This article deals with civil society organizations active in the field of family policy and demographic issues in contemporary Russia. This article uses Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality and later developments discussing technologies of citizenship. More specifically, using interviews, documents, and participant observations, so-called “daddy-schools” that have emerged in and around Saint Petersburg since 2008, are studied as a mode of governmentality. The analysis shows how the civic initiative studied attempted to empower fathers and how it has altered (...) demographic discourses while approaching similar societal goals as the state does in its biopolitical strategies. Thus, the daddy-schools provide a complementary discourse concerning fatherhood while approaching the same perceived demographic crisis that the Russian state is challenged by. (shrink)

Can one gain testimonial knowledge from unsafe testimony? It might seem not, on the grounds that if a piece of testimony is unsafe, then any belief based on it in such a way as to make the belief genuinely testimonial is bound itself to be unsafe: the lack of safety must transmit from the testimony to the testimonial belief. If in addition we accept that knowledge requires safety, the result seems to be that one cannot gain testimonial knowledge from unsafe (...) testimony. In a pair of recent papers, however, Sanford Goldberg has challenged this apparently plausible line of thought. Goldberg presents two examples intended to show that a testimonial belief can be safe, even if the testimony on which it is based is unsafe: the lack of safety need not transmit from the testimony to the testimonial belief. In this paper, I question whether Goldberg’s examples really do show that one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. The problem, I explain, is that both examples appear (for different reasons) to be open to objection. Nevertheless, I argue that although Goldberg’s examples do not establish his conclusion, the conclusion itself is true: one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. I base my argument on an example which differs in structure from Goldberg’s examples, and I argue that due to this difference, my example avoids the problems which Goldberg’s examples face. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that those who accept the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception should reject the traditional view that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive. I start by outlining the general strategy that conceptualists have adopted in response to the familiar ‘fineness of grain’ objection, and I show why a commitment to what I call the indiscriminability claim seems to form a natural part of this strategy. I then show how together, the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim (...) –the claim that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive –entail a further, suspicious-looking claim that I call the problematic claim. My argument then splits into two parts. In the first part, I show why the conceptualist does indeed need to reject the problematic claim. Given that this claim is jointly entailed by the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim, the conceptualist is then left with a straight choice: reject the indiscriminability claim, or reject the non-transitivity claim. In the second part, I then explain why the conceptualist should choose the latter option. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 46-48, February 2012.

It has become a truism that we live in so-called information societies where new information technologies have made information abundant. At the same time, information science has made us aware of many phenomena tied to the way we process information. This article explores a series of socio-epistemic information phenomena resulting from processes that track truth imperfectly: pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, and belief polarization. It then couples these phenomena with the hypothesis that modern information technologies may lead to their amplification so (...) as to give rise to what are called “infostorms.” This points to the need for studying further the exact relations between information technologies and such infostorms, as well as the ways we may design technologies to avoid being misled away from what we have good reasons to believe. (shrink)

The standpoint of realism has been widely used to argue in favour of, or against, particular physical theories. An analysis is made of the adequacy of such arguments, taking an argument by Einstein as a starting point.Some reflexions are given on relativism and invariance. Invariances can be seen as generators of both regularity and paradox in physics.

According to the epistemic theory of hallucination, the fundamental psychological nature of a hallucinatory experience is constituted by its being 'introspectively indiscriminable', in some sense, from a veridical experience of a corresponding type. How is the notion of introspective indiscriminability to which the epistemic theory appeals best construed? Following M. G. F. Martin, the standard assumption is that the notion should be construed in terms of negative epistemics: in particular, it is assumed that the notion should be explained in terms (...) of the impossibility that a hallucinator might possess a certain type of knowledge on a certain basis. I argue that the standard assumption is mistaken. I argue that the relevant notion of introspective indiscriminability is better construed in terms of positive epistemics: in particular, I argue that the notion is better explained by reference to the fact that it would be rational for a hallucinator positively to make a certain type of judgement, were that judgement made on a certain basis. (shrink)

There has been much recent interest in questions about epistemic norms of assertion. Is there a norm specific to assertion? Is it constitutive of the speech act? Is there a unique norm of this sort? What is its content? These are important questions, so it's understandable that they have received the attention which they have. By contrast, little attention—little separate attention, at least—has been given to parallel questions about telling: Which norm or norms govern telling, etc.? A natural explanation for (...) this disparity in interest is that it's felt generally to be obvious that there can be no significant distinction between the two types of norms, and hence no need to consider them separately. This paper challenges that general feeling. The first part argues that it's not obvious that the same norms govern assertion and telling. The second part argues that far from being obvious, this idea is mistaken: there are significant differences between the two types of norms. (shrink)

