The ecological approach to object pretend play, developed from the ecological perspective, suggests an action- and affordance based perspective to account for pretend object play. Theoretical, as well as empirical reasons, support the view that children in pretense incorporate objects into their play in a resourceful and functionally appropriate way based on the perception of affordances. Therefore, in pretense children are not distorting reality but rather, they are perceiving and acting upon action possibilities. In this paper, we argue for the (...) viability of an ecological theoretical framework to pretend object play which has been traditionally understood as a representational and metarepresentational ability. We discuss the origins and basic assumptions of the ecological approach to pretense. We layout details by presenting a qualitative analysis of a pretend play episode and discuss the results of an experimental study inspired by the ecological assumptions. We discuss pretend object play in the context of ecological work on tool use. We address the relationship between the enactive and the ecological approaches to pretend play, pointing out similarities as well as differences. We conclude that ecological and enactive approaches have shown that it is possible to challenge accepted interpretations and seek explanatory frameworks that could move the field in new directions. (shrink)

Imagine that your lover or close friend has embraced a difficult long-term goal, such as advancing environmental justice, breaking a bad habit, or striving to become a better person. Which stance should you adopt toward their prospects for success? Does supporting our significant others in the pursuit of valuable goals require ignoring part of our evidence? I argue that we have special reasons – reasons grounded in friendship – to hope that our loved ones succeed in their difficult goals. I (...) further propose that hope is an attitude governed by distinctive norms of epistemic rationality. It has a unique impact on motivation and rational action and a special capacity to be met with uptake in hope. Owing to these features, hope is the central attitudinal dimension of truly amiable support based on “just vision”. (shrink)

Students of Stoic philosophy, especially of Stoic ethics, have a lot to swallow. Virtues and emotions are bodies; virtue is the only good, and constitutes happiness, while vice is the only evil; emotions are judgements ; all sins are equal; and everyone bar the sage is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Non-Stoics in antiquity seem for the most part to find these doctrines as bizarre as we do. Their own philosophical or ideological perspectives, and the criticisms of the Stoa (...) to which these gave rise, are no less open to criticism than are the paradoxes and puzzles under attack – but they may be, often are, better documented, less provocatively attention-begging, or simply more familiar. Even disputes within the Stoa can be obscured or distorted by modern prejudices. Posidonius rejected Chrysippus' theory of a unitary soul, one rational through and through, on the grounds that such a theory could not satisfactorily account for the genesis of bad – excessive and irrational – emotions, the πάθη . Posidonius' own Platonising, tripartite soul feels more familiar to us because the Republic tends to be a set text rather more often than do the fragments of Chrysippus' de anima; and the balance in Plato's favour is unlikely to change. When Posidonius wrote, on the other hand, the Chrysippean soul was school orthodoxy, and Platonism the latest thing in radical chic. (shrink)

A commonly raised criticism against celebrity culture is that it celebrates people who become famous without any connection to their skills, talents or achievements. A culture in which people become famous simply for being famous is criticized for being shallow and inauthentic. In this paper we offer a defence of celebrity by arguing against this criticism. We begin by outlining what we call the Talent Argument: celebrity is a negative cultural phenomenon because it creates and sustains fame without any connection (...) to the accomplishments that arise from an expression of talent or skill. By appealing to the metaphysics of talent and skill, we argue against the Talent Argument and propose that being a celebrity requires the skills that are necessary to acquire and maintain one’s status as a celebrity. A celebrity is more likely to be talented and successful in their expression of these skills, and even celebrities who are ‘famous for being famous’ will often display talents and skills that give rise to their fame. This means that those who critique celebrity culture should not do so by appealing to the Talent Argument. We show how our account of celebrity, talent and skill works to reject both the strong version of the Talent Argument, as well as a weaker and more plausible version of the argument we call the Valuable Talents argument. We conclude by noting that our analysis has demonstrated the need to explore more closely the kinds of skills that are necessary to cultivate celebrity status. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of what a celebrity is, and the values that are attached to celebrity culture. (shrink)

Catherine Rowett presents an in depth study of Plato's Meno, Republic and Theaetetus and offers both a coherent argument that the project in which Plato was engaging has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented, and detailed new readings of particular thorny issues in the interpretation of these classic texts.

