Encourages Christian teenage girls to explore and discover Truth.

Hume’s moral philosophy is a sentiment-based view. Moral judgment is a matter of the passions; certain traits of character count as virtues or vices because of the approval or disapproval they evoke in us, feelings that express concern we have about the social effects of these traits. A sentiment-based approach is attractive, since morality seems fundamentally to involve caring for other people. Sentiment-based views, however, face a real challenge. It is clear that our affections are often particular; we favor certain (...) persons over others. This poses a problem when it comes to determining the proper content of morality. The ties of sentiment would seem to be in tension with the aspirations of morality toward impartiality and universality. (shrink)

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of (...) the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the view that wrongful discrimination is disrespectful. In section 1, I articulate three conceptions of disrespect, each of which provides a special way to understand the way in which wrongful discrimination is disrespectful. In section 2, I ask what it would take for any of these conceptions to serve as the basis for a plausible theory of wrongful discrimination. I argue that any adequate theory of wrongful discrimination must be able to do two things well: (...) reliably identify cases of wrongful discrimination and, also, explain why they are wrong. In section 3, I examine the objection that all respect-focused theories violate the first desideratum. In section 4, I contend that the objection does not apply to all respect-based theories; in particular, it does not apply to a respect-focused deliberative theory of wrongful discrimination. Though such a theory is much more powerful than its competitors, I argue that it fails to offer a satisfying explanation of why discrimination is wrong due to the fact that it locates the wrong of discrimination within deliberative processes, rather than looking to the harmful-impacts of discrimination on people affected by it. (shrink)

Are utopian visions viable in the 21st century? Utopia has been equated, for many, with totalitarianism. Such visions are not acceptable. The loss of utopian visions altogether is also unacceptable. This book argues that American Pragmatism and Feminist theory can combine to provide a process model of utopia that pushes to build a flexible future that helps us deal with change, conflict, and diversity without resorting to fixed ends.

In this wide-ranging and probing book Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it requires rethinking common assumptions about human agency and political action. To embrace the minor gesture's power to fashion relations, its capacity to open new modes of experience and manners of expression, is (...) to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world—in particular what Manning terms "autistic perception." Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and Whitehead's speculative pragmatism, Manning's far-reaching analyses range from fashion to depression to the writings of autistics, in each case affirming the neurodiversity of the minor and the alternative politics it gestures toward. (shrink)

In the Symposium, Plato has Socrates claim that the priestess Diotima once claimed that Eros is a lover of wisdom or someone who is “in between wisdom and ignorance. In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise loves wisdom.” Perhaps the best starting point for understanding the philosophy of Aristotle is that in principle, he rejects Diotima’s etymological wordplay that claims that philosophy implies an (...) absence of wisdom. At the heart of Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim not only that all humans desire to know, but also that human animals (and indeed some non-human animals) are capable of understanding the world and its contents in a broad array of epistemic capacities, including veridical perception, artisanal expertise, theoretical science, practical wisdom, and, indeed, even σοφία itself of the highest objects of cognition, namely the nature of the gods (Metaph. 1.1.980a22–981b7). My chapter explores the philosophy of Aristotle in five different parts. Part I examines the “organon” or linguistic and logical tool-kit that analyzes human reasoning from the most basic components of a proposition up through syllogistic presentation of the causes that explain what research has uncovered. Parts II and III of the chapter explore the main contours of Aristotle’s “theoretical sciences”—what today we call natural science, metaphysics, and theology. Part IV of the chapter examines what the Nicomachean Ethics calls “the philosophy of human things,” namely the study of ethics and politics. Finally, Part V looks at how Aristotle and his school systemized two different fields of human study, namely that of artistic mimesis or the art of poetry, and deliberative, judicial, and epidictic oratory or the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

