Rhetorical argumentation is a craft: collective, processual, and circulating, and it partakes in the indeterminate evolution of public norms. Official apologies can illustrate how rhetorical modalities over time can reflect change in civic sensibilities and effect collective moral reflection and evolution. Rhetorical citizenship, understood as encompassing both critical production and reception of publicly circulating arguments, is a way of conceptualizing the interaction between the individual and the collective in the ongoing discursive formation of the community and the norms that inform (...) it. (shrink)

The core function of argumentation in a democratic setting must be to constitute a modality for citizens to engage differences of opinion constructively – for the present but also in future exchanges. To enable this function requires acceptance of the basic conditions of public debate: that consensus is often an illusory goal which should be replaced by better mastery of living with dissent and compromise. Furthermore, it calls for an understanding of the complexity of real-life public debate which is an (...) intermixture of claims of fact, definition, value, and policy, each of which calls for an awareness of the greater ‘debate environment’ of which particular deliberative exchanges are part. We introduce a rhetorical meta-norm as an evaluation criterion for public debate. In continuation of previous scholarship concerned with how to create room for differences of opinion and how to foster a sustainable debate culture, we work from a civically oriented conception of rhetoric. This conception is less instrumental and more concerned with the role of communication in public life and the maintenance of the democratic state. A rhetorical meta-norm of public argumentation is useful when evaluating public argumentation – not as the only norm, but integrated with specific norms from rhetoric, pragma-dialectics, and formal logic. We contextualise our claims through an example of authentic contemporary public argumentation: a debate over a biogas generator in rural Denmark. (shrink)

When it originated in the late 19th century, psychometrics was a field with both a scientific and a social mission: psychometrics provided new methods for research into individual differences, and at the same time, these psychometric instruments were considered a means to create a new social order. In contrast, contemporary psychometrics - due to its highly technical nature and its limited involvement in substantive psychological research - has created the impression of being a value-free discipline. In this article, we develop (...) a contrasting characterization of contemporary psychometrics as a value-laden discipline. We expose four such values: that individual differences are quantitative (rather than qualitative), that measurement should be objective in a specific sense, that test items should be fair, and that utility of a model is more important than its truth. Our goal is not to criticize psychometrics for employing these values, but rather to bring them into the open and to show that these values are not inevitable and are in need of systematic evaluation. (shrink)

This paper argues that a priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism—if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of the inessential properties that, historically, have been associated with the concept. I argue that empirical indefeasibility is essential to the primary notion of the a priori ; however, the indefeasibility requirement should be interpreted in such a way that we can be fallibilist about apriori-justified claims. This fallibilist notion of the a priori accords with the (...) naturalist’s commitment to scientific methodology in that it allows for apriori-justified claims to be sensitive to further conceptual developments and the expansion of evidence. The fallibilist apriorist allows that an a priori claim is revisable in only a purely epistemic sense. This modal claim is weaker than what is required for a revisability thesis to establish empiricism, so fallibilist apriorism represents a distinct position. (shrink)

I argue that epistemic failings are a significant and underappreciated moral hazard in the financial services industry. I argue further that an analysis of these epistemic failings and their means of redress is best developed by identifying policies and procedures that are likely to facilitate good judgment. These policies and procedures are “best epistemic practices.” I explain how best epistemic practices support good reasoning, thereby facilitating accurate judgments about risk and reward. Failures to promote and adhere to best epistemic practices (...) contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. I identify and discuss some of the ways in which best epistemic practices were violated in the events that led to the crisis, with a focus on the role of the credit rating agencies. I go on to discuss some of the ways in which these failings have been redressed. I conclude by observing how proactive regulation for best epistemic practices might help us to anticipate and avoid future crises. (shrink)

Essays discuss euthanasia and the medical, legal, and ethical controversies surrounding it.