We often form intentions to resist anticipated future temptations. But when confronted with the temptations our resolutions were designed to withstand, we tend to revise our previous evaluative judgments and conclude that we should now succumb—only to then revert to our initial evaluations, once temptation has subsided. Some evaluative judgments made under the sway of temptation are mistaken. But not all of them are. When the belief that one should now succumb is a proper response to relevant considerations that have (...) newly emerged, can acting in line with one’s previous intention nonetheless be practically rational? To answer this question, I draw on recent debates on the nature of higher-order evidence and on what rationally responding to such evidence involves. I propose that agents facing temptation often have evidence of “deliberative unreliability”, which they ought to heed even when it is “misleading” (that is, even when their evaluative judgments are in fact proper responses to the relevant considerations then available). Because evidence of deliberative unreliability can “dispossess” agents of normative reasons for evaluative judgments and actions that they would otherwise have, being continent despite judging that one should now succumb can often be more rational than giving in. (shrink)

What do pictures and mental images have in common? The contemporary tendency to reject mental picture theories of imagery suggests that the answer is: not much. We show that pictures and visual imagery have something important in common. They both contribute to mental simulations: pictures as inputs and mental images as outputs. But we reject the idea that mental images involve mental pictures, and we use simulation theory to strengthen the anti-pictorialist's case. Along the way we try to account for (...) caricature and for some basic features of pictorial representations. (shrink)

Pursuing difficult long-term goals typically involves encountering substantial evidence of possible future failure. If decisions to pursue such goals are serious only if one believes that one will act as one has decided, then some of our lives’ most important decisions seem to require belief against the evidence. This is the puzzle of difficult action, to which I offer a solution. I argue that serious decisions to φ do not have to give rise to a belief that one will φ, (...) but can instead be accompanied by a hope to φ. Hope can motivate and rationalize the various actions that we associate with serious commitment. It can also account for the existence of special pressures to adopt an agential stance toward one’s future. Because hope can be cognitively rational when belief is not, there is no problematic tension between the ideal of epistemic rationality and the phenomenon of difficult action. (shrink)

In the care of patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC), some ethical difficulties stem from the challenges of accurate diagnosis and the uncertainty of prognosis. Current neuroimaging research on these disorders could eventually improve the accuracy of diagnoses and prognoses and therefore change the context of end-of-life decision making. However, the perspective of healthcare professionals on these disorders remains poorly understood and may constitute an obstacle to the integration of research. We conducted a qualitative study involving healthcare professionals from an (...) acute care university medical center. A short questionnaire captured demographic data as well as the experience of participants with DOC patients. A semi-structured interview was used to explore attitudes toward ethical issues identified in a previous literature review. Qualitative content analysis of interviews was conducted with the NVivo software. Accurate diagnosis among DOC is often regarded as a challenge, but this was generally not the case for our participants because most reported high confidence in DOC diagnoses. However, participants reported struggling with prognosis, especially because of its essential role for end-of-life decision making and communication with families. Variability of opinion between healthcare professionals was reported and identified by some as a minor issue while others stressed how families struggle with different medical opinions. End-of-life decision making encompassed a large proportion of ethical challenges in these patients, and the removal of artificial nutrition and hydration created significant discomfort in a minority of participants. The concept of futility was subject to wide-ranging understandings with both favorable and unfavorable opinions. Our data suggest that to ensure the incorporation of new evidence-based advances, attention should be directed to the real-world practices and challenges of accurate diagnosis and prognosis. Given pervasive challenges in end-of-life care, we recommend improved training of healthcare professionals in the care of patients with DOC, particularly in end-of life care, understanding the context of decision making, and determining how to optimally integrate new neuroscience research on the care of patients with DOC. (shrink)

The reality of resource limitation during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic has deeply challenged established approaches to healthcare system emergency response. Early preparation du...

