Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.

A look at political ethics covers cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal and misanthropy, and is accompanied by a description of modern public opinion about ...

The use of "theory" in feminist analysis has been said to threaten feminism as a political force. This collection of work by leading feminist scholars engages with the question of the political status of poststructuralism theory within feminism. Against the view that the use of post-structuralism necessarily weakens feminism, 'Feminists Theorize the Political' affirms the contemporary debate over theory as politically rich and consequential. In laying the theoretical groundwork for the volume, Butler and Scott posed a number of questions to (...) prominent legal scholars, literary critics, philosophers, political theorists, historians, and cultural theorists. The essays do not settle the questions but generate new and productive directions for them. The volume as a whole valorizes the unsettling power and politics of theory. The essays in 'Feminists Theorize the Political' speak to the questions that emerge from the convergence of feminism and poststructuralism: What happens to feminist critique when traditional foundations--experience, history, universal norms--are called into question? Can feminist theory problematize the notion of the subject without losing its political effectivity? Which version of the subject is to questioned, and how does that questioning open up possibilities for reformulating agency, power, and sites of political resistance? What are the consequences of a specifically feminist reformulation of difference? What are the uses and limits of a poststructuralist critique of binary logic for the theorization of racial and class differences, the position of the subaltern? This anthology represents a diverse array of theoretical work within feminist theory with strong political stakes. Although not all of the authors subscribe to poststructuralism, (and few would concede post-structuralism is a monolithic enterprise), each offers an innovative feminist analysis that is in some way motivated in and by the poststructuralist challenge. 'Feminists Theorize The Political' addresses a range of feminist concerns, including productive freedom, anti-discrimination law, rape, and formulating power in terms of exclusion, difference and hierarchy. (shrink)

But if there aren’t, then ‘they’ are not caused by anything and do not cause anything. That certainly appears to be false, however. John’s absence from our party might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion. Dick’s not eating his soup might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion.

In this paper I use philosophical accounts on the relationship between trust and knowledge in science to apprehend this relationship on the Web. I argue that trust and knowledge are fundamentally entangled in our epistemic practices. Yet despite this fundamental entanglement, we do not trust blindly. Instead we make use of knowledge to rationally place or withdraw trust. We use knowledge about the sources of epistemic content as well as general background knowledge to assess epistemic claims. Hence, although we may (...) have a default to trust, we remain and should remain epistemically vigilant; we look out and need to look out for signs of insincerity and dishonesty in our attempts to know. A fundamental requirement for such vigilance is transparency: in order to critically assess epistemic agents, content and processes, we need to be able to access and address them. On the Web, this request for transparency becomes particularly pressing if (a) trust is placed in unknown human epistemic agents and (b) if it is placed in non-human agents, such as algorithms. I give examples of the entanglement between knowledge and trust on the Web and draw conclusions about the forms of transparency needed in such systems to support epistemically vigilant behaviour, which empowers users to become responsible and accountable knowers. (shrink)

