Catcalls have been said to insult, intimidate, and silence their targets. The harms that catcalls inflict on individuals are reason enough to condemn them. This paper argues that they also inflict a type of structural harm by subordinating their targets. Catcalling initiates an unwanted conversation where none should exist. This brings the rules and norms governing conversations to bear in such a way that the catcall assigns their target a ‘subordinate discourse role’. This not only constrains the behaviour of the (...) target here and now, but also influences the norms governing future conversations. Catcalls are then not only bad because of the effects on their target, but also because of their pernicious contribution to the wider normative landscape. (shrink)

In the past decade, numerous ethical frameworks have been developed to support public health decision‐making in challenging areas. Before the COVID‐19 pandemic began, members of the authorship team were involved in research programmes, in which the development of ethical frameworks was planned, to guide (a) the use of new technologies for emerging infectious disease surveillance; and (b) the allocation of scarce supplies of pandemic influenza vaccine. However, as the pandemic evolved, significant practical challenges emerged that led to our questioning the (...) value of these frameworks. We now believe that a normative instrument, such as a framework, cannot adequately or reliably provide the ethical guidance that needs to be incorporated into public health decision‐making during natural disasters or infectious disease emergencies. Recently it has been suggested that there are potentially more dynamic, flexible, and effective ways to navigate decisions involving complex considerations entailed in policies and practices during a public health emergency. In this paper, we first outline the key functions of a public health ethics framework, before describing why we believe it would not be fit for purpose during a crisis. We end by considering whether proposed alternative methods to promote ethical public health decision‐making goals have the potential to meet these objectives. (shrink)

Three new books by Martha Nussbaum, Jeff Sebo, and Mark Rowlands seek to raise the profile of non-human animals within political theory. They present a series of compelling arguments for making animal flourishing central to discussions about the future, especially in a time of ecological crisis. All three offer important insights into what a genuinely non-anthropocentric political theory could look like. But while they converge in some ways – for instance, all recommend serious restrictions on the human industries that brutalise (...) other animals – they also paint quite different visions of the proper relationship between humans and other animals. This review essay assesses their distinctive visions of the future of human-animal relations. (shrink)

Some disagreements concern our most fundamental beliefs, principles, values, or worldviews, such as those about the existence of God, society and politics, or the trustworthiness of science. These are ‘deep disagreements’. But what exactly are deep disagreements? This paper critically overviews theories of deep disagreement. It does three things. First, it explains the differences between deep and other kinds of disagreement, including peer, persistent, and widespread disagreement. Second, it critically overviews two mainstream theories of deep disagreement, the Wittgensteinian account and (...) the Fundamental Epistemic Principle account, before introducing a Hybrid account. Finally, it explores the notion that deep disagreements can be deeper than others. (shrink)

An argument that science is indeed 'socially constructed' but in a way that exposes it to a Darwinian version of variability and selection which ensures its success.

In a symposium built around a critical reassessment by Nicholas Gaskill of Richard Rorty's pragmatism, this contribution examines the provocative question of whether Rorty's rhetoric hinders Rortian aims. When reconsidering him in company with “the philosophical wing of science studies” (Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Donna Haraway), Gaskill finds that Rorty's persistent assumption of nature/culture and word/world dichotomies is politically dangerous and prevents his comprehending both distributed agency and the complexity of human entanglements with the nonhuman. Gaskill's Rorty lacks a (...) sustained and coherent positive project, but a fuller picture, outlined in this article, reveals not only greater alignment of Rorty with science studies and agential realism but also key Rortian contributions to those fields that are particularly of moment in our “post-truth” condition. (shrink)

The Mòzǐ is among the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition, presenting China's earliest ethical, political, and logical theories. The collected works introduce concepts, assumptions, and issues that had a profound, lasting influence throughout the classical and early imperial eras. Mòzǐ and his followers developed the world's first ethical theory, and presented China's first account of the origin of political authority from a state of nature. They were prominent social activists whose moral and political reform movement sought to improve (...) the welfare of the common people and eliminate elite extravagance and misuse of power. -/- In this new translation, Chris Fraser focuses on the philosophical aspects of the writing and allows readers to truly enter the Mohists' world of thought. This abridged edition includes the essential political and social topics of concern to this vital movement. Informed by traditional and recent scholarship, the translation presents the Mohists' ideas and arguments clearly, precisely, and coherently, while accurately reflecting the meaning, terminology, and style of the original. (shrink)

