In _Considering Emma Goldman_ Clare Hemmings examines the significance of the anarchist activist and thinker for contemporary feminist politics. Rather than attempting to resolve the tensions and problems that Goldman's thinking about race, gender, and sexuality pose for feminist thought, Hemmings embraces them, finding them to be helpful in formulating a new queer feminist praxis. Mining three overlapping archives—Goldman's own writings, her historical and theoretical legacy, and an imaginative archive that responds creatively to gaps in those archives —Hemmings shows (...) how serious engagement with Goldman's political ambivalences opens up larger questions surrounding feminist historiography, affect, fantasy, and knowledge production. Moreover, she explores her personal affinity for Goldman to illuminate the role that affective investment plays in shaping feminist storytelling. By considering Goldman in all her contradictions and complexity, Hemmings presents a queer feminist response to the ambivalences that also saturate contemporary queer feminist race theories. (shrink)

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...) persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic. (shrink)

George Berkeley is known as “The Good Bishop,” a name celebrating his faith, pastoral ministry and earnest commitment to his philosophical views. To mathematicians, he is known for his agitated performance in his 1734 critique of fluxions, The Analyst. That work and its petulant tone were occasioned by (i) his “philo-mathematical” opponents’ alleged admonitions on religious mysteries’ lack of logical respectability and (ii) what Berkeley saw as a related public appetite for reformist and deist religious movements. This paper questions Berkeley’s (...) saintly reputation by outlining the hostility and flippancy in his handling of Jacob Walton’s contributions to the debate. Berkeley’s interactions with Walton bear many of the hallmarks of contemporary “trolling” culture and this paper emphasises and explains these parallels. Finally, given Berkeley’s theological and political agenda in his mathematical interactions, I argue that we should not read his mathematical rhetoric as straightforwardly representing his philosophical views. (shrink)

This article explores the contributions of women scholars, writers and artists to our understanding of the medieval past. Beginning with a contemporary artists book by Liz Mathews that draws on one of Boethius‘s Latin lyrics from the Consolation of Philosophy as translated by Helen Waddell, it traces a network of medieval women scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries associated with Manchester and the John Rylands Library, such as Alice Margaret Cooke and Mary Bateson. It concludes by examining the translation (...) of the Old English poem, The Wife‘s Lament, by contemporary poet, Eavan Boland. The art of Liz Mathews and poetry of Eavan Boland and the scholarship of women like Alice Cooke, Mary Bateson, Helen Waddell and Eileen Power show that women‘s writing of the past – creative, public, scholarly – forms a strand of an archive of women‘s history that is still being put together. (shrink)

The literature on human mate preferences is vast but most data come from studies on college students in complex societies, who represent a thin slice of cultural variation in an evolutionarily novel environment. Here, I present data on the mate preferences of men and women in a society of hunter-gatherers, the Hadza of Tanzania. Hadza men value fertility in a mate more than women do, and women value intelligence more than men do. Women place great importance on men’s foraging, and (...) both sexes rate character as important. Unlike college students, Hadza men place considerable importance on women being hard-working, and Hadza women cite looks about as often as men do. (shrink)

Strong reciprocity is an effective way to promote cooperation. This is especially true when one not only cooperates with cooperators and defects on defectors (second-party punishment) but even punishes those who defect on others (third-party, “altruistic” punishment). Some suggest we humans have a taste for such altruistic punishment and that this was important in the evolution of human cooperation. To assess this we need to look across a wide range of cultures. As part of a cross-cultural project, I played three (...) experimental economics games with the Hadza, who are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The Hadza frequently engaged in second-party punishment but they rarely engaged in third-party punishment. Other small-scale societies engaged in less third-party punishment as well. I suggest third-party punishment only became more important in large, complex societies to solve more pressing collective-action problems. (shrink)

Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In Spinoza's Religion, she sets out a bold interpretation of Spinoza through a lucid new reading of his masterpiece, the Ethics. Putting the question of religion centre-stage but refusing to convert Spinozism to Christianity, Carlisle reveals that "being in God" unites Spinoza's metaphysics and ethics. Spinoza's Religion unfolds a powerful, inclusive philosophical vision for the modern age--one that is (...) grounded in a profound questioning of how to live a joyful, fully human life. Like Spinoza himself, the Ethics doesn't fit into any ready-made religious category. But Carlisle shows how it wrestles with the question of religion in strikingly original ways, responding both critically and constructively to the diverse, broadly Christian context in which Spinoza lived and worked. Philosophy itself, as Spinoza practiced it, became a spiritual endeavor that expressed his devotion to a truthful, virtuous way of life. Offering startling new insights into Spinoza's famously enigmatic ideas about eternal life and the intellectual love of God, Carlisle uncovers a Spinozist religion that integrates self-knowledge, desire, practice, and embodied ethical life to reach toward our 'highest happiness'--to rest in God. Seen through Carlisle's eyes, the Ethics prompts us to rethink not only Spinoza but also religion itself. (shrink)

Many “pro-life” or anti-abortion advocates are Christians who believe that (1) there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect god who created our universe; (2) restricting abortion ought to be a top social and political priority; and (3) embryos and fetuses that die all go to hell or they all go to heaven. This paper seeks to establish that Christian pro-life advocates with these beliefs face the Afterlife Dilemma. On the one hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go (...) to hell, they need to abandon their belief in the morally perfect god of traditional Christianity. On the other hand, if all embryos and fetuses that die go to heaven, a plausible triage principle suggests that they must abandon their view that restricting abortions ought to be a top priority. Either way, this popular Christian pro-life view is untenable. The Afterlife Dilemma implies that many pro-life Christians must abandon some aspect of their current beliefs about God, the afterlife, or the comparative moral importance of abortion. (shrink)

Progress -- Loss -- Return -- Amenability -- Citation tactics -- Affective subjects.

The philosophy of perception has been dominated by vision, with very little discussion of the chemical senses – olfaction and gustation. In this second entry of a pair on olfactory experience, I consider what olfaction has to tell us about two issues: the nature of perceptual objects and the nature of perceptual properties and, in particular, the secondary qualities. Given the scant work on olfaction in the philosophical literature, my discussion not only surveys what philosophers have said about olfaction so (...) far, but considers the most plausible views and/or most pressing questions in each area of inquiry. (shrink)

Clare Carlisle's innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard's remarkable life as far as possible from his own perspective, conveying what it was like to be this Socrates of Christendom.

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In light of new physiological and psychophysical research on olfaction, I consider whether olfactory experience is object-based. In particular, I explore the claim that “odor objects” constitute sensory individuals. It isn’t obvious—at least at the outset—whether they (...) meet the widely accepted principles of object individuation and recognition at work in the visual and auditory cases. Among the general issues I consider, then, is whether these traditional principles form necessary, or simply sufficient, conditions on object perception. As we see, at the very least, considering the object-recognition model of olfaction challenges us to look more closely at well-entrenched models of object perception. But the payoff of doing so is high. We not only learn something about a modality that philosophers have historically neglected; by asking new questions and challenging old assumptions, we also further our understanding of perception in general. (shrink)

For Aristotle, excellence is not an act but a habit, and Hume regards habit as ‘the great guide of life’. However, for Proust habit is problematic: ‘if habit is a second nature, it prevents us from knowing our first.’ What is habit? Do habits turn us into machines or free us to do more creative things? Should religious faith be habitual? Does habit help or hinder the practice of philosophy? Why do Luther, Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard and Bergson all criticise habit? (...) If habit is both a blessing and a curse, how can we live well in our habits? In this thought-provoking book Clare Carlisle examines habit from a philosophical standpoint. Beginning with a lucid appraisal of habit’s philosophical history she suggests that both receptivity and resistance to change are basic principles of habit-formation. Carlisle shows how the philosophy of habit not only anticipates the discoveries of recent neuroscience but illuminates their ethical significance. She asks whether habit is a reliable form of knowledge by examining the contrasting interpretations of habitual thinking offered by Spinoza and Hume. She then turns to the role of habit in the good life, tracing Aristotle’s legacy through the ideas of Joseph Butler, Hegel, and Félix Ravaisson, and assessing the ambivalent attitudes to habit expressed by Nietzsche and Proust. She argues that a distinction between habit and practice helps to clarify this ambivalence, particularly in the context of habit and religion, where she examines both the theology of habit and the repetitions of religious life. She concludes by considering how philosophy itself is a practice of learning to live well with habit. (shrink)

Clare Chambers argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty and should not be trecognized by the state. She shows how feminist and liberal principles require creation of a marriage-free state: one in which private marriages, whether religious or secular, would have no legal status.

