons why stakeholder engagement is beneficial. First, (...) we explain how stakeholder engagement facilitates long-term organizational resilience and protection of stakeholders in times of crisis, and second, we show how engagement is a decisive ingredient in answering non-economic value requirements of stakeholders. To conclude, we contribute to the broader stakeholder engagement and cooperative literature by stressing that engagement practices, and particularly democratic governance arrangements, are subject to design principles that sometimes favor stakeholders in capitalist firms. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the new millennium, initiatives known as roundtables have been developed to create voluntary sustainability standards for agricultural commodities. Intended to be private and voluntary in nature, these initiatives claim their legitimacy from their ability to ensure the participation of all categories of stakeholders in horizontal participatory and inclusive processes. This article characterizes the political and material instruments employed as the means of formulating agreement and taking a variety of voices into consideration in these arenas. Referring to (...) the specific case of the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”, I undertake a detailed analysis of the tensions relating to different forms of participation, which create a gap between “local minority voices” and international stakeholders—either non-governmental organizations or industries. Local communities and small-scale farmers face difficulties when making their voices heard in the form of debate proposed. Firstly, some participants attempt to re-impose a vertical hierarchical relationship between small-scale farmers or affected communities and company managers/directors in order to deprive the former of their powers of representation and of being able to transform reality. Secondly, the liberalism of interest groups in the roundtable accords value to experts, global knowledge, strategy, and detachment, at the expense of other capabilities of rooted or attached people who come to defend their real lives with a desire to raise critical issues of injustice. In this context, I highlight the capacity of local NGOs to relieve some of those tensions and to help locally affected communities and small-scale farmers introduce public stages for debates, by accommodating other forms of participation apart from the liberal one. By being close to and by restoring their dignity through a specific work of solicitude and care, local NGOs prepare affected people for public speaking. (shrink)

A feminist phenomenological analysis of voice, rooted in both the feminist understanding of the role of voice in identity, agency, and the creation of meaning, and the phenomenological thematization and theorization of phenomenal, lived experience, leads to a deeper understanding of the importance of the materiality of the voices with which we speak, and their role in both subjective and intersubjective experience. Starting from an analysis of the intertwined associations and imageries of the feminine, voice, and embodiment, (...) I discuss the denaturalization and abstraction of voice in standard narratives of voice and voice metaphorization, and the corresponding forgetting of the living, bodily voice. In looking to recall a re-naturalized and immanent corporeality and retrieve the material voice through an account of embodied vocality, I consider examples of the power and immediacy of the corporeal voice in the female operatic voice, and in contrast, the compromised agency and attenuated (inter)subjectivity which attends the impaired or lost physical voice. These vocal counterpoints of presence and absence are often separated by corporeal disturbance or limitation, underscoring the importance of corporeality and the material voice as intermediary between the individual and the social world. This sets the contours of a phenomenology of embodied voice and vocality, holding implications for accounts of identity and intersubjectivity, gendered vocality and expressive agency, and an intercorporeality mediated by the living material voice. (shrink)

Nurse educators, like many of their health care professional colleagues, frequently face moral dilemmas when they identify a student as presenting an unacceptable risk to public safety. In this situation, the statutory requirement of nurse educators to protect the public, under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act , competes with the rights of the student to receive education under the Education Act . Using the different moral voices of justice and care, identified by Gilligan , this moral dilemma is examined (...) within the context of one school of nursing in a New Zealand tertiary education organisation. Overall, the justice voice dominated within the tertiary education organisation. Academic committees, and appeal panels, operating within the educational statutory framework, used democratic processes to reach decisions. The individual committee members, acting as autonomous moral agents, made decisions using universal principles and abstract moral reasoning. The focus was on individual rights, natural justice and due process. Nurse educators articulated both justice and care moral voices. Those with care voices described how they agonised between their duty to protect the public, and their wish to facilitate students, with whom they had built relationships, to succeed. The education management process did not acknowledge the statutory obligations of nurse educators, as registered nurses, or the implications of this within the education context. The moral dilemmas were either ignored, or rendered invisible. As a result of this, nurse educators engaged in various survival strategies, and the broader educational context remained intact and unchallenged. (shrink)