Broadly speaking, a naturalistic approach to epistemology seeks to explain human knowledge – and justification in particular – as a phenomenon in the natural world, in keeping with the tenets of naturalism. Naturalism is typically defined, in part, by a commitment to scientific method as the only legitimate means of attaining knowledge of the natural world. Naturalism is often thought to entail empiricism by virtue of this methodological commitment. However, scientific methods themselves may incorporate a priori elements, so empiricism does (...) not follow from the methodological commitments of naturalism alone. And given a suitably-naturalistic conception of the a priori, a priori forms of justification may be compatible with naturalism generally. A priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism – and hence naturalistic epistemologies – if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of some of the inessential properties that have been associated with the concept. I argue that some of the more prominent strategies for accommodating normative notions within a naturalistic framework allow for the possibility of a priori justification. These include reliabilism, instrumental rationality, and nonfactualism about justification. A priori justification thus need not be seen as standing in opposition to all naturalistic epistemologies. It is only with nonnormative naturalistic epistemologies that a priori justification per se is incompatible, and this only because the notion of justification itself has no role to play within a nonnormative approach to epistemology. (shrink)

Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or ...

A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology--and (...) this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security. Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain. (shrink)

A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault’s ‘agentless position’ for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault’s writings, which allows space for ‘human agency’, including individuals’ pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. (...) The revised analytical framework, ‘dispositional analytics’, integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault’s work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals’ capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the sociopolitical conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of ‘voice-hearers’ who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis. (shrink)

The relationship between pleasure and asceticism has been at the core of debates on western subjectivity at least since Nietzsche. Addressing this theme, this article explores the emergence of ‘non-authoritarian’ health campaigns, which do not propagate abstention from harmful substances but intend to foster a ‘well-balanced subject’ straddling pleasure and asceticism. The article seeks to develop the Foucauldian analytical framework by foregrounding a strategy of subjectivation that integrates desire, pleasure and enjoyment into health promotion. The point of departure is the (...) overwhelming emphasis in the governmentality literature on ‘prudence’, ‘self-responsibility’ or ‘risk calculation’, such that pleasure and desire remain largely absent from the framework. Some insights from Žižek’s work are introduced to help us obtain a firmer grasp on the problematic of ‘the well-balanced subject’. The article argues that, in order to analyse the transformation of interpellation in recent health promotion, we must recognize the mechanism of self-distance or dis-identification as an integral part of the procedure of subjectification. (shrink)

Michel Foucault has been presented as a unequivocal defender of civil society. He was particularly sensitive to diversity and marginality, aligned with local activism and bottom-up politics. This article re-assesses this view by demonstrating that despite his political militancy, Foucault never viewed civil society as an inherently progressive force. It traces Foucault’s struggle against his own enthusiasm for anti-institutional and anti-rationalist political movements. Inventing the notion of ‘transactional reality’, Foucault escaped the choice between naturalism and ideology critique, presenting civil society (...) as a ‘reality that does not exist’ but still has real effects. This new reality holds contradictory potentials. When articulated by political eschatology, civil society supports prophecies of the end of politics in a final accord where contradictions dissolve and the community absorbs the state. Neoliberal notions of civil society promise, on Foucault’s account, a more open-ended milieu of subject formation. (shrink)

Epistemic practices are an important but underappreciated component of business ethics; good conduct requires making epistemically sound as well as morally principled judgments. Well-founded judgments are promoted by epistemic virtues, and for organizations, epistemic virtues are arguably achieved through organizational good epistemic practices. But how are such practices to be developed? This paper addresses this normative and practical challenge. The first half of the paper explains what organizational good epistemic practices are and outlines a means for their construction. The second (...) half of the paper demonstrates how specific good epistemic practices could be developed by considering a case of corporate epistemic failings: JPMorgan’s notorious 2012 ‘London Whale’ trading losses. Following this, the paper briefly surveys the institutional epistemic failings of the 2008 global financial crisis and the remedial actions that they suggest. Although the discussion is focused on the banking industry, the main ideas, and some of the epistemic practices, generalize to organizations in other industries. (shrink)

We define the paraconsistent supra-logic Pσ by a type-shift from the booleans o of propositional logic Po to the supra-booleans σ of the propositional type logic P obtained as the propositional fragment of the transfinite type theory Q defined by Peter Andrews (North-Holland Studies in Logic 1965) as a classical foundation of mathematics. The supra-logic is in a sense a propositional logic only, but since there is an infinite number of supra-booleans and arithmetical operations are available for this and other (...) types, virtually anything can be specified. The supra-logic is a generalization of Lukasiewicz's three-valued logic, with the intermediate value duplicated many times and ordered such that none of the copies of this value imply other ones, but it differs from Lukasiewicz's many-valued logics as well as from logics based on bilattices. There are several automated theorem provers for classical higher order logic (finite type theory) and it should be possible to modify these to our needs. (shrink)

