How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens’ willingness to submit criminal complaints to the police. The study finds that predictors of disengagement with law enforcement extend beyond negative interactions with law enforcement alone. (...) Rather, the time it takes local government officials to fix a 311 request for services, such as filling potholes and abating noise, shapes the likelihood that residents will file misdemeanor criminal complaints. Thus policymakers must account for the policy environment beyond their agency’s domain to alleviate citizens’ dissatisfaction and disengagement with government overall. (shrink)

Shelley Weinberg argues that the idea of consciousness as a form of non-evaluative self-awareness helps solve some of the thorniest issues in Locke's philosophy: in his philosophical psychology, and his theories of knowledge, personal identity, and moral agency. The model of consciousness set forth here binds these key issues with a common thread.

According to the perspective developed in this article, widely shared, hegemonic cultural beliefs about gender and their impact in what the authors call “social relational” contexts are among the core components that maintain and change the gender system. When gender is salient in these ubiquitous contexts, cultural beliefs about gender function as part of the rules of the game, biasing the behaviors, performances, and evaluations of otherwise similar men and women in systematic ways that the authors specify. While the biasing (...) impact of gender beliefs may be small in any one instance, the consequences cumulate over individuals’ lives and result in substantially different outcomes for men and women. After describing this perspective, the authors show how it sheds newlight on some defining features of the gender system and illustrate its implications for research into specific questions about gender inequality. (shrink)

Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.

Visual images are widely used in medical and patient education to enhance spoken or written explanations. This paper considers the role of such illustrations in shaping conceptions of the body; specifically, it addresses depictions of variant sexual anatomy and their part in the discursive production of intersex bodies. Visual language—even didactic, ‘factual’ visual language—carries latent as well as manifest content, and influences self-perceptions and social attitudes. In the case of illustrations about atypical sex development, where the need for non-stigmatising communication (...) is crucial, it is especially important to consider the implicit messages conveyed by imagery and compositional strategies. (shrink)

The surface grammar of reports such as ‘I have a pain in my leg’ suggests that pains are objects which are spatially located in parts of the body. We show that the parallel construction is not available in Mandarin. Further, four philosophically important grammatical features of such reports cannot be reproduced. This suggests that arguments and puzzles surrounding such reports may be tracking artefacts of English, rather than philosophically significant features of the world.

In two studies, we used the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. In the first, 600 animal rights activists attending a national demonstration and 266 nonactivist college students were given the EPQ. Analysis of the returns from 157 activists and 198 students indicated that the activists were more likely than the students to hold an "absolutist" moral orientation (high idealism, (...) low relativism). In the second study, 169 students were given the EPQ with a scale designed to measure attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Multiple regression showed that gender and the EPQ dimension of idealism were related to attitudes toward animal use. (shrink)

The systems of belief by the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament and the current Kenyan tribe of Torobo demonstrate both ancient and modern tribal world view in which the religious is interconnected to all aspects of personal existence within each individual. The most important word in the vocabulary of biblical Hebrew and Torobo anthropology is ‘heart’. Lēḇ (Hebrew ‘heart’) and oltau (Torobo ‘heart’) are divinely ordained conceptual catalysts representing the composite nature of humanity. This paper will explore the concept (...) of heart as the principal, unifying object of attention employed throughout biblical Hebrew and Torobo world view that integrates psychical elements of Self as a cohesive medium for supernatural interaction and moral deportment. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But the former (...) stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to demonstrate that moral responsibility theory produces, legitimates, and even magnifies the considerable social injustice that accrues to disabled people insofar as it implicitly and explicitly promotes a depoliticized ontology of disability that construes disability as a naturally disadvantageous personal characteristic or deleterious property of individuals rather than identifies it as an effect of power, an apparatus. In particular, I argue that the methodological tools of “analytic” philosophy that philosophers of moral responsibility theory employ to (...) establish the philosophical domain in which they engage have distinctly detrimental effects on disabled people. (shrink)

Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first personal appropriation of mental states, and as identical to a first personal distinctive experience of the qualitative features of one’s own thinking. (...) There is wide agreement, however, that Locke’s theory of personal identity is meant to complement his moral and theological commitments to a system of divine punishment and reward in an afterlife. But these commitments seem to require also a metaphysical criterion, and Locke is insistent that it cannot be substance. The difficulty reconciling the psychological and metaphysical requirements of the theory has led, at worst, to charges of incoherence and, at best, to a slew of interpretations, none of which is widely accepted. (shrink)

