Caleb Ward interviews Black feminist writer, poet, educator, organizer, and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs about Audre Lorde’s spirituality, her ecological political praxis, her pedagogy, and the cross-generational scale of social change.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This chapter begins by highlighting the role of necessary emanation in allowing for goodness to be diffused without involving anything contingent or external. It then argues that, while Timothy O’Connor’s position avoids modal collapse, it may imply divine coercion. O’Connor suggests that God, in order to properly manifest God’s goodness, must create creatures capable of divine union and give them everything required to make their enjoyment as perfect and infinite as it can be. This view is in danger of making (...) God’s salvific acts required, rather than gratuitous. The difficulty is not unique to O’Connor. Any position on which created things are capable of sharing in infinite goodness faces this tension. Such views can imply both that God must create a universe containing creatures capable of infinite enjoyment and that, within such a universe, the return of all things to God must be as complete, infinite, and encompassing as possible. (shrink)

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier (...) members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers. (shrink)

Arguments for an extended evolutionary synthesis often center on the concept of “reciprocal causation.” Proponents argue that reciprocal causation is superior to standard models of evolutionary causation for at least two reasons. First, it leads to better scientific models with more predictive power. Second, it more accurately represents the causal structure of the biological world. Simply put, proponents of an extended evolutionary synthesis argue that reciprocal causation is empirically and explanatorily apt relative to competing causal frameworks. In this paper, I (...) present quantitative survey data from faculty members in biology departments at universities across the United States to evaluate this claim. The survey data indicate that a majority of the participants do not agree (i.e., most either disagree or neither agree nor disagree) that the concept of reciprocal causation confers a larger advantage on research practices. However, a majority of the participants agree that the causal framework of the extended evolutionary synthesis more accurately represents the structure of the biological world. These results demonstrate that the explanatory merits of a conceptual framework and its practical utility can come apart in interesting and informative ways. (shrink)

What should sociologists make of nature? Pragmatism provides one possible answer to this question by centering the practical relations between humans and nonhuman nature. Stefan Bargheer’s Moral Entanglements offers perhaps the most ambitious effort to develop a pragmatist sociology of nature. The book’s polemical aim is to depose a family of theories that, Bargheer argues, dominate our way of thinking about the relationship between nature and culture. This essay constructs an alternative, more accommodating critical encounter between competing theories. It begins (...) by simultaneously granting Bargheer’s positive theoretical contributions while entertaining several virtues of opposing theories of nature and culture that the book largely overlooks. The results include three challenges for a pragmatist sociology of nature: the problem of depth; the problem of breadth, and the problem of differentiation. I argue that this accommodating critical encounter may result in a smaller distance between pragmatism and other sociological theories of nature and culture, and opens to more opportunities for synthetic conversations, rather than pointing to unbridgeable chasms. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the philosophical underpinnings of the human-animal distinction among political theorists, suggesting a possible sea change in how relationships between animals and humans are understood. Yet despite this interest, Aristotle’s famous dicta that “man is a political animal” and that only “beasts and gods” might live without politics persist as the best-known statements on humans and animals and how they relate politically. This essay draws on Aristotle’s biological writings in order (...) to qualify these statements, outlining two opposing threads in Aristotle’s thought: one where humans are seen to be similar to other political animals and hence capable of sharing in political community, and the second where humans are seen to be unlike other animals by virtue of their relation with the divine. I argue that the problems that inform Aristotle’s way of understanding the similarities and differences between humans and animals and between members of.. (shrink)

In this thesis, I reconstruct C. Kenneth Waters’ “practice-centered approach” to philosophy of biology. The objective of the approach is to resolve theoretical debates in biology by appealing to how theories are used to predict and control a phenomenon, not just explain it. By turning our attention to how theories are used in practice, we can see that two conceptually incompatible theories can actually coextend. I put the approach to the test with a contemporary case study: the debate between the (...) Standard Evolutionary Theory and Niche Construction Theory. The debate centers on whether to amend the concept of an evolutionary process. Waters argues that the practice-centered approach resolves the debate with a pluralist framework. I argue that a pluralist framework is not warranted in this case, thus demonstrating that Waters’ approach is not a panacea for all theoretical debates in biology. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge a specific claim by Tyler Burge that perception delineates the lower border of representational mind and exhibits the most basic form of objectivity. According to this claim, perception is the most primitive type of representation that, when veridical, accurately attributes properties to non-perspective, mind-independent subject-matters. I argue that perception of the external world, especially vision, is not the most primitive type of objective representation. My approach will be interdisciplinary. After presenting Burge’s theory of perception, I (...) show that the current best empirical accounts strongly suggest that how perceivers represent their bodily conditions plays a key role in the biological functions of perception. Then, I argue that the lower border of objective representation is not given by perception, but by body representation. Objective representation does not begin with perception. (shrink)

