In the art of radical Informel, we encounter works with emphasised non-pictoriality, non-semantics and non-referentiality, as well as a tendency towards entropy, layering and the disintegration of form through destructive processes such as deformation, perforation, incision, scratching, the accumulation of structures and masses, fragmentation, stripping and burning. In this paper, theoretical models of interpretation for the art of radical Informel are pointed out through the concepts of the aesthetics of ugliness, i.e. brutal aesthetics, such as (1) deformation, (2) disfiguration, (3) (...) formlessness and (4) entropy – using the example of the informal works of Croatian authors Ivo Gattin, Eugen Feller and Marijan Jevšovar, which result from their attitude towards art and painting. The artists have deliberately created paintings that are not “beautiful” by opposing the classical values of art and beauty through oppositional and negative approaches, nihilism, destruction, deformation and the abolition of the surface of the painting as forms of anti-aesthetics. (shrink)

Inspired both by our ordinary understanding of the world and by reflection on science, anti-Humeanism is a growing trend in metaphysics. Anti-Humeans reject the Lewisian doctrine of Humean supervenience that the world is “just one little thing and then another”, and argue instead that dispositions, powers, or capacities provide connection and activity in nature. But how exactly are we to understand the shared commitment of this anti-Humean movement? I argue that this kind of anti-Humeanism, at its most general level, is (...) to be understood neither as a view about ontology nor about fundamentality, but rather as a specific claim about what explains what. (shrink)

According to the variety of evidence thesis items of evidence from independent lines of investigation are more confirmatory, ceteris paribus, than, for example, replications of analogous studies. This thesis is known to fail (Bovens and Hartmann; Claveau). However, the results obtained by Bovens and Hartmann only concern instruments whose evidence is either fully random or perfectly reliable; instead, for Claveau, unreliability is modelled as deterministic bias. In both cases, the unreliable instrument delivers totally irrelevant information. We present a model that (...) formalizes both reliability and unreliability differently. Our instruments either are reliable, but affected by random error, or are biased but not deterministically so.Bovens and Hartmann’s results are counter-intuitive in that in their model a long series of consistent reports from the same instrument does not raise suspicion of ‘too-good-to-be-true’ evidence. This happens precisely because they contemplate neither the role of systematic bias, nor unavoidable random error of reliable instruments. In our model, the variety of evidence thesis fails as well, but the area of failure is considerably smaller than for Bovens and Hartmann and Claveau, and holds for (the majority of) realistic cases (that is, where biased instruments are very biased). The essential mechanism that triggers variety of evidence thesis failure is the rate of false to true positives for the two kinds of instruments. Our emphasis is on modelling beliefs about sources of knowledge and their role in hypothesis confirmation in interaction with dimensions of evidence, such as variety and consistency. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to sketch, with a broad brush and in bare outlines, an approach to modal epistemology that is characterized by three distinctive features. First, the approach is agency-based: it locates the roots of our modal thought and knowledge in our experience of our own agency. Second, the approach is ambitious in that it takes the experience of certain modal properties in agency to be the sole distinctive feature of specifically modal thought and knowledge; everything that (...) we know about modality beyond the experience of agency is a matter of applying standard methods of inquiry such as deduction, induction and abductive methods for choosing between theories. Third, the account holds that modal thought and knowledge is, first and foremost, about modal properties that are sufficiently like those encountered in agency. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalism is the view that possibilities are a matter of the dispositions of individual objects: it is possible that p if and only if something has a disposition for p to be the case. We raise a problem for modal dispositionalism: nothing within the theory rules out that there could be necessary, perfect masks, which make the manifestation of a disposition impossible. Unless such necessary perfect masks are ruled out, modal dispositionalism runs the risk of failing to provide a (...) sufficient condition for possibility, and indeed of engendering contradictions. But to rule them out, modal dispositionalism would have to revise a crucial tenet of the view, its localism. (shrink)

To reduce sex differences in employment outcomes, we must examine them in the context of the sex-gender hierarchy. The conventional explanation for wage gap—job segregation—is incorrect because it ignores men's incentive to preserve their advantages and their ability to do so by establishing the rules that distribute rewards. The primary method through which all dominant groups maintain their hegemony is by differentiating the subordinate group and defining it as inferior and hence meriting inferior treatment. My argument implies that neither sex-integrating (...) jobs nor implementing comparable worth will markedly improve women's employment status because men can subvert these mechanisms or even change the rules by which rewards are allocated. As evidence, I show that occupational integration has failed to advance women appreciably, and I argue that comparable worth is not likely to be much more effective. Instead, we must seek political analyses and political solutions. (shrink)

This collection breaks new ground in four key areas of feminist social thought: the sex/gender debates; challenges to liberalism/equality; feminist ethics; and feminist perspectives on global ethics and politics in the 21st century. Altogether, the essays provide an innovative look at feminist philosophy while making substantive contributions to current debates in gender theory, ethics, and political thought.

