1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live (...) like this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

Some of the human needs are more important than others in order to be inevitable. One of these needs which cannot be avoided is the need for belonging to any authority. Whatever the name, religion, nation, homeland, flag etc. all these concepts are the reflections of the sense of belonging that comes with human existence. This article will discuss how Kuwaiti novelist Saud Alsanousi reflects the crisis of a child who is born from a secret relationship with a Filipino woman's (...) son who came to Kuwait as a housekeeper in Kuwait. When he returned to Kuwait, where he carried his passport and felt himself unfamiliar in the Philippines because of his physical structure and the Arabs, he was again excluded by his relatives because of his Filipino mother. The novel tries to draw attention to the socio-economic problems of workers coming from South East Asia to the Gulf countries, especially from the character of Jose, who has a nauseous mood due to the uncertainty between Philippine-Kuwait and Christian-Muslim affiliations. The introduction of foreign workers who constitute more than half of the population in the Gulf countries will be reviewed. Afterwards, a short summary of the novel will be given and the main theme of the lack of disability will be analyzed. Summary: In 1973, Syria and Egypt started a air strike against Israel in order to recover their lost territory in the previous wars and their reputation in the international area. Some Western countries -especially the United States- have shown all kinds of military aid to Israel in the face of this attack. Thanks to these aids the Syrian and Egyptian armies have not achieved their intended goals. This attitude of Western countries to Israel has attracted the reaction of other Gulf countries -especially the Saudi administration- which has a large amount of oil reserves. Gulf countries -which have not gotten a strong military option- tried to use the oil in their hands for the first time as a political trump card. These oil-exporting countries have reduced oil production in response. As a result, the economies of Western countries which were industrialized and dependent on oil have been negatively affected by this decision. In contrast, Gulf States have gained a sudden and massive fortune due to oil prices rising three or four times. The Gulf States, which have led this wealth to development in many areas like education, health, urbanism, etc. The need for qualified staff in these fields was supplied by other Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Sudan. However, as the years passed oil prices decreased and so oil revenues decreased. This reduction led the Gulf States -which have only oil-based economies- to look for cheaper labor. While the foreign employment provided from the Arab countries previously later this need has begun to supply from far East Asian countries which are economically very weak. Vast number of employees emigrated to the Gulf countries to work in the labor service sector with very low wages especially from the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. This segment -which has employed with very low wages- has been subjected to injustice and discrimination. The injustices faced by the Far East Asian foreign labor force deprived of social rights have been the subject of many painful stories over time. The modern novel -which aims to reflect the life and the human being with all its details- has reflected the stories of the victims of that employers. Saq al-Bamboo (Bamboo Bar) is one of these novels which has published by Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi in 2012. Within a short time after the publication of the work the novel was interested in the Arab world and in 2013 he was awarded the International Arabic Novelist Prize. The novel is consisting of five chapters and each chapter is divided into three sections 1,2,3... The author conveys the crisis of unetnicity from Jose’s chracter who was born from a Filipino mother and a Kuwaiti father. A translator named Ibrahim Selâm -which is a translation of the souvenirs and diaries belonging to Jose from the Philippine language to Arabic is intended to increase the realism of the work. Josephine -who came to Kuwait to work from the Philippines- was settled in 1985 in one of the country's most reputable families. The old woman who owns the house has a son named Rasheed. Rasheed was interested in Josephine who worked as a servant in their house and he married her with a secret marriage. Because the marriage of a Kuwaiti man and a foreign woman who was working as a housekeeper in Kuwait is accepted as a great shame that will cast a shadow on the dignity and honor of the family the marriage which was concealed by the couple inside and outside of the house, which could only come together with privacy has appeared after months. Rasheed -who was expelled from the house with Josephine- has temporarily found another house. Rasheed and his wife, who thought that his mother's attitude would change as their children were born have disappointed. Rasheed after realizing that his mother would never be satisfied, finally lost his ability to resist this crisis and sent his wife back to. With this development the problem of-identity crisis of Jose’s chracter is dealt with in a multi-faceted way. Jose, who left his age with his mother from Kuwait, had suffered from familial negativities that had passed through Kuwait years later in his twenties, and “familial negativities through his return to Kuwait and depressions caused by the sense of belonging. In an interesting coincidence when he met Gassân, one of the closest friends of Jose’s father in the Philippines, he returned to his dream Paradise ’Kuwait”. The journey from Jesus who has known as “Arabo to “Jesus” started with great hope because he was born from a Kuwaiti father in his own near the Philippines and likened to Arabs alike. But perhaps more of the crisis in the Philippines is waiting for him in Kuwait. Because his father was killed during the years when the Iraqi army occupied Kuwait. Although his father's mother welcomed Jose at first, exclusionary attitude towards foreigners in Kuwait caused her to take a negative attitude towards here grandson. The work is a continuation of the tradition of novels of criticism of the Arab society that has been going on for almost a century. The fact that novel was able to make deep psychological analyzes with his comprehensible language and simple style without being ambiguous and to keep the tension alive by leaving the problems at the end of the episodes and thus to provide immersion in this way reinforced the fictional soundness of the work. The novel also presents fictional material within the Arab society for the researchers in the field of religion psychology and sociology of religion, in order to show how a non-Muslim feels amoung the Muslim society. (shrink)