At least since Foster (2002), scholars interested in Aristotle’s views about environmental ethics have focused primarily upon his teleological account of non-human animals as the basis for an Aristotelian environmental virtue ethics. But although Aristotle’s scientific account of non-human animals can serve as the basis for a form of environmental ethics akin to “nature preservation,” one finds in his account of “household management” (or oikonomikē) a very different sort of environmental ethic, one that looks much more like a form of (...) “nature conservation.” My paper argues that for Aristotle, oikonomikē is indeed both “environmental” and an “ethic.” The first part of my chapter shows that oikonomikē is fundamentally environmental insofar as it concerns what Aristotle in Politics 1.8 calls “property acquisition in accord with nature” or “true wealth” (Pol. 1.8.1256b26–27, 30–31), namely the prudential use of natural resources in a way that recognizes the dependence of ways of life upon different habitats or environments. The second part of my chapter shows that oikonomikē is also an “ethic” insofar as it embeds three different kinds of limit on the use of animate and inanimate natural resources, namely that natural resource use is subordinate to expertise about the happiness of the political community (or what Aristotle calls “politics” [πολιτική]); that natural resource use, as an instrumental good, is limited and governed by the craft or expertise of oikonomikē; and that notions of unlimited commercial “wealth acquisition” (χρηματιστική) are based on ethically problematic ways of life. After showing that Aristotle’s account of oikonomikē is indeed an environmental ethic, the third part of my chapter considers the objection that oikonomikē is a weak environmental ethic insofar as it is exploitatively or axiological anthropocentric. I respond that Aristotle’s account of non-human animal domestication provides conceptual resources for thinking about non-human animals as subordinate members in one’s ecological-political community, especially with respect to his invocation of the craft analogy (in the example of shepherds) and inter-species utility friendships. Although Aristotle has multiple sources relevant for understanding environmental ethics, his account of oikonomikē is both a neglected source and a potentially fruitful one. (shrink)

Aristotle of Stagira (384–322 BCE) originates the study of zoology and political science. But whereas his zoology identifies a continuum between human and non-human animals, in his political and ethical works he appears to view human and non-human animals as different in kind in order to illustrate the superiority of the former and justify the instrumental use of the latter. For instance, Aristotle’s account of the virtue of moderation (namely that which concerns how humans experience pleasure) depicts non-human animals as (...) predators who only view other animals as a meal and immoderate human animals as beast-like and disgraceful because they act, “not insofar as they are human beings but insofar as they are animals” (EN 3.10.1118b2–3). Nonetheless, Aristotle wrote another ethical treatise, the Eudemian Ethics, that offers discussions that parallel those in the Nicomachean Ethics but that eschew negative characterizations of non-human animals—as if Aristotle had excised all such negative depictions of non-human animals from the Eudemian text on rhetorical grounds. I argue that the reason that Aristotle treats pleasure so differently is the result of his contrast between ethics as a function of political science (as found in the Nicomachean Ethics) and a “non-political” ethical reflection (as found in the Eudemian Ethics) that is more in line with Aristotle the zoologist. (shrink)

The widespread use of stimulants among healthy individuals to improve cognition has received growing attention; however, public attitudes toward this practice are not well understood. We determined the effect of framing metaphors and context of use on public opinion toward cognitive enhancement. We recruited 3,727 participants from the United States to complete three surveys using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk between April and July 2017. Participants read vignettes describing an individual using cognitive enhancement, varying framing metaphors (fuel versus steroid), and context of (...) use (athletes versus students versus employees). The main outcome measure was the difference in respondent-assigned level of acceptability of the use of cognitive enhancement by others and by themselves between the contrasting vignettes. Participants were more likely to support the use of cognitive enhancement by others than by themselves and more when the use of enhancement by others was framed with a fuel metaphor than with a steroid metaphor. Metaphoric framing did not affect participants’ attitudes toward their own use. Participants supported the use of enhancement by employees more than by students or athletes. These results are discussed in relation to existing ethical and policy literature. (shrink)

If someone says, “Asians are good at math” or “women are empathetic,” I might interject, “you're stereotyping” in order to convey my disapproval of their utterance. But why is stereotyping wrong? Before we can answer this question, we must better understand what stereotypes are and what stereotyping is. In this essay, I develop what I call the descriptive view of stereotypes and stereotyping. This view is assumed in much of the psychological and philosophical literature on implicit bias and stereotyping, yet (...) it has not been sufficiently defended. The main objection to the descriptive view is that it fails to include the common-sense idea that stereotyping is always objectionable. I argue that this is actually a benefit of the view. In the essay's final part, I put forward two hypotheses that would validate the claim that stereotyping is always morally or epistemically wrong. If these hypotheses are false—which is very likely—we have little reason to build moral or epistemic defect into the very idea of a stereotype. Moreover, we must abandon the seemingly attractive claim that judging individuals based on group membership is intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

