fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

The world of the Hindi heroes of the 1970s, while decked in battle gear, largely belonged to the official state apparatus, either as members of vigilante self-defence squads – of which Bahadur was a pioneer – or bonafide members of the police force, like Inspector Vikram. The costumed superhero only emerged at the end of the Nehruvian period, gradually coming to defy its signature science and rationality. My article seeks to explore questions of the political economy of the superhero (...) genre and the affective valences of the supernatural in imaging/negotiating the national and transnational, through this conjunctural moment of the late 1970s and early 1980s. (shrink)

In one of his earliest dialogues, the Soliloquia, Augustine identifies the liberal arts (disciplinae) with truth (veritas), and employs this somewhat puzzling identification as a premise in his infamous proof of the immortality of the soul (Sol. 2.24). In this paper, I examine Augustine’s argument for this peculiar identification. Augustine maintains both (1) that the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are true, and (2) that the liberal art of dialectic (disciplina disputandi) is the “truth through which all disciplines are (...) true” (Sol. 2.21). I argue that Augustine identifies the liberal arts with truth because (1) the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are learned, and (2) dialectic’s structure is essential to the liberal arts. I further suggest that the subject matter of each liberal art reflects a distinct segment of intelligible reality, that is, the realm of the intelligible Forms. (shrink)

Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive. Some governments have declared internet addiction a major public health concern, and the World Health Organization has characterized excessive internet use as a growing problem. Our article shows why scholars, policy makers, and the managers of social media companies should treat social media addiction as a serious moral problem. While the benefits of social media are not negligible, we argue that social media addiction raises unique ethical (...) concerns not raised by other, more familiar addictive products, such as alcohol and cigarettes. In particular, we argue that addicting users to social media is impermissible because it unjustifiably harms users in a way that is both demeaning and objectionably exploitative. Importantly, the attention-economy business model of social media companies strongly incentivizes them to perpetrate this wrongdoing. (shrink)

Progress in psychological science can be limited by a number of factors, not least of which are the starting assumptions of scientists themselves. We believe that some influential accounts of autism rest on a questionable assumption that many of its behavioral characteristics indicate a lack of social interest – an assumption that is flatly contradicted by the testimony of many autistic people themselves. In this article, we challenge this assumption by describing alternative explanations for four such behaviors: low levels of (...) eye contact, infrequent pointing, motor stereotypies, and echolalia. The assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviors indicate diminished social motivation has had profound and often negative effects on the ways they are studied and treated. We argue that understanding and supporting autistic individuals will require interrogating this assumption, taking autistic testimony seriously, considering alternative explanations for unusual behaviors, and investigating unconventional – even idiosyncratic – ways in which autistic individuals may express their social interest. These steps are crucial, we believe, for creating a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism. (shrink)

Autistic children do not consistently show conventional signs of social engagement, which some have interpreted to mean that they are not interested in connecting with other people. If someone does not act like they are interested in connecting with you, it may make it difficult to feel connected to them. And yet, some parents report feeling strongly connected to their autistic children. We conducted phenomenological interviews with 13 mothers to understand how they experienced connection with their 5- to 14-year-old nonspeaking (...) autistic children. Mothers of nonspeaking autistic children represent a unique group in which to study connection because their children both may not seem interested in connecting with them and have limited ability to communicate effectively using speech, a common way people connect with each other. The mothers in this study interpreted a range of child behaviors—some unconventional, but many conventional—as signs that their children were interested in connecting with them, (re)framed child behaviors that could undermine connection as caused by factors unrelated to the relationship, and expressed several convictions that may help build and sustain connection in the face of uncertainty about the meaning of their children’s behavior. Even though their autistic children may not consistently act in conventional socially oriented ways, these mothers reported perceiving their children’s behavior as embedded within an emotionally reciprocal relationship. (shrink)