Nurse educators, like many of their health care professional colleagues, frequently face moral dilemmas when they identify a student as presenting an unacceptable risk to public safety. In this situation, the statutory requirement of nurse educators to protect the public, under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act (2003), competes with the rights of the student to receive education under the Education Act (1989). Using the different moral voices of justice and care, identified by ), this moral dilemma is examined within (...) the context of one school of nursing in a New Zealand tertiary education organisation. Overall, the justice voice dominated within the tertiary education organisation. Academic committees, and appeal panels, operating within the educational statutory framework, used democratic processes to reach decisions. The individual committee members, acting as autonomous moral agents, made decisions using universal principles and abstract moral reasoning. The focus was on individual rights, natural justice and due process. Nurse educators articulated both justice and care moral voices. Those with care voices described how they agonised between their duty to protect the public, and their wish to facilitate students, with whom they had built relationships, to succeed. The education management process did not acknowledge the statutory obligations of nurse educators, as registered nurses, or the implications of this within the education context. The moral dilemmas were either ignored, or rendered invisible. As a result of this, nurse educators engaged in various survival strategies, and the broader educational context remained intact and unchallenged. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent writings in feminist ethics have urged that the activity of caring is more central to women's lives than are considerations of justice and equality. This paper argues that an ethics of care, so understood, is difficult to extend beyond the local and familiar, and is therefore of limited use in addressing the political problems of the modern world. However, the ethics of care does contain an important insight: if references to care are understood not as claims about women's (...) nature, but as reflections on the extent to which moral obligations are both unchosen and conflicting, then an ethics of care can supplement an ethics of justice, and can also provide a more realistic account of both men's and women's moral life. (shrink)

Our twenty-first century is a time of turbulence. Some of that turbulence is derived from not fully understanding what makes us moral. This article reassesses human morality in order to identify what nurtures and what distorts our moral nature. Such a reassessment potentially offers hope for a way through the escalating violence in our world that currently threatens to destroy us. This article focuses on three voices: the voice of anthropological philosopher René Girard, whose mimetic theory calls us to (...) wake up about our role in creating violence; the voice of medieval scholastic John Duns Scotus, whose moral theory is enjoying a renaissance in our contemporary world; and the voice of neuroscience with its .. (shrink)

Much of what we say is never said aloud. It occurs only silently, as inner speech. We chastise, congratulate, joke and cajole, all without making a sound. This distinctively human ability to create public language in the privacy of our own minds is no less remarkable for its familiarity. And yet, until recently, inner speech remained at the periphery of philosophical and psychological theorizing. This essay collection, from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, displays the rapidly growing (...) interest among researchers in the puzzles surrounding the nature and cognitive role of the inner voice. Questions explored include: the aids and obstacles inner speech presents to self-knowledge; the complex relation it bears to overt speech production and perception; the means by which inner speech can be identified and empirically assessed; its role in generating auditory verbal hallucinations; and its relationship to conceptual thought itself. (shrink)

This article revisits a forgotten, late project by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram: the ‘cyranoid’ studies he conducted from 1977 to 1984. These investigations, inspired by the play Cyrano de Bergerac, explored how individuals often fail to notice when others do not speak their own thoughts, but instead relay messages from a hidden source. We situate these experiments amidst the intellectual, cultural, and political concerns of late Cold War America, and show how Milgram’s studies pulled together a variety of ideas, (...) anxieties, and interests that were prevalent at that time and have returned in new guises since. In discussing the cyranoid project’s background and afterlife, we argue that its strikingly equivocal quality has lent itself to multiple reinterpretations by historians, psychologists, performers, artists, and others. Our purpose is neither to champion Milgram’s work nor to amplify the critiques already made of his methods. Rather, it is to consider the uncertain, allusive, and elusive aspects of the cyranoid project, and to seek to place that project in context, whilst asking where ‘context’ might end. We show how the experiments’ range of meanings, in different temporal registers, far exceeded the explanatory rubric that Milgram and his intellectual critics provided at that time, and ponder the risk for the historian of making anachronistic or teleological assumptions. In short, we argue, cyranoids invite our open-ended exploration of ‘voices offstage’ in social and psychological relations, and offer a useful tool for thinking about historical context and the nature of historical interpretations. (shrink)

In her work on moral reasoning, Carol Gilligan identifies two distinct models which she terms the ‘voice of care’ and the ‘voice of justice’. The ‘voice of justice’ informs a professional practice grounded in fairness and objectivity and is principally concerned with rights and obligations. It can motivate the drive for legislation and codes of ethics that provide clear rules and regulations to govern social care practice. In contrast, the ‘voice of care’ prioritises relationships, requiring practitioners (...) to pay attention to the particularity of each moral situation. As a result, the demand to commit to upholding universal principles and rights cannot be met. This paper explores the nature of the conflict between the moral voice of care and justice, applying insights from these diverging voices to deepen our understanding of the kind of professionalization appropriate in social care. (shrink)

A groundbreaking study of deafness, by a philosopher who combines the scientific erudition of Oliver Sacks with the historical flair of Simon Schama. There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others? In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Ree tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century (...) to the present. Ree explores the great debates about deafness between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right. I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey,taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, talking parrots, and silent films. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is as learned and informative as it is delightful to read. (shrink)