Recently much has been made of the grounding relation, and of the idea that it is intimately tied to fundamentality. If A grounds B, then A is more fundamental than B (though not vice versa ), and A is ungrounded if and only if it is fundamental full stop—absolutely fundamental. But here is a puzzle: is grounding itself absolutely fundamental?

Just as testimony is affected by unjust social relations, so too is intellectual self-trust. I defend an account of intellectual self-trust that explains both why it is properly thought of as trust and why it is directed at the self, and explore its relationship to social power. Intellectual self-trust is neither a matter of having dispositions to rely on one?s epistemic methods and mechanisms, nor having a set of beliefs about which ones are reliable. Instead, it is a stance that (...) an agent takes towards her own cognitive methods and mechanisms, comprising both cognitive and affective elements. Our intellectual self-trust is created and sustained socially and is thus porous to social power. Unjust social relations cause epistemic injustice, which undermines self-trust among the underprivileged; unjust social relations cause excessive self-trust among the privileged, which perpetuates epistemic injustice, which further undermines the self-trust of the disadvantaged in a vicious feedback loop. I conclude by exploring ways in which socially distorted intellectual self-trust can become better calibrated. (shrink)

I argue that it is intuitive and useful to think about composition in the light of the familiar functionalist distinction between role and occupant. This involves factoring the standard notion of parthood into two related notions: being a parthood slot and occupying a parthood slot. One thing is part of another just in case it fills one of that thing's parthood slots. This move opens room to rethink mereology in various ways, and, in particular, to see the mereological structure of (...) a composite as potentially outreaching the individual entities that are its parts. I sketch one formal system that allows things to have individual entities as parts multiple times over. This is particularly useful to David Armstrong, given Lewis's charge that his structural universals must do exactly that. I close by reflecting upon the nature and point of formal mereology. (shrink)

Between 1653 and 1655 Margaret Cavendish makes a radical transition in her theory of matter, rejecting her earlier atomism in favour of an infinitely-extended and infinitely-divisible material plenum, with matter being ubiquitously self-moving, sensing, and rational. It is unclear, however, if Cavendish can actually dispense of atomism. One of her arguments against atomism, for example, depends upon the created world being harmonious and orderly, a premise Cavendish herself repeatedly undermines by noting nature’s many disorders. I argue that her supposed difficulties (...) with atomism expose a deeper tension in her work between two fundamental metaphysical commitments each of which has substantial philosophical support: her monist theory of the material world (which maintains that there exists just one natural substance which is the single principal cause) and her occasional theory of causation (which requires multiple finite principal causes in nature -- causes that might be considered individual substances). Her monism undermines atomism while her theory of occasional cause seems to rest on a conception of nature that would be especially friendly to atomism. I argue further that we can solve this tension within a Cavendishian framework in such a way as to preserve her theory of causation and her monism, but that this solution depends upon our taking her monism in a particular (and weak) form. I finally note that we can best make sense of her unique and interesting form of monism by acknowledging her social-political motivations in addition to her motivations in natural philosophy. (shrink)

A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.

The paper is an extended discussion of what I call the ‘dismissive attitude’ towards metaphysical questions. It has three parts. In the first part, I distinguish three quite different versions of dismissivism. I also argue that there is little reason to think that any of these positions is correct about the discipline of metaphysics as a whole; it is entirely possible that some metaphysical disputes should be dismissed and others should not be. Doing metametaphysics properly requires doing metaphysics first. I (...) then put two particular disputes on the table to be examined in the rest of the paper: the dispute over whether composite objects exist, and the dispute about whether distinct objects can be colocated. In the second part of the paper, I argue against the claim that these disputes are purely verbal disputes. In the third part of the paper, I present a new version of dismissivism, and argue that it is probably the correct view about the two disputes in question. They are not verbal disputes, and the discussion about them to date has not remotely been a waste of time. At this stage, however, our evidence has run out. I argue that neither side of either dispute is simpler than the other, and that the same objections in fact arise against both sides. (For example, the compositional nihilist does not in fact escape the problem of the many, and the one-thinger does not in fact escape the grounding problem.). (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's model of deliberation as inquiry (zêtêsis), arguing that Aristotle does not treat the presumption of open alternatives as a precondition for rational deliberation. Deliberation aims to uncover acts that are up to us and conducive to our ends; it essentially consists in causal mapping. Unlike the comparative model presupposed in the literature on deliberation, Aristotle's model can account for the virtuous agent's deliberation, as well as deliberation with a view to “satisficing” desires and deliberation that fails (...) to uncover any expedient course of action. Aristotle's account of the constraints governing rational deliberation is furthermore not incompatibilist—for all Aristotle says, we may deliberate rationally despite being committed to the truth of determinism. (shrink)