In June 2019 Victoria became the first state in Australia to permit “voluntary assisted dying”, with its governance detailed in the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017. While taking lead from the regulation of medically assisted death practices in other parts of the world, Victoria’s legislation nevertheless remains distinct. The law in Victoria only makes VAD available to persons determined to be “already dying”: it is expressly limited to those medically prognosed to die “within weeks or months.” In this article, we (...) discuss the emergence of the Victorian legislation across key formative documents. We show how, in devising VAD exclusively for those “already at the end of their lives”, the Victorian state mobilizes the medico-legal category of the already dying. We argue that this category functions to negotiate a path between what are seen as the unacceptable alternatives of violent suicide on the one hand, and an unlimited right to die on the other. Further, we argue that the category of the already dying operates to make medical practitioners the gatekeepers of this new life-ending choice and effectively limits the realization of autonomy at the end of life. (shrink)

In this paper I explore a famous part of Plato’s Theaetetus where Socrates develops various models of the mind (picturing it first as a wax tablet and then as an aviary full of specimen birds). These are to solve some puzzles about how it is possible to make a mistake. On my interpretation, defended here, the discussion of mistakes is no digression, but is part of the refutation of Theaetetus’s thesis that knowledge is “true doxa”. It reveals that false doxa (...) is possible only if there is a certain stock of abstract knowledge, conceptual knowledge, that is not awareness of the particular individual that is being described. The individual must be identified under some description, or seen as something of a certain kind. Error can only occur if the description applied misdescribes the situation, but then if it is to be applied falsely it must first have been known from somewhere else. So knowledge cannot be reduced to the application of descriptions to particulars, but is to be found in the prior possession of abstract descriptions that can be deployed in identifying particular individuals on the ground. (shrink)

Teacher-student discourse is increasingly mediated through, by and with information and communication technologies: in-class discussions have found new, textually-rich venues online; chalk and whiteboard lectures are rapidly giving way to PowerPoint presentations. Yet, what does this mean experientially for teachers? This paper reports on a phenomenological study investigating teachers’ lived experiences of PowerPoint in post-secondary classrooms. As teachers become more informed about the affordances of information and communication technology like PowerPoint and consequently take up and use these tools in their (...) classrooms, their teaching practices, relations with students, and ways of interpreting the world are simultaneously in-formed – conformed, deformed and reformed – by the given technology-in-use. The paper is framed in light of Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) and “The Thing” (1949). In these writings, Heidegger shows how a thing opens a new world to us, revealing novel structures of experience and meaning, and inviting us to a different style of being, thinking and doing. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , May 2010, Volume 10, Edition 1. (shrink)

Apollonius Dyscolus’ use of ambiguity in grammatical problem-solving has in recent years had the benefit of two scholarly studies. David Blank, in the course of his analysis of the Syntax as a whole , has described the broad functions which Apollonius assigns to ambiguity. Jean Lallot's 1988 paper, ‘Apollonius Dyscole et l'ambigüité linguistique: problemes et solutions’, is devoted exclusively to the treatment of linguistic ambiguity in Apollonius’ work. Yet it is to be feared that the flood of light thrown by (...) these scholars on what had been an unregarded corner of ancient grammar has shown up rather more than Apollonius would have cared to admit, both about the nature, and about the prospects for success, of the enterprise on which he was engaged. At the same time, certain structural features of ancient grammar, at least of the ancient grammar which Apollonius himself constructed, have come into sharper focus: features clear enough with the benefit of hindsight, but glimpsed, it appears, all too dimly by Apollonius himslf. It is now worryingly clear not only that ambiguity was ambiguous for Apollonius, but also that the ambiguity of ambiguity represented a genuine threat to the coherence and value of his work. In this paper I set out to justify both these claims. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the relation between woman and nature. In the first half, I argue that the environmental slogan "Love Your Mother" is problematical because of the way "mother" and "motherhood" function in patriarchal culture. In the essay's second half, I argue that the question, "Are women closer to nature than men?" is conceptually flawed and that the nature-culture dualism upon which it is predicated is in need of being biodegraded for the sake of environmental soundness.