When an employee’s off-duty conduct generates mass social media outrage, managers commonly respond by firing the employee. This, I argue, can be a mistake. The thesis I defend is the following: the fact that a firing would occur in a mass social media outrage context brought about by the employee’s off-duty conduct generates a strong ethical reason weighing against the act. In particular, it contributes to the firing constituting an inappropriate act of blame. Scholars who caution against firing an employee (...) for off-duty conduct have thus far focused primarily on due process related issues or legal concerns pertaining to free speech, lifestyle discrimination, and employment at-will. However, these concerns amount to only a partial, and contingent, diagnosis of what is at issue. I argue that even when due process considerations are met, firings in these contexts can be unjustified. Moreover, even if a business is not concerned with the unethical conduct per se, but is rather strictly concerned with PR, the argument I advance nevertheless provides one important ethical reason that counts against firings in mass social media outrage contexts. Given that managers are often under significant pressure to respond swiftly in cases where an employee is at the center of mass social media outrage, it is especially important that scholars begin to clarify the normative issues. This article builds on the burgeoning philosophical literature on the ethics of blame and provides a novel account of a distinctive ethical concern that arises with firings in mass social media outrage contexts. (shrink)

Humans are unique in the animal world in the extent to which their day-to-day behavior is governed by a complex set of rules and principles commonly called norms. Norms delimit the bounds of proper behavior in a host of domains, providing an invisible web of normative structure embracing virtually all aspects of social life. People also find many norms to be deeply meaningful. Norms give rise to powerful subjective feelings that, in the view of many, are an important part of (...) what it is to be a human agent. Despite the vital role of norms in human lives and human behavior, and the central role they play in explanations in the social sciences, there has been very little systematic attention devoted to norms in cognitive science. Much existing research is partial and piecemeal, making it difficult to know how individual findings cohere into a comprehensive picture. Our goal in this essay is to offer an account of the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying norms that integrates what is known and can serve as a framework for future research. (shrink)

Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability of EAW for (...) a given jurisdiction depends on existing complementarities among the institutions that constitute the jurisdiction’s political economy. Notably, our view takes seriously the ethical concerns EAW critics have raised by showing how these concerns can be mitigated through public policy measures that do not require eliminating EAW. (shrink)

This article takes direction from the transnational feminist lesbian encounter that took place between the Dutch collective Sister Outsider and Audre Lorde in the 1980s to reflect on the role of archives within transnational feminist research. Drawing on archival materials from the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV) at Atria (Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History) in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, I consider how (...) fragmented archives offer stories on kinship, intimacy and loss. Taking into account the ‘absences’ and ‘presences’ (Lewis, 2017) produced in this archival research project, I propose an archival research methodology that is rooted in a practice of ‘orientation’ (Ahmed, 2006a, 2006b), ‘listening’ (Campt, 2017) and ‘intervention’ (Appadurai, 2003). (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that if a set of plausible conditions obtain, then driving a standard vehicle rather than riding in an autonomous vehicle (AV) will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. In addition, we argue that a ban on the production, sale, and purchase of new standard vehicles would also become justified. We make this case in part by highlighting that the central reasons typically offered in support of state-mandated vaccination will also (...) support mandating AV use. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of our argument for the obligations of vehicle-producing firms. (shrink)

NEMO means Network Mobility which is the extension of Mipv6 and it is invented for accessing internet for the group of people when they are travelling in Vehicle as Network group. During handoff while exchanging Binding Updates between the Mobile Network Node, Correspondent Node and Home Agent, many security threats are present during those messages exchange. It may prone to several standard malicious attacks on the BU and Binding Acknowledgement. An efficient end-to-end security method is required to protect the BU (...) Exchange between MNN, HA and CN. In this paper, a secure architecture is proposed to provide authentication and confidentiality at each level of communication using a 3-Party Key Exchange called 3-PKE-NEMO with the help of Bilinear Pairing Theorem. Handoff delay is reduced without compromising security strength. The whole experimentation of this proposed work is carried out using NS2 simulation tool and authentication proof is given using BAN logic between all the nodes in NEMO. The proposed security architecture is compared with related existing solutions and found to be more secure. (shrink)

Why do organizations conduct job interviews? The traditional view of interviewing holds that interviews are conducted, despite their steep costs, to predict a candidate’s future performance and fit. This view faces a twofold threat: the behavioral and algorithmic threats. Specifically, an overwhelming body of behavioral research suggests that we are bad at predicting performance and fit; furthermore, algorithms are already better than us at making these predictions in various domains. If the traditional view captures the whole story, then interviews seem (...) to be a costly, archaic human resources procedure sustained by managerial overconfidence. However, building on T. M. Scanlon’s work, we offer the value of choice theory of interviewing and argue that interviews can be vindicated once we recognize that they generate commonly overlooked kinds of noninstrumental value. On our view, interviews should thus not be entirely replaced by algorithms, however sophisticated algorithms ultimately become at predicting performance and fit. (shrink)

