In this article, we present the results of an original study identifying the perceptions of beginning philosophy students at the start of their first introductory course. We surveyed over 1,100 students representing over 40 universities and colleges in the United States regarding their initial perceptions of gender bias, inclusivity, value, understanding, similarities, and enjoyment of philosophy. We analyzed the results based on gender, first-generation status, and student of color status. This work represents the perspectives of a more diverse range of (...) students, reflecting far more first-generation college students (40 percent) and students who identify as people of color (43 percent) than in previous work. Additionally, this study provides novel data as we were able to collect data on the first day of classes, in most cases before students were exposed to syllabi or content that could inform their views about philosophy. Understanding what beginning students think about philosophy before formal exposure to the field might help us to identify concerns, misconceptions, and areas for improvement. Many results are striking, and our project offers insight into the initial perspectives of philosophy students. (shrink)

The APA has recently taken steps to address concerns related to teaching and supporting philosophers and students who come from less privileged backgrounds. I want to add to this project by fleshing out some concrete ways that philosophy professors contribute to the challenges faced by first-generation and financially disadvantaged philosophers and students. I hope that in making these behaviors explicit, it may be easier for faculty to acknowledge and overcome them.

While summer break presents educational and recreational opportunities for some students, students from depressed socioeconomic groups may face significant obstacles in the summer, including learning loss. In general, these students also lack access to a wide range of intrinsic and instrumental benefits attached to the study of philosophy. While there are currently existing philosophy programs, this contribution highlights the connections between summer experiences and the overall achievement gap, while identifying specific practices shown to yield successful summer programs. Philosophy provides an (...) impressive set of benefits, including academic skills and opportunities for personal growth and development. Incorporating best practices while focusing on the methods and content of philosophy should, therefore, yield particularly rewarding programs. Due to these benefits, summer philosophy programs should be researched, developed, and expanded. (shrink)

In 1931 the mathematical logician Kurt Godel published a revolutionary paper that challenged certain basic assumptions underpinning mathematics and logic. A colleague of Albert Einstein, his theorem proved that mathematics was partly based on propositions not provable within the mathematical system and had radical implications that have echoed throughout many fields. A gripping combination of science and accessibility, Godel’s Proof by Nagel and Newman is for both mathematicians and the idly curious, offering those with a taste for logic and philosophy (...) the chance to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. (shrink)

Hare proposes a view he calls prospectism for making choices in situations in which preferences have a common, but problematic structure. I show that prospectism permits the decision-maker to make a series of choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss. I also argue that a theory that permits the decision-maker to make choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss should be rejected.

Van de Poel argues that nuclear power should be treated as an ongoing social experiment that needs to be continuously monitored and evaluated. In his reports (2009; Jacobs, Van de Poel, & Os...

Little research has explored the perceptions of military medical providers in the deployed environment and how their perceptions may change over time across an extended military conflict. To our knowledge, no studies have examined military medical providers’ opinions on readiness for their roles in the post-9/11 contingency operations. What has been published indicates that, during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, military medical providers often deployed with little notice and minimal formal training. The present report examines data obtained from multiple (...) cohorts of military medical providers (N = 321) deployed to Iraq between 2005 and 2009. Despite varying degrees of support from the U.S. public, our findings indicate that U.S. Air Force military medical providers’ support for the people of Iraq, their belief in the mission, and their ability to influence change did not vary with time. (shrink)

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

Contemporary treatments of humility typically treat humility as a virtue that is reserved for the accomplished. I argue that paradigmatic humility can also be possessed by the deficient, and I provide an extended example of such humility. I further argue that attending to such a case helps us to appreciate the way in which the humble have released both the desire for superiority and the aversion to inferiority. Accordingly, when necessary, the humble will exhibit an extremely low concern with their (...) own status relative to that of others. (shrink)

Individuals who are more easily disgusted tend to be more politically conservative. Individuals who have a preference for order also tend to be more politically conservative. In the present researc...

The view of Aristotle and Brentano that ‘true’ applies straightforwardly to statements (judgments, beliefs, propositions) and derivatively to other things makes for awkward and unintuitive definitions in the cases of derived truth. This is corrected by construing ‘true’ as applying analogically to statements and other things. Under this view, six senses of ‘true’ are distinguished. Following the logic of analogy, these senses are partly the same and partly different. These six senses also exhibit an analogy of proportionality. This yields three (...) groups, paired as follows: moral truth is to sentenial truth as productive truth is to ontological truth as cultural truth is to lawful truth.But behind every analogical prediction is a derivative predication. This implies that there is a primary referent of ‘true’ behind moral, productive and cultural truth on the one hand and sentential, ontological and lawful truth on the other. In the case of the former three, it is evidently the human mind. In the case of the latter three, a reasonable hypothesis, shared by Aquinas, is that it is God’s mind. (shrink)

_An increasing number of cities around the globe aim to become Smart Cities through the implementation of a range of Information and Communication technologies (ICT), AI applications and cloud-based IoT solutions. While the underlying motivations vary, all such transitions require large amounts of data. In this paper, we articulate and defend two claims about privacy in a Smart City. Our first claim is that some level of systematic data collection and processing is ethically permissible. However, there is an upper limit (...) for what is permissible: We suggest that it is never permissible to collect and process data that significantly undermine people’s autonomy. Our second claim specifies when such minor privacy infringements that do not significantly undermine people’s autonomy are permissible: We suggest that the only policies legitimized by the first claim are those that promote the collective good._ _Keywords_: smart city, privacy, autonomy, natural right, collective good. (shrink)