Eine geistliche Schwester erkrankte ungefähr mit 22 Jahren erstmalig an einer Erscheinung, die ihr - optisch - den Tod des Vaters und seine Himmelsfahrt verkündete. Ohne Zweifel fühlte sie sich selbst bereits damals- wie es für 1966 sicher angenommen werden kann - als eine von Gott Ausersehene. Die Himmelsfahrt des Vaters ist Ausdruck ihrer hohen Abkunft. Drei Jahre später glaubte sie eine Heilige zu sein, die Leiden anderer auf sich nehmen zu können, wurde von Glauben und Hoffnung geführt, glaubte Christus (...) in sich zu haben und mit Gott auf Du und Du zu stehen. Sie hielt es aber nicht durch, fiel tief, bekam Schuldgefühle, fühlte sich verdammt, ewig verloren. Es kam zu keiner Vollremission, sie konnte in einer untergeordneten Stelle aber wieder arbeiten, obgleich sie Schwierigkeiten in der sozialen Eingliederung hatte, auch eine gewisse Leistungsinsuffizienz und geringe Belastbarkeit sich herausstelle. Zwei Jahre später kurzes Recidiv nach einem aufwühlenden Film . Wieder glaubte sie durch Versenkung anderen helfen zu können im Sinne der kleinen Therese. Die große Therese war die bedeutendste Mystikerin, die kleine Therese - die die Pat. wohl meinte - war bekannt durch ihre Wunderheilungen auf Grund ihrer Fürbitte. Sie glaubte auserkoren gewesen zu sein, versagt zu haben, von den anderen diesbezüglich nicht verstanden zu sein - nicht einmal im eigenen Orden. Die Ideen traten aber nach Abklingen der Phasen jeweils wieder in den Hintergrund, der Alltag nahm sie wieder gefangen. Nach weiteren zwei Jahren weitgehende Remission, arbeitete wieder unauffällig. Es ist ohne Zweifel und jedermann ersichtlich, daß hier zunächst auffallende Ähnlichkeiten bestehen. Einmal ist es ein Mensch, der durch den drohenden Tod transzendenten Dingen aufgeschlossen wird, ein anderes Mal betrifft es eine Person, die durch ihren erwählten geistlichen Beruf von vorneherein solchen Dingen gegenüber aufgeschlossen ist. Beide erleben optische Visionen, aber ebenso eine gewisse Verunsicherung ihrer bisherigen Lebens-situation. Ignatius schwankte zwischen Fortführung des weltlichen Lebens und einem neuen geistlichen Leben. Schwester L. fühlte sich zunächst als Spielball Gottes. Beide fühlen sich aber dann als eine von Gott ausersehene, berufene Person. Glaube, Vertrauen und Hoffnung sind für beide Tragpfeiler ihres Lebens, die von ihnen gewünschten Tugenden. Beide strebten danach, Christus bei sich zu haben. Jede erlebte eine Depression mit Schuldgefühlen, Skrupeln, Gefühl der Verdammtheit bzw. dem Gefühl, der Versuchung durch einen Teufel erlegen zu sein. Beide befürchten ihr neues Ich nicht verwirklichen zu können. Es wird so deutlich - und dies ließe sich an Hand ähnlicher Fälle anderer Heiliger oder anderer religiöser Wahnideen ebenso nachweisen - daß der Beginn in all diesen Fällen weitgehend derselbe war. Immer ist es zunächst ein passives Erleben, ein Hereinbrechen eines "Ganz-Anderen" und ein persönliches Betroffensein des Ich. Eine Welt tut sich in einer solchen Situation auf, die nicht mit Ratio oder Logik faßbar ist, viel eher dem Geschehen einer Innenschau verglichen werden kann. Bei Ignatius kam es nun aber anschließend zweimal zu Wandlungserlebnissen im Sinne einer Erleuchtung, großen Klarheit im Verstande, die ihm seine neue Aufgabe und Rolle in der menschlichen Gemeinschaft nicht nur deutlich machten, sondern ihn auch in dieser Position sicher machten. Seine geistliche Hilfe bot er seinen Mitmenschen unzählige Male in Predigten und Aussprachen an und er wurde als geistlicher Führer auch überall angenommen. Durch ihn kam es zu einer sehr bedeutenden Ordensgründung für viele Jahrhunderte und zu einer Schaffung zahlreicher frommer Werke. Dies alles blieb bei der Patientin Schwester L. aus. Sie war zur Zeit ihrer Visionen unfähig, ihren Alltagspflichten im Kindergarten nachzukommen, sie fühlte sich von weltlichen wie geistlichen Personen unverstanden. Ein nachfolgendes Reifungserlebnis blieb völlig aus, wie der nun jahrelange Verlauf nachher deutlich macht. Es