Nussbaum attempts to undermine the sharp distinction between literature and philosophy by arguing that literary texts (tragic poetry particularly) distinctively appeal to emotion and imagination, that our emotional response itself is cognitive, and that Aristotle thought so too. I argue that emotional response is not cognitive but presupposes cognition. Aristotle argued that we learn from the mimesis of action delineated in the plot, not from our emotional response. The distinctions between emotional and intellectual writing, poetry and prose, literature and philosophy, (...) the imaginative and the unimaginative do not cut along the same lines. That between literature and philosophy is not hard and fast: philosophy can be dramatic (eg Plato's dialogues) and drama can be philosophical (eg some of Shakespeare's plays), but whether either is emotional or not, or written in poetry or prose, are other questions. (shrink)

Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: improving relationships across the research ecosystem; demonstrating willingness to reform and adapt systems and processes; and making the case robustly for better resourcing.

This essay demonstrates how the early Enlightenment salonnière madame de Lambert advanced a novel feminist intellectual synthesis favoring women's taste and cognition, which hybridized Cartesian and honnête thought. Disputing recent interpretations of Enlightenment salonnières that emphasize the constraints of honnêteté on their thought, and those that see Lambert's feminism as misguided in emphasizing gendered sensibility, I analyze Lambert's approach as best serving her needs as an aristocratic woman within elite salon society, and show through contextualized analysis how she deployed honnêteté (...) towards feminist ends. Additionally, the analysis of Malebranche's, Poulain de la Barre's, and Lambert's arguments about the female mind's gendered embodiment illustrates that misrepresenting Cartesianism as necessarily liberatory for women, by reducing it to a rigid substance dualism, erases from view its more complex implications for gender politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially in the honnête environment of the salons. (shrink)

The conferralist account of social properties that Ásta develops and defends in Categories We Live By is persuasive in many ways. Conferralism could however do better, by its own lights, at handling the phenomenon of intersectionality. This paper first suggests a friendly amendment to the schema for conferrals that Asta offers. This helps to explain the difficulty concerning intersectionality. Finally, the paper suggests a way of developing the conferralist account that would resolve this difficulty.

Much of the most influential free speech scholarship emphasises that ‘political speech’ warrants the very highest standards of protection because of its centrality to self-governance. This central idea mitigates against efforts to justify the regulation of political speech and renders some egregiously offensive or harmful speech worthy of protection from a theoretical perspective. Yet paradoxically, in practice, in many liberal democracies such speech is routinely restricted. In this paper, I develop an argument that is compatible with both the argument from (...) democracy and the notion of political speech, and that can justify the regulation of hate speech, by joining an understanding of the constitutive role of speech in individuals’ lives derived from Nussbaum's capabilities theory with ideas of democratic deliberation and legitimation drawn from a Habermasian framework. This approach attends to the conditions required at an individual level for democratic legitimation to occur at a social level. It permits the development of a robust theoretical justification for the protection of a broad range of speech. It simultaneously provides a guiding framework for regulatory policy designed to ameliorate the effects of, and inhibit the expression of, that speech, which could imperil the conditions required for individuals to develop their own capabilities and which instantiates anti-democratic practice, and thus discourse, preventing the very communications required to perform democracy from being uttered. Thus, my argument also strengthens and transforms the argument from democracy as a justification for free speech protection more generally. (shrink)

In this article, I identify a distinctive form of injustice—ontic injustice—in which an individual is wronged by the very fact of being socially constructed as a member of a certain social kind. To be a member of a certain social kind is, at least in part, to be subject to certain social constraints and enablements, and these constraints and enablements can be wrongful to the individual who is subjected to them, in the sense that they inflict a moral injury. The (...) concept of ontic injustice is valuable in three main ways: it draws our attention to the role played by social kinds in enacting wrongful constraints and enablements; it clarifies our options for developing accounts of the ontology of particular social kinds, such as gender kinds; and, along with the related concept of ‘ontic oppression’, it helps us to understand and respond to oppression. (shrink)

