In this article the author seeks to establish a theoretical framework within which the contemporary concerns about young women’s unhappy and unhealthy relationships with their bodies can be elucidated. Symbolic interactionist theories are considered to explicate the imperative of producing visual identity, and modern interactionist work (Giddens) to consider the consumer capitalist context of this imperative. Post-structural feminist work is interrogated for its robust engagement with the contradictory approaches to the possibility of female agency in relation to ‘doing looks’. The (...) structural tradition is briefly utilized to consider the social position of the young people who increasingly, it is argued, seek identification through appearance. Finally, symbolic interactionist work is returned to for its ability to theorize the intersubjective production and subjective experience of body-hatred. (shrink)

In this article I describe the development of my collaboration with the textile artist Susie Freeman in the production of the visual arts project Pharmacopoeia. Over the last 3 years we have created a body of work that aims to provide information about common medical treatments in a way that engages the public imagination. The work is dominated by the use of active pharmaceuticals, both pills and capsules, which are incorporated into dramatic fabrics by a process known as pocket knitting. (...) These fabrics are then made into clothing and accessories, making their individual messages easier to ‘read’. The work aims to encourage people to think about their own medical and pharmacological history, and to reflect on their relationship with commonly prescribed drugs. It also reveals how dependent our society is on pharmaceuticals, how ambivalent we feel about them and yet how casually we use them. (shrink)

Liz Jackson is Professor of Education and Head of Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Liz served as the President of the Philosophy of Education Society...

From social media to search engines to Wikipedia, the internet is thoroughly embedded in how we produce, locate, and share knowledge around the world. Who Should We Be Online? provides an account of online knowledge that takes seriously the role of sexist, racist, transphobic, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppression. Frost-Arnold argues against analyzing internet users as a collection of identical generic people with smartphones. The novel epistemology developed in this book recognizes that we are differently embodied beings interacting (...) within systems of dominance. Our social identities and global inequalities shape who we are, who we can be online, and what we know. Tackling problems of online content moderation, fake news, and hoaxes, Frost-Arnold shows that oppressive online structures and practices help fuel ignorance. But she also reveals how the internet provides opportunities for marginalized people and activists to share knowledge online. Drawing on feminist accounts of objectivity, veritistic social epistemology, epistemologies of ignorance, virtue epistemology, and the epistemic injustice literature, this book argues for a social epistemology that values truth and objectivity, while recognizing that inequalities shape our collective ability to attain these goals. Timely and interdisciplinary, Who Should We Be Online? weaves together internet studies scholarship from across the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Presenting case studies of moderators, imposters, tricksters, fakers, and lurkers, this book both explains the problems with our current internet ecosystem and imagines liberatory online futures. (shrink)

What is artificial life? Much has been said about this interesting collection of efforts to artificially simulate and synthesize lifelike behavior and processes, yet we are far from having a robust philosophical understanding of just what Alifers are doing and why it ought to interest philosophers of science, and philosophers of biology in particular. In this paper, I first provide three introductory examples from the particular subset of artificial life I focus on, known as ‘soft Alife’ (s-Alife), and follow up (...) with a more in-depth review of the Avida program, which serves as my case study of s-Alife. Next, I review three well-known accounts of thought experiments, and then offer my own synthesized account, to make the argument that s-Alife functions as thought experimentation in biology. I draw a comparison between the methodology of the thought-experimental world that yields real-world results, and the s-Alife research that informs our understanding of natural life. I conclude that the insights provided by s-Alife research have the potential to fundamentally alter our understanding of the nature of organic life and thus deserve the attention of both philosophers and natural scientists. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 120-125.

Felicity Haynes earned Honours degrees in English and French literature from The University of Western Australia and completed her doctorate on reason and understanding at the University of Illinoi...

Nicholas Gresson 2001L-RUniversity of Auckland, Faculty of Education PhD graduates in 2001:Elizabeth Grierson/Gresson, Tina Besley, Ho-Chia Chueh, Janet Mansfield, Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul, Nesta De...

Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 17-21.

During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard, holding regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap’s notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the (...) most prominent question is: If the number of physical items in the universe is finite, what form should scientific discourse take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem: What is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s attempts to answer this question involve issues central to philosophy today.This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine’s break from Carnap), and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues. (shrink)