Professor Christopher Stead was Ely Professor of Divinity from 1971 until his retirement in 1980 and one of the great contributors to the Oxford Patristic Conferences for many years. In this paper I reflect on his work in Patristics, and I attempt to understand how his interests diverged from the other major contributors in the same period, and how they were formed by his philosophical milieu and the spirit of the age. As a case study to illustrate and diagnose his (...) approach, I shall focus on a debate between Stead and Rowan Williams about the significance of the word idios in Arius's theology (in the course of which I also make some suggestions of my own about the issue). (shrink)

Do you need to know the name of the god you're praying to? If you get the name wrong what happens to the prayer? What if the god has more than one name? Who gets to decide whether the name works (you or the god or neither)? What are names anyway? Are the names of the gods any different in how they work from any other names? Is there a way of fixing the reference without using the name so as (...) to avoid the problems of optional names? There is a type of formula used in prayer in ancient Greece which I call (in this paper) a "precautionary formula". The person praying uses expressions like "whether you want to be called [x] or [y]", and "if this is the name by which you would like to be called". I also include here the practice of adding definite descriptions that identify the god by means other than the name (e.g. their place of birth or residence, their deeds etc). In this paper I ask what these formulae were for, why so many occur in philosophical work, particularly Plato, and whether the puzzles about the names of the gods go back to the Presocratics. (shrink)

Leibniz has often been described as holding to a kind of phenomenalism. Yet Leibniz did not have a single account of perception, or of the embodied mind, or of the monad, but a set of conflicting and mutually inconsistent accounts that preclude the possibility that there is any such thing as “Leibniz's System.” This difficulty raises problems of interpretation, since it is sometimes maintained that the principle of charity precludes the assignment of frankly inconsistent views to a philosopher. The essay (...) argues that we should not be misled by the intentionalist fallacy into looking for order within a text as opposed to order commentators can impose by making a philosopher's inconsistencies intelligible. (shrink)

This tribute to the breadth and influence of Trudy Govier's philosophical work begins with her early scholarship in argumentation theory, paying special attention to its pedagogical expression. Most people first encounter Trudy Govier's work and many people only encounter it through her textbooks, especially A Practical Study of Argument, published in many editions. In addition to the work on argumentation that has continued throughout her career, much of Govier's later work addresses social philosophy and the problems of trust and response (...) to moral wrongs. The introduction by Catherine Hundleby situates Govier's research along the path of her unusual academic life. While following the timeline of Govier's research publication, in this collection the authors build on her work and suggest certain new connections between her argumentation theory and social philosophy. A Practical Study of Argument, first published in 1985, situates Govier among a distinct segment of informal logicians whose concerns about teaching reasoning to post-secondary students orient their research, Takuzo Konishi argues. Moira Kloster evaluates Govier's progress in the challenge of providing critical thinking education to diverse and changing social contexts. Shifting gears to social philosophy but still addressing education, Laura Elizabeth Pinto explores the significance of Govier's work on trust for explaining the problem of "audit culture" for teaching. At the centre of this volume, social philosophy receives an abstract meta-ethical defense from Linda Radzik. Moving solidly into the domain of normative social philosophy, Alice MacLachlan reconsiders Govier's condemnation of revenge by viewing it as a form of moral address, but she notes how revenge as an act of communication contrasts with argumentation in lacking the respect that Govier maintains is intrinsic to argumentation. MacLachlan ultimately agrees that revenge is morally indefensible. The practical challenges of addressing others in the aftermath of wrongdoing, especially in public contexts, can make it difficult to distinguish between victims and combatants or wrongdoers, Alistair Little and Wilhelm Verwoerd explain, and Kathryn Norlock argues that forgiveness is psychologically vexed too. People may recognize transformation to be in principle possible for all people, Norlock argues, and yet we may find the evidence regarding some particular evildoer sufficient to count that person as an exception. Finally Govier responds to the various papers. (shrink)

Research cites shortcomings and challenges facing research ethics committees in many regions across the world including Arab countries. This paper presents findings from qualitative in-depth interviews with research ethics committee (REC) chairs to explore their views on the challenges they face in their work with the oversight of research involving human populations. Virtual in-depth interviews were conducted with chairs (n = 11) from both biomedical and/or social-behavioral research ethics committees in six countries, transcribed, coded and subject to thematic analysis for (...) recurring themes. Two sets of recurring themes impede the work of the committees and pose concerns for the quality of the research applications: (1) procedures and committee level challenges such as heavy workload, variations in member qualification, impeding bureaucratic procedures, member overwork, and intersecting socio-cultural values in the review process; (2) inconsistencies in the researchers’ competence in both applied research ethics and research methodology as revealed by their applications. Narratives of REC chairs are important to shed light on experiences and issues that are not captured in surveys, adding to the body of knowledge with implications for the region, and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in other parts of the world. International research collaborations could benefit from the findings. (shrink)

