This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial (...) societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

The importance of emotions is supported by many authors of the ethics of care in contrast to the rationalistic paradigm of justice. However, the reference to the emotions remains generic. By focusing on three paradigmatic typologies (care out of love, care work, and care of the distant other), I propose to investigate this aspect further, and distinguish between the different emotions that motivate care (such as love, compassion, and generosity). I will try, first, to offer a reflection on which emotions (...) are likely to motivate ethical action within an ethics of care; second, to survey different potential obstacles to these emotions and propose how they might be overcome to more successfully achieve good care and ethical action. (shrink)

In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of the philosophical role “method” plays in MacKinnon’s argument, (...) and by reframing her critique of juridical neutrality and objectivity as epistemic harms. In the second section, we sketch out a provisional coalitional theory of liberation that builds on MacKinnon’s feminist epistemological insights and aligns them with decolonizing projects in women-of-color feminisms, suggesting new directions and conceptual revisions that are on the way to coalition. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...) Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

In this paper I tackle Gadamer’s and Dewey’s conceptions of art, showing a possible dialogue between American Pragmatism and Gadamerian Hermeneutics. Despite the obvious differences, it is possible to show fundamental commonalities between the two philosophies when it comes to the role of art. They share the double goal of critiquing the aestheticism of modern age, the conception of art as a mere “art for art’s sake,” and of recomposing the continuity between aesthetic experience and everyday life. I argue that (...) this common goal entails a reassessment of the relation between the work of art and the public, a reassessment that has fundamental consequences for the role of art in our societies. The present comparison will also help shed new light on Gadamer’s conception, often accused of being a merely conversative theory. For both Gadamer and Dewey art does not consist in a product of the elites that is given to the spectators: rather, the spectators cooperate with the author in the creation and development of the work of art itself. (shrink)

There is a growing trend across North America of women being criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. Rather than being a series of aberrations resulting from institutional failures, we argue that this trend is part of a colonial strategy of administrative violence aimed at women of color and Native women across Turtle Island. We consider a range of medical and legal practices constituting gender-based administrative violence, and we argue that they are the result of non-accidental and systematic production of population-level harms (...) that cannot be disentangled from the goals of ongoing settler occupation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. While white feminist narratives of gender-based administrative violence in Latin America function to distance the places where such violence occurs from the ‘liberal democratic’ settler nation-states of the U.S. and Canada, we hold that administrative forms of reproductive violence against Latin American women are structurally connected to efforts in the U.S. and Canada to criminalize women of color and Indigenous women for their reproductive outcomes. The purpose of these systemically produced harms is to sustain cultures of gender-based violence in support of settler colonial configurations of power. (shrink)

This article examines Konstantin N. Leontiev’s critique of the religious preaching of Lev N. Tolstoy. We analyze the philosopher’s main articles devoted to the great writer, noting that, despite Le...

A laughter that will bury you: the morality of plant-based meat irony When plant-based meats enter the foodscape, they face the challenge of how to communicate their nature and function to consumers: one strategy for navigating the tension between portraying conventional meat as something to be replaced and affirming their unique meaty tastiness is through ironic claims and performances. This paper seeks to analyse the moral stance of irony in plant-based meat advertisements, specifically when this irony involves the death of (...) animals. Firstly, it presents an argument showing that, from the standpoint of veganism, ironising about animals’ death can be a moral wrong. Secondly, by relying on an interpretation of irony that leverages its potential for subverting and criticising hegemonic viewpoints, it is shown that this kind of irony can serve as a form of resistance aimed at dismantling the pervasive indifference towards the killing of animals for producing meat. (shrink)

The medical drama and its central character, the doctor-hero have been a mainstay of popular television. House M.D. offers a new (and problematic) iteration of the doctor-hero. House eschews the generic conventions of the “television doctor” by being neither the idealized television doctor of the past, nor the more recent competent but often fallible physicians in entertainment texts. Instead, his character is a fragmented text which privileges the biomedical over the personal or emotional with the ultimate goal of scientifically uncovering (...) and resolving instances of disease. This article examines the implicit and explicit messages in House M.D. and critically analyzes both the show and its lead character in relation to the traditional medical drama genre that highlights the “doctor-hero” as the central character. While at first House seems to completely violate narrative and generic norms, ultimately the program provides a new form that reinforces the presence of the doctor-hero, but highlights House’s character as the central figure who is personally and interpersonally problematic but biomedically effective. (shrink)