In response to the growing importance of environmental issues, more and more consumers are turning to anti-consumption by reducing, rejecting, or avoiding consumption. Covering the intersection of sustainable consumption and anti-consumption, previous studies relied on socio-cognitive models to explain this decision. In order to extend their findings, we consider the moral and emotional perspectives to examine reducing consumption for environmental reasons in a particular context, i.e. air travel. It is against this backdrop that we propose a conceptual model that includes (...) moral foundations as the main antecedent, followed by anticipated guilt and personal responsibility, while intention to reduce consumption (i.e. air travel) for environmental reasons, positive word of mouth about reducing air travel (WOM) and environmental activism represent the outcomes. The proposed model is tested on a sample of 511 respondents from a UK online consumer panel. Our results confirm the importance of moral foundations, anticipated guilt and personal responsibility and their interplay in the prediction of intention to reduce consumption for environmental reasons. Anticipated guilt influences WOM, while personal responsibility influences activism. In addition, intentions to reduce consumption for environmental reasons have a positive impact on WOM and environmental activism. There are several implications for public policy makers and NGOs that fight against climate change that derive from these findings, as well as research opportunities for academics interested in this topic. (shrink)

The particular design of any technology may have profound social implications. Computing technologies are deeply intermeshed with the activities of daily life, playing an ever more central role in how we work, learn, communicate, socialize, and participate in government. Despite the many ways they have improved life, they cannot be regarded as unambiguously beneficial or even value-neutral. Recent experience shows they can lead to unintended but harmful consequences. Some technologies are thought to threaten democracy through the spread of propaganda on (...) online social networks, or to threaten privacy through the aggregation of datasets that include increasingly personal information, or to threaten justice when machine learning is used in such high-stakes, decision-making contexts as loan application reviews, employment procedures, or parole hearings. It is insufficient to ethically assess technology after it has produced negative social impacts, as has happened, for example, with facial recognition software that discriminates against people of color and with self-driving cars that are unable to cope with pedestrians who jay-walk. Developers of new technologies should aim to identify potential harmful consequences early in the design process and take steps to eliminate or mitigate them. This task is not easy. Designers will often have to negotiate among competing values—for instance, between efficiency and accessibility for a diverse user population, or between maximizing benefits and avoiding harm. There is no simple recipe for identifying and solving ethical problems. -/- Computer science education can help meet these challenges by making ethical reasoning about computing technologies a central element in the curriculum. Students can learn to think not only about what technology they could create, but also whether they should create that technology. Learning to reason this way requires courses unlike those currently standard in computer science curricula. A range of university courses on topics in areas of computing, ethics, society and public policy are emerging to meet this need. Some cover computer science broadly, while others focus on specific problems like privacy and security; typically, these classes exist as stand-alone courses in the computer science curriculum. Others have integrated ethics into the teaching of introductory courses on programming, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. (shrink)

Music can be described as sequences of events that are structured in pitch and time. Studying music processing provides insight into how complex event sequences are learned, perceived, and represented by the brain. Given the temporal nature of sound, expectations, structural integration, and cognitive sequencing are central in music perception (i.e., which sounds are most likely to come next and at what moment should they occur?). This paper focuses on similarities in music and language cognition research, showing that music cognition (...) research provides insight into the understanding of not only music processing but also language processing and the processing of other structured stimuli. The hypothesis of shared resources between music and language processing and of domain-general dynamic attention has motivated the development of research to test music as a means to stimulate sensory, cognitive, and motor processes. (shrink)