I propose a theory of moral obligation that is inspired by the way obligation has been understood in the Anabaptist tradition. I use the resources of the theory to explain and defend the appropriateness of the Anabaptist claim that Christian ethics is unique. I also use the theory to show that some of the standard objections to Christian pacifism, the most visibly distinctive feature of Anabaptist ethics, are misplaced when pacifism is understood as an application of the theory I defend. (...) Finally, I suggest some theological and theoretical advantages this theory. (shrink)

One major problem that confronts each nation in Africa is bad leadership. Unfortunately, a leadership position seems to be what every person, especially in Africa, desires to have even when one may be ignorant or has given only very little thought to what real leadership entails. This paper examines the qualities and principles of Moses’ leadership in relation to leadership in Africa. The purpose is to highlight the leadership qualities of Moses for Africans to emulate. The paper argues that despite (...) having no leadership ambitions, Moses was a good leader who demonstrated love and meekness to his people. The author believes that Moses’ qualities and principles remain as a valuable yardstick for all religious and political leaders in Africa to follow if the continent will make the desired progress. (shrink)

This article offers an auditory analysis of Aeschylus’ innovative staging of the chorus in Eumenides. The Erinyes’ characterization and initial utterances engage a broader tradition of chthonic sound, including the pythikos nomos, an instrumental solo for the aulos that conveyed the serpent’s suffering when Apollo slew her at Delphi. The resonance of this sound recalls the primordial cries of other chthonic figures, embodying a voice that cultural listening practices had associated with resistance to Olympian oppression. Such an auditory analysis motivates (...) the Erinyes’ unique characterization and staging, while also suggesting the use of auletic sound effects on the tragic stage. (shrink)

Most people are acquainted with the abuse of language that is involved in political propaganda. They accept that even in the best of times politicians aim, in part, to deceive their listeners, to put a good face on the worst of failures, to play down the successes of their opponents. In a general way, political language aims to guide people's perceptions of conditions and events in a way that is favourable to the interests of a politician and his party, interests (...) which may or may not be consistent with the interest of his listeners. Such language is not meant to engender consideration of issues, but rather to free them from the burden of consideration. In the worst of times there is little or no interest in the fidelity between a speaker and his words and between words and things. The accuracy of language is abandoned in favour of its effect; truth is subordinated to ambition. (shrink)

Moral error theory is the doctrine that our first-order moral commitments are pervaded by systematic error. It has been objected that this makes the error theory itself a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards of competing first-order moral theories :87–139, 1996) and Kramer. Kramer: “the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. It is not something that can adequately be contested or confirmed through non-ethical reasoning” [2009, 1]). (...) This paper shows that error theorists can resist this charge if they adopt a particular understanding of the presuppositions of moral discourse. (shrink)

This paper argues that two orthodox views of meaningful work—the subjective view and the autonomy view—are deficient. In their place is proposed the contributive view of meaningful work, which is constituted by work that is both complex and involves persons in its contributive aspect. These conditions are necessary due to the way work is inherently tied up with the idea of social contribution and the interdependencies between persons. This gives such features of the contributive view a distinct basis from those (...) found in existent accounts of meaningful work. (shrink)