Ignazio Cazzaniga (1911-1974), per molti anni Professore di Letteratura Latina all’Università degli Studi di Milano, durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, dopo l’armistizio dell’8 settembre 1943, fu fatto prigioniero dai Tedeschi a Rodi, e trasferito in Germania, al campo di prigionia di Sandbostel, insieme con migliaia di ufficiali e soldati italiani. L’articolo traduce e commenta un carme latino da lui composto in quel luogo, come piccolo esempio della ricca vita culturale e intellettuale che fu mantenuta con intensa volontà dai prigionieri italiani, (...) nonostante la fame, le malattie, le umiliazioni che subirono in quella terribile situazione. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to shed some light on what rape myths are and what we can do about them. I start by giving a brief overview of some common rape myths. I then use two philosophical tools to offer a perspective on rape myths. First, I show that we can usefully see rape myths as an example of what Miranda Fricker has termed ‘epistemic injustice’, which is a type of wrong that concerns our role as knowers. Then, I (...) show that it is important to recognise that rape myths are instances of misogyny. This word is of course a more familiar one, but I'll be drawing on a specific philosophical account of what misogyny is, developed by Kate Manne, that I think is useful here. Finally, I briefly consider some upshots of these claims. (shrink)

The way society is organised means that we all get made into members of various types of people, such as judges, wives, or women. These ‘human social kinds’ may be brought into being by oppressive social arrangements, and people may suffer oppression in virtue of being made into a member of a certain human social kind. This book argues that we should pay attention to the ways in which the very fact of being made into a member of a certain (...) human social kind can be oppressive in and of itself. For example, someone who becomes a wife under circumstances where husbands have unjust powers over their wives has suffered a wrong, even if her husband never in fact exercises these powers. The book argues that social movements against racial and gendered oppression, including efforts to advance trans liberation, must get to grips with this phenomenon, and it supplies the conceptual tools needed to do so. The first tool is an analysis of this general form of wrong, termed ‘ontic injustice’. The second tool is an account of ‘ontic oppression’, a particular kind of ontic injustice in which the wrong amounts to a form of oppression, in the sense of being structural and pervasive. The third tool is a pluralist account of race and gender kinds, according to which there is no single social kind that corresponds to a gender category such as ‘woman’, but, rather, there are various different social kinds, each of which is explanatory for different purposes. (shrink)

In this study caring is shown to be a membershipbound activity to kin and gender categories with strong moral connotations. Being a daughter or being a son are good enough reasons for becoming a caregiver, more so for women than for men. Caregivers were interviewed within the research project The role of women in family care of disabled elderly conducted by the Social and Economic Research Department of INRCA, Ancona, Italy. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed through a detailed discourse (...) analysis within an ethnomethodological framework. Interview data are treated as interactional encounters that occasion members to display relevant aspects of their identities and morally adequate images of being a caregiver. In the interview interaction, interlocutors display an orientation towards the production of a moral order in which duty and responsibilities are allocated on the basis of gender distinction. Males are generally described as not being responsible for caring tasks, except for situations in which females are absent or sick, that is, for serious reasons. Caregivers'' perception of time dedicated to caring is pervasive. Most caregivers said it occupied all their time, but gender differences were noticeable. Caring tasks are recognized as gender specific practices, thus failing to carry out these tasks is morally sanctionable when women are involved, but not so for men. Many caregivers described caring for older relatives as an intense source of stress, involving serious physical and psychological problems. The study on moral and identity issues related to caregiving highlights endangering constructions of caring. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 4-6.

In this paper I develop a systemic discrimination approach to defining a narrowly construed category of ‘hate speech’, as speech that harms to a sufficient degree to warrant government regulation. This is important due to the lack of definitional clarity, and the extraordinarily wide usage, of the term. This article extends current literature on how hate speech can harm by identifying under what circumstances speakers have the capacity to harm, and under what circumstances targets are vulnerable to harm. It also (...) shows how the capacity to harm can be mobile and involve the construction of new targets. Finally, it bridges the gap between conceptual understandings of hate speech and policy designed to regulate it. (shrink)