The second edition of Doing Ethics in Media continues its mission of providing an accessible but comprehensive introduction to media ethics, with a theoretical grounding in moral philosophy, to help students think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment. Each chapter highlights specific considerations, cases, and practical applications for the fields of journalism, advertising, digital media, entertainment, public relations, and social media. Six fundamental decision-making questions - the "5Ws and H" around which the book is organized (...) - provide a path for students to articulate the issues; understand applicable law and ethics codes; consider the needs of stakeholders; work through conflicting values; integrate philosophic principles; and pose a "test of publicity." Students are challenged to be active ethical thinkers through the authors' reader-friendly style and use of critical early-career examples. While most people will change careers several times during their lives, all of us are life-long media consumers, and Doing Ethics in Media prepares readers for that task. Doing Ethics in Media is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies. It also serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, communication studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences. The book's companion website-doingethicsin.media, or www.doingmediaethics.com-provides continuously updated real-world media ethics examples and collections of essays from experts and students. The site also hosts ancillary materials for students and for instructors, including a test bank and instructor's manual. (shrink)

Trinitarians are charged with at least two contradictions. First, the Father is God and the Son is God, so it seems to follow that the Father is the Son. Trinitarians affirm the premises but deny the conclusion, which seems contradictory. Second, the Father is a God, the Son is a God, and the Holy Spirit is a God, but the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. This (...) argument seems to entail that there are three Gods. Again, Trinitarians affirm the premises but deny the conclusion. In this article, I present a novel Trinitarian solution to these alleged contradictions. The solution allows one to maintain that the premises in the above arguments are absolute identity statements, forestalls the need to develop a new way of counting (e.g. by sortals or numerical sameness), and is compatible with divine simplicity. (shrink)

Le mot «milieu» est précieux pour souligner que les installations humaines – l’architecture, la ville – tiennent compte de leur environnement, naturel ou bâti. Avant de configurer «un monde», l’art humain configure un lieu et même l’élit et le transfigure en le métamorphosant, faisant de milieux donnés des «lieux» habitables voire mémorables aux multiples formes de délimitations, d’échanges et de devenir. La notion de milieu habité est mise en perspective et pensée en termes de limites, passages, liens et métamorphoses.

BackgroundVulnerability is a key concept in traditional and contemporary bioethics. In the philosophical literature, vulnerability is understood not only to be an ontological condition of humanity, but also to be a consequence of contingent factors. Within bioethics debates, vulnerable populations are defined in relation to compromised capacity to consent, increased susceptibility to harm, and/or exploitation. Although vulnerability has historically been associated with older adults, to date, no comprehensive or systematic work exists on the meaning of their vulnerability. To fill this (...) gap, we analysed the literature on aged care for the meaning, foundations, and uses of vulnerability as an ethical concept.MethodsUsing PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of argument-based ethics literature in four major databases: PubMed, Embase®, Web of Science™, and Philosopher’s Index. These covered biomedical, philosophy, bioethical, and anthropological literature. Titles, abstracts, and full texts of identified papers were screened for relevance. The snowball technique and citation tracking were used to identify relevant publications. Data analysis and synthesis followed the preparatory steps of the coding process detailed in the QUAGOL methodology.ResultsThirty-eight publications met our criteria and were included. Publication dates ranged from 1984 to 2020, with 17 publications appearing between 2015 and 2020. Publications originated from all five major continents, as indicated by the affiliation of the first author. Our analyses revealed that the concept of vulnerability could be distinguished in terms of basic human and situational vulnerability. Six dimensions of older adults’ vulnerability were identified: physical; psychological; relational/interpersonal; moral; sociocultural, political, and economic; and existential/spiritual. This analysis suggested three ways to relate to older adults’ vulnerability: understanding older adults’ vulnerability, taking care of vulnerable older adults, and intervening through socio-political-economic measures.ConclusionsThe way in which vulnerability was conceptualised in the included publications overlaps with distinctions used within contemporary bioethics literature. Dimensions of aged care vulnerability map onto defining features of humans, giving weight to the claim that vulnerability represents an inherent characteristic of humans. Vulnerability is mostly a value-laden concept, endowed with positive and negative connotations. Most publications focused on and promoted aged care, strengthening the idea that care is a defining practice of being human. (shrink)

