Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in (...) this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are individuated in part by causal-historical relations linking token elements of thought.

Past research showed that the ability to focus on one’s internal states positively correlates with the self-regulation of behavior in situations that are accompanied by somatic and/or physiological changes, such as emotions, physical workload, and decision-making. The analysis of moral oriented decision-making can be the first step for better understanding the legal reasoning carried on by the main players in the field, as lawyers are. For this reason, this study investigated the influence of the decision context and interoceptive manipulation on (...) the moral decision-making process in the legal field gathering the responses of two groups of lawyers. A total of 20 lawyers were randomly divided into an experimental group, which was explicitly required to focus the attention on its interoceptive correlates, and a control group, which only received the general instruction to perform the task. Both groups underwent a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, where are presented three different moral conditions and three different offers. Results highlighted a significant increase of Acceptance Rate in those offers that should be considered more equal than fair or unfair ones, associated with a general increase of Reaction Times in the equal offers. Furthermore, the interoceptive manipulation oriented the Lawyers toward a more self-centered decision. This study shows how individual, situational, contextual, and interoceptive factors may influence the moral decision-making of lawyers. Future research in the so-called Neurolaw field is needed to replicate and expand current findings. (shrink)

The concept of paternalism is intricately tied to the concept of autonomy. It is commonly assumed that when paternalistic interventions are wrong, they are wrong because they impede individuals’ autonomy. Our aim in this paper is to show that the recent shift towards conceiving of autonomy relationally highlights a separate conceptual space for a nonpaternalistic kind of interpersonal intervention termed maternalism. We argue that maternalism makes a twofold contribution to the debate over the ethics of interpersonal action and decision-making. Descriptively, (...) it captures common experiences that, while not unusual in everyday life, are largely absent from the present discussion. Normatively, it describes a type of intervention with justification conditions distinct from the standard framework of paternalism. We explicate these contributions by describing six key differences between maternalism and paternalism, and conclude by anticipating and responding to potential objections. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Feminist Ethics. Ed. Claudia Card.

Climate engineering is subject to the “playing God” critique, which charges that humans should not undertake to control nature in ways that seem to overstep the proper scope of human agency. This argument is easily discredited, and in fact the opposite—that we should “play God”—may be equally valid in some circumstances. To revive the playing God critique, I argue that it functions not on a logical but on a symbolic and emotional level to highlight nostalgia for functional dualisms in the (...) face of the bewildering problem of climate change. It also raises significant questions about the virtue of those who might engineer the climate. These two concerns point to questions about the proper role of human agency. I use the scholarship of Aldo Leopold and H. Richard Niebuhr to argue for a model of human agency based on contextual awareness and responsive, communal responsibility. I conclude with some implications of this view for decision-makers engaging the topic of climate engineering. (shrink)

This note argues that Laura Schroeter's [2005] critique of David Chalmers's epistemic two-dimensional semantics is not touched by a reply by Edward Elliott, Kelvin McQueen, and Clas Weber [2013].

How does violence shape citizens’ preferences for conflict termination? The existing literature has argued that violence either begets sympathy for more violence or drives support for making peace. Focusing on the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement, this article finds that victimhood dissociation strongly shapes these preferences. With victimhood dissociation, a discrepancy exists between objective and subjective victimization, and the effect of violence on peace attitudes depends on citizens’ subjective interpretations of their personal experiences of violence. Citizens who do not experience violence (...) often see themselves as victims of the conflict and vice versa. Victimhood dissociation is linked to cultural stereotypes of victimhood as portrayed in elite narratives concerning the conflict. In Colombia, political leaders framed victimhood around rurality, business entrepreneurship, kidnapping, extortion, and disappearance. In 2016, this widespread narrative was instrumental for politicians opposing the peace agreement. Citizens who disassociated their personal experiences of violence from their self-understanding as victims were instrumental to the failure of the peace plebiscite. (shrink)