Lisa Tessman's Burdened Virtues is a deeply original and provocative work that engages questions central to feminist theory and practice, from the perspective of Aristotelian ethics. Focused primarily on selves who endure and resist oppression, she addresses the ways in which devastating conditions confronted by these selves both limit and burden their moral goodness, and affect their possibilities of flourishing. She describes two different forms of "moral trouble" prevalent under oppression. The first is that the oppressed self may be (...) morally damaged, prevented from developing or exercising some of the virtues; the second is that the very conditions of oppression require the oppressed to develop a set of virtues that carry a moral cost to those who practice them--traits that Tessman refers to as "burdened virtues." These virtues have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer's own well being. Tessman's work focuses on issues that have been missed by many feminist moral theories, and her use of the virtue ethics framework brings feminist concerns more closely into contact with mainstream ethical theory. This book will appeal to feminist theorists in philosophy and women's studies, but also more broadly, ethicists and social theorists. (shrink)

Good epistemic practices are essential to the well-functioning of organizations. Epistemic practices are adopted norms, policies, procedures, and general methodologies that further our epistemic aims or realize our epistemic values. This chapter argues for the importance of organizational good epistemic practices through an analysis of the failures of risk management implicated in JPMorgan’s notorious ‘London Whale’ trading losses, which roiled the financial markets in 2012. A number of these failures of risk management exemplified ways in which we, as fallible reasoners, (...) may be prone to error individually and collectively. Good epistemic practices inter alia anticipate and endeavor to correct for erroneous patterns of reasoning. They help guard against future epistemic failings, and they support good reasoning within and on the part of organizations. In so doing, they constitute some of the key structural elements of organizational epistemic virtues. (shrink)

I argue against traditional virtue epistemology on which knowledge is a success due to a competence to believe truly, by revealing an in-principle problem with the traditional virtue epistemologist’s explanation of Gettier cases. The argument eliminates one of the last plausible explanation of Gettier cases, and so of knowledge, in terms of non-factive mental states and non-mental conditions. I then I develop and defend a different kind of virtue epistemology, on which knowledge is an exercise of a competence to know. (...) I show how the account, while circular, is not viciously so. It explains both how knowledge is a mental state, as well as the relationship between knowledge and justification, including justified false beliefs and Gettier cases. Moreover, although direct virtue epistemology is compatible with many views on the nature of belief, it can explain how knowledge might be metaphysically more fundamental than belief as well. (shrink)

Moral enhancements aim to morally improve a person, for example by increasing the frequency with which an individual does the right thing or acts from the right motives. Most of the applied ethics literature on moral enhancement focuses on moral bioenhancement – moral enhancement pursued through biomedical means – and considers examples such as the use of drugs to diminish aggression, suppress implicit racial biases, or amplify empathy. A number of authors have defended the voluntary pursuit of moral bioenhancement, or (...) the development of technologies that would enable it. They have highlighted the need for humans to morally improve themselves in order to address moral failures such as the oppression of women, the mistreatment of animals, and anthropogenic climate change. They have also emphasised the moral similarities between moral bioenhancement and more familiar forms of moral enhancement, such as that achieved through childhood education, introspective reflection, and engagement with literature. Critics of moral enhancement have argued that it may undermine our freedom to ‘fall’ (i.e. be immoral), and therefore our moral agency, or exacerbate the domination of individuals by political authorities. They have also questioned the potential for biomedical interventions to produce the deepest and most valuable forms of moral improvement, and have highlighted the risks that technologies for moral bioenhancement might misfire or be intentionally misused, thereby producing moral deterioration. Underlying some of these worries is the observation that there is little agreement on which psychological transformations would constitute moral improvements, and in which contexts. Defenders of moral enhancement have made various proposals for resolving or side-stepping these disagreements, but it remains unclear how far these proposals can take us beyond establishing consensus on the worst types of moral failure. (shrink)