This paper critically surveys 20 years of recent work on radical skepticism. It focuses on three key issues. First, it starts by exploring how philosophers have recently challenged our understanding of radical skeptical arguments. It then unpacks and critically evaluates some influential reactions to radical skepticism: structuralism, knowledge-first epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, and hinge epistemology. Third, it explores some novel developments of pragmatism, like pragmatic skepticism, gauges its anti-skeptical import, and reflects on the ways in which radical skeptical epistemology and ethics (...) might meet. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an account of social alienation, a genre of alienation engendered by contemporary work that has gone largely overlooked in the ethics of labor. Social alienation consists in a corruption of workers’ relations to their social life and the people that make it up. When one is socially alienated, one’s sociality and close relations exist as a mere afterthought or break from work, while labor is the central activity of one’s life. While one might think that (...) existing solutions to alienated labor would resolve this social alienation, I suggest that such solutions at best leave the problem intact and may in fact contribute to it by giving labor the place of priority in workers’ lives. Resolving social alienation, I suggest, requires rethinking the amount of time we commit to work, the rigidity of the work schedule, and most crucially, the value that we attribute to work as the primary source of purpose in our lives. (shrink)

This short article is a “conversation” in which an android, Mort, replies to Richard Marc Rubin’s android named Sol in “The Robot Sol Explains Laughter to His Android Brethren” (The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 2022). There Sol offers an explanation for how androids can laugh--largely a reaction to frustration and unmet expectations: “my account says that laughter is one of four ways of dealing with frustration, difficulties, and insults. It is a way of getting by. If you need to label (...) my conception of humor, you might call it an adjustment theory, or perhaps an accommodation theory” (Rubin 256). Mort is intrigued but has his doubts. Mort contends that synesthesia likely has something to do with how humans develop humor. Perhaps, he considers, human designers crossed the androids' sensory wires, allowing them to be able to smash up concepts that do not otherwise seem to fit together, reconstruct incongruities in a manner that is not nonsensical, express the aha-eureka moment of a serendipitous discovery, and even feel blue when they fail at a given task that we were expected to complete. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that aesthetic testimony can provide aesthetic knowledge. This leaves us with the question: why does getting aesthetic knowledge by experience – by seeing a painting up close, or witnessing a performance first-hand – nevertheless seem superior to aesthetic testimony? I argue that it is due to differences in their epistemic value; in the diversity of epistemic goods each one provides. Aesthetic experience, or the experience of art or other aesthetic objects, affords multiple, distinctive epistemic goods whereas aesthetic (...) testimony affords less. In particular, it provides aesthetic knowledge of truths, a kind of propositional knowledge, as well as aesthetic knowledge of things, a kind of non-propositional knowledge. Although aesthetic experience is superior because it has more epistemic value, this doesn’t mean that aesthetic testimony provides weaker justification for aesthetic belief than aesthetic experience; the difference is evaluative, not normative. In this way, we can explain a key pessimistic intuition about aesthetic testimony – that it is inferior to aesthetic experience – whilst preserving the optimistic view that aesthetic testimony makes aesthetic knowledge available to others. The superior epistemic value of first-hand aesthetic experience is compatible with a number of important observations about aesthetic testimony, including the importance of aesthetic trust. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends an underexplored account of faith—the perspectival account of faith—according to which faith is a value-oriented perspective on the world toward which the subject has a pro-attitude. After describing this account of faith and outlining what it is to have faith on the perspectival account, I show that the perspectival account meets methodological criteria for an account of faith. I then show that this account of faith can be used to unify various faith locutions: having faith (...) that p (propositional faith), having faith in something (attitudinal faith), being a person of faith (global faith), articles of faith (creedal faith), and acts of faith (praxical faith). Finally, since the perspectival account of faith is a cognitive account of faith, I defend the perspectival view against objections to cognitive accounts of faith. (shrink)

Chris Daly; Tropes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 253–262, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/94.1.253.

What interferes with learning and performing skills well? The Zhuāngzǐ story of the ferryman who steers a sampan through treacherous deeps with preternatural skill highlights one crucial factor: anxiety. Managing or eliminating anxiety is a pivotal step in acquiring and performing skills and, the discursive context of the story suggests, in living a flourishing life. To fare well, in life as in boat-handling, we must learn to forget the deeps and row.