According to Hutto and Satne, 521–536, 2015), an “essential tension” plagues contemporary neo-Pragmatist accounts of mental contents: their explanation of the emergence and constitution of intentional mental contents is circular. After identifying the problem, they also propose a solution: what neo-Pragmatists need to do, to overcome circularity, is to appeal to a primitive content-free variety of intentionality, different from the full-blown intentionality of propositional attitudes. In this paper, I will argue that, in addition to the problem of circularity, there is (...) another important problem that both neo-Pragmatist accounts, and Hutto and Satnes’s refinement of them, should also deal with: their difficulty to accommodate a host of recent empirical evidence and theoretical developments on the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. I will call this difficulty the objection from animal minds, and I will present several arguments designed to show that, even though the notion of primitive intentionality, introduced by Hutto and Satne, may be useful to account for some of the most basic ways of dealing with the environment of nonhuman animals, it falls short of providing an adequate explanation of the full-range of cognitive capacities and behavioral dispositions that many animal species display. Thus, their proposal ends up being insufficient to help neo-Pragmatist approaches to overcome the problem of animal minds. Finally, I will suggest that overcoming this objection requires attributing to non-human animals some basic, yet content involving, kinds of intentional mental states. (shrink)

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical (...) purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders’ memories. In this section we contrast the cases of dampening and enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders’ memories. (shrink)

An audiovisual correspondence (AVC) refers to an observer’s seemingly arbitrary yet consistent matching of sensory features across the two modalities; for example, between an auditory pitch and visual size. Research on AVCs has frequently used a speeded classification procedure in which participants are asked to rapidly classify an image when it is either accompanied by a congruent or an incongruent sound (or vice versa). When, as is typically the case, classification is faster in the presence of a congruent stimulus, researchers (...) have inferred that the AVC is automatic and bottom-up. Such an inference is incomplete because the procedure does not show that the AVC is not subject to top-down influences. To remedy this problem, we devised a procedure that allows us to assess the degree of “bottom-up-ness” and “top-down-ness” in the processing of an AVC. We did this in studies of AVCs between pitch and five visual features: size, height, spatial frequency, brightness, and angularity. We find that all the AVCs we studied involve both bottom-up and top-down processing, thus undermining the prevalent generalization that AVCs are automatic. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the drivers involved in an alternative business model: cross-sector social partnerships between for-profit, predominantly multinational corporations and nonprofit organizations. We explore these cross-sector social partnerships from the perspective of these primary stakeholders, examining the questions of power differentials and the definitions and determinants of success. In order more deeply to understand these drivers, we review the evolution of the concept of “value” and the perception of the value that each stakeholder brings to the partnership. We (...) then describe and offer the results of an empirical, qualitative study of 18 CSSPs, where we analyze each partner's representations of success, outcomes sought and distinctions in determinants of value within the partnerships. (shrink)

In this text, Jacques Rancière critically discusses the work of Georges Didi-Huberman on images. He disagrees with various claims seemingly made by Didi-Huberman about images, such as that they can “take position” or that they are “active.” Rancière argues that Didi-Huberman adds another form of dialectics to the simpler form of dialectics adopted by Bertolt Brecht and Harun Farocki in their works, namely one that also involves a layering of different temporalities. However, both in Brecht’s War Primer and in Didi-Huberman’s (...) analysis of it, all the potencies credited to images as such are actually potencies of the words that accompany the images. Rancière comes to the conclusion that to “put images in motion,” as Didi-Huberman wants to do, or to regard them as being “active,” he has to put words, his own poetic and extensive writings, in motion. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the approaches and applications of Deleuze's philosophy to the bodyUsing a variety of contemporary cultural, scientific and philosophical lines of enquiry, the contributors produce a truly multidisciplinary view of the Deleuzian body, inviting us to look afresh at art, movement and literature.The Deleuzian body is not necessarily a human body, but the lines of enquiry here all illuminate the idea of the human body and thinking about formation, origins and becoming in relation to power, creativity (...) and affect. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Seven essays explore issues of scientific methodology in various episodes of science from Newtonian physics of the 17th and 18th century to quantum mechanics in the 20th. Addressed to scholars of the history and philosophy of science, but also accessible to general readers. Annotation copyright Book.

The scholarly turn toward visual culture has left in place the sensory hierarchy that subtends Western philosophy. Yet given the commodification of sense experience, an inversion of the sensory hierarchy with the proximal senses of touch, taste, and smell at the top is not necessarily any more conducive to knowledge or justice. I argue that proximal sense experience may be a vehicle of knowledge, beauty and even ethics. Operating at a membrane between the sensible and the thinkable, the proximal senses (...) have an affective dimension that permits an immanent epistemology. My examples and olfactory ‘illustrations’ emphasize the sense of smell, which, I posit, given its intimacy with emotion and memory, gives rise to an ‘olfactory unconscious’. (shrink)