For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a ). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education institutions in dealing with such misconduct. A survey of multi-national higher education faculty was conducted to explore the perceived barriers to the implementation of academic integrity processes. It asked (...) faculty how likely some hypothetical scenarios of failures of such processes were to occur in the real world of higher education institutions. 63% of our participants perceived there to be institutional and/or faculty barriers to effectively dealing with academic misconduct. Mostly, they blamed the higher education model for this which, in the interests of mass education, has come to prioritise the need for institutions to focus more on their quantity of output as corporate business enterprises than on the integrity of their output as educators. In discussing participants’ comments, about the relationship of faculty to their employing institutions, Schein and Scheins’ ( 2016 ) theory of three levels of organisational culture was used. Participants’ comments suggested that, at the deepest level of organisational culture i.e. basic underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about beliefs and values, inadequate integrity measures have tended to become normalised. Despite the often considerable, efforts of the institutions, organisational barriers were noted which mitigate against faculty behaving professionally i.e. from doing a ‘good job’ in respect of student academic misconduct. Some blame was also placed on faculty. We argue that apparent institutional inability to effectively manage the integrity process, has potentially significant consequences for wider society. We discuss ways in which this situation might be improved including a recommendation that governments regulate this aspect of the corporate social responsibility of higher education institutions as they do other aspects, requiring that it be managed effectively. (shrink)

Epistemic relationism in the theory of assertion is the view that an assertion's epistemic propriety depends purely on the relation between the asserter and the proposition asserted. Many accounts of assertion are relationist in this sense, including the familiar knowledge, belief, and justification accounts. A notable feature of such accounts is that they give no direct importance to the role of hearer: as far as such accounts are concerned, we need make no mention of hearers in characterising an assertion's propriety (...) conditions. This paper develops an account which rejects relationism, by giving central importance to the role of hearer. The paper introduces the knowledge provision account, according to which an assertion that p is proper only if it is fit to give a hearer knowledge that p. The paper aims to show: (i) that we can understand this account in a way which does not leave it open to obvious counterexamples, (ii) that it does not reduce to any familiar relationist account, and (iii) that it carries certain advantages over familiar relationist accounts. (shrink)

In earlier work, I have argued that self-referential assertions of the form ‘this assertion is improper’ are paradoxical for the truth account of assertion. In this paper, I argue that such assertions are also paradoxical, though in a different way, for the knowledge account of assertion.

The Pythagorean women are a group of female philosophers who were followers of Pythagoras and are credited with authoring a series of letters and treatises. In both stages of the history of Pythagoreanism – namely, the fifth-century Pythagorean societies and the Hellenistic Pythagorean writings – the Pythagorean woman is viewed as an intellectual, a thinker, a teacher, and a philosopher. The purpose of this Element is to answer the question: what kind of philosopher is the Pythagorean woman? The traditional picture (...) of the Pythagorean female sage is that of an expert of the household. The author argues that the available evidence is more complex and conveys the idea of the Pythagorean woman as both an expert on the female sphere and a well-rounded thinker philosophising about the principles of the cosmos, human society, the immortality of the soul, numbers, and harmonics. (shrink)

Safety is a notion familiar to epistemologists principally because of the way in which it has been used in the attempt to cast light on the nature of knowledge. In particular, some have argued that an important constraint on knowledge is that one knows p only if one believes p safely. In this paper, I use safety for a different purpose: to cast light on the nature of assertion. I introduce what I call the safety account of assertion, according to (...) which one asserts p properly only if one asserts p safely. The central idea is that an assertion’s propriety depends on whether one could easily have asserted falsely in a similar case. I argue that the safety account is well motivated, since it neatly explains our intuitions about a wide range of assertions of different kinds. Of particular interest is the fact that the account explains our intuitions about several kinds of assertions which appear to raise problems for well-known rival accounts. (shrink)

Astyages, son of Cyaxares, now inherited the throne. A daughter was born to him, whom he called Mandane; and Astyages dreamed that she urinated so much that the urine filled his city, then went on to flood all of Asia. He consulted the dream-experts among the magi, and was alarmed by the details which he heard from them. Later, when this Mandane was already old enough for marriage, he did not give her as wife to any of the Medes who (...) were worthy of him, because he was fearful of the dream; instead he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses, who, he discovered, belonged to a good house and was mild in nature, but was still—he thought—far inferior to a Mede of even middling status. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Neurocognitive models (e.g., Schirmer & Kotz, 2006) have helped to characterize how listeners incrementally derive meaning from vocal expressions of emotion in spoken language, what neural mechanisms are involved at different processing stages, and their relative time course. But how can these insights be applied to communicative situations in which prosody serves a predominantly interpersonal function? This comment examines recent data highlighting the dynamic interplay of prosody and language, when vocal attributes serve the sociopragmatic goals of the speaker or reveal (...) interpersonal information that listeners use to construct a mental representation of what is being communicated. Our comment serves as a beacon to researchers interested in how the neurocognitive system “makes sense” of socioemotive aspects of prosody. (shrink)