We've outsourced too much of our thinking. How do we get it back? At the height of the 2014 Ebola epidemic, a man who had recently returned from West Africa with a fever and severe abdominal pain entered a hospital in Dallas--and was sent home. Even after healthcare workers learned their patient had come from Liberia, ground zero of the Ebola hot zone, not one of those treating him considered the deadly virus as a possible cause of his condition. Shortly (...) after the man died, one of the nurses who had treated him sought clearance from the Centers for Disease Control to board a commercial flight. She reported a fever of 99.5 degrees, but because the protocol restricted travel at 100.4 degrees or higher, she was cleared. She was later confirmed to be infected with Ebola. A public health disaster akin to the one depicted in the movie Contagion was averted, but only by sheer luck. How could this happen? As Harvard lecturer and global trend watcher Vikram Mansharamani shows in this eye-opening and perspective-shifting book, our complex, data-flooded world has made us ever more reliant on experts, protocols, and technology. We've stopped thinking for ourselves. (Have you ever followed your GPS device to a deserted parking lot?) With stark and compelling examples drawn from business, sports, and everyday life, the author illustrates how in a very real sense we have outsourced too much of our thinking, relinquishing our autonomy. Of course, experts, protocols, and computer-based systems are essential to helping us make informed decisions. What we need is a new approach for integrating these information sources more effectively, harnessing the value they provide without undermining our own autonomy. The author provides principles and techniques for doing just that, empowering readers with a more critical and nuanced approach to making decisions. Think for Yourself is an indispensable guide for those looking to restore self-reliant thinking in a data-driven and technology-dependent yet overwhelmingly uncertain world. (shrink)

Underdetermination of theory choice claims that empirical evidence fails to provide sufficient grounds for choosing a theory over its rivals. We explore the epistemological and methodological significance of this thesis by utilising a classificatory scheme to situate three arguments that purport to establish its plausibility. Proponents of these three arguments, W.V.O Quine, John Earman, and Kyle Stanford, use different premises to arrive at the conclusion that theory choice is empirically underdetermined and their classification along the proposed schema brings out the (...) variety in underdetermination arguments and the historical trajectory of the thesis. Although the epistemological significance of underdetermination—it is seen as undermining the doctrine of scientific realism—is widely discussed in the literature, Quine understood the acceptance of the thesis as interrogating the attitude one is justified in adopting towards rival theories. We argue that sticking with one’s own theory in the face of underdetermination leads to a distinct type of disagreement, which we present as the methodological significance of underdetermination. The examination of the methodological significance of underdetermination allows us to propose weak underdetermination as a philosophically interesting variant of underdetermination. (shrink)

In response to the 32 commentaries, we clarify and extend two of the central arguments in our target article: Social motivation is a dynamic, emergent process, not a static characteristic of individuals, and autistic perspectives are essential to the study of autistic social motivation. We elaborate on how taking these two arguments seriously can contribute to a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism.

Meno’s paradox raises serious challenges against most fundamental epistemological quest regarding the possibility of inquiry and discovery. In his response, Socrates proposes the theory of anamnesis and his ingenious distinction between doxa and episteme. But, he fails in his attempt to solve the paradox and some recent responses have also not succeeded in settling it, satisfactorily. We shall argue that epistemological issues approached in a Darwinian spirit offer a therapeutic resolution without rejecting the basic tenets of Plato’s epistemology. Drawing from (...) Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, Darwinism is regarded as a metaphysical research program, rather than using it to collapse Plato’s metaphysics into biology. (shrink)

