Extractive reserves, usually associated with the survival of rubber tappers in the Brazilian tropics, have close parallels elsewhere, including temperate zones. This research isolates the distinctive features of recent Amazonian reserves, illustrates parallel features in a fifty year-old management experiment in the United States, and explores the advantages extractive reserves offer land reformers interested not only in social equity and efficiency but in biological conservation. Extractive reserves stand apart from traditional land reforms in their innovative use of common property, a (...) tenure mode well adapted to sustainable management of marginal lands. (shrink)

What is Japanese philosophy? This paper will address this question, not by giving a survey of the works of Japanese philosophers or a definition of the subject matter of Japanese philosophy, but by attempting to present how it emerged as a distinct philosophical tradition—by sketching the controversies that gave rise to its formation; the social, intellectual, and historical factors that paved the way to its development; and the revolution of thought which finally gave it the title “Japanese philosophy.” I will (...) argue that Japanese philosophy was born not because Japanese thinkers desperately wanted a philosophy that they could call their own, but because, first and foremost, they were thinking of ways to articulate the ever changing and paradoxical nature of reality. Formed by their religion and informed by the Chinese and Japanese classics, they used the language learned from the West and tried to answer the most fundamental questions of existence. A unique way of philosophizing thus emerged and became a true locus of dialogue between Eastern and Western thought.An Inquiry into the Historical Development of Philosophy in Japan. (shrink)

All too often it is said that common-sense philosophers faIl to justify their appeal to common sense as a philosophical standard, and that they merely repeat one another in the glorification of philosophical trivialities. This book challenges these and ot.

This book offers a critical feminist perspective on the widely debated topic of transitional justice and forgiveness. Louise Du Toit examines the phenomenon of rape with a feminist philosophical discourse concerning women’s or ‘feminine’ subjectivity and selfhood. She demonstrates how the hierarchical dichotomy of male active versus female passive sexuality – which obscures the true nature of rape – is embedded in the dominant western symbolic frame. Through a Hegelian and phenomenological reading of first-person accounts by rape victims, she (...) excavates an understanding of rape that also starts to open up a way out of the denial and destruction of female sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

Keeping a conversation going is the social glue of friendships. The DSM criteria for autism list difficulties with back-and-forth conversation but does not necessitate that all autistic children will be equally impacted. We carried out three studies (two pre-registered) with verbally-fluent school children (age 5-9 years) to investigate how autistic and neurotypical children maintain a conversation topic. We also investigated within-group relationships between conversational ability and cognitive and socio-cognitive predictors. Study 1 found autistic children were more likely than neurotypical controls (...) to give off-topic and generic minimal responses (e.g. ‘mm’, ‘oh’) and were less likely to give non-verbal responses (e.g. nodding or use of facial affect to respond). Nonetheless, the autistic group provided topic-supporting responses 62% of the time, indicating some aspects of conversation topic maintenance are a relative strength. Studies 2 and 3 found large individual differences in topic-supporting conversational responding amongst both neurotypical and autistic children. These were positively related to theory of mind ability and age in both groups. Conversational skills lie on a continuum for the general population and differences by diagnostic group are a matter of degree. Given the importance for peer relationships, we suggest a whole-classroom approach to supporting conversation skills in all children. (shrink)

In a recent article, J. Angelo Corlett criticises what he takes to be the ‘offensiphobic’ practices characteristic of many universities. The ‘offensiphobe’, according to Corlett, believes that offensive speech ought to be censured precisely because it offends. We argue that there are three serious problems with Corlett’s discussion. First, his criticism of ‘offensiphobia’ misrepresents the kinds of censorship practiced by universities; many universities may in some way censure speech which they regard as offensive, but this is seldom if ever a (...) manifestation of ‘offensiphobia’. Second, we attempt to reconstruct Corlett’s criticism of ‘offensiphobia’ as a criticism of the practice of censuring hate speech, and show that this argument is unsuccessful. Third, we offer some brief reflections on how labelling universities as ‘offensiphobic’ is especially problematic in light of the current climate of political interference in university research and teaching. (shrink)

An initial distinction is made between two ways of referring in thought to a particular object. One can think of an object in virtue of having a descriptive condition in mind which uniquely denotes that object. Alternatively, one can think about a particular in a more direct way. It is with the nature of this more direct sort of reference that the subsequent discussion is primarily concerned. ;It has been argued that the relation of direct reference is purely causal in (...) nature. A number of difficulties are raised for this causal view. A diagnosis of these difficulties suggests that the causal view ignores the cognitive aspects of direct reference. ;The idea that direct reference is a cognitive relation is not new. Bertrand Russell's notion of knowledge by acquaintance can be thought of as involving the idea of a relation of reference which is direct and cognitive. A good place to begin an exploration of the cognitive dimensions of direct reference is with Russell's notion of acquaintance. Thus this notion is analysed in some depth. ;An objection to the effect that acquaintance is a relation incapable in principle of playing a role in an account of reference is shown to be unfounded. This clears the way for an extended discussion of the nature of acquaintance. This discussion suggests that we should posit a special demonstrative way in which objects can be presented to us. This demonstrative way of being presented with an object is in turn explored by way of an extended metaphor, in which it is suggested that becoming acquainted with an object should be thought of as the opening of a mental file of a special sort for that object. ;Some indirect support for this account of demonstrative modes of presentation and the associated account of direct reference comes from the fact that these notions can help solve the problem of cognitive significance that has been thought to pose a serious threat to theories that somehow treat reference as direct. ;Finally, some potential counterexamples are examined and shown not to seriously threaten the acquaintance theory of direct reference. (shrink)