The present contribution aims at reviewing the available data on the Triclinium of the Nineteen couches. It is divided into three parts: the first is intended to overview the information that Byzantine authors have handed down to us about this great banquet hall; the second aims at proposing reconstructive hypotheses about its dimensions and architecture, as well as to investigate the material aspects related to the organisation of the banquet in late antiquity; the third part deals with the ceremonial functions (...) that were performed in it. Contrary to what is usually assumed, the Triclinium was probably not a huge hall with nine apses on each side, but a rectangular hall with a final apse and akkoubita arranged along the perimeter walls. In terms of ritual, the Triclinium must have continued to be in use throughout the early Middle Ages, with a particular revival in the 10th century. (shrink)

John Rawls rejected modus vivendi political outcomes as normatively deficient because he believed that the participants are not motivated by moral reasons. Contemporary defenders of modus vivendi reject the importance of distinguishing between moral and nonmoral reasons for constructing terms of peaceful coexistence. Theorists have highlighted peace and security as values that are integral to a modus vivendi. I argue that the idea of mutuality ought to be included in an account of how a modus vivendi emerges between parties who (...) have opposed views about how to decide jointly a matter of common concern.A modus vivendi is a compromise, and the creation of a modus vivendi requires the parties to understand themselves as facing a situation to which they ought to respond together. I argue that mutuality is a value that is presupposed in their effort to create a modus vivendi. How and why parties regard each other as having standing to shape the resolution of a political conflict remains unexplored in the literature on modus vivendi. Although parties to a modus vivendi are unlikely to regard each other as deserving equality of standing, they nevertheless recognize each other in a manner that is morally salient. Mutuality involves viewing people whom one opposes or considers to be a rival as nevertheless having standing to participate in a shared political life.Inquiry into the origin of a shared commitment to mutuality can help scholars understand what conditions facilitate willingness to coexist and to participate in a modus vivendi. (shrink)

Katharine Tait, daughter of Bertrand and Dora Russell, here vividly portrays the extraordinary and stimulating environment she grew up in. In refreshing contrast to the interpretation of Russell as philosopher and public figure, Tait's is a close personal account of her deep love and admiration for her father and its gradual tempering by the imperfections she came to see in him. Touchingly written and beautifully described, the book shows Russell to be a man of great warmth, charm and humour, (...) but is also a testament to the traumas created when he applied his views on marriage and education to his own home. My Father Bertrand Russell is essential reading for those seeking to understand the private background to Russell's ideas, the personal effects of his lifestyle prescriptions, and what it was like to live with a man of such genious. (shrink)

The terms ‘hate’ and ‘hatred’ are increasingly used to describe the rationale of a kind of anti-Western terrorist-extremist speech. This discursively links this kind of terrorist-extremist speech with the well-known concept of ‘hate speech’, a link that suggests the two phenomena are more alike than they are unlike. In this article I interrogate the similarities and differences between anti-Western terrorist-extremist speech and hate speech as they manifest in Western liberal democratic states along two axes: to whom the speech is addressed, (...) and how harm is occasioned. Relying on a combination of philosophical conceptions and public policy empirics, I demonstrate that there are significant differences between the two types of speech, especially in their mechanisms of harm. The implications of this analysis are that these differences should be better understood in order to respond appropriately to these two distinct types of harmful speech. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making is inherent in nursing practice. Although a definite portion of the nursing literature is devoted to ethics and ethical decision-making, the profession is just beginning to ground its ethics research in the actual experience of nurses. Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the experience of staff nurses as they engage in ethical decision-making. Interview data were collected from 19 staff nurses in a large, midwestern American metropolitan hospital. Interviews were subse quently transcribed and Giorgi's (...) method of data analysis applied. The emerging descrip tion revealed four common aspects of ethical decision-making among staff nurses: context, trigger, ethical decision-making process (i.e. deliberation and integration), and outcomes. This description provides a foundation for future research regarding a descrip tive theory of ethical decision-making in nursing. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence and robotics have increasingly been adopted in agri-food systems—from milking robots to self-driving tractors. New projects extend these technologies in an effort to automate skilled work that has previously been considered dependent on human expertise due to its complexity. In this paper, we draw on qualitative research carried out with farm managers on apple orchards and winegrape vineyards in Aotearoa New Zealand. We investigate how agricultural managers’ perceptions of future agricultural automation relates to their approach to expertise, or (...) the degree to which they think specialised skills and knowledge are required to perform agricultural work on their orchards and vineyards. Our research generates two insights: the perceived potential for work to be automated is related to the degree to which it is seen to require technical or embodied expertise, with technical expertise being more automatable; and, while embodied expertise is perceived to be more difficult to automate, it is sometimes attributed more exclusively to those in positions of power, such that embodied expertise can be highly valued while the majority of embodied work is viewed as non-expert and thus automatable. Our analysis illustrates that a robot can be an expert when expertise is technical. It also shows variability in the conceptualization of skilled or unskilled work, and that those conceptualizations can set the stage for the future effects of new technologies. This generates new insights into the conditions under which automation might reproduce existing inequalities in agriculture, and also raises new questions about responsibility in the context of automation. (shrink)