Motivation crucially influences the willingness to play online games. Game motivation can affect players’ flow experience and player’s companionship with their game roles or avatars. However, the relationship among game motivation, flow experience, and companionship is unclear; therefore, designing online games that improving the playing experience is difficult. This study chose online pet games as study samples, and this study used a game motivation scale, flow experience scale, and the Companionship Scale of Artificial Pets to identify the relationship among game (...) motivation, flow experience, and companionship. According to 216 valid questionnaire responses, this study demonstrated that game motivation for online pet game players was primarily immersion and achievement, compared with achievement motivation, immersion motivation had a greater influence on flow experience and the development of player companionship with online pets, and players with immersion and achievement motivation had a substantially enhanced flow experience and companionship with their online pets. (shrink)

AfterTranscritique: On Kant and Marx, Karatani Kōjin’s new bookThe Structure of World Historypresents another engagement with Marxian theory from a ‘heterodox’ standpoint. In this book, rather than viewingThe Structure of World Historyfrom the aspect of mode of production in the conventional ‘Marxist’ sense, Karatani shifts perspective to the modes of exchange. To this end, Karatani appropriates what he sees as Marx’s emphasis on ‘exchange’. In the present essay, by looking at the textual evidence, I critically evaluate whether this appropriation of (...) Marx’s theory is justified. I furthermore contend that Karatani’s reading of the concepts of value, money, capital, and surplus-value from the standpoint of ‘exchange’ arises from a grave misconstrual of Marx’s critical intent. Accordingly, Karatani neglects the critique of exploitation and the systematic production of poverty that informs the basic assumptions of Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production. (shrink)

A review of Cecilia Sjöholm‘s Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things.

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...) a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard applies to both views. (shrink)

Games played on mobile phones or tablets have become a serious game platform. In the new International Classification of Diseases in 2019, the WHO now includes video game disorder as a mental disease, this highlights the seriousness of game addiction which has now become a global problem. Game design may be one of the factors that affect game addiction. Game playability can be used to evaluate the game design and to determine the features that can cause game addiction. The purpose (...) of this study was to explore the relationship between playability and game addiction, and a comparison of the difference in playability among healthy players (N = 1286) and problematic players (N = 278) that allows game developers to design games in ways that may reduce addiction while maintaining or improving playability. In this study, 1564 valid questionnaires that collected data about the Game Playability Scale and the Game Addiction Scale showed that (1) The level of playability in the problematic players was significantly higher than in healthy players. (2) The degree of correlation between playability and game addiction in the problematic players was lower than in healthy players. (3) Some playability factors and addiction factors are negatively correlated. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are notable similarities between Collingwood’s method of investigating absolute presuppositions and contemporary strands of pragmatism, focusing on two areas - the critique of realism and causation. It is first argued that there are methodological similarities between Collingwood’s argument against realism and his Kantian-inspired critique of metaphysics, and Putnam’s critique of externalism. Regarding causation, it is argued that Collingwood’s view and Price’s pragmatist approach have a common method – investigating causation in the context of specific human (...) practices. Both authors place causation in the framework of scientific inquiry as opposed to making it the subject of the inquiry itself. Thus, Collingwood’s work proves to be in line with current metaphilosophical debates, particularly in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to contribute to the literature on Roger Bacon's epistemology by focusing on the issue of perception of quantity. The reading I aim to substantiate is that Bacon's account is best understood in terms of indirect realism. I call it indirect realism because although we have access to quantities as they exist in nature, the account is mediated by the use of a quasi-syllogism. The quasi-syllogism is constructed based on three inputs, the species of the (...) eye, colour, and light. To defend this reading I follow five steps. First, I analyse the importance of quantity in perception, and then, in steps two and three, I look at Bacon's theory of perception from its two sides, extramission and intromission. In the fourth step I look at the quasi-syllogisms that mediate cognition of quantities, and in the fifth and final step, I draw all the threads together and make the case for Bacon's indirect realism of quantity perception. (shrink)

En el panorama creativo del siglo XXI abundan las producciones apocalípticas, muchas veces protagonizadas por vampiros y zombis. En algunas de ellas, se elaboran toda una serie de resignificaciones religiosas, vinculando el cristianismo con el vampirismo y lo zombi. En este contexto, la figura de María Magdalena aparece, en ocasiones, reformulada con importantes connotaciones feministas. Así sucede tanto en la película Jesucristo Cazavampiros (Lee Demarbre, Jesuschrist Vampire Hunter, 2001) como en el cortometraje Zombie Jesus (Carla Siegle, 2014). Ambas producciones, a (...) las que se unen otras para demostrar que las mismas no son una excepción, presentan un conocimiento tanto de las Escrituras como de los estudios procedentes de la teología feminista, aspectos que configuran el foco principal de atención en el presente estudio. (shrink)

