Although providing aid in conflict is implicitly political, involving humanitarian actors and aid in conflict resolution initiatives, as Weiss advocates, risks diluting the primary responsibility of humanitarian aid to alleviate suffering.

At the core of conceptual understandings underlying a common-sense comprehension of matter is an assumed opposition of the intelligible and the sensible. Drawing on the writings of Giles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray and Elizabeth Grosz, this essay attempts to rethink the relations of matter through the work of materiality in the context of art. Focusing on the installation COVERS, by Melbourne-based artist Fiona Abicare, this examination argues that a mobilization of the disordering effects of matter instigates an interval. In this (...) passage of undecidability an understanding of matter as a vehicle for expression or medium for signifying something external to itself is challenged via a ceaseless interchange across the thresholds of surface and depth, face and mask, ornament and decoration. (shrink)

Unravels the many different definitions of ideology, explores the history of the concept from the Enlightenment to postmodernism, and interprets the works of ...

The Phenomenology of Spirit is both one of Hegel's most widely read books and one of his most obscure. The book is the most detailed commentary on Hegel's work available. It develops an independent philosophical account of the general theory of knowledge, culture, and history presented in the Phenomenology. In a clear and straightforward style, Terry Pinkard reconstructs Hegel's theoretical philosophy and shows its connection to ethical and political theory. He sets the work in a historical context and shows (...) the contemporary relevance of Hegel's thought for European and Anglo-American philosophers. The principal audience for the book is teachers and students of philosophy, but the great interest in Hegel's work and the clarity of Pinkard's exposition ensure that historians of ideas, political scientists, and literary theorists will also read it. (shrink)

L.A. Paul argues that interesting issues for rational choice theory are raised by epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which provide access to knowledge that could not be known without the experience. Consideration of the epistemic effects of pregnancy has important implications for our understanding of epistemically transformative experiences and for debate about the ethics of abortion and applied ethics more generally. Pregnancy is epistemically transformative both in Paul’s narrow sense and in a wider sense: those who have not been pregnant face (...) significant barriers to acquiring the knowledge made accessible through pregnancy. This knowledge is crucial for engaging with the ethics of abortion. The epistemically transformativeWIDE nature of pregnancy may require us to use new methods to try to partially grasp what pregnancy is like such as for example, significant engagement with narrative literature. Because pregnancy is also epistemically transformative in a narrow sense, we need to work out how to engage in ethical reasoning when relevant knowledge is not fully accessible to all. This argument has implications beyond the debate about abortion. Philosophers in many areas of applied ethics will need to work out how to respond appropriately to epistemically transformative experiences. (shrink)

He sets out not just to expose the illusions of postmodernism but to show the students he has in mind that they never believed what they thought they believed ...

Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of one's moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one's moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one's moral experiences that is available to introspection is neutral with respect to the issue of whether such experiences carry ontological (...) objectivist purport. (shrink)

The result is a one-dimensional, economistic and bleakly utilitarian conception of the educational task.In Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education, Terry Hyland advances the thesis that education stands in ...

This article discusses the moral principles underlying the idea of humanitarian intervention. The analysis is in two parts, one historical and the other philosophical. First, the article examines arguments made in late medieval and early modern Europe for using armed force to punish the violation of natural law and to defend communities from tyranny and oppression, regardless of where they occur. It seeks to understand how moralists writing before the emergence of modern international law conceived what we now call humanitarian (...) intervention.In the context of international law, humanitarian intervention is usually understood to be an exception to the nonintervention principle. However, the natural law tradition regards international law as less important than the moral imperative to punish wrongs and protect the innocent.Second, the article considers how humanitarian intervention is justified within the reformulation of the natural law tradition displayed in recent efforts to theorize morality along Kantian lines. In this reformulation, humanitarian intervention is a product of the duty of beneficence and, more specifically, of the right to use force to protect the innocent. The article draws upon the biblical injunction “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor,” which has become a centerpiece of the modern reformulation, and briefly explores its application to humanitarian intervention in the context of international relations today. This reformulation of natural law explains why, despite modern efforts to make it illegal, humanitarian intervention remains, in principle, morally defensible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reveals David Hilbert’s position in the philosophy of mathematics, circa 1900, to be a form of non-eliminative structuralism, predating his formalism. I argue that Hilbert withstands the pressing objections put to him by Frege in the course of the Frege-Hilbert controversy in virtue of this early structuralist approach. To demonstrate that this historical position deserves contemporary attention I show that Hilbertian structuralism avoids a recent wave of objections against non-eliminative structuralists to the effect that they cannot distinguish (...) between structurally identical but importantly distinct mathematical objects, such as the complex roots of $-1$. (shrink)

