This is the review of a book by Paula Byrne on Lord Mansfield's great-niece, Dido, whom he raised as his own daughter. Lord Mansfield was the Lord Chief Justice of England in the Eighteenth Century. The child was brought to him as an infant and grew up to become what we would today term his paralegal clerk in his Library at Kenwood House. His great-niece was the child of a black slave and his sister's son, Sir John Lindsay. This is (...) also a narrative of the British Slave trade including some of Lord Mansfield's judgements at the King's Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice. (shrink)

Professor Dan Markel was an expert criminal lawyer at Florida State University. He was murdered in broad daylight at his home. Here is a part of a hypothesis that no one has yet to dispute or otherwise.

In the December 2015 Issue of the Police Journal Sam Poyser and Rebecca Milne addressed the subject of miscarriages of justice. Cold case investigations can address some of these wrongs. The salient points for attention are those just before his sudden death: Milligan was appointed Private Secretary to Jonathan Aitken, the then Minister of Arms in the Conservative government in 1994. The known facts are as follows: 1. Stephen David Wyatt Milligan was found deceased on Tuesday 8th February 1994 at (...) his Chiswick, West London house where he lived alone. His body was found by his secretary Vera Taggart who was told by Julie Kirkbride where a spare key to his London house was kept and who decided to go to his house that day because he was not answering his telephone. Police said he had made one last telephone call on Saturday evening at 9.00pm. 2. Stephen David Wyatt Milligan had been the elected Member of Parliament (‘MP’) for Eastleigh in Hampshire since 1992. 3. The important topics this MP was addressing in 1994 at the time of his death included: (i) rail privatization plans and the impact through job losses on communities, especially his own constituency of Eastleigh; (ii) arms dealings with Saudi Arabia, especially with his previous intelligence gathered as an economics journalist for esteemed publications; (iii) the UK military industry; (iv) homosexuality among senior government Ministers, as revealed by British footballer Fasanu; (v) personal relationship and planned marriage to his fiancée (Julie Kirkbride) who at the time was a political journalist. 4. Stephen Milligan was also appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jonathan Aitken, Arms Minister and this position must have required that he came ‘up to speed’ on international arms trade and indeed its relation to bribery and corruption across jurisdictions. Milligan’s experience and knowledge as a former high-level political and economics journalist must have been of huge benefit to government minister Jonathan Aitken who was later imprisoned for perjury. 5. Regarding Stephen Milligan’s death in 1994, the Guardian newspaper in their immediate obituary said that ‘The death of one of the government's most outspoken and loyal supporters will pose a stiff electoral test for the Tories to surmount. He was on the left of the Tory party - he had even had a brief flirtation with the SDP when it was formed - and was a noted Euro-enthusiast… the death of one of the government's most outspoken and loyal supporters will pose a stiff electoral test for the Tories to surmount. Regarding Stephen Milligan’s sudden and unexpected death in 1994, MP David Willetts (Conservative, Havant) said in March 2015, in his address in the House of Commons. ‘…The inevitable ups and downs and triumphs and disasters of politics are among the great features of this place. There are colleagues in all parts of the House who are tolerant and understanding. There are friendships that keep the downs as well as the ups of politics in perspective. Having entered the House in 1992, I think particularly of two good friends, Judith Chaplin and Stephen Milligan, who both died within two years of being elected; that loss stayed with me for a long time...’ 6. On 28 February 2000, in the House of Commons, at Column 106, Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth) said, on the deaths of Michael Colvin and of Stephen Milligan MP: ‘I knew Michael Colvin for nearly 30 years, from when he was first elected to Hampshire county council. During my time as leader of that council, he and the late former Member of Parliament for Eastleigh, Stephen Milligan, were usually the only Members of Parliament who readily supported the council when necessary. Michael Colvin supported many ventures in the county of Hampshire. He will be missed here, in his constituency, and in Europe, and I stress that Hampshire has lost a staunch supporter. I am sure that the county will at some stage want to record its regret at his death and its deepest appreciation of the part that he played in its life....’ -/- Mike Hancock had, like Stephen Milligan, served on the Select Committee on Defence. It is interesting that he mentioned Stephen Milligan’s support as MP for Eastleigh when Milligan had only been so appointed a couple of years before his sudden death, as compared to 30 years of support from Mike Colvin. 7. Mr Andrew Robathan (for Blaby) said in the House of Commons Hansard Debates on 27 January1997, (Column 62) (on the registering of sex offenders): ‘I remember the death of my honourable friend Stephen Milligan, who represented Eastleigh. The press reports of the time stated that each Metropolitan police station had a police officer in the pay of newspapers. I do not know whether that is true, but I am aware that the police are not renowned for being entirely secure with their information…’ This statement is mischievous and it has been demonstrated time and time again, as being untrue, especially during the recent press inquiry leading to the four-volume Leveson Report, published in November 2012, into phone hacking and the ethics and culture of the UK media, pursuant to section 26 of the Inquiries Act 2005, and ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 29 November 2012, ISBN: 9780102981063, by the Stationery Office Limited on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. In Volume 4 of the 2012 Leveson Report, chapter 4 concluded on the Press Complaints Commission (‘PCC’) and its effectiveness and revealed that the PCC does not initiate its own investigations other than those ‘needed to head off criticism of the press or self-regulation- or to accept complaints from third parties across the board and on a transparent basis… and the report states that ‘the resources of the police are limited’ in terms of being able to fully inspect the Press and media reports. (shrink)