In this chapter, I focus on the faculties by which we gain knowledge, namely, sensibility and the understanding, as well as on the methodological framework within which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines them. I stress the importance that the author gives to sensibility and the physiological apparatus that grounds and explains sensation.With respect to her conception of understanding, I will show that it is both the sign of man’s filiation with God and a faculty that displays deficiencies and (...) limitations with respect to the difficult task of attaining knowledge.Finally, I examine Sor Juana’s criticism both of the Neoplatonic method, which looks for a vision of the universe as a whole, as well as of the deductive method of the Aristotelian- Scholastic tradition, which attempts to reduce the unmanageable diversity of beings to some specific characteristics and laws.My conclusion is that Sor Juana shares with modern philosophers the critical attitude against tradition; she holds that traditional methods do not enable us to reach knowledge about either the remotest causes or the closest effects. On my view, Sor Juana takes an epistemological approach to philosophy, as do Bacon and Descartes, but she does not propose a new method; this is not because of some radical skepticism on her part, but because of the enormity of the task of the human mind achieving complete knowledge. (shrink)

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country-specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on "Social values and health priority setting" held in February 2011. -/- DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Conceptual analysis is used to analyse the term "social values", as employed in the framework, and its relationship to related ideas such as moral values. The structure of the framework (...) (process and content values) is considered in light of current debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values, and the extent to which they are either suited to, or sufficient for, the policy context. -/- FINDINGS: There is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature in order to further refine the framework. The framework should remain neutral in respect of the importance of procedural values in different contexts and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it includes. Further development would be best served by taking a multidisciplinary approach. The framework could provide a valuable space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can be considered. -/- ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper brings philosophical and bioethics perspectives to bear on a new framework proposed for the analysis of social values in health priority setting. It identifies how such a practical, policy-focused framework might be informed by engagement with deeper, and often unresolved, questions or principle around resource allocation in health. (shrink)

Two generalizations can be made regarding Kant’s account of imperatives of skill and prudence. First, Groundwork 4:412-420 remains the locus classicus for reconstructions of Kant’s view. Second, it is widely agreed that Kant’s treatment of these imperatives is confusing, incomplete, and lacking the requisite argumentation. I agree that Groundwork 4:412-420 lacks a clear and defensible account of imperatives of skill and prudence. But while many think this spells trouble for Kant’s theory of non-moral practical imperatives more generally, and that Kant (...) never really clarified his position, on this point I differ. Groundwork II is problematic, yet it’s not Kant’s final word on the non-moral imperatives of practical reason. In fact, there is substantial and broadly overlooked evidence that Kant later rejected much of the account he laid out in this text. This evidence is found primarily in the third Critique, and I explore this evidence and the virtues of Kant’s revised account. (shrink)

Research ethics consultation is increasingly recognized as a potentially valuable mechanism for addressing the depth and breadth of ethical issues that arise in research related to human health and well-being. However, fundamental questions remain, including: What is “research ethics consultation”? And what is its justification beyond the purposes already served by existing entities? We examine how a research ethics consultation service may differ from or complement the role of an institutional review board by offering a definition of research ethics consultation (...) and by exploring the potential scope of a consultation service in terms of types of clients served, questions addressed, and advice provided at various stages of the research process. We then consider the relationship between research ethics consultation services and IRBs, as well as the issues that may arise between them, including possible conflicts of interest. (shrink)

We surveyed IRB chairs' perspectives on offering individual genetic research results to participants and families, including family members of deceased participants, and the IRB's role in addressing these issues. Given a particular hypothetical scenario, respondents favored offering results to participants but not family members, giving choices at the time of initial consent, and honoring elicited choices. They felt IRBs should have authority regarding the process issues, but a more limited role in medical and scientific issues.

Conventional truth describes things as delivered by ordinary experience; ultimate truth captures the way that things are independent of our interests, practices, and cognitive faculties. It is notoriously difficult to provide an adequate analysis of either conventional or ultimate truth, however. This chapter develops a previous scholarly suggestion to understand conventional truth in Madhyamaka as deflationary truth. It points out that this suggestion is a good one only if a supplementary theory of meaning, which the deflationary theory of truth presupposes, (...) can be given in a way that is consistent with both the limitations of the deflationary theory of truth and with Madhyamaka antirealist metaphysics. It then offers a presentation of Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha in order to argue that the resources necessary to give the required account of meaning can be found in Dharmakīrti’s account of intentional mental content. (shrink)

