Rosemary Hennessy confronts some of the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking `woman' as a discursively constructed subject. She argues for a theory of discourse as ideology taking into account the work of Kristeva, Foucault and Laclau.

The lore is that standard information theory provides an analysis of information quantity, but not of information content. I argue this lore is incorrect, and there is an adequate informational semantics latent in standard theory. The roots of this notion of content can be traced to the secret parallel development of an information theory equivalent to Shannon’s by Turing at Bletchley Park, and it has been suggested independently in recent work by Skyrms and Bullinaria and Levy. This paper explicitly articulates (...) the semantics latent in information theory and defends it as an adequate theory of information content, or natural meaning. I argue that this theory suggests a new perspective on the classic misrepresentation worry for correlation-based semantics. (shrink)

The metaphysical ethics of Levinas appeals to many philosophers of education because it seems to promise ethics and social justice without recourse to moral norms, ‘totalising’ political systems or religious belief. However, the notion that the subject can be detached from its worldly being—that one can posit a primordial metaphysical pre-conscious pre-phenomenal self which stands in ethical relation to a primordial metaphysical pre-conscious pre-phenomenal Other—is highly questionable. From an empirical perspective, our experience of the world and of ourselves can only (...) be conceived in social, cultural and linguistic terms; the self-referential lexicon Levinas employs to depict the relation between the transcendental subject and the Other ‘in his alterity’ renders his metaphysical assertions impossible to evaluate or give determinate form. From a transcendental perspective, Levinas's metaphysical abstractions simply do not have the power to motivate people to behave ethically. Instead of contributing toward the transformation of education and society envisaged by many philosophers of education, the ‘ethics of the Other’ merely generates an esoteric discourse. (shrink)

Background: Surveillance technology such as tag and tracking systems and video surveillance could increase the freedom of movement and consequently autonomy of clients in long-term residential care settings, but is also perceived as an intrusion on autonomy including privacy. Objective: To explore how clients in residential care experience surveillance technology in order to assess how surveillance technology might influence autonomy. Setting: Two long-term residential care facilities: a nursing home for people with dementia and a care facility for people with intellectual (...) disabilities. Methods: Ethnographic field study. Ethical considerations: The boards representing clients and relatives/proxies of the clients were informed of the study and gave their written consent. The clients’ assent was sought through a special information leaflet. At any time clients and/or proxy were given the option to withdraw from the study. The research protocol was also reviewed by a medical ethics committee. Findings: Our findings show a pattern of two themes: (1) coping with new spaces which entailed clients: wandering around, getting lost, being triggered, and retreating to new spaces and (2) resisting the surveillance technology measure because clients feel stigmatized, missed the company, and do not like being “watched.” Conclusion: Client experiences of surveillance technology appear to entail a certain ambivalence. This is in part due to the variety in surveillance technology devices, with each device bringing its own connotations and experiences. But it also lies in the devices’ presupposition of an ideal user, which is at odds with the actual user who is inherently vulnerable. Surveillance technology can contribute to the autonomy of clients in long-term care, but only if it is set in a truly person-centered approach. (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory posits feminism as a way of conceptualizing from the vantage point of women's lives. However, in current work on feminist standpoint the material links between lives and knowledges are often not explained. This essay argues that the radical marxist tradition standpoint theory draws on-specifically theories of ideology post-Althusser-offers a systemic mode of reading that can redress this problem and provide the resources to elaborate further feminism's oppositional practice and collective subject.