ist also der Verlauf, der uns jederzeit eine Differentialdiagnose leicht macht. Die Erleuchtung allein könnte auch im Rahmen von manischen Größenideen bei einem Kranken auftreten. Die Erleuchtung bei Ignatius war aber verbunden mit Taten von großer Bedeutung wie der Errichtung frommer Werke, Stiftungen von Satzungen, Tröstung vieler Menschen durch geistliche Gespräche etc. Es zweifelt heute niemand daran, daß durch seine Tat ein Werk von jahrhundertelanger Bedeutung errichtet wurde. Darüber hinaus ist er auch selbst ein Mensch mit einer neuen Freiheit geworden, innere Zufriedenheit, Ausgeglichenheit und menschliche Größe kennzeichnen ein solches Bild. Bei Schwester L. war es aber so, daß sie neben der Vernachlässigung ihrer Alltagspflichten auch in keiner Weise fähig war anderen zu helfen, etwa dasLeid anderer auf sich zu nehmen, wie sie es sich vorstellte. Sie war im Gegenteil eine Belastung für die anderen Schwestern dieser geistlichen Gemeinschaft. Schwester L. zog sich von den Mitmenschen zurück, während Ignatius unter die Menschen ging, um sie aufzurichten. Schwester L. war in ihrer psychotischen Phase emotionell eingeengt, intentional - zu-mindestens teilweise - gelähmt und in ihrer persönlichen Freiheit ohne Zweifel gemindert. Demgegenüber war Ignatius von Loyola besonders tief empfindend, er verfügte über unendlich große - "überirdische" - Kräfte, die es ihm ermöglichten, nicht nur viel Leid mitzutragen, sondern darüber hinaus ein großes geistliches Werk aufzubauen. Dieses sein neues Ich machte irdische Freuden hinfällig, es ermöglichte ihm eine tiefere Wahrheit zu sehen, zu erleben und zu verwirklichen. Der Wahn bei Schwester L. ließ sie aber bestenfalls eine tiefere Wahrheit sehen, aber es war ihr nicht möglich dies so zu erleben, daß sie es auch verwirklichen konnte. Ignatius von Loyola hatte Vertrauen zur Welt und die Welt zu ihm, während Schwester L. dieses Vertrauen verloren hatte, sich in sich zurückzog, unverstanden fühlte und tatenlos blieb. Gerade auf diesen Vertrauensverlust auf der Seite des Kranken und Vertrauensgewinn auf der Seite des Heiligen weist G. Hole mit besonderer Deutlichkeit hin. Man könnte mit anderen Worten auch sagen: Es entscheidet sich nicht sofort, was aus einem Geschehen wird, das sich in der Transzendenz ereignet und ich-bezogen erlebt wird. Es kann zu einer neuen Selbstverwirklichung, zu einer Reifung der Person und größeren Freiheit führen. Es kann aber ebensogut zu einer Einbuße der Freiheit führen, in dem die Person nur mehr der Wahnidee verhaftet bleibt und dann nicht mehr über sich oder über andere Möglichkeiten einer Weltbetrachtung bzw. eines Welterlebens verfügen kann. Es ist wie mit der Kreativität in künstlerischer Hinsicht. Im Beginn einer Psychose können bemerkenswerte Kunstwerke entstehen. Bei einer länger bestehenden Psychose werden aber auch die Kunstwerke den Stempel der Stereotypie tragen, wenig Einfallsreichtum zeigen und ihre künstlerische Aussage wird meist geringer werden. Der Vergleich eines Glaubenserlebnisses bei einem Heiligen mit dem religiösen Wahn bei einer geistlichen Schwester ergibt charakteristische Ähnlichkeiten, wie sie vor allem am Beginn vorhanden sind, und charakteristische Differenzen, wie sie vor allem aus dem Verlauf ersichtlich werden. Die Ähnlichkeiten bestehen darin, daß ein Ereignis auf das Ich von Außen hereinbricht, es verändert, sodaß durch dieses Ereignis ein neues Ich wird. Die Differenz besteht darin, daß dieses neue Ich entweder eine gereiftere, dem Geschehen in der Welt und noch mehr in der Transzendenz aufgeschlossenere Person sein wird, oder es wird eine Person sein, die ein solches Erlebnis innerlich nicht verarbeiten konnte und daran zerbricht. Der Wahnkranke wird zwar dem Erlebnis verbunden bleiben wie bei einem Glaubenserlebnis, er wird aber im Gegensatz zum letzteren an innerer Freiheit verloren haben. So wird der Wahn zu einem Torso bzw. Defekt der Person führen, während im ersteren Fall eine vollkommenere Stufe des Mensch-Seins entsteht. (shrink)