By embracing the ontological view of vulnerability and stressing its social basis, the paper aims to clarify the role of vulnerability within human rights paradigm.Vulnerability is conceived of by the author as a heuristic notion, which works as a pillar for a general approach to some crucial challenges to human dignity. Both this heuristic notion and these challenges are regarded in the paper as hallmarks for the human rights paradigm.In order to ground this view, the coherence between “vulnerability turn” and (...) the rationale of human rights relies on a four-steps argument dealing with: (i) the denial of a necessary mismatch between the notion of vulnerability and the principle of autonomy; (ii) the appreciation of relation in human rights conceptualization; (iii) the complementarity between vulnerability, as a heuristic notion, and the principle of equality; (iv) the understanding of vulnerability as a “vehicle of empathy” not necessarily involving paternalist trends and therefore not in conflict with the empowerment purposes of human rights.The relevance of “vulnerability turn” in human rights paradigm is defended in the paper within a view of human rights as basic rights, i.e. as means to prevent or fight against those threats that seriously affect basic human needs. (shrink)

My paper aims to highlight the presence of a social conception of art in Gadamer’s thought by analysing his reading of Hegel’s aesthetics. In an initial section I reconstruct the core of Gadamer’s reading of Hegel’s aesthetics as a paradigm to reassess art against the limits of aestheticism. I subsequently focus on the analysis Gadamer provides of the fundamental topic of the “past-character of art”, by stressing how this is reassessed as a “presence of the past”. On this basis, I (...) show how Gadamer’s reading of Hegel helps him focus on the role of contemporary art forms. If in modernity art lost its self-evident character, this does not prevent it from establishing a sense of community. Contemporary art is a search for a communal and social element. Gadamer’s characterization of contemporary art as a work-in-progress and intrinsically linked to the audience’s participation lays the basis for rethinking Gadamer’s aesthetics in a performative direction. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se expone un acercamiento al concepto de inteligencia espiritual como parte de la realidad bio-psico-socio-espiritual del ser humano, con el objetivo de generar la necesidad de una educación espiritual que complete la educación emocional y favorezca al desarrollo íntegro de la persona, como parte fundamental de la finalidad del sistema educativo.

This article sets out an analysis of the issue of the interrelationship between ethics and ideology in Russian culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, using historical materials to explore the fate of theoretical ethics in Russia, the diversity of the theoretical forms of the study of ethics in the culture of this period, the formation of an objective originality in ethical thinking, and the principal issues defining the distinctive pattern of moral introspection in Russian culture.

Se è nel tempo e attraverso il movimento che partecipiamo alla vita, la morte ci nega per sempre questa possibilità. Nei sistemi viventi il tempo funge da organizzatore della situazione vitale dell’organismo. Il metabolismo e le funzioni vitali si compiono infatti attraverso lo scandire preciso e incalzante di ritmi biologici. Con la morte si verifica il disgregamento della nozione di tempo. Non si tratta più del tempo della vita che unisce, che coordina, che costruisce, che organizza. Il tempo della morte (...) è un tempo che distrugge, che disgrega, che disorienta, che sfilaccia l’unità della nostra esistenza nei frammenti non più ricomponibili di un puzzle. Ma la morte non è un fatto solo individuale, osserva lo psichiatra Eugène Minkowski in Le temps vécu. La morte, infatti, pone anche fine a tutte le relazioni di affetto, parentela e amicizia che ci hanno accompagnato durante la vita. Nell’articolo mostro come, a partire dalla riflessione di Minkowski, si possa parlare della morte da una duplice prospettiva di tempo vissuto: la morte come evento che impone una riflessione sulla finitudine umana, e come esperienza del vissuto individuale, oppure della morte patologica, la quale implica la morte del vissuto, ossia del contatto vitale costitutivo dell`esistenza umana. (shrink)

This paper analyses the principles of stable cooperation for stochastic games. Starting from the non-cooperative version of a discounted, non zero-sum stochastic game, we build its cooperative form and find the cooperative solution. We then analyse the conditions under which this solution is stable. Principles of stability include subgame consistency, strategic stability and irrational behaviour proof of the cooperative solution. We finally discuss the existence of a stable cooperative solution, and consider a type of stochastic games for which the cooperative (...) solution is found and the principles of stable cooperation are checked. (shrink)