According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world in (...) order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior. (shrink)

The current feminist debate over ecology raises important and timely issues about the theoretical adequacy of the four leading versions of feminism-liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. In this paper I present a minimal condition account of ecological feminism, or ecofeminism. I argue that if eco-feminism is true or at least plausible, then each of the four leading versions of feminism is inadequate, incomplete, or problematic as a theoretical grounding for eco-feminism. I conclude that, if eco-feminism (...) is to be taken seriously, then a transformative feminism is needed that will move us beyond the four familiar feminist frameworks and make an eco-feminist perspective central to feminist theory and practice. (shrink)

How much of philosophical, scientific, and political thought is caught up with the idea of continuity? What if it were otherwise? This paper experiments with the disruption of continuity. The reader is invited to participate in a performance of spacetime (re)configurings that are more akin to how electrons experience the world than any journey narrated though rhetorical forms that presume actors move along trajectories across a stage of spacetime (often called history). The electron is here invoked as our host, an (...) interesting body to inhabit (not in order to inspire contemplation of flat-footed analogies between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ worlds, concepts that already presume a given spatial scale), but a way of thinking with and through dis/continuity – a dis/orienting experience of the dis/jointedness of time and space, entanglements of here and there, now and then, that is, a ghostly sense of dis/continuity, a quantum dis/continuity. There is no overarching sense of temporality, of continuity, in place. Each scene diffracts various temporalities within and across the field of spacetimemattering. Scenes never rest, but are reconfigured within, dispersed across, and threaded through one another. The hope is that what comes across in this dis/jointed movement is a felt sense of différance, of intra-activity, of agential separability – differentiatings that cut together/apart – that is the hauntological nature of quantum entanglements. (shrink)

Common sense tells us that in certain circumstances, helping someone is morally obligatory. That intuition appears incompatible with Kant's account of beneficence as a wide imperfect duty, and its implication that agents may exercise latitude over which beneficent actions to perform. In this paper, I offer a resolution to the problem from which it follows that some opportunities to help admit latitude and others do not. I argue that beneficence has two components: the familiar wide duty to help others achieve (...) their ends and a narrow duty to avoid indifference to others as end-setters. Although we are not always required to help, we are always required not to be indifferent. When helping someone is the only way not to be indifferent to a person, helping him/her is obligatory. My account avoids certain difficulties with other proposed solutions and can also address an important concern about proximity. (shrink)

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical (...) conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways. (shrink)

Objections are raised to the demand that one be either exclusively for or against continental philosophy, and two arguments are developed; one in support of, and one against, positions developed within the continental tradition. The first is a quick argument against A.J. Ayer’s rejection, on the basis of Frege’s logical insights, of Heidegger and Sartre’s use of ‘nothing’. The second is a longer argument against Derrida’s claim, on the basis of his critique of Husserl’s phenomenology, that the difference between signifier (...) and signified is nothing. The second argument develops an exposition of Derrida’s critique of phenomenology, from the point of view of language, and argues, on the basis of that reading, that his claim is either banal or highly implausible. (shrink)

This article presents a theoretical framework that views interpersonal power as interdependent with broader structures of gender and class inequalities. In contrast to oversimplified, gender-neutral or gender-static approaches, this approach illuminates the ways that structures of inequality are expressed in ideological hegemonies, which enhance, legitimate, and mystify the interpersonal power of privileged men relative to lower-status men and women in general. The discussion centers on how the relational construction of ascendant and subordinated masculinities provide men with different modes of interpersonal (...) power that, when exercised, construct and reaffirm interclass male dominance. Examples of how the construction of femininity can undermine women's interpersonal power and implications for other forms of masculinities and femininities are discussed. Examples are drawn from an analysis of conjugal power in the accounts of remarried individuals' first and second marriages to illustrate the main points of this perspective. (shrink)

In this paper I briefly set out Susan Moller Okin’s liberal feminist position and then rehearse a number of criticisms of Okin which together suggest that dismantling the gender system and adopting the principle of androgyny would not be compatible with liberalism. This incompatibility appears to vindicate an extreme feminist critique of liberalism. I argue that nevertheless a liberal feminism is possible. The liberal feminist ought to adopt the principle of parity, that is, guaranteed equal representation of both sexes in (...) parliament, rather than the requirement of androgyny. Parity follows from a conception of procedural justice, for it provides a mechanism which guarantees that the interests of both sexes are fairly represented in the legislature. Parity may also go some way to alleviating the tensions which exist between feminism and multiculturalism. (shrink)

Preface: Blurring the boundary between human and nonhuman beings -- Only one Holocaust? -- Evidence of things not seen -- The henmaid's tale -- Holocaust victimization imagery -- Procrustean solutions -- Scapegoats and surrogates : falsifying the fate of victims -- The 9/11 controversy -- An atrocity can be both unique and general.