The theme of essential futility, absurdity, utter incomprehensibility of life and death is stressed in almost allthe writings of Albert Camus. Like Buddha he was shocked by the sight of human misery and mortality. Yet, paradoxically was attracted to the essential desirability of it. Although completely ruffled by the consciousness of an ambiguous and silent God, he was not unaware of “that strange joy that comes from a tranquil conscience”, a perfect inner harmony one experiences on attaining true knowledge. Upanishads (...) are a search for this very reality underlying the flux of things. Malraux, Sartre, and others had already developed this line of thought before Camus. What is essential and original in him is, firstly, that the world’s absurdity not a cause for despair, but on the contrary, a spur to happiness. And secondly, that , mortality and suffering actually enhance the value of life: they invite men to live more intensely. In addition to absurdity another subject the Upanishads insistently deal with is ethics, the purity of human conduct. Very much in the manner of the Existentialists, the Upanishads, aeons before, hold man himself responsible for his actions. Dr. Radhakrishnan, very aptly says that Existentialism is a new name for an ancient method. In Albert Camus and India Sharad Chandra has put forward a convincing comparative study of the two philosophies as expounded in their respective literatures. Her argument is that the parallel ideas found in the two views are not mere fortuitous conclusions but, either the result of seminal influence, or emanation of a common, deeper vision. Reading of the book will help the reader to form a firm opinion. Camus had read the Gita and had attended the lectures given by Swami Shraddhananda of the Ramakrishna Mission in Paris. (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that addresses these issues. The (...) account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)

Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind being pulled to think about a certain topic). Self‐control ostensibly seems quite (...) different because it regulates complex, temporally extended states such as emotions and cravings. But critically, these complex states also exhibit important componential structure: They rely on response pulses as a key means by which they bring about action. The overall picture is that self‐control consists of skilled sequences of cognitive control directed against extended streams of response pulses that arise from states such as emotions and cravings, thus preventing these states from being effective in action. The account clarifies the “atoms” of self‐control—the elemental units that get combined in complex ways to produce different kinds of self‐control actions. Surprisingly, the account, which is derived from research in cognitive science, aligns nicely with the commonsense conception of self‐control. (shrink)

Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures provides a feminist anaylsis of the questions of sexual and gender politics, economic and cultural marginality, and anti-racist and anti-colonial practices both in the "West" and in the "Third World." This collection, edited by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, charts the underlying theoretical perspectives and organization practices of the different varieties of feminism that take on questions of colonialism, imperialism, and the repressive rule of colonial, post-colonial and advanced capitalist nation-states. It provides (...) a comparative, relational, historically grounded conception of feminist praxis that differs markedly from the liberal pluralist, multicultural understanding that sheapes some of the dominant version of Euro-American feminism. As a whole, the collection poses a unique challenge to the naturalization of gender based in the experiences, histories and practices of Euro-American women. (shrink)

Brands are widely regarded as a constellation of shared associations surrounding a company and its offerings. On the traditional view of brands, these associations are regarded as perceptions and attitudes in consumers’ minds in relation to a company. We argue that this traditional framing of brands faces an explanatory problem: the inability to satisfactorily explain why certain branding activism initiatives elicit the moralized reactive attitudes that are paradigmatic responses to wrongdoing. In this paper, we argue for a reframing of brands (...) that calls for viewing brands as a series of normatively binding expectations that are ethically akin to promises. Our promissory framing of brands avoids the explanatory problem, illuminates a number of ethical requirements on branding, and reconceptualizes the role of brand managers. (shrink)

According to Interest-Relative Invariantism, whether an agent knows that p, or possesses other sorts of epistemic properties or relations, is in part determined by the practical costs of being wrong about p. Recent studies in experimental philosophy have tested the claims of IRI. After critically discussing prior studies, we present the results of our own experiments that provide strong support for IRI. We discuss our results in light of complementary findings by other theorists, and address the challenge posed by a (...) leading intellectualist alternative to our view.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The ability to dominate or exercise will in social encounters is often assumed in social theory to define power, but there is another form of power that is often confused with it and rarely analyzed as distinct: logistics or the ability to mobilize the natural world for political effect. I develop this claim through a case study of seventeenthcentury France, where the power of impersonal rule, exercised through logistics, was fundamental to state formation. Logistical activity circumvented patrimonial networks, disempowering the (...) nobility and supporting a new regime of impersonal rule: the modern, territorial state. (shrink)