Chris Fraser presents a rich and broad-ranging study of the culminating period of classical Chinese philosophy, the third century BC. He offers novel and informative perspectives on Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, and other movements in early Chinese thought while also delving into neglected texts such as the Guanzi, Lu's Annals, and the Zhuangzi 'outer' chapters, restoring them to their prominent place in the history of philosophy. Fraser organizes the history of Chinese thought topically, devoting separate chapters to metaphysics and (...) metaethics, political philosophy, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and philosophy of language and logic. Focused specifically on the last century of the Warring States era, arguably the most vibrant, diverse period of philosophical discourse in Chinese history, the discussion covers the shared concerns, rival doctrines, and competing criticisms presented in third-century BC sources. Fraser explicates the distinctive issues, conceptual frameworks, and background assumptions of classical Chinese thought. He aims to introduce the philosophical discourse of early China to a broad audience, including readers with no prior familiarity with the material. At the same time, the thematic treatment and incisive interpretations of individual texts will be of interest to students and specialists in the field. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan notices in a recent, influential paper how philosophers of well-being tend to neglect ill-being—the part of the theory of well-being that tells us what is bad in itself for subjects—and explains why we need to give it more attention. This paper does its part by addressing the question, If desire satisfaction is good, what is the corresponding bad? The two most discussed ill-being options for theories on which desire satisfaction is a basic good are the Frustration View and (...) the Aversion View. I aim to show that the Frustration View is more plausible than Kagan and others think; to introduce and evaluate two additional desire-oriented theories of ill-being worth considering, the Pluralist View and the Deflationary View; and to present a new line of argument for the Aversion View. (shrink)

Wayne Norman and Chris MacDonald launch a strong attack against Triple Bottom Line or 3BL accounting in their article “Gettingto the Bottom of ‘Triple Bottom Line’” (2004). This response suggests that, while limitations to 3BL accounting do exist, the critique of Norman and MacDonald is deeply flawed.

In social work there is seldom an uncontroversial `right way' of doing things. So how will you deal with the value questions and ethical dilemmas that you will be faced with as a professional social worker? This lively and readable introductory text is designed to equip students with a sound understanding of the principles of values and ethics which no social worker should be without. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book successfully explores the complexities of ethical issues, (...) while recognising the real-world context in which social workers operate. Key features of the text include: - Full of hands-on advice and tips for professional practice. - Engaging and student-friendly. Each chapter is packed with case studies, reader exercises, key definitions and useful summaries. - Comprehensive content. The book explores core issues such as moral philosophy; professionalism; religion; power; oppression; difference and diversity; and ethical codes of practice. - Satisfies all the curriculum and training requirements for the new social work degree. Mapping directly on to first year courses, this text is essential reading for all social work undergraduates. It is an ideal refresher text for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate and post-qualifying students, and for professionals. `This introductory text succeeds in providing an accessible introduction to the subject area. The book is consistently structured, well planned and uniformly written in a conversational and immediate style…. The discussion manages to combine a sense of engagement with a balanced treatment of the issues. Readers who apply themselves will be well sensitised to the matters under discussion and should be able to take their understanding into the practical arena' - Chris Clark, University of Edinburgh. (shrink)

An important book for philosophers of religion and students of Buddhism. It attempts to translate... the Mādhyamika articulation of the Buddhist dharma by comparing it with the language analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein... Chris Gudmunsen has made a persuasive case for showing overlapping philosophical concerns and claims in different cultural traditions separated by two millennia.

Can the public sphere be conceptualised in a manner that is non-reductive and inclusive? In this article, we survey the main literature on the public sphere and demonstrate that, despite apparent diversity, the dominant approaches to its conceptualisation share the same ‘matter and form’ or hylomorphic assumptions. In challenging these assumptions, our aim is to demonstrate that it is the hylomorphic model of the public sphere that prevents non-reductive conceptualisation of its essentially changing nature. Hylomorphic models of the public sphere, (...) we argue, will never yield this result because they perpetuate established identities over emergent differences. We conclude that progress toward non-reductive and inclusive accounts of the public sphere would be best served by foregoing hylomorphic models in favour of ontogenetic ones, when thinking about the changing nature of the public sphere. (shrink)