Background Citizen science and models for public participation in health research share normative ideals of participation, inclusion, and public and patient engagement. Academic researchers collaborate in research with members of the public involved in an issue, maximizing all involved assets, competencies, and knowledge. In citizen science new ethical issues arise, such as who decides, who participates, who is excluded, what it means to share power equally, or whose knowledge counts. This article aims to present an ethics framework that offers a (...) lens of understanding and heuristic guidelines to deal with ethical issues in citizen science. -/- Methods We conducted seven case studies between 2015 and 2021 to attune and validate the ethics framework for the context of citizen science. The cases related to studies with older adults, people with a psychiatric vulnerability, people dependent on community care, people who are unemployed or living in poverty or both, and young adults with respiratory disease. -/- Results Ethics in citizen science reaches beyond the ethical issues in traditional biomedical and health research. It entails more than following procedures about informed consent and privacy and submitting a proposal to a Medical Research Ethics Committee. Ethics in citizen science relates to everyday ethical issues during the study, including relational and moral complexities concerning collaboration, sharing power, and democratic decision-making. Dealing with these issues requires ethics work of researchers. This entails seeing ethically salient issues and reflecting on everyday ethical issues. Ethics work consists of seven features: framing work, role work, emotion work, identity work, reason work, relationship work, and performance work. All are relevant for researchers in citizen science. -/- Conclusions Ethical issues in citizen science often relate to power differentials, partnership, and collaboration between academics and non-academics. The ethics framework prepares researchers for the work needed in citizen science to act responsibly and offers a heuristic guide to reflect on ethics. Reflection on ethics is a pathway towards ethical citizen science, especially if researchers collaboratively reflect in partnership with non-academics who are subject to the moral issue. (shrink)

The role of agape in Christian ethics has been a major concern for twentieth century ethicists. In America, the dominant ethical position has stressed other-regard--often pressed to the point of significant personal sacrifice--as the content of agape. Feminist ethicists are now criticizing an exclusive emphasis on other-regard. They are stressing the need for a healthy self-regard and hence they are exploring mutuality as the most appropriate image of Christian love.

Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy.

The theme of this special issue is Post-truth. No doubt it was my exasperation with the terminological state of our collective situation that incited me in the spring of 2017 to settle upon it. What, exactly, does the hyphenated couplet mean or to what does it refer? What is its significance or sense? How is it being used, by whom, for what purpose, and with what consequences—for whom? And if, as was being asserted on nearly every side, we currently find (...) ourselves in post-truth, how might we ever get out, presuming we may one day want as much? The original contributions by Sarah Burgess, James Crosswhite, Jason David Myres, Bradford Vivian, and Eric King Watts published herein go a long way toward answering these... (shrink)

Recent writers in feminist ethics have been concerned to find ways to reclaim and augment women's moral agency. This essay considers Sarah Hoagland's intriguing suggestion that we renounce moral praise and blame and pursue what she calls an "ethic of intelligibility." I argue that the eschewal of moral blame would not help but rather hinder our efforts to increase our sense of moral agency. It would, I claim, further intensify our demoralization.

Wallace's contributions to biological thought tend to be overlooked or overly praised, neither of which produces a satisfactory assessment. Examples of the latter tendency are the recent expositions by Brackman and Brooks; although both books contain much worthwhile material, both are flawed. At critical points their theories fail to measure up, Brackman's because of his misinterpretations of events in the month of June 1858, and Brooks's Darwin's September 5 letter to Gray could, and probably did, represent an ordering of his (...) ideas in response to a felt challenge.A fruitful way to characterize the relationship between Darwin and Wallace may be found in terms of game theory. Most scholars look upon the relationship as a zero-sum game, with a winner and a loser, the matter of priority being considered as a “single event.” Another approach would be to look upon it as a non-zero-sum game with each man influencing the other. In this case, the productivity of one is stimulated by the contributions of the other, resulting in a net gain in knowledge overall, and both men become winners, or codiscoverers. This approach is possible if Wallace's contributions to the theory of evolution by means of natural selection are recognized. (shrink)

Although the modern American kinship system is nominally a bilateral system, the very definition of kin ties is based on the principles of patriarchy. Women do not gain their rights to their children in this society as mothers, but as father-equivalents, sources of genetic material. In child rearing as in childbearing, women may take on the role of fathers to their children, substituting poorer women to do the traditional mothering work. The resultant recasting of the classic Oedipal drama in terms (...) of class and race rather than gender is described. This article argues that we must move beyond patriarchal definitions of the relations between parents and children, and beyond modifications that simply extend to some women, most often at cost to other women, some of the privileges of patriarchy. (shrink)

How do our brains make choices? How do factors such as Alzheimer's or depression impair decision-making? Presenting the latest research on 'hot' and 'cold' decision-making, Barbara Sahakian and Jamie Nicole LaBuzetta look at the therapeutic smart drugs now available, and raise concerns about their unregulated use to enhance mental performance.

