Amy Allen’s insightful and nuanced feminist critical-theoretical account of the politics of our selves could be strengthened with a more complex and differentiated account of power and of gender, and of the social as a site of multiple conflicting and contesting relations. Such an account would adhere more consistently to Allen’s own project of understanding subjects to be constituted through both relations of power and relations of interdependence and mutuality, care and solidarity. The development of this account, and of a (...) situated account of desire or motivation, is essential for a feminist critical theory of self and social transformation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 209 Trysh Travis Toward a Feminist History of the Drug-Using Woman— and Her Recovery In 1995, public health scholars Laura Schmidt and Constance Weisner published “The Emergence of Problem-Drinking Women as a Special Population in Need of Treatment.”1 The article, aimed at specialists in the growing field of behavioral sciences, explored the history of medpsych attitudes toward women (...) drinkers. That history had been characterized, until the 1970s, by ignorance and neglect, but it began to shift in the wake of Second Wave feminism and what Schmidt and Weisner called “the women’s alcoholism movement.”2 To be fair, attitudes toward male drinkers had also long been inchoate. But beginning in the 1940s, advocacy by a handful of scientific and legal professionals, as well as the mutual aid group Alcoholics Anonymous (founded in 1935) and the National Council on Alcoholism (founded in 1944), created a new vision, which went on to be underwritten by federal funding and private insurance.3 “Alcoholism is a disease 1. Laura Schmidt and Constance Weisner, “The Emergence of Problem-Drinking Women as a Special Population in Need of Treatment,” in Recent Developments in Alcoholism, Vol. 12: Women and Alcoholism, ed. Marc Galanter (New York: Plenum Press, 1995), 309–334. 2. Ibid., 310. 3. The organization was originally called the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism; it became the National Council on Alcoholism in 1950 and changed to the current National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in 1990. 210 Trysh Travis Books Discussed in This Essay Lady Lushes: Gender, Alcoholism, and Medicine in Modern America. By Michelle L. McClellan. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States. By Claire D. Clark. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration. By Allison McKim. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. Through a Trauma Lens: Transforming Health and Behavioral Health Systems. By Vivian Barnett Brown. New York: Routledge, 2017. and the alcoholic a sick person,” argued National Council on Alcoholism founder Marty Mann in a host of magazine articles beginning in the late 1940s. From that assertion followed the beliefs that “the alcoholic can be helped and is worth helping” and that “alcoholism is a public health problem and therefore a public responsibility” (29).4 Behind Mann’s carefully gender-neutral language lay an image of the alcoholic as a white man from the respectable middle classes. The mid-century legitimation of that man’s problems, Schmidt and Weisner argue, paved the way for “problem-drinking women” to finally come into focus half a century later. Schmidt and Weisner’s article centers on the ways the Great Society funding streams that first steered funds to community-based alcohol and drug treatment changed during the 1980s. But along the way, they briefly explore organized feminism’s views of alcohol- and drug-using women. They note that Second Wave feminists had dealt aggressively with behavioral health issues such as domestic violence, child sexual 4. Marty Mann, “Can We Conquer Alcoholism?” Health (1947): 12–13, 29–30. Trysh Travis 211 abuse, and rape—all of which correlated closely with substance use and abuse. But they see no feminist activism around alcohol or drugs. Instead, “representatives from organizations in the broader feminist and women ’s health movements” were “conspicuously absent” from the women’s alcoholism movement, which consisted chiefly of activists motivated by alcohol issues, not gender.5 Interest in—and action on—women’s alcohol and other drug use consequently became the province chiefly of clinicians and policy makers, not movement women. Although many of those professionals saw substance-using women’s needs as important and worthy of services, few viewed them through the lenses of gender and power. The blind spot that Schmidt and Weisner observe among feminist activists is interesting not only for what it tells us about a conceptual boundary of Second Wave feminism (both liberal and radical) but also for the way it points to a gap in the feminist scholarship that is ostensibly a central legacy of the earlier movement. Like... (shrink)