This paper considers what olfactory experience can tell us about the controversy over qualia and, in particular, the debate that focuses on the alleged transparency of experience. The appeal to transparency is supposed to show that there are no qualia—intrinsic, non-intentional and directly accessible properties of experience that determine phenomenal character. It is most commonly used to motivate intentionalism—namely, the view that the phenomenal character of an experience is exhausted by its representational content. Although some philosophers claim that transparency holds (...) for all of the sense modalities, any detailed discussion of it focuses on vision. But transparency seems unintuitive for olfactory experience. This paper argues that olfactory experience is indeed transparent and that explanations of what transparency is have been obscured by a reliance on the visual model. In this way, the paper clarifies and advances the debate about transparency. (shrink)

Real Language Series General Editors:Jennifer Coates, Jenny Cheshire, Euan Reid This is a sociolinguistics series about the relationships between language, society and social change. Books in the series draw on natural language data from a wide range of social contexts. The series takes a critical approach to the subject, challenging current orthodoxies, and dealing with familiar topics in new ways. Gender and Discourse offers a critical new approach to the study of language and gender studies. Women moving into the public (...) domains of power traditionally monopolised by men are creating new identities for themselves, and the language that is used by them and about them offers an insight into gender roles. Clare Walsh reviews the current dominance/difference debates, and proposes a new analytical framework which combines the insights of critical discourse and feminist perspectives on discourse to provide a new perspective on the role of women in public life. A superbly accessible book designed for students and researchers in the field, the book features: - topical case studies from the arenas of politics, religion and activism- a new analytical framework, also summarised in chart form so the reader can apply their own critical analyses of texts. - written and visual text types for the reader's own linguistic and semiotic analysis. 'This important book takes up a neglected question in the study of language and gender - what difference women make to the discourse of historically male-dominated institutions - and brings to bear on it both the insights of feminist scholarship and evidence from women's own testimony. Clare Walsh's analysis of the dilemmas women face is both subtle and incisive, taking us beyond popular 'Mars and Venus' stereotypes and posing some hard questions for fashionable theories of language, identity and performance. (shrink)

Many individual sentient wild animals are vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. In this article, I suggest that animal ethicists who take sentient animals’ moral status seriously are likely to agree that, other things being equal, we have moral responsibilities to assist wild animals made vulnerable to climate change. However, I also argue that these ethicists are likely to diverge in terms of the strategies they believe would actually fulfil such moral responsibilities, depending on whether their primary concern is rectificatory justice (...) or duties of beneficence. To support this argument, I consider three plausible strategies for helping wild animals vulnerable to climate change: rescue and rehabilitation, habitat restoration, and assisted migration. I argue that different theoretical approaches to animal ethics are likely to diverge on aspects of all these strategies. These differences mean that the process of creating wide agreement among animal ethicists on climate adaptation strategies to assist vulnerable wild animals faces significant hurdles. (shrink)

Seattle rain smelled different from New Orleans rain…. New Orleans rain smelled of sulfur and hibiscus, trumpet metal, thunder, and sweat. Seattle rain, the widespread rain of the Great Northwest, smelled of green ice and sumi ink, of geology and silence and minnow breath.— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug PerfumeMuch of the philosophical literature on perception has focused on vision. This is not surprising, given that vision holds for us a certain prestige. Our visual experience is incredibly rich, offering up a mosaic (...) of apparent three-dimensional objects. For this reason, it is commonplace to suppose that visual experience is world-directed, with the view taking its most popular form in the representational, or content, view. World-directed views contrast with what we might call subjectivist views — views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations. (shrink)

This paper sets out the case for abolishing state-recognized marriage and replacing it with piecemeal regulation of personal relationships. It starts by analysing feminist objections to traditional marriage, and argues that the various feminist critiques can best be reconciled and answered by the abolition of state-recognized marriage. The paper then considers the ideal form of state regulation of personal relationships. Contra other recent proposals, equality and liberty are not best served by the creation of a new holistic status, such as (...) civil union, nor by leaving regulation to private contracts. Instead, the state should develop piecemeal regulations that apply universally. (shrink)