In Thinking Like a Mall, Steven Vogel proposes an environmental philosophy “after nature,” meaning one that rejects the division of the world into wild and humanized spaces. This division is false because environments are always constructed by people, who are enmeshed in landscapes and ecological processes. The opposition between wild and humanized parallels the religious division between sacred and profane, according to Vogel. He believes this dualism is an inextricable part of religious worldviews and thus that environmental philosophy must reject (...) religion. This understanding of religion echoes the work of many scholars of religion, who define religion in terms of an opposition between sacred and profane. However, this approach fails to take into account the many traditions that do not divide the world this way. In many cultures, the sacred is connected to the profane much as the natural and the human are intertwined in Vogel’s materialist philosophy. This entanglement is evident in ecological restoration, in which human actions help construct processes that ultimately transcend human intentions and control. I argue that this is a kind of transcendence, which points to a way in which religious language can help us think about a post-natural environmental philosophy. (shrink)

This book explores the moral, social, and spiritual dimensions of ecological restoration. Gretel Van Wieren, a religion scholar, builds on the work of both critics and advocates of restoration to develop a balanced and well-informed approach to a controversial topic in environmental ethics. Ultimately she finds much value in restoration, as much for its ability to help build human community as for its contributions to ecological well-being. Restoration, she summarizes, is “the attempt to heal and make the human relationship to (...) nature whole” (2).While she holds a generally positive view of restoration, Van Wieren consistently faces the ambivalence inherent in human efforts to recreate wild habitats. Restorationists are faced, as she explains, with “the simultaneous realities that they are in some sense making up nature as they go… and that natural processes are in some sense other than and beyond the human mind” (20). By keeping both these dimensions in mind, Van Wieren presents a balan. (shrink)

Nicholaos Jones argues that theology is not a respectable discipline because of its inability to meet the standards of contemporary science. Although Jones makes a bold claim, I suggest that he has not made his case by focusing on the question of defining science and metaphysics appropriately, the analysis of the literature he cites, and his central claim that theology presupposes the absolute certainty of God.

Suffering and evil in the world provide the basis for the most difficult challenge to monotheistic belief. This Element discusses how the three great monotheisms – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – respond to the problem of suffering and evil. Different versions of the problem, types of answers, and recurring themes in philosophical and religious sources are analyzed. Objections to the enterprise of theodicy are also discussed as are additional objections to the monotheistic God more broadly. This treatment culminates in a (...) recommendation for how monotheism can best respond to the most serious formulation of the problem, the argument from gratuitous evil. (shrink)

(2013). NORMAL MONSTERS AND MONSTROUS MONSTROSITIES: a response to cary wolfe. Angelaki: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 191-196.

In this paper I intend to discuss social decision-making involving extreme risks. By an extreme risk, I mean a potential outcome of an act for which the probability is low, but whose negative value is high. Extreme risks are often discussed when new technologies are introduced into society. Nuclear power and genetic engineering are two well-known examples.

This paper draws on the ‘new wars’ literature and global political economy research to explore how feminists and other critical analysts might investigate linkages between, and the gendering of, licit and illicit informal activities in relation to transnational financing of new wars. The paper considers the interdependence (co-constitution) of reproductive, productive and virtual economies, and aims to illuminate the intersection of race, gender, and economic inequalities (within and among states) as structural features of neoliberal globalization. Finally, the paper develops an (...) analytical framing of coping, combat and criminal informal economies, which overlap and interact but entail distinctive sets of actors, motivations, and activities. A brief description of each economy is followed by suggesting how it is gendered and how this might inform feminist theory/practice in relation to war. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to John Betz who has recently rejected claims that I have made about Erich Przywara’s anti- Semitism and his relationship to Nazi era ideology. Although I admire much of Przywara’s theology and have great sympathy for the teaching about the analogy of being, in this article I address some of the problems of Przywara’s work. I address literature from Przywara on the Jews where he talks about the essence of “the Jew” as “restless” and “revolutionary,” (...) and where he brings up the “wandering Jew” theme or claims Judaism is an “insolent disturber” of the “folkdom.” Przywara’s rejection of “Jewish messianism” and his claims about the “basic tension of the Jew” are also addressed. I analyze his conception of the essence of “the Jew” as, among other things, a “rising will of destruction” and his claim that “Christianity” ultimately becomes the “enemy” of Judaism. Beyond these things, Przywara’s desire to “overcome” Judaism with the right “weapons” is addressed. I also draw attention to his rejection of “Jewish capitalism” and his justification of “the hatred towards the Jews in world history.” In addition to this, his use of ideologically charged Nazi terminology, such as “host-peoples,” and his support of Catholic integralism in Nazi Germany are addressed. Furthermore, Przywara’s remarks on “the positive sense” of the German “movements” in the 1930s are presented. I also show that Przywara”s work was praised by a leading representative and ideologue of National Socialism. With this, I address the internal Nazi correspondences on the very influential German Catholic Jesuit journal titled Stimmen der Zeit. (shrink)

Nonhuman animals play various roles in environmental ethics, often as charismatic symbols of wilderness or active participants in the natural dramas we seek to preserve. Sometimes, however, nonhuman animals do not fit into—and may even threaten—the “nature” that we value. There are two especially problematic animals: white-tailed deer and feral cats. Together, these creatures shine light on a number of important issues in environmental ethics, including the tensions between animal welfare and environmentalism, the ways human interests and categories pervade even (...) ecocentric perspectives, and the complex place of science in environmental ethics and advocacy. Thinking through the issues raised by debates about deer and cats can contribute to a more adequate treatment of nonhuman animals in environmental thought and advocacy. (shrink)