This article had several purposes. First, I wanted to highlight the work of Esther Bubley, an American photographer whose documentary work for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information in the early 1940s is largely unknown. Second, I wanted to show how her images complicated and undermined the traditional themes of Depression era photography in the United States, Third, by looking at her images of women, my intention was to reveal how she worked against depictions of (...) femininity during the Depression, and in confrontation with one-dimensional portrayals of women as America entered the Second World Wan In conclusion, I contend that Bubley's images were fundamentally portrayals of working-class femininity represented as being an individual – rather than a symbolic – experience. Most specifically in the images I have examined, Bubley deconstructs an ideological image of female working-class identity which was central to documentary photography in 1930s America. For example, unlike in photographs by Dorothea Lange, Bubley did not portray working-class women as metaphoric sites of passive endurance which would eventually lead to the rejuvenation of American nationalism. Rather, she showed working-class women to be potentially subversive in the ways they defined themselves against the legacy of 1930s photography and in opposition to the ideological impositions of wartime propaganda. As a result, Bubley's images of working-class women waiting in bars for lonely soldiers, or looking for a future beyond the confines of their boarding house existences while remaining outside the middle-class boundaries defined by capitalist consumerism, set out a pictorial foundation for working-class female identity which exists beyond the context in which the photographs were taken. Consequently, Bubley's work highlights individual self-identity, personal empowerment and self-conscious desire in working-class women which was – and still is – confined and repressed by economic disadvantage and systematic marginalization from an American society defined from a middle-class point of view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:776 Feminist Studies 43, no. 3. © 2018 by Shirley Geok-lin Lim Shirley Geok-lin Lim Cassandra Days: Poems Vox populi vox Dei “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” June 20, 2016 The voice bellowing from the stage Will not be upstaged. The rage Swelling from its undercurrents Is its own fixed swirling warrant When actor and audience are one. One, the agent and their actions; (...) One, litigant and ombudsman. When the voice of God is human One is the voice of the people. Scattered—the lame and the crippled, When the voice of God is human And bellows on stage from this man. Shirley Geok-lin Lim 777 Cassandra November 8, 2016 This Cassandra opens a bottle of red, Begins drinking early, alone, in bed. Fascism with a friendly face does not Console, his leers do not cheer, that knowing nod To end times was foretold in the entrails Blasted by unreturned fire. They who were hailed Heroes in their homeland enter the temple, Swagger, swearing, seared in the Sun King’s call To torch and burn. This Cassandra has no gift For light. She’s depressed. No Thanksgiving will lift Her day. No deeds already in the doing Can be undone. The blood in the sheetings That she sees, the world that’s winding down, And none to scare, none can tell, none, none. 778 Shirley Geok-lin Lim What rough beast? November 11, 2016 It’s me, Ruth, slouching to who knows where. It’s me—the palace grounds are secured, the woods fenced, the house’s red-lined seats reserved, fruits forbidden, streets barred to one walking. Have you a permit? Are you licensed? Your papers, documents, ID cards? Speak, Ruth, when spoken to, only not now, not here. Shirley Geok-lin Lim 779 The Laws January 21, 2017 Law of the stone: I smash, I own. Law of the flower: Live for the hour. Law of the bee: No flight is free. Law of the man: I rule, I ban. Law of the sun: Above me, none.... (shrink)

Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds. We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; an (...) avowal such as "I'm feeling so anxious" or "I'm thinking about my next trip to Paris," it is typically supposed, tells it like it is. But why is that? Why should what I say about my present mental states carry so much more weight than what others say about them? Why should avowals be more immune to criticism and correction than other claims we make? And if avowals are not based on any evidence or observation, how could they possibly express our knowledge of our own present mental states? Bar-On proposes a Neo-Expressivist view according to which an avowal is an act through which a person directly expresses, rather than merely reports, the very mental condition that the avowal ascribes. She argues that this expressivist idea, coupled with an adequate characterization of expression and a proper separation of the semantics of avowals from their pragmatics and epistemology, explains the special status we assign to avowals. As against many expressivists and their critics, she maintains that such an expressivist explanation is consistent with a non-deflationary view of self-knowledge and a robust realism about mental states. The view that emerges preserves many insights of the most prominent contributors to the subject, while offering a new perspective on our special relationship to our own minds. (shrink)

People’s attitudes towards social norms play a crucial role in understanding group behavior. Norm psychology accounts focus on processes of norm internalization that influence people’s norm following attitudes but pay considerably less attention to social identity and group identification processes. Social identity theory in contrast studies group identity but works with a relatively thin and instrumental notion of social norms. We argue that to best understand both sets of phenomena, it is important to integrate the insights of both approaches. Social (...) status, social identity, and social norms are considered separate phenomena in evolutionary accounts. We discuss assumptions and views that support this separation, and suggest an integrated view of our own. We argue that we should be open to the early origins of human social complexity, and conjecture that the longer that the human social world involved multi-level societies the more probable it is that norm psychology and social identity interacted in rich ways. (shrink)

This book brings together people's intuitions, philosophical theories, and principles of Jewish ethics to suggest where our values should lead us. The author argues that a moral freedom of respect upholds freedom of the Self and respect for the Other.

The task of explaining language evolution is often presented by leading theorists in explicitly Gricean terms. After a critical evaluation, I present an alternative, non‐Gricean conceptualization of the task. I argue that, while it may be true that nonhuman animals, in contrast to language users, lack the ‘motive to share information’ understoodà laGrice, nonhuman animals nevertheless do express states of mind through complex nonlinguistic behavior. On a proper, non‐Gricean construal of expressive communication, this means that they show to their designated (...) audience (without intentionally telling)—and their designated audience recognizes (without rationally inferring)—both how things are in the world and how things are with them. Recognizing that our nonhuman predecessors were already proficient—though non‐Gricean—sharers of such information would free us to focus on the more tractable problem of explaining how linguistic expressive vehicles came to replace, augment, and transform the nonlinguistic expressive means to which nonhuman animals are consigned. (shrink)

Also published as Vol. 24 in _Grazer Philosophische Studien_.