This study examined the efficacy of corrected feedback for improving consent recall throughout the course of an ongoing longitudinal study. Participants were randomly assigned to either a corrected feedback or a no-feedback control condition. Participants completed a consent quiz 2 weeks after consenting to the host study and at months 1, 2, and 3. The corrected feedback group received corrections to erroneous responses and the no-feedback control group did not. The feedback group displayed significantly greater recall overall and in specific (...) content areas. Results support the use of corrected feedback for improving consent recall. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have been turning their attention to the ‘other modalities’. In a pair of entries, I consider olfaction—a sense modality that, along with gustation, has been largely overlooked by philosophers. In this first entry, I consider the challenge that olfactory experience presents to upholding a representational view of the sense modalities. It is common for philosophers to think that visual experience is world‐directed and, in particular, that it (...) is representational. World‐directed views contrast with subjectivist views—views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations. Unlike visual experience, olfactory experience doesn't obviously support a representational view. Indeed, given its phenomenology, a subjectivist view of olfactory experience might seem unavoidable. But it is not. Once we begin to unravel ourselves from the dominant visual model of perception, we see that there is a representational view available that honors the phenomenology of olfactory experience. In turn, we learn that although there are some basic similarities between visual experience and olfactory experience, there are significant differences that prevent us from making easy generalizations from the visual case. (shrink)

In a recent unit of study in an undergraduate Health Sciences pathway course, we identified a set of essays which exhibited similarity of content but demonstrated the use of bizarre and unidiomatic language. One of the distinct features of the essays was the inclusion of unusual synonyms in place of expected standard medical terminology.We suspected the use of online paraphrasing tools, but were also interested in investigating the possibility of the use of online language translation tools. In order to test (...) the outputs of these tools, we used as a seed document a corpus of text which had been provided to the students as prompt for the essay. This document was put through six free online paraphrasing tools and six separate iterative language translations through the online Google Translate™ tool.The results demonstrated that free online paraphrasing tools did not identify medical terminology as standardised or accepted nomenclature and substituted synonyms, whereas Google Translate™ largely preserved medical terminology.We believe that textual indicators such as the absence of standard discipline-based terminology may be of assistance in the identification of machine paraphrased text. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, (...) if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships. (shrink)

A new hypothesis is proposed to explain the perennially enlarged breasts of human females. The nubility hypothesis proposes that hominid females evolved protruding breasts because the size and shape of breasts function as an honest signal of residual reproductive value. Hominid females with greater residual reproductive value were preferred by males once reliable cues to ovulation were lost and long-term bonding evolved. This adaptation was favored because female-female competition for investing males increased once hominid males began to provide valuable resources.

Contract cheating is a major problem in Higher Education because it is very difficult to detect using traditional plagiarism detection tools. Digital forensics techniques are already used in law to determine ownership of documents, and also in criminal cases, where it is not uncommon to hide information and images within an ordinary looking document using steganography techniques. These digital forensic techniques were used to investigate a known case of contract cheating where the contract author has notified the university and the (...) student subsequently confirmed that they had contracted the work out. Microsoft Word documents use a format known as Office Open XML Format, and as such, it is possible to review the editing process of a document. A student submission known to have been contracted out was analysed using the revision identifiers within the document, and a tool was developed to review these identifiers. Using visualisation techniques it is possible to see a pattern of editing that is inconsistent with the pattern seen in an authentic document. (shrink)

This paper sets out issues in the realist/antirealist debate in philosophy of religion. These include the existence of God and the meaning of prayer. The paper describes motivations for antirealism in religion such as the recognition of conflicting religious claims and a desire for tolerance. It explores instrumentalism and reductionism as possible antirealist strategies. Parallels between the debate in religion and the corresponding debate in philosophy of science are used to inform the discussion in the religious sphere. Shared aspects of (...) science and religion feature in a pragmatic argument suggesting that the advantages of realism outweigh those of antirealism for religion. (shrink)

Menopause is puzzling because life-history theory predicts there should be no selection for outliving one’s reproductive capacity. Adaptive explanations of menopause offered thus far turn on women’s long-term investment in offspring and grandoffspring, all variations on the grandmother hypothesis. Here, I offer a very different explanation. The patriarch hypothesis proposes that once males became capable of maintaining high status and reproductive access beyond their peak physical condition, selection favored the extension of maximum life span in males. Because the relevant genes (...) were not on the Y chromosome, life span increased in females as well. However, the female reproductive span was constrained by the depletion of viable oocytes, which resulted in menopause. (shrink)