It is often thought that the numerous contradictory perspectives in Margaret Cavendish's writings demonstrate her inability to reconcile her feminism with her conservative, royalist politics. In this book Lisa Walters challenges this view and demonstrates that Cavendish's ideas more closely resemble republican thought, and that her methodology is the foundation for subversive political, scientific and gender theories. With an interdisciplinary focus Walters closely examines Cavendish's work and its context, providing the reader with an enriched understanding of women's contribution to (...) early modern scientific theory, political philosophy, culture and folklore. Considering also Cavendish's ideas in relation to Hobbes and Paracelsus, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students of literature, philosophy, history of ideas, political theory, gender studies and history of science. (shrink)

Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can.".

This paper investigates how deans and directors at the top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the "Financial Times" in their 2006 Global MBA rankings) respond to questions about the inclusion and coverage of the topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability at their respective institutions. This work purposely investigates each of the three topics separately. Our findings reveal that: (1) a majority of the schools require that one or more of these topics be covered in their MBA (...) curriculum and one-third of the schools require coverage of all three topics as part of the MBA curriculum, (2) there is a trend toward the inclusion of sustainability-related courses, (3) there is a higher percentage of student interest in these topics (as measured by the presence of a Net Impact club) in the top 10 schools, and (4) several schools are teaching these topics using experiential learning and immersion techniques. We note a fivefold increase in the number of stand-alone ethics courses since a 1988 investigation on ethics, and we include other findings about institutional support of centers or special programs; as well as a discussion of integration, teaching techniques, and notable practices in relation to all three topics. (shrink)

Unilateral spatial neglect is a disorder characterized by the failure to report, respond to, or orient toward the contralateral side of space to a brain lesion. Current assessment methods often fail to discover milder forms, cannot differentiate between unilateral spatial neglect subtypes and lack ecological validity. There is also a need for treatment methods that target subtypes. Immersive virtual reality systems in combination with eye-tracking have the potential to overcome these shortcomings, by providing more naturalistic environments and tasks, with sensitive (...) and detailed measures. This systematic review examines the state of the art of research on these technologies as applied in the assessment and treatment of USN. As we found no studies that combined immersive VR and ET, we reviewed these approaches individually. The review of VR included seven articles, the ET review twelve. The reviews revealed promising results. All included studies found significant group-level differences for several USN measures. In addition, several studies found asymmetric behavior in VR and ET tasks for patients who did not show signs of USN in conventional tests. Particularly promising features were multitasking in complex VR environments and detailed eye-movement analysis. No VR and only a few ET studies attempted to differentiate USN subtypes, although the technologies appeared appropriate. One ET study grouped USN participants using individual heatmaps, and another differentiated between subtypes on drawing tasks. Regarding ecological validity, although no studies tested the prognostic validity of their assessment methods, VR and ET studies utilized naturalistic tasks and stimuli reflecting everyday situations. Technological characteristics, such as the field of view and refresh rate of the head-mounted displays, could be improved, though, to improve ecological validity. We found no studies that utilized VR or ET technologies for USN treatment up until the search date of the 26th of February 2020. In conclusion, VR-ET-based systems show great potential for USN assessment. VR-ET holds great promise for treatment, for example, by monitoring behavior and adapting and tailoring to the individual person’s needs and abilities. Future research should consider developing methods for individual subtypes and differential diagnostics to inform individual treatment programs. (shrink)

Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to (...) understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. (shrink)

A central feature of ordinary moral thought is that moral judgment is mind-independent in the following sense: judging something to be morally wrong does not thereby make it morally wrong. To deny this would be to accept a form of subjectivism. Neil Sinclair (2008) makes a novel attempt to show how expressivism is simultaneously committed to (1) an understanding of moral judgments as expressions of attitudes and (2) the rejection of subjectivism. In this paper, I discuss Sinclair’s defense of anti-subjectivist (...) moral mind-independence on behalf of the expressivist, and I argue that the account does not fully succeed. An examination of why it does not is instructive, and it reveals a fundamental dilemma for the expressivist. I offer a suggestion for how the expressivist might respond to the dilemma and so uphold Sinclair’s defense. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the (...) aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties, takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view. (shrink)