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

A “Zanzibar” is an island of measurement values that internally cohere, but are detached from independent contact with reality. One manifestation of Zanzibars is through “bandwagon effects,” the tendency of contemporaneous measurements to agree. Bandwagons illustrate how the otherwise virtuous drive towards coherence can have negative epistemic consequences. I argue that precision is an epistemic virtue that mitigates against bandwagon effects and illustrate this claim with a case study from the history of measurements of c. This precision-first reasoning motivates the (...) practice of blind data analysis in bleeding edge precision measurement, where outcomes can point the way to new physics. (shrink)

Margaret Archer has recently provided a persuasive account of the importance of the internal conversation to reflexivity. This raises questions about the shaping of such conversations by involuntary agential positioning. The work of Bourdieu and Bernstein is reviewed to suggest that structural influences can operate by condi-tioning the resources available for the conducting of the internal conversation. Particular emphasis is placed on the transfer of taken for granted ideas from one domain of practice to another.

Several strands of contemporary cognitive science and its philosophy have emerged in recent decades that emphasize the role of action in cognition, resting their explanations on the embodiment of cognitive agents, and their embedding in richly structured environments. Despite their growing influence, many foundational questions remain unresolved or underexplored for this cluster of proposals, especially questions of how they can be extended beyond straightforwardly visuomotor cognitive capacities, and what constraints the commitment of embodiment places on the ontology of explanations. This (...) special issue aims to contribute to these foundational debates by drawing on important precursors to embodied cognition in mid-twentieth century gestalt psychology, its immediate successor ecological psychology, and their dialectical counterpart, phenomenology. Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists wrestled with many of the same foundational questions that still haunt us today, in a manner that seems refreshing in hindsight, and poised to contribute constructively to contemporary debate. Looking back on this history reveals deep commonalities across competing embodied approaches, exposing fundamental tensions that remain unresolved, but also paving the way to a more ecumenical and conciliatory embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper argues that the new science of positive psychology is founded on a whole series of fallacious arguments; these involve circular reasoning, tautology, failure to clearly define or properly apply terms, the identification of causal relations where none exist, and unjustified generalisation. Instead of demonstrating that positive attitudes explain achievement, success, well-being and happiness, positive psychology merely associates mental health with a particular personality type: a cheerful, outgoing, goal-driven, status-seeking extravert.

This paper explores concepts of multiple and nested identities and how these relate to citizenship and rights, and the implications of identities and rights for active citizenship education. Various theoretical conceptions of identity are analysed, and in particular ideas concerning multiple identities that are used contingently, and about identities that do not necessarily include feeling a strong affinity with others in the group. The argument then moves to the relationship between identity and citizenship, and particularly citizenship and rights. Citizenship is (...) treated non-legalistically, as one of the locations of belonging. The paper draws on three successive categorisations of citizenship rights: by T.H. Marshall in the 1950s, Karel Vasak in the late 1970s and John Urry in the 1990s, and is illustrated in part by the development of European citizenship in parallel to national identity. This is then linked to how contemporary citizenship education might use the exploration of contested rights as a way of developing practical enactive skills of citizenship. (shrink)

Deleuze does not mention Schopenhauer very frequently. Certainly Schopenhauer does not appear to be in the counter-canon of life-affirming philosophers that Deleuze so values – indeed, far from it. Nor does he appear to be even a favoured ‘enemy’ as he describes Kant, or as he sometimes appears to view Hegel. In Jones and Roffe’s collection on Deleuze’s historical antecedents, Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage, Schopenhauer is mentioned exactly once (in the chapter on Hume) and certainly not in the dignified role of (...) one of the twenty leading influences on Deleuze. Nevertheless, I think Schopenhauer’s break from Kant is crucial for understanding not only Deleuze’s account of Nietzsche, but also for a proper grasp of the core Deleuzian distinction between the actual and the virtual, at least in its guise as the distinction between desiring-production and social production in Anti-Oedipus. (shrink)