Mammalian sperm undergo discharge of a single, anterior secretory granule following their attachment to the zona pellucida surrounding the oocyte. This secretory discharge is known for historical reasons as the acrosome reaction. It fulfils a number of purposes and without it, sperm are unable to penetrate the zona pellucida and fuse with the oocyte. In this review, we focus on the role of the acrosome reaction in the development of fusion competence in sperm. Any naturally occurring membrane fusion has two (...) major sequential steps: a docking or adhesion step, in which two membranes adhere, and a fusion step, in which their lipid bilayers are destabilized and merged and a cellular compartment is either created or destroyed. Recent evidence suggests that there is an important role for oocyte integrins and sperm‐bound disintegrins in mammalian sperm/oocyte adhesion and fusion. The fusion mechanism employed by sperm remains poorly understood, however, and circumstantial evidence suggests it is more complex than the interaction between a single protein species and its target. Sperm/oocyte fusion is probably the most accessible eukaryotic model for intercellular fusion currently available, partly because it is temporally separated from gene expression. Elucidation of the mechanism of sperm/oocyte fusion may throw light on the mechanism of other intercellular fusions such as myoblast fusion, and the evolutionary relationship of intercellular membrane fusion to intracellular membrane fusion. (shrink)

O'Keefe's contention that Epicurus devised the atomic swerve to counter a threat to the efficacy of reason posed by the thesis that the future is fixed regardless of what we do, is not supported by the evidence he adduces. Epicurus' own words in On nature XXV, and testimony from Lucretius and Cicero, tell far more strongly in favour of the traditional view, that Epicurus' concerns were causal determinism and its threat to moral responsiblity for our actions and characters.

The grammarians of antiquity, unlike some of their modern counterparts, seem to have had little interest in investigating ‘what every speaker knows’, at least as a largescale project, consciously articulated and embarked on. The object of such a project would be to determine what constitutes such knowledge—or mastery, or cognition, or whatever name it is given—in actual speakers. An alternative goal would be an account of something knowledge of which would count as knowledge of the language in question, even if (...) this is not what actual speakers know. No ancient author seems to have set himself either task; indeed, the whole question of what it is to know a language seems to have been raised only very occasionally in classical antiquity. is probably the best known of these rare discussions.) Kaimio is surely justified in making the still more sweeping observation that ‘The concept of language knowledge was rather vague amongst ancient peoples’. (shrink)

O artigo procura mostrar que sem uma comunidade civil democratizante de justificação, em lugar do atual sistema internacional, as normas da justiça global não passam de uma ficção, uma mera expressão do imperialismo cultural e político, um instrumento de controle e dominação dos povos em escala mundial, segundo um modelo colonizador ampliado que torna as declarações dos direitos humanos inoperantes. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Direitos humanos. Ética. Habermas. Justiça global. Normas internacionais. Rawls. ABSTRACT The article seeks to show that without a civil, (...) democratizing community of justification, replacing the current international system, the norms of global justice remain a fiction, a mere expression of cultural and political imperialism, an instrument of control and domination of the peoples worldwide, according to an enlarged colonizing model which render the declarations of human rights inoperative. KEY WORDS – Ethics. Global justice. Habermas. Human rights. International norms. Rawls. (shrink)

The reception of Rawls in France has been an extremely complex story where forces of innovation have been, in the end, overwhelmed by the resistance of `philosophical nationalism'. This is surprising as, in many ways, France was going through tremendous changes and modernization at the time of the translation of A Theory of Justice in 1987. In that context, Rawls's project seemed to have something useful and suggestive to offer: bridging the gap between freedom and equality in a new version (...) of social democracy, combining social justice and market efficiency, respecting the plurality of values within civil society and creating a consensus on democratic legitimacy. But the intellectual obstacles, represented mostly by the French idiosyncratic brand of republicanism, were to prove too strong to allow for a true `liberalization' of French intellectual and political life. Whereas a number of lawyers, economists and political scientists as well as proportion of the French civil service saw all the benefits of a rigorous engagement with Rawls, philosophers and the intelligentsia on the whole, with the exception of Paul Ricoeur, reacted negatively to Rawls. (shrink)