This paper covers the home-made bombing used at the 2013 Boston Marathon annual races even though we knew before the trial began that the verdict will have to be 'guilty' because the people of Boston demanded that verdict and received the first lap of the verdict on 8 April 2015. Neither beautiful technical rulings nor breaches of prosecution disclosure rules nor metadata queries nor tampered evidence would have held sway at this trial.

The Law Society recently published a practice note titled 'Prosecutions of victims of trafficking'. This practice note comes many years after many lawyers had highlighted the problem and after the government machinery had chuntered into action and passed the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 with explanatory notes and non-statutory guidelines for corporations. Since 2012 there had been issued warnings about the way defence lawyers, the Crown Prosecution Service and the UK police were dealing with trafficking and the Criminal Cases Review (...) Commission as far back as 2012 had note the severe failings by defence solicitors, prosecution and police, leading to many appeals and potential miscarriages of justice. Even in 2012 there were 946 known human trafficking victims, including 234 children. There was an attempt at a Human Trafficking Bill in 2010 which came to a halt and several reports including one by the Prison Reform Trust and Cambridge University Press, notwithstanding many books by notable academics for many years before today. This article examines the inadequacies of the Law Society practice note on defending victims and the jumble of high-ideals but short-sighted and impractical parts of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015. (shrink)

The Scottish story of the daughter of two doctors who bore five children and who did not take one child to see a doctor when he was ill-he died-she was charged with murder.

This is a case that should go to the European Court of Human Rights. A decent, senior qualified family doctor was accused by his mentally ill daughter of sex abuse. Without real evidence except for what the girl told another mentally ill patient at a psychiatric hospital she stayed at for several years, and wit just two witnesses, one a younger child wo saw none of the accused offences, and the other parent, struck off the General Medical Council Register for (...) drunk driving more than once, the case was fitted up by those who are rampantly seeking to raise statistical numbers for child sex abuse offences by high level persons- a bizarre situation and a travesty against tis family doctor's human rights, because a judge can use his 'discretion' to send a much needed family doctor to 18 years in jail. The International Community should scrutinize the United Kingdom's Criminal Justice System. (shrink)

When I heard Donald Trump say in one of his many unofficial/quasi-official talks that his plan is to win the forthcoming election and be president for 18 more years, I at first thought he spoke in jest. This was not a jocular statement. This article explains why.

A case to be taken up by the Criminal Appeals Commission because the decision of the appeal court was flawed- a miscarriage of justice against Dr Stephen Hamilton, formerly, a most respected senior family general practitioner.

A second look at a global ethics forum of several years ago can be a good start for examination of ethics of countries we deal with today. This global ethics forum had been financed by the United Kingdom’s DFID, The World Bank, USAID and AusAid to enable delegates from seventy countries to meet and discuss ethics policies.

The UK has been slack in fulfilling its international obligations regarding human trafficking. The UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 has apparently nothing to say about the demand for women trafficked into prostitution, although it addresses the demand for other forms of trfficking though the supply chain provisins in the Act. The UK has disappointed many in condoning prostitution, as Lady Butler-Sloss describes as 'one of the longest standing industries'. However it is one of the longest-standing forms of exploitation. The Act (...) instead, has given much importance to modern -day slavery. An effective way of tackling demand for prostitution and the attendant exploitation would be to make it an offence to purchase someone for sex. Yet perhaps the point is that to curb modern-day slavery is to curb prostitution and pornography, through curbing the supply side. However the UK hasragged its feet over many years, especially when one considers that Internet pornography brings in over £4 billion annually to the UK Gross Domestic Product. (shrink)