In 1935, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s new building opened and displayed the phrase “Equal Justice Under Law,” racial segregation was commonplace, as were barriers limiting opportunities for men and women of all colors to participate in economic and political life. The justices on the Court and the lawyers appearing before them reflected those facts; almost all were white men. Today, the Supreme Court’s inscription has become its motto, read as if it always referenced an understanding of equality that has (...) become central to the identity and the legitimacy of courts. The judiciary “looks” somewhat different than it did and, in a sense, has become more “representative” of the range of people appearing in courts. Given the role that courts had played in sustaining discrimination, the impression that courts ought to welcome everyone is a major achievement. Yet, to assess the impact of new judicial demographics requires analysis of other major alterations in U.S. courts—the influx of diverse litigants newly entitled to pursue legal claims; the economic barriers facing many claimants; the emergence of judiciaries as agency-like promoters of agendas; and the displacement of public adjudication through the privatization of dispute resolution. Studies of women as judges focus mostly on their rulings, but probing the “difference that difference makes” requires looking beyond judicial opinions. Courts in the United States have developed structural capacities to propose rules and legislation, create education programs, commission research and task forces, and lobby for resources. When women of all colors and men of color became lawyers and judges, they created affinity organizations and pressed courts to research court-based bias and to revise rules of ethics, doctrine, and practice. Those changes are part of the impact of diversification within the legal profession, as is the backlash against affirmative efforts to reform practices. Another difference of the last decades is that new rights have brought into court many claimants with limited means. Participatory participation remains elusive, while the “justice gap” is pervasive. Worse yet, in some jurisdictions, courts have served as “revenue centers,” using court-imposed assessments as income. Failure to pay “legal financial obligations” can result in suspension of driver’s licenses, the loss of voting rights, and other sanctions levied disproportionately on people who are poor and of color. Instead of being seen as fonts of fairness, courts are coming to be identified as sites of inequality. In addition, many courts have embraced alternative forms of dispute resolution that make both processes and outcomes less visible to the public. Through doctrine and rules, U.S. courts have shifted their own practices as well as enforced mandates imposed on consumers and employers that push them out of court and out of class or joint actions. In sum, the new faces on the bench ought not to obscure that the project of representation, inclusion, and equality is far from complete. The vivid inequalities in courts are problems for courts because such disparities undermine their ability to be places of justice. (shrink)

This paper contributes data from Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) to the discussion of how temporal reference is determined in tenseless languages. The empirical focus of this study is on finite clauses headed by verbs inflected only for person/number information, which are compatible only with non-future temporal reference in most matrix clause contexts. The paper first explores the possibility of accounting for the temporal reference of such clauses with a phonologically empty non-future tense morpheme, along the lines of Matthewson’s (Linguist Philos 29:673–713, (...) 2006 ) analysis of a similar phenomenon in St’át’imcets (Salish). This analysis is then contrasted with one according to which temporal reference is not constrained by tense in Paraguayan Guaraní, but only by context and temporal adverbials. A comparison of the two analyses, both of which are couched in a dynamic semantic framework, suggests empirical and theoretical advantages of the tenseless analysis over the tensed one. The paper concludes with a discussion of cross-linguistic variation of temporal reference in tensed and tenseless languages. (shrink)

Two ideas shape the epistemology of testimony. One is that testimony provides a unique kind of knowledge. The other is that testimonial knowledge is a social achievement. In traditional terms, those who affirm these ideas are anti-reductionists, and those who deny them are reductionists. There is increasing interest, however, in the possibility of affirming these ideas without embracing anti-reductionism. Thus, Sanford Goldberg uses the idea of epistemic buck-passing to argue that even reductionists can accept the uniqueness of testimonial knowledge, and (...) Jennifer Lackey gives both speaker and hearer an essential role in testimonial justification, rejecting both reductionism and anti-reductionism in favor of what she calls dualism. After distinguishing a weaker and a stronger notion of buck-passing, we show how anti-reductionists can use the stronger notion to motivate their position, and to answer Goldberg’s and Lackey’s challenges. (shrink)

Production and comprehension have long been viewed as inseparable components of language. The study of vision, by contrast, has centered almost exclusively on comprehension. Here we investigate drawing—the most basic form of visual production. How do we convey concepts in visual form, and how does refining this skill, in turn, affect recognition? We developed an online platform for collecting large amounts of drawing and recognition data, and applied a deep convolutional neural network model of visual cortex trained only on natural (...) images to explore the hypothesis that drawing recruits the same abstract feature representations that support natural visual object recognition. Consistent with this hypothesis, higher layers of this model captured the abstract features of both drawings and natural images most important for recognition, and people learning to produce more recognizable drawings of objects exhibited enhanced recognition of those objects. These findings could explain why drawing is so effective for communicating visual concepts, they suggest novel approaches for evaluating and refining conceptual knowledge, and they highlight the potential of deep networks for understanding human learning. (shrink)

Heidegger's Eschatology is a ground-breaking account of Heidegger's early engagement with theology, from his beginnings as an anti-Modernist Catholic to his turn towards an undogmatic Protestantism and finally to a resolutely a-theistic philosophical method.