The Cambridge Critical Guides series offers cutting-edge research volumes on some of the most important works of philosophy. Each volume presents newly-commissioned essays by an international team of contributors, and will appeal to a scholarly and graduate-level audience. One of the themes that this volume brings out is the endurance and contemporary relevance of some of Schopenhauer’s most pressing concerns. In a sense, he is right to be ahistorical: is it not this reaching out of its time that makes a (...) work a classic, eternal even? Principal among these concerns of course is the question of how to respond as plagues overwhelm us (which is Schopenhauer’s description of existence in a normal state, the plague of existence rather than a plague within existence). His famous answer involves the negation of the will, the ascetic denial and rejection of desire. Of course, this response is more striking than it is clear, and several of the essays tackle the question of what is meant, entailed, and achieved by negation of the will. (shrink)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling (1775-1854) was a colleague of Hegel, Holderlin, Fichte, Goethe, Schlegel, and Schiller. Always a champion of Romanticism, Schelling advocated a philosophy which emphasized intuition over reason, which maintained aesthetics and the creative imagination to be of the highest value. At the same time, Schelling's concerns for the self and the rational make him a major precursor to existentialism and phenomenology. Schelling has exercised a subterranean influence on modern thought. His diverse writings have not given rise (...) to a system or school of thought; rather, individual philosophers have been influenced by the resonance of his ideas and their influence on contemporary ideas and movements. The New Schelling brings together a wide-ranging set of essays which elaborate the connections between Schelling and other thinkers - such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Deleuze, and Lacan - and argue for the unexpected modernity of Schelling's work. (shrink)

A clinical ethics fit for the Anthropocene—our current geological era in which human activity is the primary determinant of environmental change—needs to incorporate environmental ethics to be fit for clinical practice. Conservationist Aldo Leopold’s essay ‘The Land Ethic’ is probably the most widely-cited source in environmental philosophy; but Leopold’s work, and environmental ethics generally, has made little impression on clinical ethics. The Land Ethic holds that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of (...) the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” I argue that a Land Ethic helps to re-frame problems in clinical ethics that more common philosophical approaches struggle to handle, and that it can be incorporated into clinical ethics without succumbing to “environmental fascism”. I motivate viewing problems in clinical ethics from the perspective of the ‘integrity of the biotic community’, then illustrate how this perspective can offer guidance where more commonly-invoked theories—such as consequentialism and Kantian-inspired approaches—struggle, using antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial infection as a case study. The Land Ethic equips us to understand human values as arising within and inseparable from a social-ecological context, and by treating communities as valuable in themselves rather than just through the aggregate welfare of their individual participants, we can avoid problems with the ‘repugnant conclusion’ and utility monster that plague utilitarian accounts. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that although the Aristotelian ideal of leading a virtuous life for its own sake is admirable, conventional Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of how it might be realised are empirically inadequate: Habituation is unlikely to produce ‘a love of virtue’, practical experience cannot then produce practical judgement or phronesis, and Aristotle's conception of a virtuous life excludes all but an idealised elite. Instead, I argue that two conceptually distinct aspects of moral development can be identified: the (...) ‘Aristotelian’ and the ‘Humean’. In the former, the desire to lead a virtuous life for its own sake is produced through certain forms of challenging experience which, by disturbing and decentring the egoistic self, evoke a personal moral transformation. In the latter, the capacity to act well in specific social situations is the outcome of a process of socialisation, first in upbringing and later through initiation into the practices of adult life. Both aspects should be promoted in moral education for together they produce something akin to full virtue in the Aristotelian sense: Practical wisdom and practical judgement—or phronesis. Moreover, ‘the good life’ is best conceived as encompassing a variety of transcendent goods. To live a virtuous life for its own sake constitutes one good or form of human flourishing; but it is not the only one. (shrink)