Hall (1996) raises the question of the relationship between Aristotle’s Politics and Poetics by claiming that Aristotle had separated drama from its civic origins; various rejoinders to her challenge can be found in Heath (2009) and Jones (2012). In response to this question, I argue that a central connection between these two works is their shared concern about the effects of performance—both in the case of drama and music—either for performers or their audience. Aristotle’s criticisms of “spectacle” (opsis) in tragedy—a (...) problem taken up most recently in Bouchard (2012), Hanink (2011), Konstan (2013), Sifakis (2013), and Wise (2008)—thus parallel his criticisms of slavishness in musical performance in Politics 8. Thus, the problem of Aristotle’s silence about tragedy in his account of education in Politics 8—a problem taken up by Lord (1982) and more recently Ford (2004)—is explainable on the basis of an explicit and central doctrine from the Poetics, namely that a drama can produce the function of tragedy independent of public performance. On my reading, Aristotle’s Politics and Poetics together retain tragedy as a central “cultural” institution for the liberally educated citizen, a view completely consistent with everything Aristotle defends about tragedy in the Poetics. But Politics 8 displaces tragedy as the pre-eminent form of public education and in its place supplies instrumental music—no doubt much to the consternation of Athenian democrats both historically and their kindred spirits in contemporary drama and classics departments. My paper concludes by articulating and speculating about why music eclipses tragedy as the pre-eminent form of liberal arts education in Aristotle’s best regime. (shrink)

The pursuit of genetic knowledge has such emotional, social, scientific, and financial importance that it has been compared to the divine quest for the Holy Grail, and to the calamity of opening Pandora's Box. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the recent announcement of a completed blueprint for the human genome has fueled calls for both increased research and increased precautions. This new era, which holds the potential promise of advances in medicine, agriculture and other areas, also requires the (...) careful investigation of a myriad of issues. Those issues such as informed consent, patenting, privacy, and confidentiality, have been explored in at least some detail. Others, such as equity, mutual respect, empowering education, consensus building, and planning for long-term survival, have not been as fully examined, nor have they been as comprehensively integrated into mainstream thinking. To facilitate this, we need to implement an ethical approach that leads us to ask critical questions about the appropriate use of our new tools. (shrink)

According to Singer, it is not directly wrong to kill 'non-self-conscious beings', such as lower animals, human foetuses and newborn infants, provided that any consequent loss of happiness is made good by the creation of new sentient life. In contrast, normal adult humans, being 'self-conscious', generally have a strong preference for going on living, the flouting of which cannot, Singer argues, be morally counterbalanced by creating new, equally happy individuals. Singer's case might be reinforced by taking account, not only of (...) the preference for continued life itself, but also of other preferences for whose satisfaction continued life is essential. It proves difficult, however, to find a formulation of 'preference utilitarianism' which, while lacking other obviously unacceptable consequences, supports Singer's 'non-replaceability principle'. Also, Singer's position fails adequately to accommodate our conviction that the lives of human beings are, in general, more valuable than those of other animals. Finally, his thesis that lower animals (let alone human infants) are replaceable, has decidely counterintuitive implications. (shrink)

Prelude -- What moves as a body returns as a movement of thought -- Introduction: Events of relation : concepts in the making -- Incipient action : the dance of the not-yet -- The elasticity of the almost -- A mover's guide to standing still -- Taking the next step -- Dancing the technogenetic body -- Perceptions in folding -- Grace taking form : Marey's movement machines -- Animation's dance -- From biopolitics to the biogram, or, how Leni Riefenstahl moves (...) through fascism -- Of force fields and rhythm contours -- Relationscapes : how contemporary Aboriginal art moves beyond the map -- Constituting facts : Dorothy Napangardi dances the dreaming -- Cornering a beginning -- Conclusion: Propositions for thought in motion. (shrink)

The idea of ‘moral responsibility’ is typically linked with praise and blame, and with the notion of ‘the voluntary’. It is often thought that if we are free, in the relevant sense, we may “deserve” praise or blame; otherwise, we do not. But when we look at whether and why we need the notions of praise and blame, we find that they are not as intimately connected with desert as many philosophers have thought. In particular, this paper challenges the idea (...) that forms of evaluation and behavior tied to our “reactive attitudes” (especially resentment) best further morality’s aims, properly understood. (shrink)

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. The author underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion (...) that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.--. (shrink)

Este ensayo busca trazar una genealogía defectuosa de varias escenas de lectura en la obra de Jacques Lezra. Se enfoca en la lectura como práctica metodológica salvaje que conjuga —de manera inesperada, contraintuitiva, e indisciplinada— objetos, discursos, y modalidades conceptuales. Se analiza una selección de escenas de lectura de Materialismo salvaje y República salvaje para identificar en ellas un pensamiento estético-político que imagina corrientes subterráneas y deconstruye conceptos como soberanía, institución, y normatividad, enfatizando su carácter defectuoso.