Two themes, the elusiveness of wisdom and the distortion of speech, are traced through three important scenes of Herodotus' Lydian logos, the meeting of Solon and Croesus , the scene where Cyrus places Croesus on the pyre , and the advice of Croesus to Cyrus to cross the river and fight the Massagetae in their own territory . The paper discusses whether Solon is speaking indirectly at 1.29–33, unable to talk straight to Croesus about his transgressive behavior: if so, that (...) illuminates the dynamics of speech at a court. At 1.86–90 Croesus may not have fully understood what Solon earlier said to him. Cyrus may understand Croesus' report of Solon's words better than Croesus does himself. Herodotus' readers will also be uncertain what the response of Delphi will be to Croesus' indignant questioning: if a reader has failed to grasp the significance of Gyges' transgression five generations earlier, that reenacts the forgetfulness of figures in the text. At 1.207 Croesus' advice to Cyrus is of questionable wisdom: Croesus too cannot speak directly, and he has anyway learned the wrong lesson from his catastrophe, extrapolating too directly from his own experience. The conclusion suggests some reasons why Herodotus should have chosen to begin his History with Lydia, the kingdom that is on the cusp between East and West, and with Croesus, a figure that resists description in the easy formulations of Greek/barbarian discourse. (shrink)

L’enfant se trouve « placé » dans une famille d’accueil suite à des défaillances parentales graves qui produisent des effractions dans le psychisme de l’enfant. Ces effractions fragilisent le rapport à la Loi, aux interdits et laissent le champ pulsionnel se débrider sans limite. Le placement familial aura la charge d’aider l’enfant à subjectiver ces traumatismes objectifs en particulier au moment des « crises » ou des comportements à risque, insupportables ou invalidants.

In earlier work, I have argued that the self-referential assertion that “this assertion is improper” is paradoxical for the truth account of assertion, the view onwhich an assertion is proper if and only if it is true. In a recent paper in this journal, John Turri has suggested a response to the paradox: one might simply deny that in uttering “this assertion is improper” one makes a genuine assertion. In this paper, I argue that this ‘no assertion’ response does not (...) dissolve the paradox in the way Turri suggests. (shrink)

I defend, to a certain extent, the traditional view that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. The argument proceeds by considering important recent work by Benj Hellie: Hellie argues that colour perception represents ‘inexactly’, and that this results in violations of the transitivity of colour indiscriminability. I show that Hellie’s argument remains inconclusive, since he does not demonstrate conclusively that colour perception really does represent inexactly. My own argument for the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability uses inexactness instead as one horn of a (...) dilemma: the key idea is that there is a class of perceptual experiences which might plausibly be supposed either to represent inexactly or to represent exactly—but which demonstrate the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability either way. (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we possess concepts for all the objects, properties, and relations which feature in our experiences. Richard Heck has recently argued that the phenomenon of illusory experience provides us with conclusive reasons to reject this view. In this paper, I examine Heck’s argument, I explain why I think that Bill Brewer’s conceptualist response to it is ineffective, and I then outline an alternative conceptualist response which I myself endorse. My argument turns (...) on the fact that both Heck, in constructing his objection to conceptualism, and Brewer, in responding to it, miss a crucial distinction between perceptual demonstrative concepts of objects, on the one hand, and perceptual demonstrative concepts of properties, on the other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is a common contention that education done uncritically and unreflectively may serve to sustain and justify the status quo, in terms of mechanisms of cultural or racial privileging and marginalization. This article explores an argument made from within anti-oppressive education theory and advocated by theorist Kevin Kumashiro, namely that transformative education must entail altering harmful citational practices. I see two shortcomings in relation to this argument: first, its focus on discursive practice entails a prerequisite of high discursive literacy. (...) Second, it may lead to a failure to give credit to people’s intentions, risking a conflation of honest mistakes and wilful ignorance, and depriving us of theoretical nuance. While a well-argued and important call, I argue in this article that both shortcomings lead to the risk of a polarized conversation. Focusing on cultural, ethnic, and racial categorization, and using social studies as an illustration, it is suggested that applying notions from the theoretical concept of epistemic injustice may open up a space for granting nuanced credit to people’s intentions, thereby mitigating the risk of polarization. Rather than viewing attention to outcome and attention to intention as oppositional to one another, it is argued that both theoretical perspectives may benefit from the insights of the other. By applying needed context-specificity and nuance to categorizations of dominance and marginalization in individual discursive exchange, this can be done without granting priority to the experience of dominantly situated knowers. (shrink)