Epistemology needs to account for the success of science. In True Enough, Catherine Elgin argues that a veritist epistemology is inadequate to this task. She advocates shifting epistemology’s focus away from true belief and toward understanding, and further, jettisoning truth from its privileged place in epistemological theorizing. Pace Elgin, I argue that epistemology’s accommodation of science does not require rejecting truth as the central epistemic value. Instead, it requires understanding veritism in an ecumenical way that acknowledges a rich array of (...) truth-oriented values. ¶ In place of veritism, Elgin offers a holistic epistemology that takes epistemic norms to have their genesis in our collective practice of deliberation. The acceptability of epistemic norms turns on epistemic responsibility, as opposed to reliability, and truth-conduciveness is rejected as the standard of evaluation for arguments and methods of inquiry. I argue, by way of an extended discussion of a high-profile and controversial criminal case, that this leaves epistemic practices and their products inadequately grounded. I offer an alternative, veritistic account of epistemic norms that retains a modified version of truth-conduciveness as a standard of evaluation. However, my alternative account of epistemic norms is congenial to Elgin’s holistic epistemology, and, I suggest, could be incorporated within it. (shrink)

Such an absence seems ultimately fatal. Yet as this volume amply demonstrates, the richness of his social theory can be opened up by contemporary feminism.

When two actors have the same mental state but one happens to harm another person (unlucky actor) and the other one does not (lucky actor), the latter elicits a milder moral judgement. To understand how this outcome effect would affect post-harm interactions between victims and perpetrators, we examined how the social role from which transgressions are perceived moderates the outcome effect, and how outcome effects on moral judgements transfer to agentic and communal interpersonal goals. Three vignette experiments (N = 950) (...) revealed similar outcome effects on moral judgement across social roles. In contrast, outcome effects on agentic and communal goals varied by social role: victims exhibited the strongest outcome effects and perpetrators the weakest, with bystanders falling in between. Moral judgement did not mediate the effects of outcome severity on interpersonal goals. We discuss the possibility that outcome severity raises normative expectations regarding post-harm interactions that are unrelated to moral considerations. (shrink)

I motivate and develop a novel account of the epistemic assessability of suspension as a development of my knowledge-first, virtue-epistemological research program. First, I extend an argument of Ernest Sosa's for the claim that evidentialism cannot adequately account for the epistemic assessability of suspension. This includes a kind of knowledge-first evidentialism of the sort advocated by Timothy Williamson. I agree with Sosa that the reasons why evidentialism fails motivate a virtue-epistemological approach, but argue that my knowledge-first account is preferable to (...) his view. According to my account, rational belief is belief that manifests proper practical respect for what it takes to know. Beliefs are the only primary bearers of epistemic evaluation since they are the only candidates for knowledge. However, suspension can manifest a derivative kind of practical respect for what it takes to know. Thus, we can explain why the same sort of assessment is applicable to both belief and suspension, and why belief has a privileged claim to these properties. Lastly, I'll look at Sosa's and Williamson's treatments of Pyrrhonian skepticism, which treats a certain kind of suspension as the epistemically superior practice, and argue that my account provides a better anti-skeptical response than either of their approaches. (shrink)

In this accessible yet throught-provoking work, Lisa Tessman takes us through gripping examples of the impossible demands of morality -- some epic, and others quotidian -- whose central predicament is: How do we make decisions when morality demands we do something that we cannot?

Human motor skills are exceptional compared to other species, no less than their cognitive skills. In this perspective paper, we suggest that “movement matters!,” implying that motor development is a crucial driving force of cognitive development, much more impactful than previously acknowledged. Thus, we argue that to fully understand and explain developmental changes, it is necessary to consider the interaction of motor and cognitive skills. We exemplify this argument by introducing the concept of “embodied planning,” which takes an embodied cognition (...) perspective on planning development throughout childhood. From this integrated, comprehensive framework, we present a novel climbing paradigm as the ideal testbed to explore the development of embodied planning in childhood and across the lifespan. Finally, we outline future research directions and discuss practical applications of the work on developmental embodied planning for robotics, sports, and education. (shrink)