Politics VII.1-3 enacts a contest that concludes that ‘whether for a whole city-state in common or for an individual, the best way of life would be a practical one’. Scholarship on VII.1-3 has focused on the best way of life for an individual to the neglect and even misunderstanding of the best way of life for a polis. The best way of life for a polis is, I argue, a specification of the foreign policy or ‘inter-polis’ relations for the best (...) constitution. Such a foreign policy appears to include the possibilities of both isolationism and regional hegemony, although Politics VII-VIII more broadly suggests that such latitude is constrained by the teleology of life, which shows that war should be pursued only for the sake of peace. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Philip Pettit presents and defends a “republican” political philosophy that stems from a tradition that includes Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Madison. The book provides an interpretation of what is distinctive about republicanism—namely, Pettit claims, its notion of freedom as nondomination. He sketches the history of this notion, and he argues that it entails a unique justification of certain political arrangements and the virtues of citizenship that would make those arrangements possible. Of (...) historical and philosophical interest, he stresses, is the fundamental contrast between freedom as nondomination and slavery. Joseph Priestly, for instance, invoked this contrast in defending the cause of the American Revolution, and in 1769 declared, incredibly, that if the parliament of Great Britain continued to tax the American colonies, “the colonists will be reduced to a state of as complete servitude, as any people of which there is an account in history”. Those opposed to American independence, among them Jeremy Bentham, relied instead on a Hobbesian notion of freedom as noninterference, using it to argue that the colonists were no more interfered with by the British government than were citizens of Britain. Drawing out this contrast, Pettit aims to establish that a republican view of freedom better supports the institutions of a constitutional democracy than does liberalism. His account of the distinguishing characteristics and strengths of republicanism is, however, only partially successful. Neither his case that a republican notion of freedom provides for a more solid defense of democratic institutions and constitutional protections than is available within liberalism, nor his argument that republicanism can better address “private” injustices, is convincing. (shrink)

This article examines whether and how a particular research practice is overseen and supervised, and by whom. This investigation fills notable gaps in the literature on science, including a lack of emphasis on larger sociopolitical structures, a neglect of regulation, and indifference toward ethics. The author focuses on the oversight of a particular research practice; data editing; which embodies qualities that are intriguing to sociologists of science: invisibility, uncertainty, heterogeneity, and reliance on tacit knowledge. These characteristics pose unique challenges to (...) oversight efforts. An analysis of in-depth interviews with gatekeepers reveals that although the methodological and ethical implications of data editing strategies can be substantial, oversight of such practices falls outside the stages and domains of current gatekeeping activity. These findings serve as the basis for recommendations to ensure data integrity while maintaining the professional autonomy of researchers. (shrink)

“Every practice is a mode of thought, already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday: a thinking of the world’s varied ways of affording itself.” —from _Thought in the Act _Combining philosophy and aesthetics, _Thought in the Act_ is a unique exploration of creative practice as a form of thinking. Challenging the common opposition between the conceptual and the aesthetic, Erin Manning and Brian Massumi “think through” (...) a wide range of creative practices in the process of their making, revealing how thinking and artfulness are intimately, creatively, and inseparably intertwined. They rediscover this intertwining at the heart of everyday perception and investigate its potential for new forms of activism at the crossroads of politics and art. Emerging from active collaborations, the book analyzes the experiential work of the architects and conceptual artists Arakawa and Gins, the improvisational choreographic techniques of William Forsythe, the recent painting practice of Bracha Ettinger, as well as autistic writers’ self-descriptions of their perceptual world and the experimental event making of the SenseLab collective. Drawing from the idiosyncratic vocabularies of each creative practice, and building on the vocabulary of process philosophy, the book reactivates rather than merely describes the artistic processes it examines. The result is a thinking-with and a writing-in-collaboration-with these processes and a demonstration of how philosophy co-composes with the act in the making. _Thought in the Act_ enacts a collaborative mode of thinking in the act at the intersection of art, philosophy, and politics. (shrink)

Methods in comparative work -- The sense of justice in Rawls -- The sense of justice in the analects -- Two senses of justice -- The contemporary relevance of a sense of justice.