Moral theory -- Abortion -- Genetic engineering, cloning, and stem cell research -- Euthanasia and assisted suicide -- The death penalty -- Drug and alcohol use -- Sexual intimacy and marriage -- Feminism, motherhood, and the workplace -- Freedom of speech -- Racial discrimination and global justice.

Moral theorists often say such things as “But surely A ought to do such and such,” or “Plainly it is morally permissible for B to do so and so,” and do not even try to prove that those judgments are true. Moreover, they often rest weight on the supposition that those judgments are true. In particular, they often rest theories on them: they take them as data. Others object. They say that nobody is entitled to rest any weight at all (...) on judgments such as those. They say, not that the judgments are false, but that there is no reason to believe them true. They say, more generally, that there is no reason to think of any moral judgment that it is true. I will call this The No Reason Thesis. Is there reason to think The No Reason Thesis true? There are lots of arguments for it in the literature, but I want to focus on one of them in particular. I think that the one I will focus on lies behind all the others, but no matter if it does not: I suggest that if this argument fails, they all fail. (shrink)

Foucault proposes at the end of the first volume of The History of Sexuality to shift the focus of sexual studies from sex-desire to bodies and pleasures. This article seeks to establish what he means by this shift, how he proposes it be made, and what the consequences are for thinking about sexuality together with `sex'. Foucault's shift involves a historiographical claim about the superability of the recent past, and can be read as an effort to relegate the concerns about (...) sexual difference and kinship to the past, and to establish a contemporary field for sexuality that involves bodies without history, pleasures without sex. The article suggests a way around this questionable historiographical assumption and marks a different departure for a Foucauldian study of sexuality. It also seeks to highlight some of the contemporary tensions between feminist and lesbian and gay studies, especially queer studies, in light of this reading of Foucault. (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)

An introductory level text designed to explain and review basic ideas concerning the role of law in society. Assuming no previous knowledge of the field, the volume examines the theoretical and empirical dimensions of law in society from political, sociological, psychological and philosophical perspectives.

Using selections from writers like Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree jr., and many others, this collection shows how the imagined worlds of science fiction create hold experiments for testing feminist hypotheses and for interpreting philosophical questions about humanity, gender, equality and more. Four main themes: Part 1, 'Human nature and reality', concentrates on whether there is an intrinsic difference between males and females. Part 2, 'Dystopias: the worst of all (...) possible worlds', portrays misogynistic societies uncomfortably familiar to the early 21st-century reader. Part 3, 'Separatist utopias: worlds of difference', assembles stories that scrutinize both the virtues and vices of separatism. In Part 4, 'Androgynous utopias: worlds of equality', the authors create worlds that anticipate the consequences, good and bad, of perfect sexual equality in education, intelligence, capability, and reproduction. (shrink)