Justice in production is concerned with ensuring the benefits and burdens of work are distributed in a way that is reflective of persons' status as moral equals. While a variety of accounts of productive justice have been offered, insufficient attention has been paid to the distribution of work's benefits and burdens in the future. In this article, after granting for the sake of argument forecasts of widespread future technological unemployment, we consider the implications this has for egalitarian requirements of productive (...) justice. We argue that in relation to all the benefits affiliated with work, other than undertaking social contribution, the technological replacement of work is unproblematic as these benefits could in principle be attained elsewhere. But because social contribution uniquely corresponds to work (when work is understood as more than a paid job), the normative assessment of technological unemployment will turn on the value that theories of justice give to contributive activity. We then argue that despite technological replacement being plainly beneficial insofar as it relieves persons from the burdens of work, such as dangerous work or drudgery, because the nature of care work makes it less susceptible to technological replacement, egalitarian concern will require the burdens of care work to be shared equally between individuals. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories have significant promise; they would have important upshots if they were true. But they also face severe problems. The problems are severe enough to make many philosophers doubt that they could be true. My ambition is to show that the problems are just instances of a highly general problem: a problem about what are sometimes called ‘intensional anaphora'. I'll also show that any adequate explanation of intensional anaphora immediately solves all the problems for the hybrid theorist. We (...) should regard hybrid tools as among the most legitimate tools in our toolkit—at least when we use them properly. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ. I present Aristotle’s account of the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive states, both perceptual and intellectual. On my interpretation, Aristotle’s account is based around the notion of cognitive powers taking on forms in a special preservative way. Based on this account, Aristotle argues that no physical structure could enable a bodily part or combination of bodily parts to produce or determine the full range of forms that (...) the human intellect can understand. For Aristotle, cognitive powers with bodily organs are always spatiotemporally limited, but the understanding is not. Aristotle claims that our understanding applies to all instances of the thing understood wherever and whenever they exist. On Aristotle’s own account the intellect in its nature is only “potential,” it does not actually possess any form. Thus nothing prevents it from possessing all forms. (shrink)

Many maintain that petitionary prayer is pointless. I argue that the theist can defend petitionary prayer by giving a general account of how divine and creaturely causation can be compatible and complementary, based on the claim that the goodness of something depends on its cause. I use Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical framework to give an account that explains why a world with creaturely causation better reflects God’s goodness than a world in which God brought all things about immediately. In such a (...) world, prayer could allow us to cause good things in a distinctive way: by asking God for them. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s distinctive version of practice theory has already influenced strategy as practice research but his approach has further relevance to the field. The MacIntyrean approach further focuses attention on joint production as an organization-wide practice that potentially encompasses and integrates sub-organizational practices. It also highlights the way that ordinary organization members engage in modes of praxis in order to integrate productive practices in the service of morally salient, organizational goals, facilitating collaboration and long-term value creation, illustrating how participation in joint (...) production shapes members’ identities beyond that derived from sub-organizational, productive practices. As such, this approach offers new insights into the nature of the praxis, practices, and practitioners that shape processes of strategizing within organizations., This approach also furthers the integration of the practical and critical strands of strategy as practice research and provides insights into the way it can be integrated with other research in strategy. (shrink)

I introduce a new formulation of rule consequentialism, defended as an improvement on traditional formulations. My new formulation cleanly avoids what Parfit calls “ideal world” objections. I suggest that those objections arise because traditional formulations incorporate counterfactual comparisons about how things could go differently. My new formulation eliminates those counterfactual comparisons. Part of the interest of the new formulation is as a model of how to reformulate structurally similar views, including various kinds of contractualism.

I take it that liberal justice recognises special protections against the restriction of speech and expression; this is what I call the Free Speech Principle. I ask if this Principle includes speech acts which might broadly be termed ‘hate speech’, where ‘includes’ is sensitive to the distinction between coverage and protection , and between speech that is regulable and speech that should be regulated . I suggest that ‘hate speech’ is too broad a designation to be usefully analysed as a (...) single category, since it includes many different kinds of speech acts, each of which involves very different kinds of free speech interests, and may cause very different kinds of harm. I therefore propose to disaggregate hate speech into various categories which are analysed in turn. I distinguish four main categories of hate speech, namely (1) targeted vilification, (2) diffuse vilification, (3) organised political advocacy for exclusionary and/or eliminationist policies, and (4) other assertions of fact or value which constitute an adverse judgment on an identifiable racial or religious group. Reviewing these categories in the light of the justifications for the Free Speech Principle, I will argue that category (1) is uncovered by the Principle, categories (2) and (3) are covered but unprotected , and that category (4) is protected speech. (shrink)

I examine the passages where Aristotle maintains that intellectual activity employs φαντάσματα (images) and argue that he requires awareness of the relevant images. This, together with Aristotle’s claims about the universality of understanding, gives us reason to reject the interpretation of Michael Wedin and Victor Caston, on which φαντάσματα serve as the material basis for thinking. I develop a new interpretation by unpacking the comparison Aristotle makes to the role of diagrams in doing geometry. In theoretical understanding of mathematical and (...) natural beings, we usually need to employ appropriate φαντάσματα in order to grasp explanatory connections. Aristotle does not, however, commit himself to thinking that images are required for exercising all theoretical understanding. Understanding immaterial things, in particular, may not involve employing phantasmata. Thus the connection that Aristotle makes between images and understanding does not rule out the possibility that human intellectual activity could occur apart from the body. (shrink)