The One Health approach to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) requires stakeholders to contribute to cross-sectoral efforts to improve antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). One Health AMR policy implementation is challenging in livestock farming because of the infrastructural role of antibiotics in production systems. Mitigating AMR may require the development of more stringent stewardship obligations and the future limitation of established entitlements. Drawing on Amatai Etzioni’s compliance theory, regulatory analyses and qualitative studies with stakeholder groups we examine the structural and socio-cultural dimension of antibiotic (...) use and AMS compliance in Australian beef and dairy production. We found a disconnect between how antibiotic use is conceptualised by farmers and the way in which AMS policies construe agricultural AMR risks. Under the umbrella of food safety standards and national-level prescribing restrictions, farmers and veterinarians interact around antibiotic use with different operating logics and compliance mechanisms. These parallel regimes service distinct and sometimes competing common goods of food security and antibiotic preservation. Further reforms to mitigate AMR need to account for the value orientations of different groups and the embeddedness of the constraints imposed by existing systems. Advocacy for greater AMR precaution in agriculture should acknowledge and compensate for erosions in competing common goods and the cost of proposed interventions. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Daniel Stephens argues against Chad Hansen’s and Chris Fraser’s interpretations of the later Mohists as realists about the ontology of kinds, contending that the Mohist stance is better explained as conventionalist. This essay defends a realist interpretation of later Mohism that I call “similarity realism,” the view that human-independent reality fixes the similarities that constitute kinds and thus determines what kinds exist and what their members are. I support this interpretation with a (...) new, detailed account of the Mohist conception of a kind on which kind relations lie in inherent similarities between the intrinsic features of objects. This account distinguishes kind relations from “uniting together” and part-whole relations, both of which, unlike kind relations, may be determined by convention. I argue that Stephens’s critique of realist interpretations fails because it confuses the ontological issue of what determines the existence of kinds with the semantic issue of what fixes the names for kinds. (shrink)

Political liberals aim to treat citizens as free and equal participants in a society governed by principles endorsable from a wide range of reasonable conceptions of the good. This popular account of political morality struggles to accommodate child citizens yet to develop the capacities for freedom and equality enjoyed by citizens under political liberalism. It appears political liberals must either accept political liberalism should not apply to all citizens or intrusively constrain parental rights to shape the values of their children (...) in line with anti-perfectionism. I defend a third possibility that justifies perfectionism in parenting and anti-perfectionism in education. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they believe (...) it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

Public arguments can be good or bad not only as a matter of logic, but also in the sense that speakers can _do_ good or bad things with arguments. For example, hate speakers use public arguments to contribute to the subordination of their targets. But how can ordinary speakers acquire the authority to perform subordinating speech acts? This is the ‘Authority Problem’. This paper defends a solution inspired by McGowan’s (Australas J Philos 87:389–407, 2009) analysis of oppressive speech, including against (...) concerns raised by McGowan (Just words: On speech and hidden harm, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019) herself. A _deflated_ kind of authority can be gained from the hate speaker’s standing in a norm-governed ‘activity of oppression’. We should be wary about engaging with such speakers in public argument. Even if we counter their arguments, we may still elevate their standing within that activity and so enable them to perform more pernicious speech acts than was previously possible. (shrink)

In our increasingly instrumentalist culture, debates over the privatization of schooling may be beside the point. Whether we hatch some new plan for chartering or funding schools, or retain the traditional model of government-run schools, the ongoing instrumentalization of education threatens the very possibility of public education. Indeed, in the culture of performativity, not only the public school but public life itself is hollowed out and debased. Qualities are recast as quantities, judgments replaced by rubrics, teaching and learning turned into (...) exchange values. Schools should be central to public life: key locations for the regeneration of values, the cultivation of judgment, and the creation of the conditions for positive freedom. In this article Chris Higgins, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, goes beyond typical treatments of the schools as equalizer of individual opportunity to explore three aspects of educational publicity: the school as an object of communal concern, schooling as preparation for public life, and the classroom as public space. (shrink)

What is indoctrination? This paper clarifies and defends a structural epistemic account of indoctrination according to which indoctrination is the inculcation of closed-minded belief caused by “epistemically insulating content.” This is content which contains a proviso that serious critical consideration of the relevant alternatives to one's belief is reprehensible whether morally or epistemically. As such, it does not demand that indoctrination be a type of unethical instruction, ideological instruction, unveridical instruction, or instruction which bypasses the agent's rational evaluation. In this (...) way, we can account for why indoctrination can occur for liberal democratic beliefs as much as it occurs for fascist, fundamentalist, or fanatical belief: for indoctrination is fundamentally a structural epistemic phenomenon. (shrink)

Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs integrate and interpret the work of leading Kant scholars to come to a new and deeper understanding of Kant's difficult book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In this text, Kant's vocabulary and language are especially tortured and convoluted. Readers have often lost sight of the thinker's deep ties to Christianity and questioned the viability of the work as serious philosophy of religion. Firestone and Jacobs provide strong and cogent grounds for taking (...) Kant's religion seriously and defend him against the charges of incoherence. In their reading, Christian essentials are incorporated into the confines of reason, and they argue that Kant establishes a rational religious faith in accord with religious conviction as it is elaborated in his mature philosophy. For readers at all levels, this book articulates a way to ground religion and theology in a fully fledged defense of Religion which is linked to the larger corpus of Kant's philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

The author of the bestselling book The Lies We Believe challenges readers to recognize and overcome the misconceptions they have about God and enjoy a closer relationship with their Creator. --Publisher.