Kathryn Morgan has introduced us to a typology of ‘the ways in which women’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity are twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.’ She claims that this experience can induce in women ‘a sense of confusion and genuine moral madness.’I am in agreement with much of what Morgan says. However, I suspect that some others might find her case less convincing than I for the reason that she supports her claims by (...) an appeal to classical philosophical literature and what we might loosely call ‘sociological observations.’ One can imagine the easy retort—‘Yes, well, it’s true that Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau and Kant did say those silly things about women, but their remarks were mere asides and no one takes them seriously in this matter any more anyway. (shrink)

Partee (1973) discussed quotation from the perspective of the then relatively new theory of transformational grammar.2 As she pointed out, the phenomenon presents many curious puzzles. In some ways quotes seem quite separate from their surrounding text; they may be in a different dialect, as in her example in (1), (1) ‘I talk better English than the both of youse!’ shouted Charles, thereby convincing me that he didn’t. [Partee (1973):ex. 20] or even in a different language, as in (2): (2) (...) Louise said ‘Je voudrais un auto-da-f´e’, but I didn’t know what she meant. (shrink)

What does it mean to be a white educator teaching about and against whiteness to a racially diverse group of students while simultaneously acknowledging one’s white complicity? This books gleans insight from philosophical scholarship that can help respond to the challenges that white complicity creates for pedagogy.

The aim of this article is to present the circumstances of Noël Coypel’s appointment as rector of the French Academy in Rome and to trace the route of his didactic journey from Paris to Rome with the Prix de Rome scholars entrusted to him. The paper is an attempt to answer the following questions: why a more difficult route through the Alps was chosen, in what way was the journey educational, and what role did the documents given to Coypel play (...) in securing the expedition. The article is based on an analysis of administrative records during the reign of Louis XIV, lists of superintendents and directors of the French Academy in Rome, accounts of royal buildings, and minutes of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. The paper uses the analytical method, the comparative method, the synthetic method, source criticism, argumentum ex silentio inference, and the geographical method when discussing the itinerary. Although the trip was purposeful and related to Coypel’s new position, he designed it in such a way as to not so much get to the destination quickly, but to show his students as much as possible. Coypel introduced the royal scholars to masterpieces of painting and sculpture at centers along a route through Dijon, Lyon, Chambéry, the Mont Cenis Pass, Turin, Milan, Bologna and Florence. The crossing of the Alps, though dangerous, was most often chosen because of the artistic reputation of the cities there. The trip was educational at the expense of comfort or safety. Coypel, as a guide and teacher led his charges by overseeing their learning during and through the journey. Wandering to the Eternal City was part of a painter’s education in the seventeenth century and was part of Coypel’s didactic work allowing young people to be inspired by direct exposure to masterpieces. The journey had an eminently didactic and artistic character, but also an initiatory one, as it gradually initiated and prepared the students for the experience of Rome, the center of artistic life at that time. (shrink)

The two target articles in this issue bring into focus the struggle for governance over biomedical interventions that may offer some families more agency—the capacity to act—in the context of many...

In this paper we explore shifts in how the law and ethics allow European law enforcement officers to use forensic genetic technologies. We do so by reviewing three technologies, ‘traditional’ (STR-based) forensic DNA profiling, forensic DNA phenotyping and the searching of genetic genealogy databases. In particular, we discuss changes in how ethical boundaries have been placed around what is seen as an appropriate use of genetic technologies in European criminal justice systems. While the ‘type’ of DNA that law enforcement officers (...) are permitted to analyse offers a useful ethical reference point, for newer forensic genomic technologies, ethical scrutiny, we argue, would also look at the specific purpose or use of the technology. (shrink)