" La justice, écrit John Rawls, est la première vertu des institutions sociales comme la vérité est celle des systèmes de pensée. " Rawls renoue ainsi avec la grande tradition de la philosophie politique classique, kantienne en particulier. Les principes de justice qui gouvernent nos démocraties peuvent faire l'objet d'un accord unanime, légitimé par la procédure suivie et non plus par référence à une conception du souverain bien. Mais sa démonstration suppose une société unifiée. Or cette condition n'est plus valable (...) étant donné la diversité culturelle de nos sociétés multiethniques. La nouvelle question qui se pose est donc celle " de savoir comment une société juste et libre est possible dans des conditions de conflits doctrinaux profonds sans espoir de solution. " Dans Libéralisme politique, Rawls amorce une réponse. Le consentement recherché sur des principes de justice ne doit pas être compris comme une adhésion globale : c'est un consentement uniquement " politique " qui laisse toute liberté en matière philosophique, morale ou religieuse. Mais peut-on ainsi séparer le politique et le métaphysique? Est-il possible et même utile de rester " philosophiquement superficiel " pour parvenir à un consensus politique? (shrink)

. In this paper the nature and the role of Rawls's idea of a “free public reason” are examined with an emphasis on the divide between the private and the public spheres, a divide which is the hallmark of a liberal democracy. Criticisms from both the so‐called Continental tradition and the Communitarian opponents to liberalism insist on the ineffectiveness of such a conception, on its inability to establish a political consensus on democracy. But it would be a mistake to see (...) a contractarian theory of justice, such as Rawls's justice as fairness, as grounding the social contract in a public use of reason. Such a contract would indeed be susceptible to endless conflicts and renegotiations and would never achieve consensus. Therefore, a distinction must be made between the values of justice that are present in and through the “original” contractual position and the that regulate the public sphere and guarantee its stability. (shrink)

This article examines the shift in the concept of realism and relativism in ethics in early modern Europe. It suggests that the problem of the nature and foundations of moral rightness and moral obligation became visible to philosophers of the early modern period as they began to reconsider the problems of error, superstition, and illusion to question traditional authorities and to devote attention to scientific methodology and the logic of discovery. It contends that the doctrine that qualities are perceiver-relative, combined (...) with an increased awareness of other ages and cultures, made moral relativism an attractive position, even while its less attractive implications were grasped at the same time. (shrink)

I explore some enlightening alternative economic theories in Plato’s Republic which help to cast doubt on standard models of rationality in economics. Starting from Socrates’ suggestion that things work best if everyone says ‘mine’ about the same things, I discuss a kind of ‘belonging’ which merits more attention in political and economic theory. This kind of belonging is not about owning property, but it can (better) explain the desire to do things for others and for the collective good. But did (...) Socrates forget to invoke it when addressing the puzzle about why the philosopher would willingly return to the cave? (shrink)

After a quick overview on the specification of the causal role of the powers or faculties (δυνάμεις) in nutrition, from the Hippocratic physicians to Galen, via Aristotle, the article defines the set of questions about this process that the Hippocratic physicians leave open. It then examines how Aristotle provides some sort of indirect physical and ethical answers, while Galen openly takes the side of reappropriating the central Stoic concept of oikeiôsis in a Platonist way.

This paper addresses the conception of theology developed by Giles of Rome from the Reportatio of his lecture on the second book of the Sentences to his fifth Quodlibet. It demonstrates that, from the beginning of his career, Giles discredited the power of philosophical reason in the realm of theology, a discipline which he conceived as a defensive, rhetorical and exegetical practice. Henry of Ghent was the principal adversary attacked by Giles, who challenged the scientific legitimacy of theology which Henry, (...) after Thomas Aquinas, had established as the highest speculative discipline. In the conclusion, the paper highlights strong similarities between Giles’ theological epistemology and Godfrey of Fontaines’ conception and practices of university sciences. (shrink)