The essay examines contemporary Arab films that express the body's forces. One strategy, common with other world cinemas, is that films carry out different operations at the molar and molecular levels, which correspond to different levels of embodiment and body politics. Another, more unique to Arab cinema, is to cultivate strategies of protecting and enfolding bodies, similar to what Foucault termed ars erotica. Third, they enlist the audience in a struggle to attain what Spinoza called ‘adequate ideas’, ideas that arise (...) immanently from the body's capacities. (shrink)

Significant amounts of wealth have been exchanged as part of marriage settlements throughout history. Although various models have been proposed for interpreting these practices, their development over time has not been investigated systematically. In this paper we use a Bayesian MCMC phylogenetic comparative approach to reconstruct the evolution of two forms of wealth transfers at marriage, dowry and bridewealth, for 51 Indo-European cultural groups. Results indicate that dowry is more likely to have been the ancestral practice, and that a minimum (...) of four changes to bridewealth is necessary to explain the observed distribution of the two states across the cultural groups. (shrink)

An inaccessible cardinal κ is supercompact when (κ, λ)-ITP holds for all λ ≥ κ. We prove that if there is a model of ZFC with two supercompact cardinals, then there is a model of ZFC where simultaneously \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${(\aleph_2, \mu)}$$\end{document} -ITP and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${(\aleph_3, \mu')}$$\end{document} -ITP hold, for all \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mu\geq \aleph_2}$$\end{document} and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mu'\geq \aleph_3}$$\end{document}. (shrink)

Mathematics and aesthetics are closely intertwined. Not only mathematical concepts, relationships and theorems can be aesthetically pleasing, but we also often find harmony between their results and the patterns of the world around us, and we like that. Yet, apart from rare exceptions, the beauty of mathematics, particularly in education, is mostly unrecognized: this science rarely meets the favour of students. Vedic mathematics is an approach which encapsulates the enjoyment and power of this knowledge, not only in the sphere of (...) thought process, but also in its practical utility. It highlights and develops the aesthetic dimension of learning in a very immediate sense. The aim of this article is to introduce the method – what it is and how it works – to give comparative examples of techniques and their efficacy, and to emphasize the aesthetic value it conveys. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to study the stages of development of corporate responsibility global standards and initiatives based on the development of integratednetworked governance. I propose a matrix based on four development stages built along a continuum and in crescendo collaboration among different global standards and multistakeholder initiatives. The research is based on the concept of the analysis of the integrated networked governance on an analysis of the Global Action Network (Waddell, 2011).

This essay compares Sikh and Christian thought about and practices of hospitality in light of the global refugee crisis. It aims to show how both practices of hospitality, and religious ethical thought about hospitality, can be enhanced by dialogue between traditions. The refugee crisis arises out of a global failure of hospitality, and the type of hospitality refugees most fundamentally need is that which confers membership in a political community. Comparing Christian and Sikh ethics of hospitality provides guidance toward building (...) rooted religious communities that welcome outsiders, including by incorporating them into political communities. In particular, Christians who hold social power and privilege can better fulfill ethical mandates of hospitality by looking to the example of Sikhs and other marginalized groups. Sikhs have often built communities through acts of hospitality and welcomed outsiders without fear, even in contexts where their own belonging is questioned and their own security is under threat. (shrink)

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the present commentary, here translated into English for the first time, Alexander (...) develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time, including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the Middle Ages and later. (shrink)

The idea that guides this paper is that visual images of law have contributed in a very important way to the creation of a mental image of law that supports the belief in an obligation to obey the law. My purpose is: first, to identify and to analyse the visual representation of law and the messages they convey. Second, attempt to find out how they shape the mental image we have of law by following the construction of judicial space and, (...) then, through the iconography of law in order to understand how they build the belief that there is an obligation to obey the law; hence the idea that law has authority.Resumen:La idea central de este ensayo es que las imágenes visuales del derecho han contribuido en un modo importante a la creación de una imagen mental del derecho que apoya la creencia de que hay una obligación de obedecer el derecho. Así, el propósito de la autora es: primero, identificar y analizar la representación visual del derecho y los mensajes que ellas transmiten. Segundo, tratar de averiguar cómo estas representaciones conforman la imagen mental que tenemos del derecho: siguiendo la distribución del espacio judicial y, entonces, a través de la iconografía del derecho para comprender cómo construyen la creencia de que hay una obligación de obedecer el derecho; y por lo tanto la idea de que el derecho tiene una autoridad. (shrink)