Most literature about vaccine hesitancy has been focused on parental attitudes. Less attention has been devoted to both scientists and experts who raise criticism about immunization policies and intervene in the public debate. This consideration aims to balance the current emphasis in the literature on parents’ attitudes about vaccination, offering a complementary angle to reframe and widen the controversy. Focusing on scientists and experts, an unattended complex picture of multiple attitudes towards vaccines and vaccinations has been discovered through a qualitative (...) content analysis of texts related to the harsh public debate, held between March 2017 and November 2018, triggered by the legislative proposal of making ten vaccinations mandatory for children. Unlike oversemplications that misleading dichotomies reproduce, the analysis reveals nine different positions along the continuum of immunisation attitudes, ranging from radical acceptance of vaccinations to radical rejection, which constitute a fuzzy set. Consequently, a twofold reality emerges: on the surface, the conflict seems between pro-vaxxers versus hesitant, pro-choice and anti-vaxxers; beneath it is amid standardized versus a varieties of contextual and personalised approaches to health. (shrink)

Calls for vigilance have been a recurrent theme in social justice education. Scholars making this call note that vigilance involves a continuous attentiveness, that it presumes some type of criticality, and that it is transformative. In this essay Barbara Applebaum expands upon some of these attributes and calls attention to three particular features of vigilance that, while they may be alluded to in the aforementioned discussions, are rarely made explicit. These three features are critique, staying in the anxiety of (...) critique, and vulnerability. Using the lens of Judith Butler's recent work and the discussions that her work has provoked, Applebaum examines these three features of vigilance and demonstrates how they are crucial for white people interrogating their complicity in systemic racism. Finally, she discusses how the expanded three features of vigilance can offer guidance to one of the enormously thorny questions that arises in the social justice classroom. (shrink)

We investigate the complexity of isomorphisms of computable structures on cones in the Turing degrees. We show that, on a cone, every structure has a strong degree of categoricity, and that degree of categoricity is${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0 $-complete for someα. To prove this, we extend Montalbán’sη-system framework to deal with limit ordinals in a more general way. We also show that, for any fixed computable structure, there is an ordinalαand a cone in the Turing degrees such that the exact complexity (...) of computing an isomorphism between the given structure and another copy${\cal B}$in the cone is a c.e. degree in${\rm{\Delta }}_\alpha ^0\left$. In each of our theorems the cone in question is clearly described in the beginning of the proof, so it is easy to see how the theorems can be viewed as general theorems with certain effectiveness conditions. (shrink)

Bioethics education now takes place outside universities as well as within them. How should clinicians, ethics committee members, and policymakers be taught the ethics they need, and how may their progress best be evaluated?

We show that Sacks' and Shoenfield's analogs of jump inversion fail for both tt- and wtt-reducibilities in a strong way. In particular we show that there is a ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{2}^{0}$ set B > tt ∅′ such that there is no c.e. set A with A′ ≡ wtt B. We also show that there is a ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{2}^{0}$ set C > tt ∅′ such that there is no ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{2}^{0}$ set D with D′ ≡ wtt C.

Here I craft a case for recognizing the roots and patterns that ground the possibility of contemporary com-posting—as outlined in Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble—by New Materialists and critical pragmatists, especially those who are affected by the social injustices and ill-advised practices of today’s formal education. I explore both Spinozan Ethics and American pragmatism in order to fashion a pattern that affects educational thought and action. That pattern of affect/affecting is one Haraway calls “attunement”, a state of co-relation that (...) makes “unexpected feats possible.” My goal is to encourage those educational theorists who dwell in a critical pragmatist archive and those who dwell in a New Materialist archive to “make kin,” to learn to play string figures with a companion species, as they com-post educational possibility in a world where agency is both more limited and more widely-distributed. (shrink)

expression that indicates hearer-familiarity conversationally implicates that the referent is in fact nonfamiliar to the hearer” (KW 177, emphasis in original, footnote added). The purpose of this note is two-fold: first, to look more closely at the proposed implicature; and second, to clarify its relation to a different implicature – a scalar implicature of nonuniqueness resulting from use of the indefinite rather than the definite article, which was proposed by Hawkins (1991). In the first section below we distinguish explicit from (...) implicit indications of familiarity. In §2 we look specifically at definite NPs from this perspective. In §3 we consider KW’s evidence for the familiarity implicature, and in §4 we argue that the existence of such an implicature does not cast doubt on the existence of Hawkins’ nonuniqueness implicature. The final section contains some concluding remarks. We should make clear that we may ultimately have little or no disagreement with KW on the issues here. (We have had some indication from one of the authors that that is the case.) Rather, our main purpose is clarificatory. Most importantly, we fear that a reader of KW may come away with the conclusion that their nonfamiliarity implicature in some way supplants or supersedes the Hawkins implicature, and we would like to ward off any such conclusion. (shrink)