In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, an incredibly sophisticated chatbot. Its capability is astonishing: as well as conversing with human interlocutors, it can answer questions about history, explain almost anything you might think to ask it, and write poetry. This level of achievement has provoked interest in questions about whether a chatbot might have something similar to human intelligence or even consciousness. Given that the function of a chatbot is to process linguistic input and produce linguistic output, we consider the (...) question whether a sophisticated chatbot might have inner speech. That is: Might it talk to itself, internally? We explored this via a conversation with ‘Playground’, a chatbot which is very similar to ChatGPT but more flexible in certain respects. We asked it questions which, plausibly, can only be answered if one first produces some inner speech. Here, we present our findings and discuss their philosophical significance. (shrink)

Modern computer systems are ubiquitous in contemporary life yet many of them remain opaque. This poses significant challenges in domains where desiderata such as fairness or accountability are crucial. We suggest that the best strategy for achieving system transparency varies depending on the specific source of opacity prevalent in a given context. Synthesizing and extending existing discussions, we propose a taxonomy consisting of eight sources of opacity that fall into three main categories: architectural, analytical, and socio-technical. For each source, we (...) provide initial suggestions as to how to address the resulting opacity in practice. The taxonomy provides a starting point for requirements engineers and other practitioners to understand contextually prevalent sources of opacity, and to select or develop appropriate strategies for overcoming them. (shrink)

Salloch and Eriksen (2024) present a compelling case for including patients as co-reasoners in medical decision-making involving artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on O'Neill’s neo-Kantian frame...

In cases where the claims of different groups of people compete, the Relevance View occupies a middle ground between aggregation and nonaggregation. It allows weaker claims to aggregate to outweigh a stronger claim just when the competing claims, compared pairwise, are sufficiently close in strength. The view has strong intuitive appeal when applied to simple binary choices, but I argue that attempts to extend it to nonbinary choices have been unsuccessful. I propose a new extension of the Relevance View to (...) nonbinary choices based on a “binary contrastive” account of the moral reasons that obtain in the cases of interest. (shrink)

A key argument of Dixon et al. in the target article is that prejudice reduction through intergroup contact and collective action work in opposite ways. We argue for a complementary approach focusing on extreme emotions to understand why people turn to non-normative collective action and to understand when and under what conditions extreme emotions may influence positive effects of contact on reconciliation.

This paper contains a critical analysis of the interpretation of Kant's second edition version of the Transcendental Deduction offered by Béatrice Longuenesse in her recent book: Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Though agreeing with much of Longuenesse's analysis of the logical function of judgment, I question the way in which she tends to assign them the objectifying role traditionally given to the categories. More particularly, by way of defending my own interpretation of the Deduction against some of her criticisms, (...) I argue that Longuenesse fails to show how either part of the two-part proof may be plausibly thought to have established the necessity of the categories (as opposed to the logical functions). Finally, I question certain aspects of her 'radical' interpretation of the famous footnote at B160-1, where Kant distinguishes between 'form of intuition' and 'formal intuition'. (shrink)

Artificial intelligent (AI) systems that perform image classification tasks are being used to great success in many application contexts. However, many of these systems are opaque, even to experts. This lack of understanding can be problematic for ethical, legal, or practical reasons. The research field Explainable AI (XAI) has therefore developed several approaches to explain image classifiers. The hope is to bring about understanding, e.g., regarding why certain images are classified as belonging to a particular target class. Most of these (...) approaches use visual explanations. Drawing on Elgin’s work (True enough. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017), I argue that analyzing what those explanations exemplify can help to assess their suitability for producing understanding. More specifically, I suggest to distinguish between two forms of examples according to their suitability for producing understanding. I call these forms samples and exemplars, respectively. Samples are prone to misinterpretation and thus carry the risk of leading to misunderstanding. Exemplars, by contrast, are intentionally designed or chosen to meet contextual requirements and to mitigate the risk of misinterpretation. They are thus preferable for bringing about understanding. By reviewing several XAI approaches directed at image classifiers, I show that most of them explain with samples. If my analysis is correct, it will be beneficial if such explainability methods use explanations that qualify as exemplars. (shrink)

Evoke is a Python library for evolutionary simulations of signalling games. It offers a simple and intuitive API that can be used to analyze arbitrary game-theoretic models, and to easily reproduce and customize well-known results and figures from the literature.

Although the authors' ingenuity in identifying criteria for innovation for field studies is appealing, most field studies will lack adequate data. Additionally, their definition does not clearly distinguish innovation from individual learning and is vague about cognitive mechanisms involved. We suggest that developmental data are essential to identifying the causes and consequences of learning new behaviors.