Concentrating on the Qingdao Observatory, this paper will explore the role of scientific facility in asserting China’s sovereignty during the first half of the twentieth century. Although scholars have explained the efforts of China’s internationalization in diplomacy through the perspectives of politics, economics and culture, they have not paid attention to science. Therefore, this paper aims to shed some light on how scientific issues were solved via diplomacy during the Republic of China, while further asserting that the focus in negotiations (...) was not confined to science itself, but rather to sovereignty within a scientific context. In this process, the meaning of sovereignty has also been expanded basing on the improvement of nation’s scientific capability. Besides, the participation of different actors involved in sovereignty assertion is investigated by this paper. Although the diplomatic negotiation was held at the international level, the local government and scientific community were main promoters in this case, which calls for attention on the various subjects in sovereignty issue. Consequently, this paper argues that Asian countries, such as Republic of China, could also employ science as a means to negotiate with foreign powers and claim their due rights. (shrink)

Sentiment analysis is one of the important tasks of online opinion analysis and an important means to guide the direction of online opinion and maintain social stability. Due to the multiple characteristics of linguistic expressions, ambiguity, multiple meanings of words, and the increasing speed of new words, it is a great challenge for the task of text sentiment analysis. Commonly used machine learning methods suffer from inadequate text feature extraction, and the emergence of deep learning has brought a turnaround for (...) this purpose. In this paper, we investigate the problem of text sentiment analysis using methods related to deep learning. In order to incorporate user and product information in a more diverse way in the model, this paper proposes a model based on a deep bidirectional long-and short-term memory network-self-attention mechanism-custom classifier. The model first identifies contextual associations and acquires deep text features through a deep bidirectional long- and short-term memory network and then captures important features in the text using a self-attentive mechanism. The model finally combines user information and product information to build a custom classifier module and uses context-aware attention mechanisms to assign specific parameters to user information and product information, which improves the performance of the model on public datasets compared with current common models. The results show that the accuracy of the algorithm in this paper is high, and it is about 5% lower than the traditional algorithm. The method can reduce the number of iterations and the running time of the algorithm. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of political argument in early eighteenth-century England, a time in which the politics of virtue were vigorously pursued - and just as vigorously challenged. In tracing the emergence of a privately orientated conception of civic virtue from the period’s public discourse, this book not only challenges the received notions of the fortunes of virtue in the early modern era but provides a promising critical perspective on the question of what sort of politics of virtue (...) is possible or desirable today. (shrink)

The default theory of aesthetic value combines hedonism about aesthetic value with strict perceptual formalism about aesthetic value, holding the aesthetic value of an object to be the value it has in virtue of the pleasure it gives strictly in virtue of its perceptual properties. A standard theory of aesthetic value is any theory of aesthetic value that takes the default theory as its theoretical point of departure. This paper argues that standard theories fail because they theorize from the default (...) theory. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the implications of microchip technology for children's development. It examines the relevant research literature from an "ecological perspective," meaning that attention is paid to the consequences of microchip technology for the settings in which children develop, for the interconnections between these settings, and for the role of parents, teachers, and other socializing agents as "translators" of the rapidly changing environment to the developing child.

If, as Richard Wollheim says, the Acquaintance Principle is ‘a well-entrenched principle in aesthetics,’ it would be surprising if there were not something true at which those who have asserted it have been aiming. I argue that the Acquaintance Principle cannot be true on any traditional epistemic interpretation, nor on any usability interpretation of the sort Robert Hopkins has recently suggested. I then argue for an interpretation of the principle that treats acquaintance as the end to which judgments of aesthetic (...) value are the means as opposed to the other way around. (shrink)

in their famous correspondence, Stillingfleet objects that Locke's definition of knowledge, by limiting certainty to the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, lessens the credibility of faith. Locke replies that his definition of knowledge does not affect the credibility of an article of faith at all, for faith and knowledge are entirely different cognitive acts: The truth of the matter of fact is in short this, that I have placed knowledge in the perception of the agreement or disagreement (...) of ideas. This definition of knowledge, your lordship said, "might be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith, which you have endeavored to defend." This I denied, and gave this reason for it, viz.... (shrink)