IRBs often face dueling values in research: their historically grounded mission to protect research participants from harm conflicts with more recent attention to the importance of including underr...

Although the concept of gender identity plays a prominent role in campaigns for trans rights, it is not well understood, and common definitions suffer from a problematic circularity. This paper undertakes an ameliorative inquiry into the concept of gender identity, taking as a starting point the ways in which trans rights movements seek to use the concept. First, I set out six desiderata that a target concept of gender identity should meet. I then consider three analytic accounts of gender identity: (...) the dispositional account, the self-identification account, and the norm-relevancy account. I argue that only the norm-relevancy account can meet all six desiderata. Finally, I defend the norm-relevancy account from three objections: that it is cis-normative, that it has problematic implications regarding trans women, and that it entails that some people do not have the gender identity they take themselves to have. (shrink)

The term sustainability can be used so liberally within production industries that it becomes meaningless. There is also recognition that for sustainability to be a useful concept, it must be crafted for the context in which it is deployed. A paradox of sustainability, it seems, lies in the conflict between the practical adoptability and context specificity of programs paired with the need for significant change. One response for those grappling with this sustainability challenge has been to adopt flexible approaches to (...) sustainability through the development of technologies and governance processes that focus on benchmarking, monitoring and ongoing change, rather than hard limits and targets. In this paper we elaborate on this point by evaluating how sustainability programs in a transition context can be seen as deliberative platforms and thus actors in governance processes. Through an analysis of the development of a sustainability program deployed in the wine industry in New Zealand, we argue that a widely adopted and clearly defined program can be an asset to democratic environmental governance, if viewed as a shared project. Drawing on interviews with key personnel in the wine industry and reviews of industry literature and media, we suggest that substantiating sustainability can have benefits for environmental governance through the precipitation of distinction and dialogue. We conclude with some suggestions about how to encourage visionary forms of practice and engagement with sustainability programs in ways that can aid their democratic development and expand the reach of their goals. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between the origins of the concept of post-normal science, its potential as a heuristic and the phenomenon of complex science entailed policy problems in late industrial societies. Drawing on arguments presented in the early works of Funtowicz and Ravetz, it is proposed that there is a fundamentally empirical character to the post-normal science call for democratizing expertise, which serves as an antidote to late industrial poisoning of the fairy tale ideal of a clean divide between (...) science and politics. Post-normal science extended-peer-review methodology is interpreted as a response to a crisis in the governance of science. Rather than viewing extended-peer-review processes as products of the post-normal science discourse, here the post-normal science discourse is understood to provide a heuristic lens through which existing complex science/society collaborations and conflicts can be better understood. Two different post-normal science situations—management of mega-contamination in Bitterfeld, Germany, and eviction of the Parakuiyo Maasai from the eastern wetlands of the Usangu plains of Tanzania—are presented and the implications of their de facto extended-peer-review structures are discussed, to illustrate this heuristic potential. (shrink)

This article argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths constitute hermeneutical injustices. Drawing on empirical research, I show that the prevalence of these myths makes victims of rape and of domestic abuse less likely to apply those terms to their experiences. Using Sally Haslanger's distinction between manifest and operative concepts, I argue that in these cases, myths mean that victims hold a problematic operative concept, or working understanding, which prevents them from identifying their experience as one of rape or (...) of domestic abuse. Since victims in this situation lack the conceptual resources needed to render their experience sufficiently intelligible, they are suffering a form of hermeneutical injustice. Attending to this distinctive case sheds new light not only on the functioning of social myths of this kind but on the nature of hermeneutical injustice itself, since the case of the victim who accepts myths is importantly different from other cases of hermeneutical injustice discussed in the literature to date. In practical terms, this analysis supports calls for juries in rape trials to be warned about rape myths at the start of the trial, and may have implications for calls for statutory Sex and Relationships Education in schools. (shrink)