The goal of this paper is to show that the information carried by a structural representation can be decomposed into the information carried by its component parts. In particular, the relations between the components of a structural representation carry quantifiable information about the relations between components of their signifieds. It follows that the information carried by cognitive structural representations, including cognitive maps, can in principle be quantified and decomposed. This is perhaps surprising given that the formal tools of communication theory (...) have typically only been applied to simpler representation-like states without significant structure, such as detectors or indicators. In the final section I consider using computational complexity theory to capture the processing advantages afforded by structural representation. (shrink)

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In this article, we review some of the discussions about the theory itself, especially addressing issues of the reliability of analyses and psychological validity, together with a discussion of the nature of text relations. We also propose areas for further research. A follow-up (...) article will discuss applications of the theory in various fields. (shrink)

Kant’s views on enlightenment are best known through his essay, “What is Enlightenment?” This is, however, merely the first of a series of reflections on the subject contained in the Kantian corpus. In what follows, I shall attempt to provide an overview of the Kantian conception of enlightenment. My major concern is to show that Kant had a complex and nuanced conception of enlightenment, one which is closely connected to some of his deepest philosophical commitments, and is as distinct from (...) the views of his contemporaries, including Mendelssohn’s, as his critical philosophy is from the rationalism of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. (shrink)

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion features fourteen new essays written by some of the most prominent philosophers working in the field. Contributors include Linda Zabzeski, Hugh McCann, Brian Leftow, Gareth B. Matthews, William L. Rowe, Elliott Sober, Derk Pereboom, Alfred J. Freddoso, William P. Alston, William J. Wainwright, Peter van Inwagen, Philip Kitcher and Philip Quinn. Features fourteen newly commissioned essays. Provides a comprehensive treatment of the major problems in the philosophy of religion. Surveys the field and (...) presents distinctive arguments. (shrink)

Surviving School Stress provides the reader with fundamental components of different types of stress, stressors, and strategies for interventions. In Part I, Dr. Lebrun breaks down the individual components of each type of stress and provides readers with a clear understanding of the key concepts and essential questions needed to be able to effectively intervene with children and adolescents within a school or home setting. Part II of the book provides a framework for educators to use to guide small and (...) large group lessons in a school setting. Each lesson can be individually presented. The small group lessons are meant to guide students in a very focused direction. The general classroom lessons can be adapted depending on the needs of the group within that particular classroom. This resource is suitable for all special education teachers, general classroom teachers at the K-12 levels, behavior consultants, and school mental health counselors. (shrink)

In response to the urgent need to foster sustainable and just transitions toward fairer and healthier food systems, cities and their networks are leading creative interventions. This article presents the case study of FoodLab Sydney, an Australian not-for-profit kitchen incubator that foregrounds ethical principles in training and supporting a diverse range of fledgling food entrepreneurs. It is designed according to a theory of change that combines an approach to food with issues of economic participation and broader social inclusion. This article (...) shares the conception, planning, implementation, and outcomes of the program. These include opportunities for participants from vulnerable communities to develop vocational and business skills and to build strong networks. For many it has improved their capacity to develop and advance business plans or find employment within the food industry and contribute to an expanding network of ethical food actors. The FoodLab Sydney case study joins international examples of food business and kitchen incubators such as FoodLab Detroit and La Cocina as models for supporting community-based microenterprise development with positive social, economic, and environmental benefits. (shrink)

In the twenty-four years since the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, a body of high-quality scholarship on socialism has slowly accumulated. Here I discuss two superb additions to this incipient post–Cold War canon, Mark Bevir’s The Making of British Socialism and Jonathan Sperber’s Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life. Both authors take it as axiomatic that the socialist utopia, with its quasi-eschatological promise of complete human emancipation, is an idea whose time has passed. But Bevir and, to a lesser degree, (...) Sperber discern a utopian afterglow that warrants our interest—and is still quite capable of providing inspiration. “This book has been a long time in the making,” Mark Bevir admits in the .. (shrink)

An inspiring collection of the personal philosophies of a fascinating group of individuals Based on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty essays penned by the famous and the unknown—completing the thought that the book’s title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a star-studded list of contributors—including Isabel Allende, John Updike, William (...) F. Buckley, Warren Christopher, Penn Jillette, Colin Powell, Rick Moody, and Kay Redfield Jameson—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk in Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island’s parole board. The result is a stirring, funny, and always provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of Americans whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best. (shrink)