Why do leaders fail ethically? In this book, Terry L. Price applies a multi-disciplinary approach to an understanding of immorality in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He argues that leaders can know that a certain kind of behavior is generally required by morality but nonetheless be mistaken as to whether the relevant moral requirement applies to them in a particular situation and whether others are protected by this requirement. Price articulates how leaders make exceptions of themselves, explains how (...) the justificatory force of leadership gives rise to such exception-making, and develops normative prescriptions that leaders should adopt as a response to this feature of their moral psychology. (shrink)

This paper uses a dilemma presented by David Benatar to explore the challenges that ‘Sexual Liberals’ face in giving a satisfactory account of sexual ethics. A satisfactory Sexual Liberal account of sexual ethics must be able to fully explain the wrongness of sexual assault without implying that sexual activity should be restricted to those in love. The assumption that this is impossible may be due to mistakes in our thinking about sexual assault. However, even when such mistakes are resolved, producing (...) a satisfactory account of sexual ethics requires Sexual Liberals to confront the significance of the sexual in human life. I describe an account of sexual desire that explains the significance of the sexual in human life without forcing us to endorse a restrictive sexual ethics. (shrink)

In Sociology of Culture and of Cultural Practices, Laurent Fleury presents a synthesis of research and debate from France and the United States. He traces the development of the sociology of culture from its origins and examines the major trends that have emerged in this branch of sociology. Fleury also raises issues of cultural hierarchy, distinction, and legitimate culture and mass culture and focuses on new areas of research, including the role of institutions, the reception of works of art, aesthetic (...) experience, and emancipation through art. (shrink)

I recently told my uncle that I thought I had come up with a way of showing that a mother who saw her child about to be stung by a wasp should try to intervene. I’d been working on this for several months. My uncle did not look very impressed. To be fair, it doesn’t sound like a very impressive result. Surely it is just utterly obviously that mothers should protect their children from wasps? So why had this taken me (...) months of work? I am trying to come up with a moderate account of maternal duties. Maternal duties pick out what a mother is morally required to do for her children. In doing so, I’ve discovered that it is harder than it might at first appear to come up with a moderate account of maternal duties that recognises ‘obvious’ duties like the duty not to let your child be stung by a wasp. I’ve also found that in the context of maternal duties, even more than in other contexts, we need be cautious before we accept our judgments about what seems obvious. Yet, it is absolutely vital to come up with a good moderate account of maternal duties – because doing so is necessary to protect vulnerable women and children. (shrink)

The philosophy of engineering is, in the first instance, concerned to make sense of what we do and how we do it as agents in the world. It is also concerned with understanding the nature of inquiry and exploration in the engineering enterprise. In these latter concerns, the philosophy of engineering constitutes the more general framework for understanding the nature of reality and the role of engineering in it. The philosophy of engineering and the engineering worldview supersede and subsume the (...) philosophy of science and the scientific worldview. (shrink)