As has been widely observed, histories of feminism have often been conceived via notions of generation where feminism is positioned as a kind of familial property, a form of inheritance and legacy which is transmitted through generations. Thus feminism and its history have been imagined as following a familial mode of social reproduction. Despite the dominance of this model, it has nonetheless been subject to critique, not least because of its reliance on teleological and progressive notions of history. Judith Roof, (...) for example, has called for new conceptualizations of temporality in an attempt to decouple histories of feminism from a generational model. This need to move away from a generational model is also underscored by what commentators such as Angela McRobbie have identified as a dispersal of feminism – a broad-scale circulation of feminist values in popular culture – as well as by the emergence of a certain kind of reflexivity whereby past and current feminist practices are increasingly subject to critique. For McRobbie such developments are understood as part of the articulation of a post-feminism in which feminism can no longer be passed on as it is positioned as having already passed away. However, in this article via an exploration of recent accounts of the passing of feminism it is suggested that what allows for a declaration of this passing is an attachment to feminism as a particular way of knowing as well as to a particular arrangement of the social. Indeed, it will be suggested that recent histories of feminism and commentaries on the state of contemporary feminism are driven not only by generational logics but also by these attachments – attachments which lose and fix both feminism and women in time. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to the emerging field of the philosophy of money and finance. The field addresses philosophical issues about the nature of money and the normative foundations of financial systems. Although philosophical theorizing about money and finance dates back to Antiquity, the topic has only recently emerged as a central research focus. The chapter also introduces the present anthology and locates its parts and chapters in the broader field. More specifically, the anthology is divided into four main (...) parts: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Political Philosophy. Each part contains four chapters on different but interrelated topics, which are all introduced here. (shrink)

In his article ‘Making semantics for essence’ (Inquiry, 2019), Justin Zylstra proposed a truthmaker semantics for essence and used it to evaluate principles regarding the explanatory role of essence. The aim of this article is to show that Zylstra's semantics has implausible implications and thus cannot adequately capture essence.

What is it to base a belief on reasons? Existing attempts to give an account of the basing relation encounter a dilemma: either one appeals to some kind of neutral process that does not adequately reflect the way basing is a content‐sensitive first‐personal activity, or one appeals to linking or bridge principles that over‐intellectualize and threaten regress. We explain why this dilemma arises, and diagnose the commitments that are key obstacles to providing a satisfactory account. We explain why they should (...) be rejected anyway, and then offer a new, knowledge‐first virtue epistemological theory of the basing relation that shows how we can substantially theorize about mental processes without these commitments. The resulting view plausibly captures the way in which basing is an inherently mental and content‐sensitive process. (shrink)

I develop a new account of perception on which it is metaphysically and explanatorily prior to illusion, hallucination, and perceptual experience. I argue that this view can rival the mainstream experience-first representationalist approach in explanatory power by using competences as a key theoretical tool: it can help to explain the nature of perception, how illusion and hallucination depend on it, and how cognitive science can help to explain in virtue of what we perceive. According to the Competence View, perception is (...) a kind of target-oriented activity that manifests the agent’s perceptual competence. This characterization of perception helps to explain the role of the subject in perception, as well as how perception has accuracy conditions. Illusion and hallucination are explained as degenerate exercises of perceptual competences. Lastly, I show the Competence View provides a flexible and robust framework for investigation in cognitive science. (shrink)

Structural analogies connect Williamson’s epistemology and action theory: for example, action is the direction-of-fit mirror image of knowledge, and knowledge stands to belief as action stands to intention. These structural analogies, for Williamson, are meant to illuminate more generally how ‘mirrors’ reversing direction of fit should be understood as connecting the spectrum of our cognitive and practically oriented mental states. This paper has two central aims, one negative and the other positive. The negative aim is to highlight some intractable problems (...) with Williamson’s preferred analogical picture, which links the cognitive and the practical through the nexus of direction-of-fit mirroring. The positive aim of the paper is to propose a better alternative. In particular, we show that an achievement-theoretic proposal captures what is in common across the range of attitudes that exhibit the kind of structure that knowledge-belief, action-desire/intention do, while at the same time avoiding the problems shown to face Williamson’s proposed picture. Moreover, we draw attention to several key theoretical benefits of embracing our proposed achievement-theoretic picture, including some of the key benefits of the knowledge-first programme that Williamson’s own analogies were designed to secure. (shrink)