Two types of interleukin 1 (IL‐1α and IL‐1β) have been defined by purifying the molecules from activated human peripheral blood cells, followed by cloning and expressing the molecules in Escherichia coli. Both types of IL‐1 stimulate proliferation and differentiation of T‐ and B‐lymphocytes and induce cartilage proteoglycan degradation but differ in other properties. For example, demineralization and appears to be a major mediator in the pathogenesis of joint erosion in rheumatoid arthritis. Synthetic adjuvants elicit the production of IL‐1 separate from (...) endogenous pyrogen, and this property is required for the new generation of vaccines based on antigens produced by recombinant DNA technology. (shrink)

"Nearly all the essays are theoretically informed, argumentative, and exceptionally interesting; nearly all try to paint the merits (and demerits) of utilitarianism as a political philosophy in the light of attempted solutions to theoretical problems that are explored in some detail. The result is a searching, thoughtful volume." --Ethics "The Utilitarian Response is unique in the breadth of problems and questions in utilitarian theory covered. It is more suggestive of strategies by which contemporary utilitarianism could be improved than a comprehensive (...) reply to recent objections to utilitarianism. It should be of great interest to scholars in ethical theory and political philosophy. It would also serve well as a text for a graduate level seminar, if accompanied with readings in the area of recent objections to utilitarianism." --Utilitas Utilitarianism is an important component of both popular and academic responses to the problems of ethics and public policy. Over the past two decades, it has lost some ground to rival theories, such as: contractarian, libertarian and natural rights. This book explores the capacity of utilitarianism and the existing challenge of reviving it in political theory. Primary attention is given to questions on the intellectual coherence and moral acceptability of utilitarian responses to practical dilemmas, including health care, punishment, and electoral arrangements. Also examined are the relationships between private ethics and public policy, utility and freedom, utility and democracy, and the role and limitations of states, both locally and internationally. The Utilitarian Response is a broad and contemporary account of utilitarian theory as it exists today. It explores the continuing applicability of utilitarian thought to current practical and interrelated issues of ethics, economics, and politics. An ideal resource for scholars in political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

If God is omniscient then he knows contingent facts. If he exists a se, then his knowledge of facts must not depend on them. How then does he know them? I take seriously Aquinas’ view that God’s knowledge is the cause of things. I argue that “things” includes both entities and situations, that God’s knowledge of them is his knowledge of his unimpedable will, and that the view does not threaten human freedom. God’s knowledge is thus like my knowledge of (...) my linguistic stipulations, except that whereas my knowledge is dedicta, his is de reo. (shrink)

Ethological farm programs as they exist in Switzerland are compared with environmental farm programs in respect of demand and supply. Because animal welfare is not a public good but rather a relation that causes psychological externalities, the demand for animal welfare has a different standing in economic theory than the demand for a clean environment. The supply of animal welfare by farmers, however, largely follows the patterns known from the delivery of environmental goods. Farm size, age and education, and also (...) family size and capital intensity are influencing variables. The paper concludes that the design of ethological farm programs should be based on broad public discussions as described by deliberation theorists rather than willingness-to-pay studies. (shrink)

In assessing the welfare of dairy cows and laying hens, longevity has recently been introduced as an indicator. This paper presents recent attempts to transfer the normative power of longevity to non-human animals and evaluates this choice systematically. It first shows that the normative power of longevity can be justified by utilitarianism but not by rights-based approaches. The case of the ban to kill day-old chicks in Germany is then used to show that public opinion leans neither to the utilitarian (...) approach nor to the rights-based one but draws a firm line between killing animals before and after reaching an adult age. This may be not so much a desire for longevity among farmed animals but a first sign of empathy that may transform our relationship with farmed animals. (shrink)

I describe how gravitational entropy is intimately connected with the concept of gravitational heat, expressed as the difference between the total and free energies of a given gravitational system. From this perspective one can compute these thermodyanmic quantities in settings that go considerably beyond Bekenstein's original insight that the area of a black hole event horizon can be identified with thermodynamic entropy. The settings include the outsides of cosmological horizons and spacetimes with NUT charge. However the interpretation of gravitational entropy (...) in these broader contexts remains to be understood. (shrink)