Relational structure is a primitive notion of Heidegger’s Dasein. By analyzing the concept of pros-ti as it emerges from the Heidegger’s 1924 course dedicated to Plato’s Sophist, I outline the Platonic and Aristotelic roots of Heideggerian Mitsein. Arguably the Mitsein makes explicit the instances of the pros ti — in other words, the instances of Aristotle’s concept of relatedness/intentionality that Heidegger ascribes to Plato’s heteron — but giving them an existential value, having Heidegger pursued the shift from realism to phenomenologyexistentialism. (...) The article concludes by emphasizing the relevance of these themes for social ontology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments WEISKEL'S SUBLIME AND THE IMPASSE OF KNOWLEDGE by Laura Quinney Since the publication of Thomas Weiskel's The Romantic Sublime in 1976, scholars of the sublime, in America at any rate, have taken their cue from the demystifying character ofWeiskel's analysis.1 Before Weiskel the most ambitious twentieth-century account of the sublime was Samuel Monk's largely descriptive work The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories inEighteenth-CenturyEngland.2 With (...) the advent ofsemiotic and psychoanalytic approaches in the late sixties and early seventies, studies of the sublime shifted into a more critical mode. Neil Hertz had taken a skeptical tack in his early essay "A Reading of Longinus," but it was with Weiskel's book that the possibilities of demystifying die sublime were first explored fully.3 Weiskel's treatment is comprehensive, covering all the English Romantic poets as well as Burke and Kant. His thinking is sophisticated, incisive, and often inspired; though The Romantic Sublime was published nearly twenty years ago, it remains an admirable and influential work. In some respects it has never been superseded. Most major American scholars of the sublime—de Man, Knapp, and de Bolla, among others—have adopted the skeptical mode of Weiskel and Hertz.4 But die demystifying approach Weiskel's book helped to pioneer, while it has led to powerful argument, has certain limitations. Weiskel's precocious effort to "desublimate" the sublime shows diese limitations clearly, and it is die purpose of this essay to explore them. In die course of exposing the sublime as a mystified notion, and separating the naive believers from the canny skeptics, Weiskel also Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 309-319 310Philosophy and Literature separates intellectual insight from aesthetic capacity, and thus he uncritically reiterates die old Romantic dialectic of knowledge and power. The figure of Wordsworth plays a central role in establishing these oppositions. Weiskel portrays Wordsworth as the most successful poet of the sublime—the most successful, and tiierefore the most beguiled. In his remarkable concluding chapter, Weiskel locates the source of Wordsworth's powerful "liminal sublime" in a kind of intellectual regression. Wordswortii refuses the whole Symbolic order, the ghastly product of the Oedipus complex, for that order spells die deatii or disappearance of the signified, and die end of an imaginatively fruitful narcissism. Wordswortii retreats from the Symbolic to the Imaginary radier than endure tiiis threat to poetic life. And he is well rewarded for his dodge, since as a consequence the images of his memory thrill with the fascination of the ineffable. The Prelude gains its momentum from the project of memory; but the rich opacity and mysterious beckoning of memory's images are in a sense contrived. They spring out of a sublimation, the images colored widi the intensity of the signification Wordswortii has repudiated. Wordswortii sacrifices insight and intellectual progress for imaginative power. This is a strictly ambivalent exchange, as Weiskel makes clear in his conclusion; Wordsworth's rejection of the Oedipus complex and of the descent into the Symbolic Order, is "purely illusory, a fiction," but "the fiction is a necessary and saving one; it founds die self and secures the possibility—the chance for a self-conviction—of originality" (p. 203). Wordswortii's poetic success arises from his acceptance of an illusion, a "saving fiction" both enviable and degraded. This selfdelusion is essential to the poetic flourishing of the sublime, and only Wordsworth had the odd insensitivity to maintain it. Weiskel contrasts faith in the efficacy and excellence of sublimation with skeptical insight into its origin and end—its origin in mystification, and its end in alienation from the phenomenal world. The faith of Wordswortii's egotistical sublime is that imaginative perception provides die highest and paradoxically truest form of perception. It is easy enough to see how such a faith could provide hope and energy, and tiius could be compromised by wish-fulfillment in its generation, and direatened by extinction in its analysis. But what lies behind Weiskel's opposition of faith and insight is the old dichotomy—or series of interrelated dichotomies—that date back at least to Romanticism. Weiskel admits that his opposition of fruitful illusion and dessicating realism... (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 26-28.