Dido Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Captain Lindsay, the aristocratic nephew of William Murray, Scottish by birth and Lord Chief Justice of England for many decades. The book tells the story of Dido's life in Lord Mansfield homes, from the time her father begged Lord and Lady Mansfield to be wards of the child Dido to the death at age 88 of Lord Mansfield, mainly cared for by Dido and to Dido's young death at age 43. It also raises (...) issues of financial queries, Wills, Probate, and the place of a woman in society in those days, not quite chattel but not equal to men. (shrink)

Professor Nicholas Ryder (see Appendix A for a list of his published works) and Dr Karen Harrison (see Appendix B for a list of her published works) have produced this second edition of The Law relating to financial crime in the United Kingdom (published by Routledge of Taylor & Francis Group) in order to bring the work up-to-date; to include recent legislation and government policy developments; and also to add the financial crime topics of tax evasion, market manipulation (including insider (...) trading) and cybercrime, making this work a complete and well-rounded university-level introduction to the criminal laws relating to financial crimes as they affect the United Kingdom. (shrink)

This review is unashamedly from the perspective of English law because busy United Kingdom criminal law solicitors and barristers mostly wish to know what the law states, which case is a precedent case and whether the author has provided up-to-date legal information. This is because legal practitioners deal with real and urgent cases. The English Income Tax Act gained Royal Assent in 1799 the first government attempt to stop early tax avoidance. Later, tax avoidance schemes (which in English Law were (...) deemed a legitimate method of minimising one payment of taxation) became de rigueur all over the world and often involved creation of Deeds of Covenant and Trusts, notably Discretionary Trusts under civil law. Man’s ingenuity knows no bounds and this applies to man’s characteristic of criminality as it does to scholarship, enterprise and innovation. Despite protestations by some countries police agencies, contrary to the rise of crime, the fact is that that crime is increasing exponentially worldwide, but the number of people committing crime is not increasing because many crimes are repeated crimes committed by persons with habitual criminal behaviour, ie hard-core criminals. (shrink)

"Being and Logos" is... a philosophical adventure of rare inspiration.... Its power to illuminate the text..., its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity—all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will want to re-read along with the dialogues themselves. A superadded gift is the author's prose, which is a model of lucidity and grace." —International Philosophical Quarterly "Being and Logos is highly recommended for those who wish to learn how (...) a thoughtful scholar approaches Platonic dialogues as well as for those who wish to consider a serious discussion of some basic themes in the dialogues." —The Academic Reviewer. (shrink)

In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions ...

Its power to illuminate the text..., its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity—all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will ...

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

The False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, a post-Civil War law inspired by cases of defense contracting fraud, was revitalized in 1986. Since then it has been used to sue both manufacturers and providers of pharmaceuticals. In some cases, these suits were meant to target offlabel marketing of pharmaceuticals. In 2009, the 11th Circuit rendered a decision in Hopper v. Solvay Pharmaceuticals that dramatically limits the ability of private plaintiff whistle-blowers to bring qui tam suits under the FCA for (...) such marketing. In June 2010, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, making the Circuit court decision final. The Solvay decision creates a significant barrier to certain kinds of qui tam suits, requiring the plaintiff to demonstrate the intent to market off-label, including by showing specific prescriptions that were written as a result of efforts to do so. (shrink)

I’ll start by giving a very brief summary of Sider’s position and will identify some points on which my own position differs from his. I’ll then raise four issues, viz., how to articulate the 3-dimensionalist view, the trade-offs between Ted’s stage view of persistence and endurance with respect to intrinsic properties, the endurantist’s response to the argument from vagueness, and finally more general questions about what’s at stake in the debate. I don’t believe that anything I say raises insurmountable problems (...) for Sider’s view; and in fact, I’m sure he’s in a better position to defend his view more convincingly than I’m able to defend mine. However, there is plenty worth discussing further. (shrink)

Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set of practices, attitudes, (...) social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means. (shrink)

Across the humanities and social sciences it has become commonplace for scholars to argue that categories once assumed to be “natural” are in fact “social” or, in the familiar lingo, “socially constructed”. Two common examples of such categories are race and gender, but there many others. One interpretation of this claim is that although it is typically thought that what unifies the instances of such categories is some set of natural or physical properties, instead their unity rests on social features (...) of the items in question. Social constructionists pursuing this strategy—and it is these social constructionists I will be focusing on in this paper—aim to “debunk” the ordinary assumption that the categories are natural, by revealing the more accurate social basis of the classification.2 To avoid confusion, and to resist some of the associations with the term ‘social construction’, I will sometimes use the term ‘socially founded’ for the categories that this sort of constructionist reveals as social rather than natural. (shrink)