Global migration raises important ethical issues. One of the most significant is the question of whether liberal democratic societies have strong moral obligations to admit immigrants. Historically, most philosophers have argued that liberal states are morally free to restrict immigration at their discretion, with few exceptions. Recently, however, liberal egalitarians have begun to challenge this conventional view in two lines of argument. The first contends that immigration restrictions are inconsistent with basic liberal egalitarian values, including freedom and moral equality. The (...) second maintains that affluent, liberal democratic societies are morally obligated to admit immigrants as a partial response to global injustices, such as poverty and human rights violations. This article surveys the main philosophical arguments for these positions on immigration and discusses the critical responses to these arguments. (shrink)

Arthur Danto argued from the premiss that artworks are essentially cognitive to the conclusion that they are incidentally aesthetic. I wonder why Danto, and the very many of us he persuaded, came to believe that the cognitive and the aesthetic oppose one another. I argue, contrary to Danto’s historical claims, that the cognitive and the aesthetic did not come into opposition until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they were brought into opposition for reasons of art-critical expediency (...) rather than philosophical necessity. I conclude that a robustly cognitive notion of the aesthetic remains an option for us. (shrink)

Shelley Burtt,Jérémie Duhamel | : Quelles sont les sources psychologiques de la vertu civique dans la tradition républicaine? Cet article en identifie trois : l’éducation des passions, la manipulation des intérêts et la contrainte du devoir. L’auteure explore chacune de ces sources et conclut qu’une meilleure appréciation de ce qui les distingue est porteuse de nouvelles possibilités pour raviver la vertu républicaine dans le monde moderne. | : What are the psychological sources of civic virtue in the republican tradition? (...) This article identifies three: the education of the passions, the manipulation of interests, and the compulsion to duty. The author explores each and concludes that an appreciation of their distinctions suggests possibilities for reviving republican virtue in the modern world. (shrink)

Locke has been accused of failing to have a coherent understanding of consciousness, since it can be identical neither to reflection nor to ordinary perception without contradicting other important commitments. I argue that the account of consciousness is coherent once we see that, for Locke, perceptions of ideas are complex mental acts and that consciousness can be seen as a special kind of self-referential mental state internal to any perception of an idea.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 1-17 [Access article in PDF] The Influence of Folk Meteorology in the Anaximander Fragment Cameron Shelley * Introduction No scholars doubt that the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially the Milesians, were concerned with meteorology. Their works abound with accounts of wind, rain, thunder, lightning, meteorites, waterspouts, whirlwinds, and so on. Through examination of the fragments of the pre-Socratics, we can trace this (...) interest in meteorology from each philosopher to his predecessors right back to Anaxi-mander. 1 Thales might at first seem to be the most obvious candidate as the man who introduced meteorology into philosophy, but Kirk et al. argue persuasively that Thales was more interested in near-eastern mythology. 2 Thus, we must take Anaximander, Thales's protégé, to be the philosopher who made meteorology a topic of philosophical interest.This situation leaves us with an obvious question: where did Anaximander come by his interest and ideas about meteorology if not from Thales? Modern scholarship unanimously points to the Greek mythological tradition of Anaxi-mander's time as recorded primarily by Homer and Hesiod. Gilbert confidently asserts that any inquiry into the origin of Greek meteorology must begin with the stories recorded by these poets, and modern scholars generally echo this opinion. 3 Kahn notes that in classical Athens the Milesian-style, non-mythological accounts of meteorology were treated as direct challenges to the Olympic religion, [End Page 1] as demonstrated by Aristophanes in The Clouds. 4 But to conclude on this basis that Anaximander himself saw his project as the construction of theories by the removal of deities from myths is to mistake the result for the cause. Kirk et al. simply point to Kahn's account and speculate that Anaximander was influenced by Greek legends about Phaethon and Deucalion. 5 None of these scholars consider alternative possible sources of Anaximander's meteorological ideas, so that support for mythology as the source derives largely from the lack of a rival. But there is an alternative, namely, folk meteorology.Folk meteorology may be described as the body of folk wisdom concerning the nature and prediction of weather patterns. It typically comes in the form of pithy statements or jingles such as "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight; red sky in morning, shepherd's warning." 6 Folk meteorology has been almost completely neglected even by folklore scholars, so it is not surprising that it has escaped the attention of philosophers and classical scholars as well. However, an examination of folk beliefs about meteorology reveals significant similarities with some of the philosophical beliefs attributed to Anaximander, most notably, and surprisingly, regarding the concept of justice (dikê) implicit in Anaximander's famous fragment.The purpose of this paper is to construct and defend a case for the influence of folk meteorology on Anaximander, particularly on the concept of justice in the Anaximander fragment. The case begins on familiar ground, with the fragment itself and arguments against attempts to trace influences on it to non-meteorological sources, and continues with some evidence of the universality of folk meteorology across cultures and the character of balance as a folk-meteorological concept, which is then applied to the Anaximander fragment as a means of explicating what Anaximander meant there by justice. The suitability of balance for this purpose is taken as evidence that Anaximander was influenced by folk meteorology. Thus, this inquiry identifies a plausible origin of one of Anaximander's central philosophical ideas, an origin which has so far remained completely unexplored by scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. The Fragment of Anaximander Anaximander is famous among Greek scholars for the central role he gave to the concept of justice (dikê) in his natural philosophy. The one fragment of his writings, quoted by Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (24.18-21), records Anaximander's view on the effect of justice in the physical world: [End Page 2] The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be, according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution... (shrink)