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding My Compass*Laura Inter+I was born in the 1980s, and much to my parents surprise, the doctors could not say whether I was a boy or a girl because my body had ambiguous genitalia. They then conducted a chromosome test and the result was XX chromosomes. I was assigned female and only later was diagnosed with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Fortunately for me the endocrinologist who treated me (...) did not mention the option of surgery, so my medical treatment consisted only of taking cortisol. Apart from this, from the time I turned one, I was subjected to genital examinations twice a year, during which the endocrinologist would touch my genitals and look to see how they were developing.These unnecessary and intrusive examinations had a profound effect on me. As a young child, I did not understand why I had to lower my pants in front of a stranger—the endocrinologist—and let him touch me. The fact that my mother was present, and approved of this was something that made me feel completely helpless. All this seemed very strange to me; I found it confusing, and terribly uncomfortable, and I just felt it wasn’t right.I remember the doctor always spoke as if I wasn’t right there, and I did not always understand everything the doctor said when I was young, because of all the medical terms he used. I grew up with a feeling of being “inadequate,” of having a sense that something was wrong with me, though I didn’t know exactly what. These exams lasted until I was about 12 years old. Years later, as I began my adult, sexual life, I realized how much those displays had affected me emotionally.I discovered what was “wrong” with me during sex education classes in the first year of high school. There was a class session in which two images were shown: one displaying the external female sex organs, and the other the male sex organs. I noticed that my body was not like either of them. I was very distressed, thinking “I have deformed genitals!” I feared I could not perform sexually as either a man or a woman. I became very depressed. I was sure nobody would want me, that I would never have a relationship. I was unacceptable, “abnormal,” or at least that is what the doctors had said. And in any case my parents never spoke of it, and I didn’t know that I had CAH.Skip forward a few years: I was still looking for answers, I found my medical file and read in the documents “pseudo–hermaphrodite,” and [End Page 95] “congenital adrenal hyperplasia.” I searched the internet, but only found medical opinions that said that in the case of genital ambiguity, the best option was surgery. I wondered to myself: “Why didn’t they operate on me?”I put the question to my parents, and, at fifteen, I found myself being examined once more in the doctor’s office, this time to consider the possibility of a genital surgery which might once and for all, I believed, make me a “normal” person.I have never told anyone outside my family before, but one of those exams was the most humiliating experiences of my life. One doctor wanted to speak with me alone, so she made my mother wait outside the exam room. My mother agreed, thinking that after the doctor talked with me, my mother would be able to be present during the rest of the exam. The doctor asked me questions, some of which made me very uncomfortable: “Do you feel good about being a woman”? Did you ever feel like a man? Why don’t you dress up more, use more makeup? Are you a lesbian? Have you ever had sex? She then said she wanted to see my genitals. I felt awful and wanted my mother present, but I also wanted it to be over quickly, and said nothing. Examining my genitals, the doctor told me they “would not be adequate for sex,” and that she needed to “perform surgery.” Something else that made me uncomfortable was the presence of another doctor in... (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that ordinary judgments about core normative topics purport to attribute stable, objective properties and relations. Our strategy is first to analyze the structures and practices characteristic of paradigmatically representational concepts such as concepts of objects and natural kinds. We identify three broad features that ground the representational purport of these concepts. We then argue that core normative concepts exhibit these same features.

Kant sobre las definiciones matemáticas, de Mirella Capozzi.

Reseña de: Rafael Reyna Fortes, La evolución hacia el criticismo. Estudios sobre la Dissertatio de 1770 y el comienzo del criticismo kantiano, Madrid, Faber and Sapiens - Á peiron Ediciones, 2020, 160 pp. ISBN: 978-84-17898-81-6.

Kant thinks poetry is the greatest of all the arts, and that Milton is one of the greatest poets. Sanford Budick, a professor of English from Hebrew University, investigates the Miltonic echoes in Kant’s work in this very thorough, dense, and deliberate study. Budick argues that Milton’s poetic form, especially his use of successive images, informs some of the most crucial and complex passages in Kant’s ethical and aesthetic theory. Budick concedes that it may seem strange to blur the line (...) between poetry and philosophy, but he also underlines the fact that “in Kant’s world poetry and philosophy had not yet experienced the virtual divorce that characterizes our own age” (119). Budick contends that the .. (shrink)