This essay proposes a design perspective on argumentation, intended as complementary to empirical and critical scholarship. In any substantive domain, design can provide insights that differ from those provided by scientific or humanistic perspectives. For argumentation, the key advantage of a design perspective is the recognition that humanity’s natural capacity for reason and reasonableness can be extended through inventions that improve on unaided human intellect. Historically, these inventions have fallen into three broad classes: logical systems, scientific methods, and disputation frameworks. (...) Behind each such invention is a specifiable “design hypothesis”: an idea about how to decrease error or how to increase the quality of outcomes from reasoning. As problems in contemporary argumentation practice become more complex, design thinking rises in relevance and importance. A design research agenda in argumentation would focus on theorizing design innovations and on evaluating design hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention. The social world, on this account, does not begin when psychologically sophisticated individuals interact to share knowledge or make plans. Instead, culture shapes agents to interpret and respond both to each other and the physical world around us. Practices shape us as we shape them. This provides resources for understanding why (...) social practices tend to be stable, but also reveals sites and opportunities for change. (shrink)

Recent work on social injustice has focused on implicit bias as an important factor in explaining persistent injustice in spite of achievements on civil rights. In this paper, I argue that because of its individualism, implicit bias explanation, taken alone, is inadequate to explain ongoing injustice; and, more importantly, it fails to call attention to what is morally at stake. An adequate account of how implicit bias functions must situate it within a broader theory of social structures and structural injustice; (...) changing structures is often a precondition for changing patterns of thought and action and is certainly required for durable change. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic networks of (...) social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

Theorists analyzing the concepts of race and gender disagree over whether the terms refer to natural kinds, social kinds, or nothing at all. The question arises: what do we mean by the terms? It is usually assumed that ordinary intuitions of native speakers are definitive. However, I argue that contemporary semantic externalism can usefully combine with insights from Foucauldian genealogy to challenge mainstream methods of analysis and lend credibility to social constructionist projects.

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so (...) that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.V. (shrink)

_The Verge of Philosophy_ is both an exploration of the limits of philosophy and a memorial for John Sallis’s longtime friend and interlocutor Jacques Derrida. The centerpiece of the book is an extended examination of three sites in Derrida’s thought: his interpretation of Heidegger regarding the privileging of the question; his account of the Platonic figure of the good; and his interpretation of Plato’s discourse on the crucial notion of the chora, the originating space of the universe. Sallis’s reflections are (...) given added weight—even poignancy—by his discussion of his many public and private philosophical conversations with Derrida over the decades of their friendship. This volume thus simultaneously serves to mourn and remember a friend and to push forward the deeply searching discussions that lie at the very heart of that friendship. “All of John Sallis’s work is essential, but [this book] in particular is remarkable.... Sallis shows better than anyone I have ever read what it means to practice philosophy on the verge.”—Walter Brogan, Villanova University. (shrink)

A very distinctive and important new option for Christian theology. McFague proposes in a clear and challenging way a theological program based on what she calls 'the organic model' for conceiving God.

Neural substrates of fatigue in traumatic brain injury are not well understood despite the considerable burden of fatigue on return to productivity. Fatigue is associated with diminishing performance under conditions of high cognitive demand, sense of effort, or need for motivation, all of which are associated with cognitive control brain network integrity. We hypothesize that the pathophysiology of TBI results in damage to diffuse cognitive control networks, disrupting coordination of moment-to-moment monitoring, prediction, and regulation of behavior. We investigate the cingulo-opercular (...) and frontoparietal networks, which are engaged to sustain attention for task and maintain performance. A total of 61 individuals with mild TBI and 42 orthopedic control subjects participated in functional MRI during performance of a constant effort task requiring altering the amount of effort utilized to manually squeeze a pneumostatic bulb across six 30-s trials. Network-based statistics assessed within-network organization and fluctuation with task manipulations by group. Results demonstrate small group differences in network organization, but considerable group differences in the evolution of task-related modulation of connectivity. The mild TBI group demonstrated elevated CO connectivity throughout the task with little variation in effort level or time on task, while CO connectivity diminished over time in controls. Several interregional CO connections were predictive of fatigue in the TBI group. In contrast, FP connectivity fluctuated with task manipulations and predicted fatigue in the controls, but connectivity fluctuations were delayed in the mild traumatic brain injury group and did not relate to fatigue. Thus, the mTBI group’s hyper-connectivity of the CO irrespective of task demands, along with hypo-connectivity and delayed peak connectivity of the FP, may allow for attainment of task goals, but also contributes to fatigue. Findings are discussed in relation to performance monitoring of prediction error that relies on internal cues from sensorimotor feedback during task performance. Delay or inability to detect and respond to prediction errors in TBI, particularly evident in bilateral insula-temporal CO connectivity, corresponds to day-to-day fatigue and fatigue during task performance. (shrink)