In this article, the notion of broken bodies is explored in relation to the African body and the history of colonialism in South Africa. This exploration will be rooted in a retelling of the story of the woman, Saartjie Baartman. In this retelling, the product of colonialism comes to the fore in a haunting. Jacques Derrida’s use of the concept of Hauntology is employed to investigate the ethical demand the spectre makes of us. With the help of the African concept (...) of ubuntu and African women’s theologies, we then seek to find healing and restoration for the broken bodies. (shrink)

This study identifies some of the ethical issues that arise in the everyday practice of researching in collecting interactional data. A form of conceptualizing ethics in research is proposed as awareness of the social dimension of research practices and their transformative nature. The collection of ethnographic data—including interviewing, observing, audiovisual recording, and other methods—is achieved by means of social interactions that necessarily imply issues of face, relevance, appropriateness, politeness, and identity, to name a few. Research activities have an impact on (...) both the setting and the participants in the study, in fact, they become part of the setting studied. At times, participants may be using the research activity for their own ends. It is important for researchers to be aware of and responsible for the impact they have on the setting under study. Some ethical problems encountered conducting actual research activities are discussed as an illustration: issues related to negotiation of consent in semipublic settings and to the protection of informants’ anonymity. The actual resolution of these problems is presented as research findings from the everyday practice of doing research. Systematic reflection on the social and interactional dimension of how ethical decisions are taken during actual research activities could make legislation on the protection of research participants and ethical guidelines more realistic and useful. (shrink)

Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories -- such as "the people" -- that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as (...) shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital.". (shrink)

Contemporary feminist critics have often described Surrealism as a misogynist movement. In Automatic Woman, Katharine Conley addresses this issue, confirming some feminist allegations while qualifying and overturning others. Through insightfuløanalyses of works by a range of writers and artists, Conley develops a complex view of Surrealist portrayals of Woman. Conley begins with a discussion of the composite image of Woman developed by such early male Surrealists as Andrä Breton, Francis Picabia, and Paul Eluard. She labels that image ?Automatic Woman??a (...) term that comprises views of Woman as provocative and revolutionary but also as a depersonalized object largely devoid of individuality and volition. This analysis largely confirms feminist critiques of Surrealism. The heart of the book, however, examines the writings of Leonora Carrington and Unica Z_rn, two women in the Surrealist movement whose works, Conley argues, anticipate much contemporary feminist art and theory. In concluding, Conley shows how Breton?s own views on women evolved in the course of his long career, arriving at last at a position far more congenial to contemporary feminists. Automatic Woman is distinguished by Katharine Conley?s judicious understanding of how women?and the image of Woman?figured in Surrealism. The book is an important contemporary account of a cultural movement that continues to fascinate, influence, and provoke us. (shrink)

In logic, including the designer logics of artificial intelligence, and in the philosophy of science, one is often concerned with qualitative, comparative orderings on the states of a system, or on theories expressing information about the system. States may be compared with respect to normality, or some preference criterium, or similarity to some given (set of) state(s). Theories may be compared with respect to logical power, or to truthlikeness, or to how well they capture certain information. We explain a number (...) of these relations, study their properties, and unravel some of their interrelationships. (shrink)

The essay analyzes Marx’s articles on India, focusing on the problem of the colonial government in its relation to the world market. While the contested passages where Marx ascribes to English colonialism a ‘revolutionary’ function are considered in the context of his polemic against Henry Carey, the essay maintains that Marx’s inquiries do not reveal a progressive and unilinear conception of history, but rather the recognition of an historical rift that requires a global understanding of political forms and of the (...) subjects that oppose capital’s domination. (shrink)

This essay studies the different literary genres of Proverbs 1–9, including how they might have emerged, what social contexts generated such texts in Israel and in Egypt, and what their function might have been. A theological context is seen to be integral to both of the main genres of instruction and poem, despite the clearly more educational emphasis of the instruction texts.