I would say very simply that the function of the intellectual is this: to put at the disposal of others, to put in common, this greater set of critical analytical tools, to make those tools freely available, and this naturally demands being rooted in reality that is in movement, a reality in which the researcher herself puts certain choices into practice, in which she can deem some matters to be more crucial than others. And the hope is, depending on the (...) choices made by all of those who are today committed to transforming that which exists, that there effectively comes about the wide-ranging social transformation of which we are in need.Costa’s definition of the intellectual is both inspiring and radical. Her.. (shrink)

Récemment, dans The Problem of the Criterion, Roderick M. Chisholm distinguait deux stratégies visant à résoudre le problème du cercle vicieux, à savoir, celle des «particularistes» pour lesquels il faut d'abord établir ce qu'on sait, partant, formuler les criteres de la connaissance et celle des « méthodistes » qui entendent établir d'abord les critères de la connaissance, partant, son étendue. Voici done notre problème formulé, puisque Chisholm considère Descartes comme un exemple de stratégic «méthodiste» et Thomas Reid ainsi que G.E. (...) Moore comme des exemples de stratégie «particulariste», ces derniers illustrant d'ailleurs la stratégie «la plus raisonnable». Dans le cas de Reid cependant, on verra que même s'il se livre à une critique de la démarche cartésienne, la tentative de réponse au problème du cercle vicieux est chez lui aussi de type «méthodiste», dès lors, susceptible d'une circularité comparable à celle qu'il reproche à Descartes. (shrink)

We share Jaswal & Akhtar's concerns about the unintended repercussions of assumed social disinterest in autism. We expand consideration of these consequences with discussion of the literature and our own work on loneliness, mental ill-health, and self-representation, which is a cornerstone to social and emotional health. Further study is needed with expansive, mixed methodologies and involvement of the autistic community.

Résumé Richelieu envoie, en 1629, Louis Deshayes de Courmenin à Moscou afin de signer un traité pour la reprise du commerce français en Russie. Après Hauser (1944) et Zordanija (1960), nous tentons d’éclairer cette mission à l’aide de textes inédits. Un extrait du journal de voyage de Brisacier et d’autres documents montrent que les Français recherchent surtout les produits russes (fourrures et autres peaux, fournitures de marine, céréales). Bien que le tsar leur refuse le droit d’aller en Perse pour acheter (...) la soie brute via la Russie, la mission de Deshayes est néanmoins un succès, économique et aussi politique. (shrink)

Présentant les textes publiés dans ce numéro de Philosophiques comme résultats préliminaires d'une recherche collective sur les théories de l'égalité et les problèmes philosophiques de la condition féminine, l'auteur soutient que leur contribution majeure réside dans une triple réévaluation des enjeux relatifs à l'égalité : le parallélisme étanche qui caractérise en ce moment les recherches sur l'égalité d'une part et les recherches sur la condition féminine d'autre part doit être corrigé; une démarche post-rawlsienne reliant la question de l'égalité à un (...) traitement équitable des multiples formes de différences se manifestant entre les humains est grandement nécessaire; les limites caractérisant les plaidoyers contemporains en faveur d'une égalité par-delà les différences doivent être identifiées.Presenting the papers included in this issue of Philosophiques as the preliminary results of a three years research project on theories of equality and philosophical problems of the women condition, it is argued that their main contribution lies in a threefold reasessment of the issues of equality: the impervious parting which presently caracterizes researches on equality, on the one hand, and researches on women, on the other hand, must be corrected; a post-rawlsian approach relating the question of equality to a just treatment of manifold differentiations among human beings is highly needed; and the shortcomings of present pleas in favor of an equality beyond differentiations must be identified. (shrink)

This article marks a decisive step towards the recovery of the French woman writer, journalist, and aviation pioneer Louise Faure-Favier, who today is virtually forgotten. The article begins by sit...