Over the last several years, C. B. Macpherson has attempted to present a far-reaching critique of the theories underlying and justifying capitalist social systems. Beginning with a critique of the classical theories of capitalism, he has extended it to the later formulations offered by j. S. Mill and T. H. Green, along with the most recent formulation offered by john Rawls. The guiding thread throughout his writing has been the critique of the model of persons which underpin the various formulations (...) of capitalist theory. What I would like to do in this paper is to present what I think to be a stronger defense of Macpherson's argument than Macpherson has himself given, since I think it can be shown that at certain crucial points his argument is necessarily flawed for the point which he is trying to make. (shrink)

Neo-Skinnerianism differs from Radical Behaviorism in at least three important respects: (1) its willingness to entertain cognitive accounts of the processes underlying behavioral dispositions, (b) its reluctance to assert that the results of animal experiments can be used to predict and control human behavior, and (c) its ability to side step folk psychology's major criticism of operant theory. While eschewing Radical Behaviorism's ambition to transform psychology (and, indeed, human society itself), it nonetheless joins issue with a centuries-old debate over human (...) nature, and may eventually help to resolve it. (shrink)

In some of Plato’s early dialogues we find a concern with correctly ascertaining the contents of a particular kind of one’s own psychological states, cognitive states. Indeed, one of the achievements of the elenctic method is to facilitate cognitive self-knowledge. In the Alcibiades, moreover, Plato interprets the Delphic injunction, ‘know yourself’, as crucially requiring cognitive self-knowledge, and ending in knowing oneself as subject to particular epistemic norms. Epistemic authority for self-knowledge is, for Plato, conferred on the basis of correct application (...) of norms to cognitive self-ascriptions, and not confined to the first-personal perspective. This implies first-personal plural epistemic authority for self-knowledge. (shrink)

This case study of Central American migration to Washington, DC closely examines how gender is related to the decision to migrate, as well as the choice of destination. The study investigates the social and economic conditions in sending Central American countries as well as those in a receiving city in the United States to determine why women predominate in certain labor migrations. A macrostructural analysis accounts for the conditions that delimit the flow of international migrants, but a concept termed gendered (...) labor recruitment provides the link between macro- and microlevels of analysis. Results of the research indicate that approximately seventy percent of the initial Central American migrants to the nation's capital in the 1960s and 1970s were women and that their migration may be attributed partly to informal labor recruitment. Over the years, Washington's government, diplomatic and professional workforce “recruited,” made arrangements for, or returned to the nation's capital with foreign workers who could provide basic services, primarily as domestics and child-care providers. (shrink)

The need for energy system change in order to address the energy ‘trilemma’ of security, affordability and sustainability is well documented and requires the active involvement of individuals, families and communities who currently engage with these systems and technologies. Alongside technical developments designed to address these challenges, alternative ways of living are increasingly being envisaged by those involved in low-impact development. This article draws on data from a qualitative longitudinal study involving residents of a low-impact ecovillage in West Wales, UK, (...) in order to consider how the successful meeting of their planning targets has not been without personal and social troubles, which are absent from official measures of the project's success. We argue that, in exploring issues pertaining to scaling up, policy timescales and the legacy of such projects (such as inspiring others), insights drawn from this study have a wider relevance beyond the specific case site. (shrink)

Infant feeding decisions are highly emotionally charged. I argue elsewhere that many problems surrounding infant feeding decisions result from a moralized context created by mistakes in our assumptions about maternal duties including the mistaken assumption that mothers have a defeasible moral duty to breastfeed. Mothers have a reason, but not a moral duty to breastfeed. Even those who are convinced by my argument in the case of full-term babies, might find it harder to accept in the case of premature babies. (...) It might seem that mothers do have a defeasible moral duty to breastfeed or, as is more likely to be appropriate in such cases, to express breastmilk. Here, I explain why preterm neonates present a tricky case for the right not to breastfeed. I show why, nonetheless, moral pressure for mothers to express breastmilk in the neonatal unit is neither permissible nor pragmatically advisable. I argue that instead we should address structural barriers to providing breastmilk and support donor milk initiatives. (shrink)