Wellman argues that legitimate states have a presumptive right to close their borders, excluding all prospective immigrants. He maintains that this right is not outweighed by egalitarian considerations because societies can fulfill their duties to outsiders by transferring aid instead of opening borders. I argue that societies cannot discharge their egalitarian duties by providing aid in at least two cases: when opening borders is the only way to fulfill these duties, and when transferring aid is inconsistent with egalitarian commitments. I (...) also consider additional, non-egalitarian moral considerations that may justify a duty to maintain open borders. I conclude that Wellman fails to prove that states have an actual, all things considered right to close their borders. (shrink)

This is the first of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. For example, Shelley Burtt argues that the liberal state has good reason to be far more accommodating of traditional groups than liberals commonly recognize. She contends that liberal autonomy, (...) properly understood, is not threatened in any special way by traditional religious or cultural groups, and that traditional cultures are as capable of fostering autonomy as their more cosmopolitan counterparts. Most strikingly, she maintains that it is a good thing, from the perspective of liberal autonomy, to be encumbered by unchosen attachments and loyalties such as those that we might expect to be most fully developed within religious communities. The essay is in two main parts: Part One takes up the challenge of the notion that liberal theorists have missed the chance to describe in detail the possibilities for autonomous thought from within a comprehensive education to a particular way of life or understanding of the good, offering several reasons why the central demand of autonomy – to think and know for oneself – is well within the reach of individuals who receive this sort of ‘grounded’ education; Part Two looks more closely at liberal theories of autonomy, particularly aspects of those accounts that encourage the idea that comprehensive educations are at odds with the development of autonomy, arguing that such characterizations overstate the difficulties that exist, and concluding by reaffirming the possibility of combining an education for autonomy with education toward a comprehensive vision of the good life. (shrink)

This article engages critically with issues surrounding the theorization of the self and body relation, where the body is interpreted as material increasingly open to human intervention and choice. It is argued that this theorization rests upon a mind/body split that limits an understanding of embodied identity. The significance for feminism of undermining representational practices that rely upon this dualism are outlined and criticized for reproducing the logic of representation they set out to destabilize. An alternative strategy is examined and (...) the argument is made that to understand embodied identity the question must not be what do bodies mean but what can they do. Here feminist approaches that rely upon a radically different ontological position in order to move beyond the mind/body split are utilized. These theoretical debates are made meaningful through the lens of self narratives produced by young women–a context which demands the development of strategies for theorizing lived bodies. (shrink)