Efforts to promote responsible conduct of research (RCR) should take into consideration how scientists already conceptualize the relationship between ethics and science. In this study, we investigated how scientists relate ethics and science by analyzing the values expressed in interviews with fifteen science faculty members at a large midwestern university. We identified the values the scientists appealed to when discussing research ethics, how explicitly they related their values to ethics, and the relationships between the values they appealed to. We found (...) that the scientists in our study appealed to epistemic and ethical values with about the same frequency, and much more often than any other type of value. We also found that they explicitly associated epistemic values with ethical values. Participants were more likely to describe epistemic and ethical values as supporting each other, rather than trading off with each other. This suggests that many scientists already have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between ethics and science, which may be an important resource for RCR training interventions. (shrink)

Despite the growing attention to oppression and resistance in social and political philosophy as well as ethics, philosophers continue to struggle to describe and appropriately attribute agency under non-ideal circumstances of oppression and structural injustice. This chapter identifies some features of new accounts of non-ideal agency and then examines a particular problem for such theories, what Serene Khader has called the agency dilemma. Under the agency dilemma, attempts to articulate the agency of subjects living under oppression must on the one (...) hand avoid overemphasizing constraints on agency, and thereby producing paternalistic theories that “deny agency” for oppressed subjects, and on the other hand avoid failing to fully appreciate the effects of oppression on agency, thereby missing crucial features of how oppression unjustly shapes a person’s lived possibilities. This chapter traces this dilemma to a preoccupation with ascribing agency, which produces problematic descriptive and political effects for theorizing agency under oppression: what the author calls an asymmetry problem and a disenfranchisement problem. Finally, the chapter proposes that the agency dilemma might be ameliorated if theorists scrutinize more closely how moral, epistemic, and political agency interact and overlap in life under oppression. (shrink)

This paper defends views like rule consequentialism by distinguishing between two sorts of ideal world objections. It aims to show that one of those sorts of objections is question-begging. Its success would open up a path forward for such views.

The Expanse will develop “Beltalowda” into one of the most meaningful and complex linguistic inventions fiction has seen. George Orwell draws a distinction between the concepts of patriotism and nationalism, two terms synonymous with love of nation, and two terms that, up until that point, had been used almost interchangeably. The Expanse is a sprawling space opera about saving the universe from an alien lifeform; at its core, though, it is a study in what it means to love one's nation (...) the right way. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power. According to Orwell, the foremost difference between patriotism and nationalism is the distinction between defensive and offensive attitudes, which is demonstrated in the different approaches of Camina Drummer and Marco Inaros. Evidence of Marco's obsession and Drummer's lack thereof is also on display in their differing treatment of Naomi Nagata. (shrink)

Body ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a (...) rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

Working in subsystems of second order arithmetic, we formulate several representations for hypergraphs. We then prove the equivalence of various vertex coloring theorems to \, \, and \.

Die vorgelegte Untersuchung, deren Facettenreichtum der Bilderfülle des wohl berühmtesten ‚byzantinischen‘ Hymnus entspricht, ist eine reife Frucht aus dem weiteren Umfeld des Wiener Byzantinistischen Instituts, die als Dissertation am 25. März 2000 an der Universität Helsinki verteidigt und danach mit Veränderungen und Verbesserungen im Druck vorgelegt wurde.