The clinical encounter begins with presentation of an illness experience; but throughout that encounter, something else is constructed from it – a symptom. The symptom is a particular interpretation of that experience, useful for certain purposes in particular contexts. The hermeneutics of medicine – the study of the interpretation of human experience in medical terms – has largely taken the process of symptom-construction to be transparent, focussing instead on how constellations of symptoms are interpreted as representative of particular conditions. This (...) paper examines the hermeneutical activity of symptom-construction more closely. I propose a fourfold account of the clinical function of symptoms: as theoretical entities; as tools for communication; as guides to palliative intervention; and as candidates for medical explanation or intervention. I also highlight roles they might play in illness experience. I use this framework to discuss four potential failures of symptom-interpretation: failure of symptom-type and symptom-token recognition; loss of the complete picture of illness experience through overwhelming emphasis on its symptomatic interpretation; and intersubjective feedback effects of symptom description altering the ill person’s own perceptions of their phenomenal experience. I conclude with some suggestions of potential remedies for failures in the process of symptom-construction. (shrink)

Nietzsche's doctrine of the -eternal recurrence of the same- - the conception that the universe of events repeats itself in the same sequence, to infinity - is often taken to be logically incoherent: if an event recurs, it is not identically the same as the event itself, and if taken as self-identical cannot be the recurrence of anything. This book offers a new interpretation of the doctrine so as to rescue it from the charge of incoherence. It shows that the (...) doctrine is an outgrowth of ideas found in Nietzsche's philosophy of nature, among them that space is Riemannian and that time is relative to events, not an independently existing continuum which underlies events.". (shrink)

Timbre is that property of a sound that distinguishes it other than pitch and loudness, for instance the distinctive sound quality of a violin or flute. While the term is obscure, the concept has played an important, implicit role in recent philosophy of sound. Philosophers have debated whether to identify sounds with properties of waves, events, or objects. Many of the intuitive considerations in this debate apply most clearly to timbre qualities. Two prominent forms of timbre physicalism have emerged: one (...) identifying timbre with the spectral composition of proximal waves; the second identifying timbre with the mechanical vibrations at a sound source. I demonstrate that the first possibility is conceptually unsatisfying, while the second fails to meet the standards of rigor established by the color physicalism literature. One response to these worries might be to adopt a more modest, non-reductive realism about timbre, such as the ecological view of J. J. Gibson. (shrink)

Felicitas Kraemer draws on the experiences of patients undergoing deep-brain stimulation to propose two distinct and potentially conflicting principles of respect: for an individual's autonomy , and for their authenticity. I argue instead that, according to commonly-invoked justifications of respect for autonomy, authenticity is itself in part constitutive of an analysis of autonomy worthy of respect; Kraemer's argument thus highlights the shortcomings of practical applications of respect for autonomy that emphasise competence while neglecting other important dimensions of autonomy such as (...) authenticity, since it shows that competence alone cannot be interpreted as a reliable indicator of an individual's capacity for exercising autonomy. I draw from relational accounts to suggest how respect for a more expansive conception of autonomy might be interpreted for individuals undergoing DBS and in general. (shrink)

The world is about to be swamped by an unprecedented wave of AI-generated content. We need reliable ways of identifying such content, to supplement the many existing social institutions that enable trust between people and organisations and ensure social resilience. In this paper, we begin by highlighting an important new development: providers of AI content generators have new obligations to support the creation of reliable detectors for the content they generate. These new obligations arise mainly from the EU’s newly finalised (...) AI Act, but they are enhanced by the US President’s recent Executive Order on AI, and by several considerations of self-interest. These new steps towards reliable detection mechanisms are by no means a panacea—but we argue they will usher in a new adversarial landscape, in which reliable methods for identifying AI-generated content are commonly available. In this landscape, many new questions arise for policymakers. Firstly, if reliable AI-content detection mechanisms are available, who should be required to use them? And how should they be used? We argue that new duties arise for media and Web search companies arise for media companies, and for Web search companies, in the deployment of AI-content detectors. Secondly, what broader regulation of the tech ecosystem will maximise the likelihood of reliable AI-content detectors? We argue for a range of new duties, relating to provenance-authentication protocols, open-source AI generators, and support for research and enforcement. Along the way, we consider how the production of AI-generated content relates to ‘free expression’, and discuss the important case of content that is generated jointly by humans and AIs. (shrink)