In this article the increasing significance of Bourdieu’s social theory is mapped in recent sociological accounts of gender in late-modern societies. What is highlighted in particular is the influence of Bourdieu’s social theory, and especially his arguments regarding critical reflexivity and social transformation, on a specific thesis which is common to a number of contemporary feminist accounts of gender transformations in late modernity. Here it is suggested that in late modernity there is a lack of fit between habitus and field (...) in certain public spheres of action via an increasing transposition or movement of the feminine habitus from private to public spheres, which is linked to a heightened critical reflexivity vis-à-vis gender and to detraditionalization. In this article, however, a number of limits regarding this line of argument are highlighted, especially those flowing from the unproblematic coupling of reflexivity with detraditionalization. This exploration in turn leads to a critical discussion of Bourdieu’s ideas regarding social transformation. In particular it is asked why, when thinking about social transformation, does Bourdieu abandon his own principles regarding practice? (shrink)

This volume presents cutting-edge theory and research on emotions as constructed events rather than fixed, essential entities. It provides a thorough introduction to the assumptions, hypotheses, and scientific methods that embody psychological constructionist approaches. Leading scholars examine the neurobiological, cognitive/perceptual, and social processes that give rise to the experiences Western cultures call sadness, anger, fear, and so on. The book explores such compelling questions as how the brain creates emotional experiences, whether the "ingredients" of emotions also give rise to other (...) mental states, and how to define what is or is not an emotion. Introductory and concluding chapters by the editors identify key themes and controversies and compare psychological construction to other theories of emotion. (shrink)

This very short paper highlights some of my recent and forthcoming work on “good epistemic practices” in the financial services industry. It identifies some epistemic dimensions of risk management in banking and illustrates how managing for good epistemic practices might be helpful.

Increase or decrease in subsequent action following a low-cost act of support for a cause can be predicted from both commitment theory and the slacktivism effect. In this paper, we report on three studies that tested type of motivation as a moderator of the effect of an initial act of support [wearing a badge and writing a slogan ] has on support for blood donation. Small-scale meta-analysis performed on data from the three studies shows that activating prosocial motivation generally leads (...) to greater support for the cause after an initial act of support compared to the control condition, while the effect from impression-management motivation can either be negative or null. (shrink)

I extend my direct virtue epistemology to explain how a knowledge-first framework can account for two kinds of positive epistemic standing, one tracked by externalists, who claim that the virtuous duplicate lacks justification, the other tracked by internalists, who claim that the virtuous duplicate has justification, and moreover that such justification is not enjoyed by the vicious duplicate. It also explains what these kinds of epistemic standing have to do with each other. I argue that all justified beliefs are good (...) candidates for knowledge, and are such because they are exercises of competences to know. However, there are two importantly different senses in which a belief may be a good candidate for knowledge, one corresponding to an externalist kind of justification and the other corresponding to an internalist one. I show how the account solves the new evil demon problem in a more satisfactory way than existing accounts. We end up with a view of knowledge, justification, and rationality that is plausible, motivated, and theoretically unified. (shrink)

Stem cell research. Drug company influence. Abortion. Contraception. Long-term and end-of-life care. Human participants research. Informed consent. The list of ethical issues in science, medicine, and public health is long and continually growing. These complex issues pose a daunting task for professionals in the expanding field of bioethics. But what of the practice of bioethics itself? What issues do ethicists and bioethicists confront in their efforts to facilitate sound moral reasoning and judgment in a variety of venues? Are those immersed (...) in the field capable of making the right decisions? How and why do they face moral challenge -- and even compromise -- as ethicists? What values should guide them? In The Ethics of Bioethics, Lisa A. Eckenwiler and Felicia G. Cohn tackle these questions head on, bringing together notable medical ethicists and people outside the discipline to discuss common criticisms, the field's inherent tensions, and efforts to assign values and assess success. Through twenty-five lively essays examining the field's history and trends, shortcomings and strengths, and the political and policy interplay within the bioethical realm, this comprehensive book begins a much-needed critical and constructive discussion of the moral landscape of bioethics. (shrink)