For about 2500 years, from Plato’s time until the closing decades of the 20^th century, the dominant view was that the emotions are quite distinct from the processes of rational thinking and decision making, and are often a major impediment to those processes. But in recent years this orthodoxy has been challenged in a number of ways. Damasio (1994) has made a forceful case that the traditional view, which he has dubbed _Descartes’ Error_, is quite wrong, because emotions play a (...) fundamental role in rational decision making. When the systems underlying the emotions don’t function properly, Damasio maintains, rational decision-making breaks down. Other theorists, most notably Robert Frank (1988), have argued that if we view the emotions through the longer lens of evolutionary theory, we can see that much of what looked to be irrational in the emotions is actually part of an effective strategy for achieving agents’ goals and maximizing their reproductive success. In the wake of this and other recent work, the pendulum of received opinion has swung in the other direction. The emotions are now increasingly regarded as inherently rational, as Frank maintains, and as important components of other rational processes. (shrink)

Incompatibilists and compatibilists (mostly) agree that there is a strong intuition that a manipulated agent, i.e., an agent who is the victim of methods such as indoctrination or brainwashing, is unfree. They differ however on why exactly this intuition arises. Incompatibilists claim our intuitions in these cases are sensitive to the manipulated agent’s lack of ultimate control over her actions, while many compatibilists argue that our intuitions respond to damage inflicted by manipulation on the agent’s psychological and volitional capacities. Much (...) hangs on this issue because manipulation-based arguments are among the most important for defending incompatibilist views of free will. In this paper, I investigate this issue from a experimental perspective, using a set of statistical methods well suited for identifying the features of hypothetical cases people’s intuitions are responding to. Results strongly support the compatibilist view—subjects’ tendency to judge that a manipulated agent is unfree was found to depend on their judgments that the agent suffers impairments to certain psychological/volitional capacities that compatibilists say are the basis for free will. I discuss the significance of these results for the use of manipulation cases in the philosophical debate about free will. (shrink)

Recent studies by experimental philosophers demonstrate puzzling asymmetries in people’s judgments about intentional action, leading many philosophers to propose that normative factors are inappropriately influencing intentionality judgments. In this paper, I present and defend the Deep Self Model of judgments about intentional action that provides a quite different explanation for these judgment asymmetries. The Deep Self Model is based on the idea that people make an intuitive distinction between two parts of an agent’s psychology, an Acting Self that contains the (...) desires, means-end beliefs, and intentions that are the immediate causal source of an agent’s actions, and a Deep Self, which contains an agent’s stable and central psychological attitudes, including the agent’s values, principles, life goals, and other more fundamental attitudes. The Deep Self Model proposes that when people are asked to make judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally, in addition to standard criteria proposed in traditional models, people also assess an additional ‘Concordance Criterion’: Does the outcome concord with the psychological attitudes of the agent’s Deep Self? I show that the Deep Self Model can explain a very complex pattern of judgment asymmetries documented in the experimental philosophy literature, and does so in a way that has significant advantages over competing models. (shrink)

Dasabodhisattuppattikatha Edited and translated into English with an introduction by Dr. H. Saddhatissa. Pali Text Society, London. 166pp. £10.50.

An anti-representationalist view of language and a deflationary view of truth, key themes in contemporary pragmatism and especially Richard Rorty, do not undermine the notion, in critical theory, of ideology as 'false consciousness'. Both Foucault and Marx were opposed to what Marxists call historical idealism and so they should be seen as objecting to forms of ideology-critique that do not sufficiently avoid such an 'Hegelian' perspective. Foucault's general views on the relations between truth and power can plausibly be construed in (...) a way that makes them compatible with a Marxian critical theory. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have advanced a surprising conclusion: people's judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally are pervasively influenced by normative considerations. In this paper, we investigate the ‘Chairman case’, an influential case from this literature and disagree with this conclusion. Using a statistical method called structural path modeling, we show that people's attributions of intentional action to an agent are driven not by normative assessments, but rather by attributions of underlying values and characterological dispositions (...) to the agent. In a second study, we examined people's judgments about what they think drives asymmetric intuitions in the Chairman case and found that people are highly inaccurate in identifying which features of the case their intuitions track. In the final part of the paper, we discuss how the statistical methods used in this study can help philosophers with the critical features problem, the problem of figuring out which among the myriad features present in hypothetical cases are the critical ones that our intuitions are responsive to. We show how the methods used in this study have some advantages over both armchair methods used by traditional philosophers and survey methods used by experimental philosophers. (shrink)