Argues that there is little reason to assume that Christine de Pizan had access to the royal library in the Louvre prior to 1403 and that the majority of her sources were available in the libraries of women who were her contemporaries and who are mentioned in her works. A table of the books owned by important royal women mentioned by Christine is provided.

Argues that on an interpretation of the Enlightenment which emphasises its radical potential and importance for the development of democracy Catharine Macaulay should be recognised as a more centrally Enlightenment historian than David Hume.

Sosa (2007) claims that a necessary condition on knowledge is manifesting an epistemic competence. To manifest an epistemic competence, a belief must satisfy two conditions: (1) it must derive from the exercise of a reliable belief-forming disposition in appropriate conditions for its exercise and (2) that exercise of the disposition in those conditions would not issue a false belief in a close possible world. Drawing on recent psychological research, I show that memories that are issued by episodic memory retrieval fail (...) to satisfy either of these conditions. This presents Sosa, and other proponents of similar conditions (e.g. some safety theorists and process reliabilists), with a dilemma: (1) deny that episodic memories count as knowledge or (2) give up the conditions as necessary conditions on knowledge. I explore the implications of this dilemma for our understanding of knowledge, memory and the relationship between them. (shrink)

It has often been noted that Margaret Cavendish discusses God in her writings on natural philosophy far more than one might think she ought to given her explicit claim that a study of God belongs to theology which is to be kept strictly separate from studies in natural philosophy. In this article, I examine one way in which God enters substantially into her natural philosophy, namely the role he plays in her particular version of teleology. I conclude that, while Cavendish (...) has some resources with which to partially alleviate this tension, she is nonetheless left with a significant difficulty. (shrink)

Self-tracking practices include the use of personal data-gathering apps, wearable devices, and data analysis tools to record patterns from daily activities, as well as the organization, visualization, and analysis of this data. This paper draws on theories of digital labour and feminist political economy to build a framework of digital productive labour that highlights the exploitation of activities external to the formal labour relationship. Self-tracking practices are analysed through the lens of digital productive insofar as they fulfill three roles: they (...) generate the content necessary for sustaining digital networks and producing data that can be captured in commodity form; they aid in the reproduction of the social factory’s labour force; and they cultivate subjectivities amenable to consumption and production in contemporary capitalism. The paper examines the production and commodification of data, highlighting the algorithmic means by which self-trackers are separated from the financial value of their data. This is connected to feminist analyses of unpaid labour, with particular attention to self-tracking’s role as a contemporary form of reproductive labour that replenishes the labour force. Finally, the paper provides an analysis of the themes of self-knowledge, self-discovery, and gamification to understand how these frame self-trackers’ understanding of themselves as labourers, thus reproducing and deepening capitalist subjectivities. The paper concludes by considering self-tracking through the lens of the exploitation of life ‘outside’ the official labour relationship. (shrink)

Peter Singer is responsible for having developed a powerful argument that apparently shows that most of us are far more immoral than we take ourselves to be. Many people follow a minimalist morality. They avoid killing, stealing, lying and cruelty, but feel no obligation to devote themselves to the well-being of everybody else. If we are unstintingly generous, constantly kind or untiring advocates for the prevention of cruelty, we take it that we are doing more morally than is strictly required. (...) We commend those who give generously to foreign aid, but we do not look on those who fail to give us unthinking criminals or moral reprobates. Yet, if Singer's argument is cogent, our standard judgements are seriously askew. Those who fail to do what they can to alleviate the absolute poverty of the worst off in the world are not quite as bad as murders and thieves, for they do not intentionally act in such a way as to kill and deprive others of their rightful share. They are, however, about as bad as reckless drivers who act in a way which will cause death and destruction, without desiring that these predictable consequences of their actions should come about (Singer 1993, p. 228). (shrink)

In this comment I want to clarify five topics. The first topic concerns the importance of looking back at the very principles of the foundations of Western society. The second comment argues for the original position of Latour within the field of (social) constructivism. In the third comment, I argue that Haraway adds to the science-politics discussion by elaborating her philosophy beyond dichotomy. In the fourth comment, I argue that the terms ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ are central philosophical concepts which should (...) be retained. Finally I will make the connection between ‘what’ is represented and ‘how’ to represent it. (shrink)

This study describes impact measurement of corporate philanthropy and explores potential drivers on different types of impact measurement (business impact, social impact, impact on reputation and stakeholder satisfaction, other impact).