Does the real difference between non-consequentialist and consequentialist theories lie in their approach to value? Non-consequentialist theories are thought either to allow a different kind of value (namely, agent-relative value) or to advocate a different response to value ('honouring' rather than 'promoting'). One objection to this idea implies that all normative theories are describable as consequentialist. But then the distinction between honouring and promoting collapses into the distinction between relative and neutral value. A proper description of non-consequentialist theories can only (...) be achieved by including a distinction between temporal relativity and neutrality in addition to the distinction between agent-relativity and agent-neutrality. (shrink)

When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative (...) approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently. Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments. Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world. (shrink)

I argue for a deflationary answer to the question, “What is it to be a woman?” Prior attempts by feminist theorists to provide a metaphysical account of what all and only women have in common have all failed for the same reason: there is nothing women have in common beyond being women. Although the social kinds man and woman are primitive, their existence can be explained. I say that human sex difference is the material ground of systems of gender; gender (...) systems serve to enable male control of female reproductive capacities. This explains the fact that most women are female, but it does not entail that all women are female or that all females are women. To clarify my position, I draw an analogy between the kind woman and the kind parent. While it is difficult to come up with necessary and sufficient conditions for being a parent, it is clear that the social institution or practice of parenting has its material ground in the biological facts about human reproduction together with facts about infantile dependency. Saying this does not entail that all and only biological progenitors are parents. (shrink)

In a quiet London office, a software designer muses on the algorithms that will make possible the risk flags to be visualized on the screens of border guards from Heathrow to St Pancras International. There is, he says, ‘real time decision making’ – to detain, to deport, to secondarily question or search – but there is also the ‘offline team who run the analytics and work out the best set of rules’. Writing the code that will decide the association rules (...) between items of data, prosaic and mundane – flight route, payment type, passport – the analysts derive a novel preemptive security measure. This paper proposes the analytic of the data derivative – a visualized risk flag or score drawn from an amalgam of disaggregated fragments of data, inferred from across the gaps between data and projected onto an array of uncertain futures. In contrast to disciplinary and enclosed techniques of collecting data to govern population, the data derivative functions via ‘differential curves of normality’, imagining a range of potential futures through the association rule, thus ‘opening up to let things happen’ ( Foucault 2007 ). In some senses akin to the risk orientation of the financial derivative, itself indifferent to actual underlying people, places or events by virtue of modulated norms, the contemporary security derivative is not centred on who we are, nor even on what our data say about us, but on what can be imagined and inferred about who we might be – on our very proclivities and potentialities. (shrink)

Policy discussions and corporate strategies on machine learning are increasingly championing data reuse as a key element in digital transformations. These aspirations are often coupled with a focus on responsibility, ethics and transparency, as well as emergent forms of regulation that seek to set demands for corporate conduct and the protection of civic rights. And the Protective measures include methods of traceability and assessments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ datasets and algorithms that are considered to be traceable, stable and contained. However, (...) these ways of thinking about both technology and ethics obscure a fundamental issue, namely that machine learning systems entangle data, algorithms and more-than-human environments in ways that challenge a well-defined separation. This article investigates the fundamental fallacy of most data reuse strategies as well as their regulation and mitigation strategies that data can somehow be followed, contained and controlled in machine learning processes. Instead, the article argues that we need to understand the reuse of data as an inherently entangled phenomenon. To examine this tension between the discursive regimes and the realities of data reuse, we advance the notion of reuse entanglements as an analytical lens. The main contribution of the article is the conceptualization of reuse that places entanglements at its core and the articulation of its relevance using empirical illustrations. This is important, we argue, for our understanding of the nature of data and algorithms, for the practical uses of data and algorithms and our attitudes regarding ethics, responsibility and regulation. (shrink)

Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself the challenge of explaining how, within a deterministic universe, agents can be necessary causes of their own actions. With special attention to Shepherd’s resistance to materialism and to any reduction of the mental, the (...) paper argues that we can read Shepherd as leveraging her original theory of causation to develop a distinctive compatibilist view of the psychology of intention, one that makes agents the necessary causal sources of their own actions. Published on 2022-10-28 10:36:44. (shrink)

Documentary film, in the words of Bill Nichols, is one of the "discourses of sobriety" that include science, economics, politics, and history-discourses that claim to describe the "real," to tell the truth. Yet documentary film, in more obvious ways than does history, straddles the categories of fact and fiction, art and document, entertainment and knowledge. And the visual languages with which it operates have quite different effects than does the written text. In the following interview conducted during the winter of (...) 1997, historian Ann-Louise Shapiro raises questions about genre-the relationship of form to content and meaning-with documentary filmmaker Jill Godmilow.In order to explore the possibilities and constraints of non-fiction film as a medium for representing history, Godmilow was asked: What are the strategies and techniques by which documentary films make meaning? In representing historical events, how does a non-fiction filmmaker think about accuracy? authenticity? invention? What are the criteria you have in mind when you call a film like The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl "dishonest"? How does the tension between making art and making history affect documentary filmmaking? Should documentary filmmakers think of themselves, in the phrase of Ken Burns, as "tribal storytellers"? What kind of historical consciousness is produced by documentary film? (shrink)