Most work addressing clinical workers' professional responsibilities concerns the norms of conduct within established professional–patient relationships, but such responsibilities may extend beyond the clinical context. We explore health workers' professional responsibilities in such “informal” encounters through the example of a doctor witnessing the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of a serious long-term condition in a television documentary, arguing that neither internalist approaches to professional responsibility nor externalist ones provide sufficiently clear guidance in such situations. We propose that a mix of both approaches, (...) emphasizing the noncomplacency and practical wisdom of virtue ethics, but grounding the normative authority of virtue in an external source, is able to engage with the health worker's responsibilities in such situations to the individual, the health care system, and the population at large. (shrink)

Early psychophysical methods as codified by Fechner motivate the development of quantitative theories of subjective experience. The basic insight is that just noticeable differences between experiences can serve as units for measuring a sensory domain. However, the methods described by Fechner tacitly assume that the experiences being investigated can be linearly ordered. This assumption is not true for all sensory domains; for example, there is no trivial linear order over all possible color sensations. This paper discusses key developments in the (...) history of psychophysical methods for measuring color experience. In particular, a clear distinction between topological and metrical structure allowed Helmholtz to use opponent colors as a standard for measuring the gross structure of color space. Once this gross structure had been determined, lines through color space could be defined and Fechner-style methods employed for determining local structure. Extensions of these methods due to Wright, MacAdam, and others provide detailed evidence for the degree of agreement in the qualities of color experience across individuals. This allows a precise statement of the evidential support for the claim that your experience of color and mine are the same. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a novel position in the color realism debate, namely structural realism. This position is novel in that it dissociates the veridicality of color attributions from the claim that physical objects are themselves colored. Thus, it is realist about color in both the semantic and epistemic senses, but not the ontic sense. The generality of this position is demonstrated by applying it to other “secondary qualities,” including heat, musical pitch, and odor. The basic argument proceeds by (...) analogy with the theory of measurement. I argue that perceptual experiences are analogous to numerical structures in that they are suitable for measurement, but only report measured values after they have been linked to states of a measurement device via calibration. Since the calibration of our sensory apparatus varies with context, it is inappropriate to identify specific experiences with specific properties in the world. Rather, it is structural relations between possible experiences which represent relations between possible external properties, and it is at the level of these structural relationships that veridicality is appropriately assessed. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 356-370, April 2022.

Smajdor invites welcome interrogation of the distance between our philosophical justifications of how we engage people in decisions about healthcare or research, and the ways we do so.1 She notes the implicit elision made between autonomy and informed consent, and argues the latter alone cannot secure the former, proposing a more flexible approach. As researchers working with people with dementia (PwD), we share Smajdor’s reservations. We argue that an autonomy worthy of respect requires not just decision-making capacity, but also authenticity; (...) the ability to determine for oneself what is good for oneself.2 Furthermore, our relationships support or undermine both capacity and authenticity, and autonomous expression manifests throughout evolving relationships. This invites us to view respect differently—as an ongoing conversation with another person, capable of holding values that may move us. In Smajdor’s terminology, it requires that we recognise them. We describe how we operationalise this in our research. Three broad arguments usually support respect for autonomy.2 One—owed to JS Mill—holds that permitting individuals free choice promotes utility of all, by helping them fulfil ideas of the good, demonstrating ‘experiments in living’. Another draws from Kant’s categorical imperative; its Formula of Humanity holds that the capacity to determine our own values gives us reason to act, and we ought, therefore, to treat others’ values with the respect we show our own. Lastly, many simply assume ‘liberal neutrality’—an intrinsic value in people being permitted to pursue the …. (shrink)

It will be remembered that the introductory chapter to this paper differentiated between human therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research, with the former concept encapsulating the latter one. In turning to examine the current system of regulation found within the United Kingdom this has particular relevance as it is only the practice of therapeutic cloning – the creation and use of an embryo – which engages with the regulative measures adopted.

Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Manuel Castells (1942–) are the grand theorists of the information age. The article provides a detailed, up-to-date, comparative analysis of their writings. It begins with their methodologies, identifying numerous commonalities in their post-Marxian frameworks. The substance of their theories is then examined, where it is shown that both plausibly explain contemporary social reality in terms of the interplay of three forces: the information technology revolution, the restructuring of capitalism and the innovational role of culture. There are (...) found to be major similarities in their accounts (the Kantian interpretation, social stratification) but also significant divergences (role of science, the fourth world, the normative content of culture). Suitably combined, Bell’s and Castells’s thought goes a long way towards delivering a persuasive sociological theory of the global information society. However, the article concludes by suggesting that extensive further work is needed to clarify the precise relationships between the three factors and their relative weightings in the equations required to explain recent social change. (shrink)

The ideas of philosopher John Rawls should be appropriated for the information age. A literature review identifies previous contributions in fields such as communication and library and information science. The article postulates the following neo-Rawlsian propositions as co-ordinates for the development of a normative theory of the information society: that political philosophy should be incorporated into information society studies; that social and technological circumstances define the limits of progressive politics; that the right is prior to the good in social morality; (...) that the nation state should remain in sharp focus, despite globalization; that liberty, the first principle of social justice, requires updating to deal with the growth of surveillance and other challenges; that social wellbeing is a function of equal opportunities plus limited inequalities of outcome, in information as well as material resources; and that political stability depends upon an overlapping consensus accommodating both religion and secularism. Although incomplete, such co-ordinates can help to guide policy-makers in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the (...) history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right. (shrink)

his paper argues that we will never get rid of the extremist mentality unless the dualist view prevails and is taught as part of the educational system. The dualist view takes account of both sides of an argument whereas the extremist view promotes one side unequivocally without considering the merits of the opposing view. The merits of the dualist view can be taught in schools so that everyone learns to recognise that mentality when it is evident not only in other (...) people’s behaviour but also in their own thinking about things. The dualist view is a flexible one involving trial-and-error processes as we work our way through life. That view is contrasted with the monist view that focuses on one point of view to the exclusion of all others. The extremist’s view is usually monistic and is intolerable of views that contradict or dispute their dogmatic view of things. This paper therefore examines these two contrasting views. It outlines the spectrum between monist and dualist ways of thinking, and it concludes that systematic form of dualism is possible that takes the middle way between the extremes of dogmatic and sceptical thinking. Only through dualist studies will the dualist view be more thoroughly developed, as is outlined here. (shrink)

This thesis is an interrogation of the viability of transitive production, which I associate with the Aristotelian term hylomorphic. The central axiom of hylomorphic production that will be targeted for critique is that the agent of production must be distinguished absolutely from the product. The thesis follows the thought of production primarily-but not exclusively-in its characteristically modem instantiation in the Kantian transcendental. The argument seeks to demonstrate that the productive aspect of the operator of transitive production is incompatible with the (...) transcendental element, and that Kant was himself increasingly aware of this problem. The Third Critique, under the rubric of an aesthetics, it will be argued, manifests this awareness in its problematic of a manifold of empirical laws. That this constitutes a difficulty for transcendent idealism means that the transcendental operators of the First Critique have failed to constitute experience in a relevant and important way. Furthermore, it is possible to see in some of the famous slogans of the Third Critique, an indication of another mode of production which is immune to the difficulties of the axiom of transitive production. In conclusion I suggest that the consequences of this new mode of intransitive production, associated with materiality, is destructive of the thought of the axiomatic otherworldliness of production operators. Production is not operated at all. Some suggestions are then made as to the explanation of the error embodied in the axiom of transitivity. (shrink)

We settle a question in the literature about degrees of models of true arithmetic and upper bounds for the arithmetic sets. We prove that there is a model of true arithmetic whose degree is not a uniform upper bound for the arithmetic sets. The proof involves two forcing constructions.