Erin Plunkett draws from both analytic and continental sources to argue for the philosophical relevance of style, making the case that the essay form is uniquely suited to address the sceptical problem. The authors examined here-Montaigne, Hume, the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard and Stanley Cavell-bring into relief the relationship between scepticism and ordinary life and situate the will to know within a broader frame of meaningful human activity. The formal features of the essay call attention to time, subjectivity, and (...) language as the existential conditions of knowledge. -/- In contrast to foundationalist approaches, which expect philosophy to reach empirical or rational certainty, Plunkett demonstrates through these writings the philosophical advantages of a fragmentary, non-dogmatic style of writing. A Philosophy of the Essay shows how this medium can help us come to terms with the contingency and uncertainty of life. (shrink)

Much has been made of the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers, but does US engineering education actually encourage neophytes to take seriously their professional responsibility to public welfare? Counter to such ideals of engagement, I argue that students’ interest in public welfare concerns may actually decline over the course of their engineering education. Using unique longitudinal survey data of students at four colleges, this article examines (a) how students’ public welfare beliefs change during their engineering education, (b) whether (...) engineering programs emphasize engagement, and (c) whether these program emphases are related to students’ public welfare beliefs. I track four specific public welfare considerations: the importance to students of professional/ethical responsibilities, understanding the consequences of technology, understanding how people use machines, and social consciousness. Suggesting a culture of disengagement, I find that the cultural emphases of students’ engineering programs are directly related to their public welfare commitments and students’ public welfare concerns decline significantly over the course of their engineering education. However, these findings also suggest that if engineering programs can dismantle the ideological pillars of disengagement in their local climates, they may foster more engaged engineers. (shrink)

A new word has recently entered the British medical vocabulary. What it stands for is neither a disease nor a cure. At least, it is not a cure for a disease in the medical sense. But it could, perhaps, be thought of as an intended cure for a medicosociological disease: namely that of haphazard or otherwise ethically inappropriate allocation of scarce medical resources. What I have in mind is the term ‘QALY’, which is an acronym standing for quality adjusted life (...) year. Just what this means and what it is intended to do I shall explain in due course. Let me first, however, set the scene. (shrink)

What has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In _For a Pragmatics of the Useless_ Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter (...) two that a central refrain echoes: "All black life is neurodiverse life." This is not an equation, but an "approximation of proximity." Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity "schizz" around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with Félix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition's accounts of black life and the aesthetics of black sociality, proposes a "schizoanalysis" of the more-than, charting a panoply of techniques for other ways of living and learning. (shrink)

In _Always More Than One_, the philosopher, visual artist, and dancer Erin Manning explores the concept of the "more than human" in the context of movement, perception, and experience. Working from Whitehead's process philosophy and Simondon's theory of individuation, she extends the concepts of movement and relation developed in her earlier work toward the notion of "choreographic thinking." Here, she uses choreographic thinking to explore a mode of perception prior to the settling of experience into established categories. Manning connects (...) this to the concept of "autistic perception," described by autistics as the awareness of a relational field prior to the so-called neurotypical tendency to "chunk" experience into predetermined subjects and objects. Autistics explain that, rather than immediately distinguishing objects—such as chairs and tables and humans—from one another on entering a given environment, they experience the environment as gradually taking form. Manning maintains that this mode of awareness underlies all perception. What we perceive is never first a subject or an object, but an ecology. From this vantage point, she proposes that we consider an ecological politics where movement and relation take precedence over predefined categories, such as the neurotypical and the neurodiverse, or the human and the nonhuman. What would it mean to embrace an ecological politics of collective individuation? (shrink)

A rational process for assessment of environmental policy options should be based on an appreciation of how humans value nature. Increased understanding of values will also contribute to the development of appropriate ways for us to relate to and manage natural areas. Over the past two decades, environmental philosophers have examined the notion that there is an intrinsic value in nature. Economists have attempted to define and measure the market and nonmarket economic values associated with decisions concerning natural areas. Psychologists (...) have tried to assess the extent to which people believe in an intrinsic value in nature, and have also begun to work with economists to improve nonmarket valuation techniques. I briefly review the contributions made to our understanding of natural area value by environmental philosophy, psychology and economics, and develop a model that integrates insights from these disciplines. Components in the model include cognitions, held values, assigned values and various modes of value expression. I make recommendations for future validation, development and use of the model. (shrink)