In the present research, two studies test the efficacy of an innovative procedure designed to reduce distortion and enhance communication of accurate childhood memories. One hundred two 7-year-olds participated in a staged activity and were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions . Two weeks later, half of the children participated in the innovative procedure designed to increase resistance to misleading questions by addressing sociolinguistic and socioemotional factors thought to promote acquiescence to misinformation. The other half of the children (...) participated in control sessions and were given motivating instructions to do their best. Then, memory for the staged activity was tested in an interview with an unfamiliar authority figure. The results of both studies suggest that the children who participated in the innovative procedure made significantly fewer errors in response to misleading questions than children in the control groups, hence diminishing acquiescence. This was accomplished without generating additional errors on the other question types. These findings are interpreted as a promising first step toward reducing the potential for distortion in the recall of childhood memories. Implications for adult recall of childhood trauma are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Aristotle's account of sexual difference in Generation of Animals, arguing that Aristotle conceives of the production of males as the result of a successful teleological process, while he sees the production of females as due to material forces that defeat the norms of nature. My suggestion is that Aristotle endorses what I call the "degrees of perfection" model. I challenge Devin Henry's attempt to argue that Aristotle explains sex determination exclusively with reference to material necessity (...) (in particular, levels of "vital heat" in the male semen), for Aristotle's notion of "sufficient" or "deficient" vital heat is itself teleological. If, as Aristotle is aware, male and female embryos appear with approximately equal frequency in most species, how, in light of Physics II, can he conceive of the former as in accordance with nature, and the latter as somehow contrary to nature? My proposal is that Aristotle's notion of what happens usually (ως επì τò πoλυ) is bifurcated: the usual need not be more frequent. (shrink)

The theories of pre-existence and epigenesis are typically taken to be opposing theories of generation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One can be a pre-existence theorist only if one does not espouse epigenesis and vice versa. It has also been recognized, however, that the line between pre-existence and epigenesis in the nineteenth century, at least, is considerably less sharp and clear than it was in earlier centuries. The debate (1759-1777) between Albrecht von Haller and Caspar Friedrich Wolff on their (...) theories of generation is usually taken to be a debate between a pre-existence theorist and an epigeneticist, and the supposed fact that these two theories of generation are mutually exclusive explains (so the story goes) the divide between Haller and Wolff. However, it’s not clear that Haller endorsed an especially robust form of pre-existence, and nor is it clear that Wolff’s theory of generation -- once he considered it carefully -- is clear epigenetic. Rather, Haller’s theory of generation is marked by traces of epigensis and Wolff’s theory has elements of pre-existence theory. This is not to say that their theories of generation are basically the same, but the debate between the two ought not to be framed in terms of pre-existence versus epigenesis. Their points of difference must be explained in some other way. In this way, their controversy bears characteristics of similar disputes over generation in the nineteenth century more than it resembles those in the seventeenth century. In this paper, I argue that (a) Haller’s and Wolff’s theories both blend elements from pre-existence and epigenesis; (b) but there are still deeply-rooted differences between the two generation theories; (c) one source of these differences is that Haller and Wolff have divergent conceptions of what an adequate explanation is; (d) we can see that they have different conceptions of what constitutes an adequate explanation by paying heed to their evaluations of Descartes’ epistemology and methodology in his theory of generation (such as it is); and (e) this shows that one of the main differences between Haller’s generation theory and that of Wolff is the degree to which each thinks we need to (and indeed can) explain the nature of the causes -- both efficient and final -- at play during the formation of organic beings. (shrink)

Are there sex differences in pain? For experimentally delivered somatic stimuli, females have lower thresholds, greater ability to discriminate, higher pain ratings, and less tolerance of noxious stimuli than males. These differences, however, are small, exist only for certain forms of stimulation and are affected by many situational variables such as presence of disease, experimental setting, and even nutritive status. For endogenous pains, women report more multiple pains in more body regions than men. With no obvious underlying rationale, some painful (...) diseases are more prevalent among females, others among males and, for many diseases, symptoms differ between females and males. Sex differences in attitudes exist that affect not only reporting, coping, and responses to treatment, but also measurement and treatment. So many variables are operative, however, that the most striking feature of sex differences in reported pain experience is the apparent overall lack of them. On the other hand, deduction from known biological sex differences suggests that these are powerful sex differences in the operation of pain mechanisms. First, the vaginal canal provides an additional route in women for internal trauma and invasion by pathological agents that puts them at greater risk for developing hyperalgesia in multiple body regions. Second, sex differences in temporal patterns are likely to give rise to sex differences in how pain is and stimuli are interpreted, a situation that could lead to a greater variability and wider range of pains without obvious peripheral pathology among females. Third, sex differences in the actions of sex hormones suggest pain-relevant differences in the operation of many neuroactive agents, opiate and nonopiate systems, nerve growth factor, and the sympathetic system. Thus, while inductive analysis of existing data demonstrate more similarities than differences in pain experience between females and males, deductive analysis suggests important operational sex differences in its production. (shrink)