At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: epistemology and marginality; literary, visual and cultural representations; sexuality; macro and microeconomics of gender; conflict (...) and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think 'theoretically' is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism."--Publisher description. (shrink)

In 1853, the young Thomas Henry Huxley published a long review of German cell theory in which he roundly criticized the basic tenets of the Schleiden-Schwann model of the cell. Although historians of cytology have dismissed Huxley's criticism as based on an erroneous interpretation of cell physiology, the review is better understood as a contribution to embryology. "The Cell-theory" presents Huxley's "epigenetic" interpretation of histological organization emerging from changes in the protoplasm to replace the "preformationist" cell theory of Schleiden (...) and Schwann (as modified by Albert von Kölliker), which posited the nucleus as the seat of organic vitality. Huxley's views influenced a number of British biologists, who continued to oppose German cell theory well into the twentieth century. Yet Huxley was pivotal in introducing the new German program of "scientific zoology" to Britain in the early 1850s, championing its empiricist methodology as a means to enact broad disciplinary and institutional reforms in British natural history. (shrink)

Most scientific theories of consciousness are challenging to apply outside the human case insofar as non‐human systems (both biological and artificial) are unlikely to implement human architecture precisely, an issue I call thespecificity problem. After providing some background on the theories of consciousness debate, I survey the prospects of four approaches to this problem. I then consider a fifth solution, namely thetheory‐light approachproposed by Jonathan Birch. I defend a modified version of this that I term themodest theoretical approach, arguing that (...) it may provide insights into challenging cases that would otherwise be intractable. (shrink)

This paper proposes a formal top-level model of explaining the outputs of machine-learning-based decision-making applications and evaluates it experimentally with three data sets. The model draws on AI & law research on argumentation with cases, which models how lawyers draw analogies to past cases and discuss their relevant similarities and differences in terms of relevant factors and dimensions in the problem domain. A case-based approach is natural since the input data of machine-learning applications can be seen as cases. While the (...) approach is motivated by legal decision making, it also applies to other kinds of decision making, such as commercial decisions about loan applications or employee hiring, as long as the outcome is binary and the input conforms to this paper’s factor- or dimension format. The model is top-level in that it can be extended with more refined accounts of similarities and differences between cases. It is shown to overcome several limitations of similar argumentation-based explanation models, which only have binary features and do not represent the tendency of features towards particular outcomes. The results of the experimental evaluation studies indicate that the model may be feasible in practice, but that further development and experimentation is needed to confirm its usefulness as an explanation model. Main challenges here are selecting from a large number of possible explanations, reducing the number of features in the explanations and adding more meaningful information to them. It also remains to be investigated how suitable our approach is for explaining non-linear models. (shrink)

In this paper several recent factor- and dimension-based models of precedential constraint are formally investigated and an alternative dimension-based model is proposed. Simple factor- and dimension-based syntactic criteria are identified for checking whether a decision in a new case is forced, in terms of the relevant differences between a precedent and a new case, and the difference between absence of factors and negated factors in factor-based models is investigated. Then Horty’s and Rigoni’s recent dimension-based models of precedential constraint are critically (...) examined. An alternative to their reason models is proposed which is less expressive but arguably easier to apply in practice. (shrink)

This volume presents seventeen essays by one of the world's leading scholars on Kant. Henry E. Allison explores the nature of transcendental idealism, freedom of the will, and the concept of the purposiveness of nature. He places Kant's views in their historical context and explores their contemporary relevance to present day philosophers.

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals . Allison pays special attention to the structure of the work and its historical and intellectual context. He argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy.

In this paper, I argue that the Parts of Animals [PA] should be seen as continuing in the tradition of those earlier natural scientists who “investigated the material principle of things and that s...

Reformed catholicity suffers from a fragility that causes it to easily fragment over comparatively small differences. This study wagers that an important resource that can be useful for addressing this problem is the Chinese philosophy of tianxia. The article introduces the idea of a ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ by placing a more liberal interpretation of tianxia in conversation with the problems in Reformed approaches to the church’s catholicity. In doing so, the article demonstrates tianxia’s ecclesiological usefulness while articulating two dimensions (...) of ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ that can deepen how Reformed churches inhabit catholicity in ways that promote unity. (shrink)

In the face of limited resources during the COVID-19 pandemic response, public health experts and ethicists have sought to apply guiding principles in determining how those resources, including vaccines, should be allocated.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 97-100, Winter 2020.

Aimed at those new to studying Spinoza, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to his thought, placing it in its historical and philosophical contexts, and assessing its critical reception. In addition to providing an analysis of Spinoza's metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical views in the Ethics, Henry Allison also explores his political theory and revolutionary views on the Bible, as well as his account of Judaism, which led to the excommunication of the young Spinoza from the Jewish community in (...) Amsterdam. Although the book's main focus is on the analysis of Spinoza's views, including a close reading of the central arguments of the Ethics, it also considers many of the standard objections to these arguments as well as possible responses to them. This completely revised and updated new edition of Allison's classic book, with two new chapters, will help a new generation of students to understand and value Spinoza's work. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s “Deconstruction and Circumvention” is a sobering reminder of how far we have to go before anything like a real dialogue between deconstruction and philosophy can take place in this country. Our literary critics ignore too much of what is specifically philosophical in philosophical texts; and our philosophers equally blind when they read literary language. Perhaps it is laughably undeconstructed to make the distinctions I had just made. But perpahs, too, it is not so easy to get beyond certain (...) oppositions as is beginning to be widely taken for granted. It is surprising to see Rorty encouraging such complacency, for Rorty himself generally thinks hard and to good purpose. He is a figure of unique distinction on our intellectual landscape, a bridge, perhaps, our only one, between deconstruction and the American philosophical establishment. But for that very reason it is sobering to see how this philosopher reads Jacques Derrida: very much as a philosopher reads. The overall result is ambiguous , but is it not finally to “encapsulate and circumvent” Derrida, leaving the native speech community immune to his critique? Let us see. Henry Staten is associate professor of English and adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Utah. He is the author of Wittgenstein and Derrida and is currently working on a study of mourning and idealization in Western literature from Homer to D. H. Lawrence. (shrink)

In the survey and criticism of science and philosophy we are considering systems of knowledge and thought rationally developed from coherent human experience. These rational systems are in a definite sense intellectually organized. Where intellectual and social problems are real and urgent the relevant knowledge and thought should be organized socially and purposively to achieve tentative, if not adequate or definitive solutions.