J. S. Mill is typically thought of as a liberal utilitarian disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and in other readings as a modern Socratic or even a modern Epicurean. Mill and the Epicureans are alike in several respects: they theorize personal freedom and active character versus determinism and passivity, they oppose excessive love and praise friendship, and they are critical of traditional religiosity. In spite of these similarities, Mill and the Epicureans have a different conception of active character and citizenship, stemming (...) from a difference in first principles. Mill's philosopher does not share the Epicurean aim of untroubledness (ataraxia), and Mill accepts the demanding task of educating and regenerating a mass democratic society. Below, I assess Mill's troubled hedonism, that is, his acceptance of often intense and long-term mental perturbations, justified by a decidedly non-Epicurean social reform project. (shrink)

Recent neo-Humean theories of laws of nature have placed substantial emphasis on the characteristic epistemic roles played by laws in scientific practice. In particular, these theories seek to understand laws in terms of their optimal predictive utility to creatures in our epistemic situation. In contrast to other approaches, this view has the distinct advantage that it is able to account for a number of pervasive features possessed by putative actual laws of nature. However, it also faces some unique challenges. First, (...) since the view tries to characterize the laws in terms of their predictive utility, any respects in which putative actual laws are sub-optimally predictively useful are inherently problematic. Such "predictive infelicities" can easily be found among our best physical theories. Second, in tying the laws to our epistemic situation, neo-Humeanism raises the possibility that by changing our epistemic situation, we can change the laws themselves, though it is hard to believe that we have such influence over the laws. This paper aims to address both of these challenges, first by presenting a variety of strategies for explaining away predictive infelicities, and then by developing a version of Lewis's "rigidification" strategy to preclude the possibility of our changing the laws. (shrink)

Good theory; bad politics - this is how Zizek's works have been described. Now Chris McMillan argues that Zizek's reading of global capitalism could reinvent political subversion. He highlights the political consequences of Zizek's fundamental concepts, such as the Lacanian Real, universality and the communist hypothesis. He argues that Zizek's turn to Communism represents the ultimate significance of Zizek's work for the 21st century and a marked new direction for Zizekian theory. While Zizek's work attracts a lot of labels, (...) most of them pejorative - communist, conservative, anti-semantic - Chris McMillan identifies Zizek's unique and productive contribution to social and political theory, constructing his work as a response to the difficulties of contemporary social theory and the political deadlock of global capitalism. (shrink)

This essay argues that the third-century BC Ruist “masters” text Xúnzǐ presents a sophisticated approach to semantics and epistemology in which a concern with truth is at best secondary, not central. Xúnzǐ’s primary concern is with identifying and applying the apt dào (way), which for him is a more fundamental concept that underwrites and explains truth claims. Dào refers to a way or path of personal and social conduct, covering prudential, esthetic, ethical, and political concerns. Xúnzǐ is primarily concerned with (...) whether utterances, along with actions, policies, and social practices, are correct in conforming to dào—specifically, the dào of “good order” (zhì)—rather than whether they are correct in being true. Insofar as he is concerned with truth, he regards the status of assertions as true or not as derivative from their status as following dào or not. A consequence is that for Xúnzǐ questions of value and culture are more basic than questions of truth. (shrink)

the smallest scales-why a molecule of water gets hot in a microwave oven, or how a uranium atom splits in a nuclear reactor. The rules of quantum mechanics are often counterintuitive and seem incompatible with our everyday experiences. Over the past century, deeper understanding of quantum mechanics has given scientists better control of the quantum world and quantum effects. This control provides technologists with new ways to acquire, process, and transmit information as part of a new scientific field known as (...) quantum information science (QIS). (shrink)

A "good" arguer is like an architect with a penchant for civil and civic engineering. Such an arguer can design and present their reasons artfully about a variety of topics, as good architects do with a plenitude of structures and in various environments. Failures in this are rarely hidden for long, as poor constructions reveal themselves, often spectacularly, so collaboration among civical engineers can be seen as a virtue. Our logical virtues should be analogous. When our arguments fail due to (...) being uncivil and demagogic, since we inhabit the arguments we build, we are all crushed beneath our flawed reasoning. This mixed metaphor takes us to a self-referential analysis of argumentation, analogy, and humor. I argue that good argumentation strives to collaboratively convince rather than belligerently persuade. A convincing means toward this end is through humorous analogical arguments, whether the matter at hand is ethical, logical, theological, phenomenological, epistemological, metaphysical, political, or about baseball. (shrink)