Are sagging pants cool? Are cows food? Are women more submissive than men? Are blacks more criminal than whites? Taking the social world at face value, many people would be tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative. And if challenged, they can point to facts that support their answers. But there is something wrong about the affirmative answers. In this chapter, I draw on recent ideas in the philosophy of language and metaphysics to show how the assertion of a (...) generic claim of the sort in question ordinarily permits one to infer that the fact in question obtains by virtue of something specifically about the subject so described, i.e., about women, or blacks, or sagging pants. In the examples I’ve offered, however, this implication inference is unwarranted. The facts in question obtain by virtue of broad system of social relations within which the subjects are situated, and are not grounded in intrinsic or dispositional features of the subjects themselves. The background relations are obscured, however, and as a result, the assertion is at least systematically misleading; a denial functions to block the problematic implication. Revealing such implications or presuppositions and blocking them is a crucial part of ideology critique. (shrink)

The past three years have seen a dramatic increase in our understanding of the structural organization and expression strategies of the dispersed, repetitive yeast transposon, Ty. These studies have led to a logical comparison of Ty with retroviral proviruses and other mobile, repetitive elements. Such comparisons have culminated in the hypotheses that transposition occurs via the formation of Ty‐encoded virus‐like particles and that these particles represent a basic unit of all ‘retro‐systems’.

Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one (...) another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management. (shrink)

Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one (...) another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management. (shrink)

How does an object persist through change? How can a book, for example, open in the morning and shut in the afternoon, persist through a change that involves the incompatible properties of being open and being shut? The goal of this reader is to inform and reframe the philosophical debate around persistence; it presents influential accounts of the problem that range from classic papers by W. V. O. Quine, David Lewis, and Judith Jarvis Thomson to recent work by contemporary philosophers. (...) The authors take on the question of persistence by examining three broad approaches: perdurantism, which holds that change over time is analogous to change over space; exdurantism, according to which identity over time is analogous to identity across possible worlds; and endurantism, which holds that ordinary objects persist by enduring. Each of these approaches appears to be coherent, but each also has its own metaphysical problems. Persistence includes papers that argue for perdurantism, exdurantism, or endurantism, as well as papers that explore some metaphysical difficulties challenging each account. In this way the collection allows readers to balance the trade-offs of each approach in terms of intuitiveness, theoretical attractiveness, and elegance.Contributors:Yuri Balashov, William Carter, Graeme Forbes, Sally Haslanger, Katherine Hawley, H. S. Hestevold, Mark Hinchliffe, Mark Johnston, Roxanne Marie Kurtz, David K. Lewis, Ned Markosian, D. H. Mellor, W. V. O. Quine, Theodore Sider, Richard Taylor, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman. (shrink)

[Sally Haslanger] In debates over the existence and nature of social kinds such as 'race' and 'gender', philosophers often rely heavily on our intuitions about the nature of the kind. Following this strategy, philosophers often reject social constructionist analyses, suggesting that they change rather than capture the meaning of the kind terms. However, given that social constructionists are often trying to debunk our ordinary (and ideology-ridden?) understandings of social kinds, it is not surprising that their analyses are counterintuitive. This (...) article argues that externalist insights from the critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction can be extended to justify social constructionist analyses. /// [Jennifer Saul] Sally Haslanger's 'What Good Are Our Intuitions? Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds' is, among other things, a part of the theoretical underpinning for analyses of race and gender concepts that she discusses far more fully elsewhere. My reply focuses on these analyses of race and gender concepts, exploring the ways in which the theoretical work done in this paper and others can or cannot be used to defend these analyses against certain objections. I argue that the problems faced by Haslanger's analyses are in some ways less serious, and in some ways more serious, than they may at first appear. Along the way, I suggest that ordinary speakers may not in fact have race and gender concepts and I explore the ramifications of this claim. (shrink)