Resumo (200 palavras) Podem-se encontrar diferentes conceitos na história da Ética. Esse artigo lida com a ideia que se deve identificar um conceito de Ética para se discutir sobre sua relação com Educação. Moral é um conceito que aparece quando se pensa sobre Ética. Por isso uma discussão sobre o conceito de Moral e sua relação com Ética é apresentado. Discutir Ética significa entender o conceito na sociedade porque Ética não pode acontecer a uma pessoa sozinha. Pessoas se relacionam na (...) sociedade e Ética é o fundamento básico da vida social. Antes que se possa observar Ética na sociedade como um conjunto, é possível descobrir que Ética começa na vida da família. A escola é o lugar específico na sociedade que ajuda a família a construir a relação entre Ética e Educação. Filósofos e educadores concordam sobre a importância de educar crianças para serem cidadãos éticos, mas os conceitos de Ética que eles possam usar são de algum modo diferente. Ética Relativa e Ética Universal são os principais grupos de conceitos encontrados na literatura. Concluímos que para se tornar inteiramente um ser humano, cada pessoa precisa se sentir integrada à humanidade e isto somente é possível por meio de conceitos universais de ética. Palavras chaves – ética – educação – moral – família - escola - sociedade (200 words) We can find different concepts in history of Ethics. This article deals with the idea that it is necessary to identify a concept of Ethics in order to discuss about its relation to Education. Moral is a concept that comes to mind when we think about Ethics. Because of this a discussion about this concept and its relation to Ethics is presented. To discuss Ethics means to understand it in society because it can’t happen to a person alone. People relate themselves in society and Ethics is the basic foundation to social life. Before we can observe Ethics in society as a whole it is possible to discover that Ethics begins in family life. School is the specific place in society that helps family to build the relation between Ethics and Education. Philosophers and educators agree about the importance of educating children to be ethical citizens but concepts of Ethics they may use are somehow different. Relative Ethics and Universal Ethics are the major groups of concepts that we can find in literature. We conclude that to become a whole human being each person needs to feel integrated to humankind and this is only possible through universal concepts of Ethics. Keywords – ethics – education – moral – family – school - society  . (shrink)

Considerable attention has focussed on the potential of indigenous agricultural knowledge for sustainable development. Drawing upon fieldwork on the soil and water management principles of rice farming systems in Senegambia, this paper examines the potential of the traditional system for a sustainable food security strategy. Problems with pumpirrigation are reviewed as well as previous efforts in swamp rice development. It is argued that sustainability depends on more than ecological factors and in particular, requires sensitivity to socio-economic parameters such as the (...) labor demands of the food security strategy, the sexual division of labor, and food pricing policies. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente texto expone los resultados de un estudio prospectivo, del tipo de intervención comunitaria aplicado en la Clínica Estomatológica Docente La Vigía, provincia Camagüey, con el objetivo de instrumentar una estrategia educativa en pacientes con bruxismo y disfunción temporomandibular en el período de enero de 2017 a enero de 2018. Se diseñó y aplicó una estrategia educativa según la metodología utilizada por la Maestría Nacional de Educación para la salud. Predominó el sexo femenino y las edades comprendidas entre (...) los 24 y 29 años, así como el nivel escolar universitario. Al finalizar la intervención, el nivel de conocimientos fue evaluado de bueno en casi todos los pacientes, la apertura bucal limitada, el dolor muscular y articular aparecieron en menos de la mitad de los individuos; el nivel de satisfacción respecto a la intervención fue alto. Se concluyó que la estrategia generó un impacto positivo en los pacientes estudiados. ABSTRACT The present text exhibits the results of a pilot study, of the type of community intervention applied in the Dentistry University Clinic La Vigía, Camagüey province, with the objective to arrange an educational strategy in patients with bruxism and temporomandibular dysfunction in the period from January, 2017 until January, 2018. It was designed and applied an educational strategy as the methodology used by the National Mastery of Education for the health. It predominated over the feminine sex and the ages understood between 24 and 29 years, as well as over the university school level. On having finished the intervention, the knowledge level was evaluated of good in almost all the patients, the limited mouth opening, the muscular pain and to articulate appeared in less than half of the individuals; the satisfaction level with regard to the intervention was high. It was concluded that the strategy generated a positive impact in the studied patients. (shrink)

We live and thrive in a global society and economy where education and training is essential to a nation’s competitiveness and to the standard of living of its people. Opening the doors of higher or further education beyond the enrollments in elite or select universities has become a greater necessity. This has spawned a movement to develop or expand institutions that are more affordable, accessible, flexible, and tied to business and industry. Take a look at the systems that have been (...) developed in 20 countries worldwide that were designed to meet these needs. Historical development of each system, as well as the strategies for addressing national mandates for preparing a workforce for the global economy, are described throughout each chapter. (shrink)