Guth provided a persuasive rationale for inflationary cosmology based on its ability to solve fine-tuning problems of big bang cosmology. Yet one of the most important consequences of inflation was only widely recognized a few years later: inflation provides a mechanism for generating small departures from uniformity, needed to seed formation of subsequent structures, by “freezing out” vacuum fluctuations to form classical density perturbations. This paper recounts the historical development of this aspect of inflation and puts it in context of (...) the development of ideas on structure formation in relativistic cosmology, before turning to the comparison between inflation and a competing account of structure formation based on topological defects. One aim is to assess in what sense inflation is empirically tested through its account of the formation of structure, in light of persistent debates among cosmologists regarding whether inflation is “falsifiable.”. (shrink)

While many are born into prosperity, hundreds of millions of people lead lives of almost unimaginable poverty. Our world remains hugely unequal, with our place of birth continuing to exert a major influence on our opportunities. -/- In this accessible book, leading political theorist Chris Armstrong engagingly examines the key moral and political questions raised by this stark global divide. Why, as a citizen of a relatively wealthy country, should you care if others have to make do with less? (...) Do we have a moral duty to try to rectify this state of affairs? What does 'global justice' mean anyway - and why does it matter? Could we make our world a more just one even if we tried? Can you as an individual make a difference? -/- This book powerfully demonstrates that global justice is something we should all be concerned about, and sketches a series of reforms that would make our divided world a fairer one. It will be essential introductory reading for students of global justice, activists and concerned citizens. (shrink)

> Wealthy nations must step up support for Africa and vulnerable countries in addressing past, present and future impacts of climate change The 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a dark picture of the future of life on earth, characterised by ecosystem collapse, species extinction and climate hazards such as heatwaves and floods.1 These are all linked to physical and mental health problems, with direct and indirect consequences of increased morbidity and mortality. To avoid these catastrophic (...) health effects across all regions of the globe, there is broad agreement—as 231 health journals argued together in 2021—that the rise in global temperature must be limited to <1.5°C compared with pre-industrial levels. While the Paris Agreement of 2015 outlines a global action framework that incorporates providing climate finance to low-income and middle-income countries, this support has yet to materialise.2 COP27 is the fifth Conference of the Parties (COP) to be organised in Africa since its inception in 1995. Ahead of this meeting, we—as health journal editors from across the continent—call for urgent action to ensure it is the COP that finally delivers climate justice for Africa and vulnerable countries. This is essential for the health of those countries, and for the health of the whole world. The climate crisis has had an impact on the environmental and social determinants of health across Africa, leading to devastating health effects.3 Impacts on health can result directly from environmental shocks and indirectly through socially mediated effects.4 Climate change-related risks in Africa include flooding, drought, heatwaves, reduced food production and reduced labour productivity.5 Droughts in sub-Saharan Africa …. (shrink)

If knowledge is socially constructed, then students' discursive attachments should be eminently malleable. Students' radical openness to change, however, is not the defining characteristic of a university classroom. Instead, learners appear to desire coherence of knowledge over revelations of contingency, and pedagogical acts that disrupt existing formations are as likely to produce reactionary responses as revolutionary reorganizations of the self. In this article Chris McMillan argues that neither the constructivist nor the social constructionist readings of critical pedagogy are able (...) to account for this fixity of knowledge. In response he contends that Slavoj Žižek's Lacanian-inspired theory of subjectivity and of the Real can effectively respond to the limitations of these approaches by insisting upon the pedagogical value of the lack within subjectivity. A Žižekian conception of subjectivity is able to respond to this lacuna by positing the negativity of the subject as the agent of transformation and to produce a “pedagogy of the impossible” that evokes the moments of impossibility within discourse embodied by the subject qua the Lacanian Real. (shrink)