Although ethics instruction has become an accepted part of the business school curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, some scholars have questioned its effectiveness, and research results have been mixed. However, studies yield interesting results regarding certain factors that influence the ethicality of business students and may impact the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. One of these factors is gender. Using personal and business ethics scenarios, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and business ethics education (...) on moral judgment. We then analyze the relationships between gender and business ethics education on personal ethical perspectives. Our results indicate that women are generally more inclined to act ethically than men, but paradoxically women who have had business ethics instruction are less likely to respond ethically to business situations. In addition, men may be more responsive to business ethics education than women. Finally, women’s personal ethical orientations may become more relativistic after taking a business ethics class. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction (PI) states: most past scientific theories were radically mistaken; therefore, current theories are probably similarly mistaken. But mistaken in what way? On the usual understanding, such past theories are false. However, on widely held views about reference and presupposition, many theoretical claims of previous scientific theories are neither true nor false. And if substantial portions of past theories are truth-valueless, then the PI leads to semantic antirealism. But most current philosophers of science reject semantic antirealism. So PI (...) proponents face a difficult choice: accept either semantic antirealism or an unorthodox position on reference and presupposition. (shrink)

Most questions commonly asked about international politics are ethical ones. Should the international community intervene in Bosnia? What do we owe the starving in Somalia? What should be done about the genocide in Rwanda? Yet, Mervyn Frost argues, ethics is accorded a marginal position within the academic study of international relations. In this book he examines the reasons given for this, and finds that they do not stand up to scrutiny. He goes on to evaluate those ethical theories which (...) do exist within the discipline - order based theories, utilitarian theories, and rights based theories - and finds them unconvincing. He elaborates his own ethical theory, constitutive theory, which is derived from Hegel, and highlights the way in which we constitute one another as moral beings through a process of reciprocal recognition within a hierarchy of institutions which include the family, civil society, the state, and the society of states. (shrink)

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how (...) and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Althoughpatientsand by extension their families (especially in cases of decisional incapacity) are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are theleastlikely (...) to request them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

The logic of singular terms that refer to nothing, such as ‘Santa Claus,’ has been studied extensively under the heading of free logic. The present essay examines expressions whose reference is defective in a different way: they signify more than one entity. The bulk of the effort aims to develop an acceptable formal semantics based upon an intuitive idea introduced informally by Hartry Field and discussed by Joseph Camp; the basic strategy is to use supervaluations. This idea, as it stands, (...) encounters difficulties, but with suitable refinements it can be salvaged. Two other options for a formal semantics of multiply signifying terms are also presented, and I discuss the relative merits of the three semantics briefly. Finally, possible modifications to the standard logical regimentation of the notion of existence are considered. (shrink)

The relationship between divine and created causality was widely discussed in medieval and early modern philosophy. Contemporary scholars of these discussions typically stake out three possible positions: occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere-conservationism. It is regularly claimed that virtually no medieval thinker adopted the final view which denies that God is an immediate active cause of creaturely actions. The main aim of this paper is to further understanding of the medieval causality debate, and particularly the mere-conservationist position, by analysing Peter John Olivi's (...) neglected defence of it. The paper also includes discussion of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for concurrentism and an analysis of whether Olivi's objections refute his position. (shrink)

In a conversation in Interview magazine, the painter Manuel Solano reflects on the shifts in their artistic practice after going blind at 26 years old. Their first museum show came after this devel...

This document collects discussion and commentary on issues raised in the workshop by its participants. Contributors are: Greg Frost-Arnold, David Harker, P. D. Magnus, John Manchak, John D. Norton, J. Brian Pitts, Kyle Stanford, Dana Tulodziecki.

This paper reconstructs and analyzes Thomas Aquinas’ intriguing views on transeunt causal activity, which have been the subject of an interpretive debate spanning from the fifteenth century up until the present. In his Physics commentary, Aquinas defends the Aristotelian positions that the actualization of an agent’s active potential is the motion that it causes in its patient and action and passion are the same motion. Yet, in other texts, Aquinas claims that action differs from passion and “action is in the (...) agent” as subject. This paper proposes a solution for how to reconcile Aquinas’ varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. In addition to advancing understanding of Aquinas’ views on causal activity, the paper also offers insights into more general topics in his thought, such as the relationship between actualities and accidents and the nature of extrinsic accidents. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

This special issue includes a series of interviews with the past women presidents of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA), including Felicity Haynes, Nesta Devine, Tina Besley, and Liz Jackson. This article sets the stage for reading the interviews, though an extended dialogue between the two authors of this project. In what follows, the authors reflect on insights gleaned from the interviews, and the past and future of women leadership in philosophy of education. Using a dialogical format, it (...) highlights different experiences and similar challenges across generations, questions what has changed versus what has stayed the same over decades, and elaborates on the value of the interviews for readers coming from different academic generations and subject positions. It reflects on the state of the field and its future directions from the perspectives of two women philosophers working and thinking across generations. (shrink)

This article argues that feminist theorists should conceive of the life sciences not only as a factual resource but also as a figural resource. It proposes that in shifting our conceptual orientation to biological science from fact to figure, feminists will be able to give theoretical life to scientific findings about the ways in which social environments and material habitats are processes integral to our development, growth, and social and political well-being. The figuration of ourselves as specifically biocultural creatures will (...) enable feminists to gain a stronger theoretical and analytic purchase on the ongoing mutual shaping of the biological and social dimensions of existence. This, in turn, will enable feminists to creatively re-imagine the fields and fora of feminist politics. (shrink)