Many commonly accepted models for understanding disability use a vertical method in which disability is defined as a category into which people are slotted based on whether or not they fit its definitional criteria. This method, and the models of disability developed in accordance with it, inevitably homogenizes the experiences of disabled people to preserve the integrity of the definition of disability that a given model provides. A hermeneutic investigation and critique of commonly accepted models for understanding disability will provide (...) an epistemological tool that makes it possible both to critique and to augment contemporary models of disability. (shrink)

The side-effect effect, in which an agent who does not speci␣cally intend an outcome is seen as having brought it about intentionally, is thought to show that moral factors inappropriately bias judgments of intentionality, and to challenge standard mental state models of intentionality judgments. This study used matched vignettes to dissociate a number of moral factors and mental states. Results support the view that mental states, and not moral factors, explain the side-effect effect. However, the critical mental states appear not (...) to be desires as proposed in standard models, but rather ‘deeper’ evaluative states including values and core evaluative attitudes. (shrink)

____Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic__ ____Futures__ provides a feminist anaylsis of the questions of sexual and gender politics, economic and cultural marginality, and anti-racist and anti-colonial practices both in the "West" and in the "Third World." This collection, edited by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, charts the underlying theoretical perspectives and organization practices of the different varieties of feminism that take on questions of colonialism, imperialism, and the repressive rule of colonial, post-colonial and advanced capitalist nation-states. It provides (...) a comparative, relational, historically grounded conception of feminist praxis that differs markedly from the liberal pluralist, multicultural understanding that sheapes some of the dominant version of Euro-American feminism. As a whole, the collection poses a unique challenge to the naturalization of gender based in the experiences, histories and practices of Euro-American women. (shrink)

The debates of the 1980s and 1990s on methodological individualism versus methodological holism have not been adequately resolved. Within analytical Marxism, G.A. Cohen, John Roemer, Jon Elster and others have come down in favour of methodological individualism as part of the effort to make analytical Marxism more 'scientific' and 'rigorous' than earlier versions of Marxism. In doing so they have presented methodological individualism as a necessary ingredient in ridding Marxism of obscurantism. This view is here challenged from a pragmatist philosophical (...) perspective. It is argued that, from such a perspective, the debates between the individualists and holists should have been dissolved rather than resolved in favour of the individualists. It is suggested that such dissolution would even strengthen analytical Marxism by redirecting analytical energies towards real social and political problems in the contemporary world and away from endless methodological debate. (shrink)

This article looks at the relationship between logistical power and the assemblages of sites that constitute modern states. Rather than treating states as centralizing institutions and singular sites of power, we treat them as multi-sited. They gain power by using logistical methods of problem solving, using infrastructures to enforce and depersonalize relations of domination and limit the autonomy of elites. But states necessarily solve diverse problems by different means in multiple locations. So, educating children is not continuous with governing colonies (...) even though both are necessary to nineteenth-century states. For this reason, states use logistical means of coordination to link sites, and they make the power of the state seem unitary even though the exercise of state power is not. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about loss of control in addiction: Some theorists say at least some addicts’ drug-directed desires are irresistible, while others insist that pursuing drugs is a choice. The debate is long-standing and has essentially reached a stalemate. This essay suggests a way forward. I propose an alternative model of loss of control in addiction, one based not on irresistibility, but rather fallibility. According to the model, on every occasion of use, self-control processes exhibit a low, but (...) non-zero, rate of failure due to error. When these processes confront highly recurrent drug-directed desires, the cumulative probability of a self-control lapse steadily grows. The model shows why the following statement—which has an air of paradox—can in fact be true: Each drug-directed desire the addict faces is fully resistible, but the addict nonetheless has significantly diminished control over eventually giving in. (shrink)

We test the hypothesis that US corporations headquartered in states with greater public corruption are also prone to more unethical behavior when operating abroad. We exploit passage of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that curtailed bribery of foreign officials and find firms in corrupt states, especially those exporting to more corrupt countries, suffer greater performance decline following FCPA, suggesting larger loss from anticipated bribery restrictions. Controlling for industry, firms in corrupt states are more likely to be targets of FCPA enforcement actions. (...) They are also more likely to have paid foreign bribes, as disclosed during pre-FCPA investigations. (shrink)