In what sense does empty space feature in visual experience? In the first part of this essay I sketch a view advanced by Soteriou and Richardson on which one's visual awareness of empty space is explained by appeal to ‘structural’ features of the phenomenology of visual experience, in particular the phenomenology of experiencing one's visual field as bounded. I suggest that although this ‘structuralist’ view is silent on whether empty space has a phenomenal appearance, the very appeal to structural features (...) seems a natural foil to some such thought. In the second part, I outline a view on which it can be granted that empty space does, after all, have a phenomenal appearance and, so, is not best cast as a species of absence perception as the structuralist avows, at least on a certain construal of ‘absence perception’. After O'Shaughnessy , I contend that although some privations have a phenomenal appearance, ‘absence perception’ should single out the putative perception of phenomena that lack phenomenal reality. I finally consider how the descriptive phenomenology that the structuralist points to, and which I urge should be embraced, can nonetheless be reconciled with the view I spell out. (shrink)

Since at least the 1970s, one of the stock standard tools in the animal protection movement’s arsenal has been illegal entry into factory farms and animal research facilities. This activity has been followed by the publication of images and footage captured inside those otherwise socially invisible places. This activity presents a conundrum: trespass is illegal and it is an apparent violation of private property rights. In this paper we argue that trespass onto private property can be justified as an act (...) of civil disobedience. We look at one particular type of justification: the use of information gathered through trespass in public policy formation. We then animate this analysis both with an historical overview of the effects of sharing information about animal agriculture, and with a specific case study of trespass undertaken recently. (shrink)

Spinoza's account of acquiescentia has been obscured by inconsistent translations of acquiescentia, and forms of the verb acquiescere, in the standard English edition of the Ethics. For Spinoza, acquiescentia is an inherently cognitive affect, since it involves an idea of oneself (as the cause of one's joy). As such, the affect is closely correlated to the three kinds of cognition identified by Spinoza in Ethics II. Just as there are three kinds of cognition, so too are there three kinds of (...) acquiescentia. Two qualities—stillness and obedience—provide the criteria for distinguishing between these. This illuminates Spinoza's positive account of acquiescentia, and also clarifies how it responds critically to the equivalent Cartesian passion, la satisfaction de soimême, which is translated as acquiescentia in se ipso in the relevant Latin edition of Les passions de l'âme. (shrink)

Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action (...) thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorising that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It is comprised of three parts: The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world. (shrink)

This article seeks to intervene in what I perceive to be a problematic opposition in feminist theory between ontological and epistemological accounts of existence and politics, by proposing an approach that weaves together Elspeth Probyn’s conceptualisation of ‘feminist reflexivity’ with a re-reading of feminist standpoint through affect. In so doing, I develop the concept of affective solidarity as necessary for sustainable feminist politics of transformation. This approach is proposed as a way of moving away from rooting feminist transformation in the (...) politics of identity and towards modes of engagement that start from the affective dissonance experience can produce. Moving beyond empathy as a privileged way of connecting with others, I argue that the difference between ‘womanhood’ and ‘feminism’ is critical for a universal yet non-essential understanding of what motivates gendered change. (shrink)

In Just Fodder, Josh Milburn defends the view that sentient animals have negative rights. Since non-human animals are not moral agents, and can’t themselves violate anyone’s rights, wild predation is normally ethically unproblematic. However, Milburn argues, there are occasions when humans can become morally responsible for an animal’s predation. In cases like these, predation does violate the prey animal’s rights. The difficulty here lies in determining when a human is ‘sufficiently’ morally responsible for an animal’s predation for the predation to (...) count as a rights violation. In this paper, I pick out what I take to be the relevant criteria Milburn identifies for moral responsibility: creating increased predation risk, foreseeability of increased predation risk, intending predation to happen, having some kind of special responsibility for the predator, and having some kind of special relationship to the prey. I argue that, at least as applied by Milburn, these criteria can lead to a kind of moral over-extension, one that rules out most forms of wild animal rehabilitation, species reintroduction and rewilding. (shrink)