Dale Dorsey’s wide-ranging A Theory of Prudence contains ideas and arguments worthy of our attention on quite a variety of self-interest-related normative topics. In this essay I focus on Dorsey’s theory of prudential rationality, which is designed to deliver a negative answer to this essay’s titular question. Dorsey’s negative answer may be more intuitive, but I believe the positive answer is more defensible. From the perspective of prudence, it is just as reasonable to change your desires to fit the world (...) as it is to change the world to fit your desires. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is reasoning about what to do. Practical wisdom is the traditional ideal of practical reasoning associated with virtue ethics. Practical wisdom requires the knowledge and skills necessary to act rightly across a wide range of situations. Critics allege that this notion does not cohere well with what contemporary cognitive science tells us about the production of human behavior. After briefly discussing these criticisms, I sketch an alternative account of these cognitive processes that I call affective engine theory. I (...) then discuss a normative conception of practical reasoning that complements this account. Finally, adopting an approach according to which the virtues are those character traits necessary for excellence in practical reasoning, I argue that these accounts can provide the basis for a nontraditional theory of virtue. I discuss three traits that are plausible candidates for virtues on such an account. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi rejects the use of invariant general norms to guide action, instead stressing the importance of contextual factors in determining the apt course to take in particular situations. This stance might seem to present a variety of moral particularism, the view that general norms play no fundamental role in moral thought and judgment. I argue against interpreting the Zhuangzi as committed to particularism and thus denying that dao rests on, is shaped by, or comprises general patterns or norms. Instead, (...) I contend, the text presents a combination of contextualism about the factors that determine appropriate responses to particular situations and pluralism about defeasible general norms or standards. The target of criticism is not generalism, the view that general patterns and relations play a role in determining and explaining appropriate courses of action. It is the monolithic application of fixed norms without regard for context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.2 (2002) 1-11 [Access article in PDF] On Ecofeminist Philosophy Chris Cuomo In the heat of a historical moment when the interwoven nature of imperialism, ecological degradation, exploitation of workers, racism, and women's oppression is painfully obvious to many, ecofeminism appears to be gaining in popularity. As Karen Warren's book Ecofeminist Philosophy (2000) illustrates, a key insight of ecological feminism is captured by the (...) phrase "it's all connected." In more precise terms, ecofeminism stresses the depth to which human realities are embedded in ecological realities, and the fact that we are all composed of physical and conceptual connections and relationships. Ecofeminists also make strong normative claims about those connections, and they find present ecological and social relationships to be far more morally troubling than "we" modern thinkers tend to acknowledge.Karen Warren's work has been incredibly influential in the development of ecofeminism, especially as a philosophical perspective. In her 1987 essay "Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections," she argued for a basic ecofeminist position: that feminists ought to pay attention to environmental issues and ecological interdependencies, and that environmentalists ought to attend to the connections among ecological degradation, sexism, and other forms of social oppression. A wealth of ecofeminist poetry, fiction, and political writing had been published in the seventies and early eighties, before "Feminism and Ecology" appeared on the pages of [End Page 1] the journal Environmental Ethics. But Karen Warren was the among the first to use the tools of analytic philosophy to articulate and argue for ecofeminism as a philosophical position, ethical approach, and political movement.In fact, Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) was arguably the first work in contemporary academic philosophy to engage ecofeminism (my first acquaintance with ecofeminist theory was made through a special issue of the feminist magazine Heresies, on feminism and ecology). But Daly's emphasis was on the plight of females in patriarchal social environments. Karen Warren and Australian philosopher Val Plumwood brought full focus to the eco in ecofeminism, applying feminist philosophy (and especially feminist ethics) to our relations with the more than human world, and in turn articulating a broader theory of oppression and liberation. Their analytic approaches resulted in philosophy that synthesizes as it clarifies, taking seriously the value of nature, the history of philosophy, the power of culture, and the insights of good science.In Ecofeminist Philosophy Karen Warren presents ecofeminism as a general school of thought, though she also argues for a particular set of ecofeminist principles, values, methodologies, and practices. In terms of both her method and her conclusions, it is important to note that her emphasis on clearly articulated principles is by no means a defense of an absolutist or falsely universalizing ethic. Rather, Warren's ecofeminist philosophy emerges from her reading of a wide and diverse array of theoretical and political examples. Like Noël Sturgeon's Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action (1997), which focuses on feminist ecological movements, Warren's project is to look for and describe the family resemblances among diverse examples of ecofeminism. This approach allows her to articulate epistemic, moral, and political positions that are pluralist, yet do not avoid making bold truth-claims. For example, Warren argues that "something is a feminist issue if an understanding of it helps one understand the oppression, subordination, or domination of women" (Warren 2000, 1).In a sense such a definition is wide open, taking various approaches and issues to be worthy of feminist attention. At the same time, it certainly does not allow just any perspective to count as feminist. Throughout Ecofeminist Philosophy, Warren defends multicultural ethics while clearly advocating specific transcultural values, such as justice and caring: [End Page 2] If we dare to care, if we dare to enter into community with others through an honest recognition of our commonalities and differences, we will be poised to create generally respectful, nonviolent, care-based, intentional communities where commonalities and differences are just that... Such intentional communities are a creative alternative to violence-prone communities where order is imposed from outside through unjustified... (shrink)