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach, according to which “a more productive framework” for primate communication research should be “pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances”. After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on, I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins of human (...) linguistic communication. My main aim in this paper is to motivate–and begin to articulate–an intermediary conception whose scope is narrower than Carnapian pragmatics but broader than Gricean pragmatics. To do so, I first spell out what I take to be the key insight offered by proponents of the Gricean approach concerning the emergence of linguistic communication, namely, its being communication ‘from a psychological point of view’. I then develop this insight using key elements from the anti-Gricean ‘biosemantic’ account of linguistic communication due to Ruth Millikan, Philosophical Perspectives 9, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascedero CA, 1995, Millikan R Varieties of Meaning. Mass.: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Millikan, Beyond concepts: unicepts, language, and natural information, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 2017, and elsewhere). I argue that the intermediary pragmatics-first approach that I propose, which draws on both Gricean and Millikanian resources, would be better equipped to serve the purposes of those who search for potential precursors of human linguistic communication in animal communication. (shrink)

Expressivism, broadly construed, is the view that the function of utterances in a given area of discourse is to give expression to our sentiments or other (non-cognitive) mental states or attitudes, rather than report or describe some range of facts. This view naturally seems an attractive option wherever it is suspected that there may not be a domain of facts for the given discourse to be describing. Familiarly, to avoid commitment to ethical facts, the ethical expressivist suggests that ethical utterances (...) (e.g., “Gratuitous torture is wrong”, “What John did was morally good”) do not serve to ascribe ethical properties to objects, actions, persons, or states of affairs. Instead, they simply function to give voice to certain of our sentiments (or ‘pro/con’ attitudes). Along similar lines, philosophers have entertained versions of expressivism about the aesthetic, the modal, the mental, what is funny, even about theoretical science and knowledge ascriptions. (shrink)

An exploration of the features and methods of Imāmī exegesis. Principally, it offers a description and analysis of the major tenets of Imāmī doctrine, as reflected in the earliest Imāmī works of exegesis and related sources, up to the Major Occultation of the twelfth Imam in 329/941.

... A. Zvie BAR-ON The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Shmuel Hugo Bergman, one of the most prominent Jewish philosophers of the 20th century, ...

This book contains readings of canonical Western philosophical texts from the viewpoint of current feminist thinking. The contributors focus specifically on the ways in which modern Western philosophy constructs genders and analyzes gender relations. They provide a detailed analysis of modern philosophers’ conceptions of masculinity and femininity and call attention to the intertwining of gender with conceptual schema and networks.

Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptive discourses, on the one hand, and discourses – such as ethics, mathematics, or mentalistic discourse – that are thought to be more problematic in various ways. But certain strategies for ‘saving the differences’ can make it too difficult to preserve notable similarities across discourses. My own preference is for strategies that ‘save the differences’ without sacrificing logico-semantic continuities or committing to deflationism about truth, but also without embracing either truth-pluralism (...) or global expressivism.I motivate my preference by examining, as a test case, mentalistic discourse. I begin by reconstructing three philosophical puzzles that have led philosophers to think of mentalistic discourse as problematic (Section 2). These puzzles concern the semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical status of contrasts between first-person present-tense attributions – ‘avowals’ – and all other ordinary contingent attributions. I then briefly present my own,neo-expressiviststrategy for addressing the puzzles (Section 3). Unlike traditional ‘simple expressivism’ (which is the analogue in the mentalistic realm of ethical emotivism), neo-expressivism is not committed to avowals’ being non-truth-apt or having non-propositional meanings. And yet it does not require embracing either deflationism about truth or global expressivism. It preserves continuities between mentalistic and other discourses while allowing us to capture discontinuities. Moreover, it is possible to apply the neo-expressivist framework in other areas where the notion of expression is deemed explanatorily useful, as illustrated by consideringethical neo-expressivism(Section 4). In the final section (5), I make more general comments on truth and meaning and tease out some of the commitments of the approach I advocate. (shrink)

In this book, the late Prof. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov argues that the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process so far has been mainly the result of the inability of both sides to reach an agreed formula for linking justice to peace. The issues of justice and injustice are focused mainly on the outcomes of the 1947-1949 first Arab-Israeli War and specifically in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. The conflicting historical narratives of the two sides regarding the question of responsibility (...) for the injustice done to the Palestinians turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a classic case of linking the issues of justice and peace. Given that the two sides often define the conflict in terms of injustice and unfairness, these issues have particular relevance for the peace process, and this is what makes dealing with them as barriers to the resolution of the conflict so problematic. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov argues that the link between justice and peace is an important issue requiring both sides' attention, but, given the wide and currently unbridgeable gap separating the two sides, it should be postponed to the phase of reconciliation rather than being included in the process of conflict resolution. The two-state solution is endorsed as the best and practical solution and as a first step for a "just peace" in this conflict, to be followed by reconciliation. Highly topical, this book is essential reading for scholars and researchers of International Relations, Peace Studies and the Arab-Israeli conflict. (shrink)