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research and (...) publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow. (shrink)

Schools and other forms of education and have significant impacts on people's views about emotions and emotional experiences. It shows how we often take it for granted that certain emotions, such as happiness, are 'positive', while others are 'negative' and how personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and race, can make an unfair difference when it comes to what emotions are expected or accepted. Written in an accessible format, the book encourages broad reflection on what emotions are and why they (...) matter, in relation to the aims of education, what it means to be a good person, and equality and social justice. (shrink)

Ignorance of one’s privileges and prejudices is an epistemic problem. While the sources of ignorance of privilege and prejudice are increasingly understood, less clarity exists about how to remedy ignorance. In fact, the various causes of ignorance can seem so powerful, various, and mutually reinforcing that studying the epistemology of ignorance can inspire pessimism about combatting socially constructed ignorance. I argue that this pessimism is unwarranted. The testimony of members of oppressed groups can often help members of privileged groups overcome (...) their ignorance. This paper argues that a particular type of speaker’s trust—hopeful trust—can motivate hearers to become cognizant of their privilege and prejudice. I argue that hopeful trust is a powerful way of eliciting trust-responsiveness that can be an effective mechanism for challenging privilege and prejudice. To make this case, I draw on case studies of online attempts to challenge ignorance. While the problems of testimonial injustice, defensi... (shrink)

Karen Frost-Arnold's response to comments Respuesta de Karen Frost-Arnold a los comentarios Karen Frost-Arnold's response to comments.

This book is the first extensive study of the role of the family in the work of Seneca. It offers a new way of reading philosophy that combines philosophical analysis with social, cultural and historical factors to bring out the ways in which Stoicism presents itself as in tune with the universe. The family serves a central role in an individual's moral development - both the family as conventionally understood, and the wider conceptual family which Stoicism constructs. Innovative readings of (...) Seneca's work bring out the importance of the family to his thought and how it interacts with other Stoic doctrines. We learn how to be virtuous from observing and imitating our family, who can be biological relatives or people we choose as our intellectual ancestors. The Ethics of the Family in Seneca will be of particular interest to researchers in Roman Stoicism, imperial culture and the history of the family. (shrink)

The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response. An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests (...) that the response is never appropriate. Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may fruitfully be seen as instances of the identical rivals response; since Einstein’s arguments are generally accepted, the response is at least sometimes appropriate. But when is it appropriate? We attempt to steer a middle course between Norton’s view and that of Laudan and Leplin: the identical rivals response is appropriate when there is good reason for adopting a parsimonious ontology. Although in simple cases the identical rivals response need not involve any ontological difference between the theories, in actual scientific cases it typically requires treating apparent posits of the various theories as mere verbal ornaments or computational conveniences. Since these would-be posits are not now detectable, there is no perfectly reliable way to decide whether we should eliminate them or not. As such, there is no rule for deciding whether the identical rivals response is appropriate or not. Nevertheless, there are considerations that suggest for and against the response; we conclude by suggesting two of them. (shrink)

On November 14th, 1770, the young chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) read his ‘Sur la nature de l’eau’ to the Académie des Sciences. Eventually published in the Académie’s journal in 1773, the two-part memoire challenged a widely held view of earlier experimenters: the transmutability of matter. Specifically, experimenters such as Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont (1580–1644), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), and Ole Borsch (1626–1690) had noted that when distilled water was heated in a glass vessel, a small amount of earthy residue remained, seemingly demonstrating (...) the transmutation of water into earth. Antoine-Laurent designed an experiment to determine whether it was really to the ‘destruction of a portion of the water that this residual earth owed its origin, or if it was to that of the glass.’ In partial agreement with Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (1720–1800), a fellow academician, Antoine-Laurent aimed to disprove the antiquated belief – the transmutation of one element into another – by using a glass vessel from the alchemist’s cabinet: the pelican. (shrink)

A persuasive argument that theism is a Humean “natural belief” relies on the assertion that belief in intelligent design is caused by “Cleanthes’s propensity,” introduced in Hume’s Dialogues—a universal propensity to believe in a designer triggered by the observation of apparent telos in nature. But Hume neverclaims in his own voice that religious belief is founded on anything like Cleanthes’s propensity. Instead, in the Natural History, he argues that the belief in invisible intelligent power is caused by the psychological propensity (...) to anthropomorphize triggered by the observation of disorder. I argue that religious belief is among theHumean natural beliefs only if this propensity is relevantly similar to the propensity responsible for inductive beliefs—the paradigmatic case of natural belief. Evidence from the Natural History and Treatise confirm that this is not the case. I conclude that belief in intelligent design is not, for Hume, a natural belief. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories considered empirically successful in their time turn out to be not even approximately true, most present ones probably aren’t approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s ‘Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’ is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the evidence available to them. Here, I offer another answer, which I (...) call the ‘Problem of Misleading Evidence.’ I argue that this proposal is, in important respects, superior to Stanford’s. (shrink)