The increased visibility of feminism in mainstream culture has recently been noted, with the presence of both online and offline campaigns embedding feminist claims in a variety of everyday spaces. By granting recognition to women’s experiences, these campaigns continue the feminist practice of generating critical knowledge on the basis of gendered experience. In the post-truth era, however, the norms governing claims-making are being significantly reconstructed, with significant consequences for critiques of gender inequality. It is argued here that these norms are (...) linked directly to a wider context of anti-feminism in which dismissing women’s claims is consistent with the goal that opponents of gender equality have of seeking and consolidating epistemic power in the face of what is perceived as systemic male disadvantage and victimhood. Returning to earlier debates within feminism, it is argued that the kinds of post-truth rhetoric used to dismiss women’s experience provide a challenge that feminism must confront. This rhetoric is often grounded in the authenticity of individual experience; however, experience cannot provide unmediated access to truth and, therefore, cannot provide the foundation for feminist claims. On the other hand, experience cannot merely offer one of many contested versions of ‘reality’. The excesses of both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist epistemology are countered with the argument that cognition is a human practice mediated by theoretical propositions which illuminate the question of what can be known. This is the role played by feminist theory in defending the role of experience. (shrink)

Liu Ping discusses patriotism and nationalism in regard to culture and values and also the role of the prophetic voice in Chinese society. His provocative allegorical rewriting of a prophecy from the Biblical book of Amos, setting it in contemporary China, is pointedly political. Liu writes in the Chinese intellectual tradition of pointing out when a society or a country is on the brink of destruction.

Introduced into the philosophical lexicon during the Eighteenth Century, the term ‘aesthetic’ has come to be used to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value. For the most part, aesthetic theories have divided over questions particular to one or another of these designations: whether artworks are necessarily aesthetic objects; how to square the allegedly perceptual basis of aesthetic judgments with the fact that (...) we give reasons in support of them; how best to capture the elusive contrast between an aesthetic attitude and a practical one; whether to define aesthetic experience according to its phenomenological or representational content; how best to understand the relation between aesthetic value and aesthetic experience. But questions of more general nature have lately arisen, and these have tended to have a skeptical cast: whether any use of ‘aesthetic’ may be explicated without appeal to some other; whether agreement respecting any use is sufficient to ground meaningful theoretical agreement or disagreement; whether the term ultimately answers to any legitimate philosophical purpose that justifies its inclusion in the lexicon. The skepticism expressed by such general questions did not begin to take hold until the later part of the 20th century, and this fact prompts the question whether (a) the concept of the aesthetic is inherently problematic and it is only recently that we have managed to see that it is, or (b) the concept is fine and it is only recently that we have become muddled enough to imagine otherwise. Adjudicating between these possibilities requires a vantage from which to take in both early and late theorizing on aesthetic matters. (shrink)

Wellman argues that legitimate states have a presumptive right to close their borders, excluding all prospective immigrants. He maintains that this right is not outweighed by egalitarian considerations because societies can fulfill their duties to outsiders by transferring aid instead of opening borders. I argue that societies cannot discharge their egalitarian duties by providing aid in at least two cases: when opening borders is the only way to fulfill these duties, and when transferring aid is inconsistent with egalitarian commitments. I (...) also consider additional, non-egalitarian moral considerations that may justify a duty to maintain open borders. I conclude that Wellman fails to prove that states have an actual, all things considered right to close their borders. (shrink)

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the (...) discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability. (shrink)

This paper raises two objections to the freedom of movement argument from the perspective of nonideal philosophy: the argument cannot provide a means for establishing admissions priorities when all prospective immigrants cannot be admitted and it ignores alternative grounds for moral claims to admission in the context of histories of injustice. I develop an alternative admissions-guiding principle that assigns strong moral claims to admission to certain prospective immigrants based on a global extension of the no-harm principle. It claims that a (...) society must admit prospective immigrants if admission is necessary either to prevent that society from harming those immigrants or to compensate immigrants whom it has already harmed. States must fulfill these duties before they may legitimately use immigrant admissions policy in service of other national goals, including the advancement of economic interests. (shrink)

: This article critically examines the constitution of impairment in prenatal testing and screening practices and various discourses that surround these technologies. While technologies to test and screen prenatally are claimed to enhance women's capacity to be self-determining, make informed reproductive choices, and, in effect, wrest control of their bodies from a patriarchal medical establishment, I contend that this emerging relation between pregnant women and reproductive technologies is a new strategy of a form of power that began to emerge in (...) the late eighteenth century. Indeed, my argument is that the constitution of prenatal impairment, by and through these practices and procedures, is a widening form of modern government that increasingly limits the field of possible conduct in response to pregnancy. Hence, the government of impairment in utero is inextricably intertwined with the government of the maternal body. (shrink)