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 147 - 165 Though Hobbes consistently differentiates between the ‘subject’ and ‘servant’ across Elements of Law, On the Citizen, and Leviathan, we currently lack an exhaustive account of the Hobbesian servant. In this paper, I argue that the distinction would have profound consequences for one’s disposition toward both the commonwealth and the community at large. Because the servant joins under the immediate threat of violence and covenants directly with the sovereign, we would expect (...) her initial experience to contribute to a fundamentally more pessimistic attitude toward the commonwealth and atomistic understanding of her place in the body politic. On one level, this distinction could be used to distinguish privileged populations from otherwise marginalized groups. On another level, however, in revealing both the brute reality of sovereign power and the ways in which she is alienated from it, the servant gives us a more accurate understanding of the commonwealth than the subject’s own. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the claim that Christian theology gives us good reason to think that virtue is relative to individuals and communities, i.e., that what character traits are virtues for individuals is relative to individuals and to the communities of which they are members. I begin by reviewing the theological claims that I take to be relevant. I then argue that these claims make it plausible to conclude that virtue is morally redemptive and therefore relative to individuals and (...) communities. I then seek to use these conclusions to illuminate the discussion of the correctiveness of virtue. Finally I respond to some objections and suggest some further ways that my views could be developed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Alasdair MacIntyre’sAfter Virtuehas made a significant impact within business ethics. This impact has centered upon applications of the virtues-goods-practices-institutions schema (Moore & Beadle, 2006). In this article, I develop an extension of the practices-institutions schema (Moore, 2017), drawing upon MacIntyre’s later text,Dependent Rational Animals. Two key concepts drawn from this text are “networks of giving and receiving” and “the virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Networks of giving and receiving are non-calculative relationships that enable participants to cope with vulnerability. These relationships are (...) sustained by the virtues of acknowledged dependence, including just generosity,misericordia,and beneficence, virtues that direct participants to treat the needs of others as reasons for action. Drawing upon research in social network theory, I develop an example illustrating the application of these concepts within an organizational and interorganizational context. I then suggest a number of applications and research questions related to this extension of the practices-institutions schema. (shrink)

According to Rosenthal’s Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, first-order mental states become conscious only when they are targeted by HOTs that necessarily represent the states as belonging to self. On this view a state represented as belonging to someone distinct from self could not be a conscious state. Rosenthal develops this view in terms of what he calls the ‘thin immunity principle’ (TIP). According to TIP, when I experience a conscious state, I cannot be wrong about whether it is (...) I who I think is in that state. We first suggest that TIP is a direct consequence of the HOT theory. Next we argue that somatoparaphrenia—a pathology in which sensations are sometimes represented as belonging to other people—shows that TIP can be violated. This violation of TIP in turn shows that the HOT theory’s claim that conscious states are necessarily represented as belonging to self is in error. Rosenthal’s attempt to account for pathological cases is found to be inadequate when applied to somatoparaphrenia, and other possible defenses are also shown to be incapable of preserving TIP. We further conclude by suggesting that the HOT theory’s failing in this regard is not a failing that is peculiar to this theory of consciousness. (shrink)

I use Plotinus to present absolute divine simplicity as the consequence of principles about metaphysical and explanatory priority to which most theists are already committed. I employ Phil Corkum’s account of ontological independence as independent status to present a new interpretation of Plotinus on the dependence of everything on the One. On this reading, if something else (whether an internal part or something external) makes you what you are, then you are ontologically dependent on it. I show that this account (...) supports Plotinus’s claim that any entity with parts cannot be fully independent. In particular, I lay out Plotinus’s case for thinking that even a divine self-understanding intellect cannot be fully independent. I then argue that a weaker version of simplicity is not enough for the theist since priority monism meets the conditions of a moderate version of ontological independence just as well as a transcendent but complex ultimate being. (shrink)

Following a hypnotic amnesia suggestion, highly hypnotically suggestible subjects may experience amnesia for events. Is there a failure to retrieve the material concerned from autobiographical memory, or is it retrieved but blocked from consciousness? Highly hypnotically suggestible subjects produced free-associates to a list of concrete nouns. They were then given an amnesia suggestion for that episode followed by another free association list, which included 15 critical words that had been previously presented. If episodic retrieval for the first trial had been (...) blocked, the responses on the second trial should still have been at least as fast as for the first trial. With semantic priming, they should be faster. In fact, they were on average half a second slower. This suggests that the material had been retrieved but blocked from consciousness. A goal-oriented information processing framework is outlined to interpret these and related data. (shrink)

I evaluate the argument advanced in politics and Christian ethics that I term ‘decolonial homophobia’: that decolonisation and LGBT+ affirmation are contradictory because LGBT+ rights are a global Northern phenomenon that is imperialistically imposed on the global South. I suggest one premise of the argument is valid—neo-colonial imposition of LGBT+ rights does happen and should be opposed. However, the overall argument fails because it erases or distorts diverse views and complexities of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history, and it tacitly supports (...) ‘homophobic nationalism’ that is oppressive even when advanced in ostensibly decolonial causes. I grant that there are tensions within many current expressions of decolonisation and LGBT+ rights, but argue that Christians should support both decolonisation and LGBT+ rights as intersecting justice issues. I close by suggesting we listen to global Southern LGBT+ activists like Uganda's kuchus on how to navigate this tension and pursue intersectional justice in all societies. (shrink)