The ethic of care provides not only a basis for understanding relationships of care at the micro level but also a potent form of political ethics, relevant to the development of welfare services. Williams (2001), for example, argues that the concept of care has the capacity to be a central referent in social policy?a point at which social and cultural transformations meet with the changing relations of welfare (Williams 2001, p. 470). English social care services are currently in another period (...) of change precipitated by the ?personalisation agenda?. This agenda is seen as having the potential to revolutionise social care, to create the conditions needed to tailor services to individual needs, and to give service users greater choice and control, including, where possible, control over their own service budgets or direct possession and management of care funds. These developments are inextricably linked to broader economic and social trends, key amongst which are the ageing of the population and changing economic conditions affecting both the labour market and the market for care services. This article applies the feminist ethic of care to an analysis of the personalisation agenda in the context of care for dependent older people. It highlights fundamental political questions posed concerning the nature and extent of older people's need for care, responsibility for meeting these needs and the associated costs. It questions whether the personalisation agenda could potentially offer a more responsive form of care, by placing more power and control in older people's hands. Key points considered are the individualisation of care and the ways in which control is conceptualised. The article concludes with an assessment of the feminist ethic of care as a basis for policy evaluation. (shrink)

Alexander Rosenberg recently claimed (1997) that developmental biology is currently being reduced to molecular biology. cite several concrete biological examples that are intended to impugn Rosenberg's claim. I first argue that although Laubichler and Wagner's examples would refute a very strong reductionism, a more moderate reductionism would escape their attacks. Next, taking my cue from the antireductionist's perennial stress on the importance of spatial organization, I describe one form an empirical finding that refutes this moderate reductionism would take. Finally, I (...) point out an actual example, anterior-posterior axis determination in the chick, that challenges the reductionist's belief that all developmental regularities can be explained by molecular biology. In short, I argue that Rosenberg's position can be saved from Laubichler and Wagner's criticisms and putative counter-examples, but it would not survive a different kind of counter-example. (shrink)

This is a review of historical developments in international criminal law leading up to the inclusion of rape as a "crime against humanity" in the current war crimes tribunal for the ex-Yugoslavia. In addition to the need to understand the specificity of events and their impact on women, the laws of war must also be understood in their specificity and the ways in which even the humanitarian provisions of those laws privilege military needs.

Thomas Hobbes is an iconic figure who serves as an easy reference for pundits commenting on the brutality of war as well as for critics of a distinctly modern individualism in which calculating and rapacious self-interest is the cause of the violence, destruction, and exploitation endemic to the contemporary world. Frost's reading of Hobbes's philosophy shows us that underlying such visions of self and politics is another iconic figure: that of the Cartesian subject. What gives the iconic Hobbes his (...) hardcore individualism and its corollary accounts of instrumentalism, conflict, and absolutism is a Cartesian rendering of the self as split into mind and body. Carefully elaborating Hobbes's materialist ontology, _Lessons from a Materialist Thinker_ challenges both our implicit Cartesian assumptions about the self and the commonplace Hobbes that so readily figures violence in our political imagination. Through his materialism, Hobbes presents an alternative modern account of self-consciousness, reason, agency, power, freedom, and responsibility. In doing so, he shows that our fundamental intersubjectivity and interdependence require that we pursue peace above all else. (shrink)

In a healthcare setting, a multitude of ethical and moral challenges are often present when patients and families direct uncivil behavior toward clinicians and staff. These negative interactions may elicit strong social and emotional reactions among staff, other patients, and visitors; and they may impede the normal functioning of an institution. Ethics Committees and Clinical Ethics Consultation Services (CECSs) can meaningfully contribute to organizational efforts to effectively manage incivility through two distinct, yet inter-related channels. First, given their responsibility to promote (...) a humane, respectful, and professional climate, many CECSs and Ethics Committees may assist institutional leadership in evaluating and monitoring incivility policies and procedures. Second, when confronted with individual incidents of patient/family incivility, Ethics Consultants can and often do work with all stakeholders to address and mitigate potentially deleterious impacts. This manuscript presents an overview of the multifaceted ethical implications of incivility in the healthcare environment, discusses the inherent qualifications of Ethics Consultants for assisting in the management of incivility, and proposes specific mitigating actions within the purview of CECSs and Ethics Committees. We also invite healthcare organizations to harness the skills and reputation of their CECSs and Ethics Committees in confronting incivility through comprehensive policies, procedures, and training. (shrink)