So-called basic self-knowledge (ordinary knowledge of one's present states of mind) can be seen as both 'baseless' and privileged. The spontaneous self-beliefs we have when we avow our states of mind do not appear to be formed on any particular epistemic basis (whether intro-or extro-spective). Nonetheless, on some views, these self-beliefs constitute instances of (privileged) knowledge. We are here interested in views on which true mental self-beliefs have internalist epistemic warrant that false ones lack. Such views are committed to a (...) form of disjunctivism about basic self-knowledge. We begin by presenting an influential disjunctivist view about perceptual knowledge (Pritchard 2008, 2012, and elsewhere) and articulate a problem for it. We then consider two versions of disjunctivism about basic self-knowledge – one 'constitutivist', the other 'neo-expressivist' – and argue that both can avoid an analogue of this problem for self-knowledge. However, we give reasons for preferring the disjunctivism yielded by neo-expressivism. We conclude by considering briefly whether an acceptable disjunctivism about mental self-beliefs can point the way toward a sensible disjunctivism about perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

John Forrester’s book Thinking in Cases does not provide one ultimate definition of what it means to ‘think in cases’, but rather several alternatives: a ‘style of reasoning’ (Hacking), ‘paradigms’ or ‘exemplars’ (Kuhn), and ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein), to mention only a few. But for Forrester, the stories behind each of the figures who suggested these different models for thinking (in cases) are as important as the models themselves. In other words, the question for Forrester is not only what ‘thinking in (...) cases’ is, but also who might be considered a ‘thinker in cases’. Who could serve as a case study for such a thinker? The major candidates that Forrester considers in his book to be ‘thinkers in cases’ are Kuhn, Foucault, Freud, and Winnicott. In what follows, I will argue that one name is missing from this list, as well as from Forrester’s book more generally: Michael Balint. This name is missing not only because Balint was a great ‘thinker in cases’, but also because we have some reasons to believe that Forrester himself thought so and wished to add him to the list. Forrester, I will argue, found in Balint an exemplar for a thinker in cases that combined elements from Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and Foucault’s philosophy of the case-based sciences. (shrink)

I argue that one ought not be epistemically akratic. Although this position may look self-evident, it is hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong with the akratic subject. Indeed, some philosophers argue that epistemic akrasia is permissible. The standard anti-akratic response focuses on the weird downstream implications of this state for action and assertion. This approach, however, is unsatisfactory, since it fails to explain the epistemic impermissibility of epistemic akrasia. Here, I argue that epistemic akrasia is impermissible on a purely (...) epistemic basis. Doing so brings out the connection between positive epistemic statuses and truth: it is that connection that explains the fundamental impermissibility of epistemic akrasia. (shrink)

In June 22-27,1970, an International Working Symposium on Pragmatics of Natural Languages took place in Jerusalem under the auspices of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science.! Some thirty philosophers, logicians, linguists, and psychologists from Israel, U.S.A., West-Germany, England, Belgium, France, Scotland, and Denmark met in seven formal and a number of informal sessions in order to discuss some ofthe problems (...) around the use and acquisition oflanguage which in the eyes of an increasing number of scholars have been left under treated in the recent upsurge ofinterest in theoretical linguistics and philos ophy of language. More specifically, during the formal sessions the following topics were discussed: The validity of the syntactics-seman tics-pragmatics trichotomy The present state of the competence-performance issue Logic and linguistics The New Rhetoric Speech acts Language acquisition. The participants in the Symposium distributed among themselves re prints and preprints of relevant material, partly in advance of the meeting, partly at its beginning. Each session was introduced by one or two modera tors, and summaries of each day's proceedings were prepared and distri buted the next day. The participants were invited to submit papers after the symposium, written under its impact. The eleven essays published here are the result. (shrink)