Niebuhr saw that several paragraphs had been lost from the beginning of the Caesar; Ziegler suggested that the lacuna extended to the end of the Alexander. Both hypotheses are confirmed, if the identification of two new fragments is admitted.At 10. 11 p. 368, Zonaras is epitomizing the text of Caes.; he recounts the Story of Caes. 60. 3, and continues: Editors leave the provenance of the passage unspecified: ‘addita sunt pauca de nomine Caesaris‘. The correction of the vulgar error might (...) perhaps be an inference of Zonaras himself—though such an original contribution to historical polemic would be unique; but the erroneous version, at least, must come from somewhere. It is not found in any of Zonaras' sources for this period, nor in any surviving book which he certainly knew. Nor is it likely to be an addition from his own general knowledge. (shrink)

Nisbet and Kraggerud make good cases for taking the ninth Epode as a dramatic recreation of the Actium campaign. Horace begins in fearful anticipation; then the crisis comes, first on land and then on sea; Antony turns to flight; and — even though some danger remains, and there is metus as well as joy at the end of the poem — the celebrations can finally begin. On this reading there remains the familiar problem of vv. 17–20: at huc frementes uerterunt (...) bis mille equos Galli canentes Caesarem, hostiliumque nauium portu latent puppes sinistrorsum citae. The first couplet clearly relates to the defection of Amyntas' Galatians, the decisive moment in the fighting on land; the second must describe the crucial battle on sea. There is no problem in portu latent. The fleet has withdrawn, and is skulking in harbour instead of fighting. But what of nauium…puppes sinistrorsum citae? The difficulty is notorious: the secondary sources do not clearly describe any movement ‘toward the left’, and it is hard to see why Horace chooses so enigmatic a phrase to capture the fighting. His audience would not make much of the topographical detail in any case: unless they had been at Actium themselves , their reaction to the words would centre on other associations — the contrast between these magnificent puppes and their undignified sideways movement; the suggestions of ill omen in sinistrorsum. (shrink)

Community engagement is increasingly recognized as a critical element of medical research, recommended by ethicists, required by research funders and advocated in ethics guidelines. The benefits of community engagement are often stressed in instrumental terms, particularly with regard to promoting recruitment and retention in studies. Less emphasis has been placed on the value of community engagement with regard to ethical good practice, with goals often implied rather than clearly articulated. This article outlines explicitly how community engagement can contribute to ethical (...) global health research by complementing existing established requirements such as informed consent and independent ethics review. The overarching and interlinked areas are respecting individuals, communities and stakeholders; building trust and social relationships; determining appropriate benefits; minimizing risks, burdens and exploitation; supporting the consent process; understanding vulnerabilities and researcher obligations; gaining permissions, approvals and building legitimacy and achieving recruitment and retention targets. (shrink)

It has become a truism that we live in so‐called information societies where new information technologies have made information abundant. At the same time, information science has made us aware of many phenomena tied to the way we process information. This article explores a series of socio‐epistemic information phenomena resulting from processes that track truth imperfectly: pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, and belief polarization. It then couples these phenomena with the hypothesis that modern information technologies may lead to their amplification so (...) as to give rise to what are called “infostorms.” This points to the need for studying further the exact relations between information technologies and such infostorms, as well as the ways we may design technologies to avoid being misled away from what we have good reasons to believe. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the name of the 19th-century English physician John Snow (1813-1858) has cropped up to a surprising extent, notably in connection with the severe cholera epidemic of 1854 in the district of Golden Square, London. It is repeatedly stated that Snow brought this epidemic of waterborne disease to an end by removing the handle of the Broad Street pump. It is also widely known that this story is a myth. Nonetheless, the Broad Street pump story as told (...) by Snow's close friend Benjamin Ward Richardson remains embedded, partly, it is argued, because of its appeal to areas of the cultural consciousness. In America, Snow and his work on the epidemiology of cholera, including the Broad Street pump story, achieved a serious status which has endured, in one form or another, to the present day. In contrast to Britain, the heroic age of public health in America coincided with the optimism of the bacteriological revolution and higher hopes for medical science. However, this rapidly changing environment exacerbated differences of opinion as to what the small and emergent specialty of epidemiology should look like, what its project was, and where it should be based. Different versions of Snow's persona came to represent basic and often conflicting conceptions of epidemiology and the status (or lack of it) of its practitioners. For many, consciously or otherwise, the removal of the Broad Street pump handle remained an individualistic triumph, a single human intervention which resembled modern medicine in providing a “cure.”. (shrink)