Over the past decade, there has been an extensive debate about whether researchers have an obligation to disclose genetic research findings, including primary and secondary findings. There appears to be an emerging (but disputed) view that researchers have some obligation to disclose some genetic findings to some research participants. The contours of this obligation, however, remain unclear. -/- As this paper will explore, much of this confusion is definitional or conceptual in nature. The extent of a researcher’s obligation to return (...) secondary and other research findings is often limited by reference to terms and concepts like “incidental,” “analytic validity,” “clinical validity,” “clinical relevance,” “clinical utility,” “clinical significance,” “actionability,” and “desirability.” These terms are used in different ways by different writers to describe obligations in different sorts of cases. -/- Underneath this definitional confusion is a general notion, supported by much of the literature, that findings only need to be disclosed when they surpass certain presumably objective or measureable thresholds, such as medical importance or scientific reproducibility. The problem is that there is significant variability in the way that these terms and concepts are used in the literature and, as such, in defining the scope of an obligation to return findings that surpasses the relevant thresholds. -/- The goal of this paper is to analyze the definitional muddle underlying the debate about returning genetic research findings, with the hope of answering a few questions. First, what is the range of definitions being used in this debate? Based on an extensive literature review, Part 1 will lay out a range of articulated definitions for each relevant term, with the goal of categorizing them into a handful of distinct types. Part 2 explains the definitional redundancy and confusion in the current literature, and, drawing from the terminological patterns identified in Part 1, outlines more cohesive building blocks to inform the development of future disclosure frameworks.Our minimum goal in articulating these conceptual building blocks is to promote clearer articulations of, and distinctions between, future disclosure frameworks. More ambitiously, we suggest which definitions and conceptualizations we consider most appropriate to use in future disclosure frameworks. Here, we seek to balance benefits to participants through the disclosure of important information with the minimization of undue burdens on individual researchers and the research enterprise more generally. -/- Our analysis builds upon the central philosophical distinction between concepts and conceptions. The basic idea is that the “concept” of X refers to the general (and relatively uncontroversial) structure/shape of X, while various “conceptions” of X are more particular, filled out, and controversial elaborations of the concept. In other words, “concepts” of X will be formal representations of X, while “conceptions” of X will be substantive interpretations of the key elements and relationships operating within that formal framework. (Implicit in this distinction is an important point about the nature of disagreement – namely, that in order for two or more parties to “disagree” about X as opposed to simply talk past one another, there must be at least enough shared agreement about X to know that the parties are referring to the same thing. A concept of X provides this point of common agreement, while competing conceptions of X mark the areas where disagreement arises.) In this paper, we will employ this distinction in a fundamental way to clarify exactly where the primary disagreements arise in the debate over disclosing genetic research findings. -/- We propose that, underlying all the seeming confusion and disagreement, there are three central and widely agreed upon concepts at work in this debate—validity, value, and volition. The first two concepts concern the nature of the information itself. An obligation to disclose only exists when findings are valid and have value but there are competing conceptions of how to determine or define validity and valuableness. The third concept—volition—pertains not to the information but rather to the person to whom it will be disclosed. Does that person want or not want the information, and what is the best way of determining this? Here, too, competing conceptions arise. Our key point, though, is that almost all of the ethical disagreement arises because of competing conceptions of these three concepts. Understanding and appreciating this key point can help to refocus the substantive debate by providing some common ground to start from in determining how best to interpret these shared concepts. This refocusing can, ideally, produce more productive debate and facilitate some progress in resolving it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile over the last few decades AI research has largely focused on building tools and applications, recent technological developments have prompted a resurgence of interest in building a genuinely intelligent artificial agent – one that has a mind in the same sense that humans and animals do. In this paper, I offer a theoretical and methodological framework for this project of investigating “artificial minded intelligence” that can help to unify existing approaches and provide new avenues for research. I first outline (...) three desiderata that a framework for AMI research should satisfy. In Section 1, I further motivate the desiderata as well as the need for a new framework. Section 2 develops a general methodological approach, the “generative methodology,” and Section 3 develops a version of this methodology, the “Competence Framework for AI research”. (shrink)