Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911. Edited by Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert, and Dagmar Schäfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 277. $105.

This paper examines and contextualizes rituals and beliefs surrounding the cat demon. While the demon has been briefly discussed or referenced in earlier scholarship, there as yet exists no systematic attempt to understand how it is treated in various sources. The paper approaches the complex of practices and ideas associated with the cat demon as a unique and richly informative cultural phenomenon that is suggestive of tensions relating to gender and class. The paper begins with a close examination of materials (...) surrounding the most famous and well-documented case of cat demon practice, that involving Dugu Tuo, the half- brother of Empress Dugu of the Sui, before turning to medico-religious approaches and, finally, to transformations of the supernatural or demonic cat in post-Tang materials. (shrink)

Transgressive Typologies: Constructions of Gender and Power in Early Tang China. By Rebecca Doran. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs, vol. 103. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press. Pp. viii + 260. $39.95.

The view that social kinds (e.g., money, migrant, marriage) are mind-dependent is a prominent one in the social ontology literature. However, in addition to the claim that social kinds are mind-dependent, it is often asserted that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this view social kind anti-realism. To defend their view, social kind anti-realists must accomplish two tasks. First, they must identify a dependence relation that obtains between social kinds and our mental states. Call this the (...) Dependence Task. Second, they must show that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this the Anti-Realist Task. In this paper, I consider several different ways of defining the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states. With respect to each relation, I argue that either it fails to accomplish the Dependence Task, or it fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. As such, anyone who wishes to defend social kind anti-realism must provide an alternative explanation of how social kinds depend on our mental states in a way that impugns their reality. In the absence of such an explanation, there is no reason to endorse social kind anti-realism. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

The 'Gamer's Dilemma' is the problem of why some actions occurring in video game contexts seem to have similar, albeit attenuated, kinds of moral significance to their real-world equivalents, while others do not. In this paper, I argue that much of the confusion in the literature on this problem is not ethical but metaphysical. The Gamer's Dilemma depends on a particular theory of the virtual, which I call 'inflationary', according to which virtual worlds are a metaphysical novelty generated almost exclusively (...) by video games. Actions performed in virtual worlds really belong to the kinds of action they appear to—'virtual murder' is a kind of murder. Inflationary theories are contrasted with 'deflationary' theories which, in effect, consider video games purely as systems for generating images, and thus the gamer as a consumer of media images. Inflationary theories struggle to explain why video games produce this unique metaphysical novelty; deflationary theories fail to do justice to the intuition that there is some significant difference between the gamer and the consumer of other media forms. In place of either, I sketch a theory of the gamer as performer, primarily by analogy with stage and cinema actors, which I suggest captures more of the moral complexity of the gamer's action. (shrink)

Student evaluations of teaching are ubiquitous in the academe as a metric for assessing teaching and frequently used in critical personnel decisions. Yet, there is ample evidence documenting both measurement and equity bias in these assessments. Student Evaluations of Teaching have low or no correlation with learning. Furthermore, scholars using different data and different methodologies routinely find that women faculty, faculty of color, and other marginalized groups are subject to a disadvantage in SETs. Extant research on bias on teaching evaluations (...) tend to review only the aspect of the literature most pertinent to that study. In this paper, we review a novel dataset of over 100 articles on bias in student evaluations of teaching and provide a nuanced review of this broad but established literature. We find that women and other marginalized groups do face significant biases in standard evaluations of teaching – however, the effect of gender is conditional upon other factors. We conclude with recommendations for the judicious use of SETs and avenues for future research. (shrink)

Contemporary culture trivializes the "seven deadly sins," or vices, as if they have no serious moral or spiritual implications. Glittering Vices clears this misconception by exploring the traditional meanings of gluttony, sloth, lust, and others. It offers a brief history of how the vices were compiled and an eye opening explication of how each sin manifests itself in various destructive behaviors. Readers gain practical understanding of how the vices shape our culture today and how to correctly identify and eliminate the (...) deeply rooted patterns of sin that are work in their own lives. This accessible book is essential for any reader interested in spiritual disciplines and character formation. Excerpt Very simply, a virtue (or vice) is acquired through practice repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and gradually forms our character. . . . We often need external incentives and sanctions to get us through the initial stages of the process, when our old, entrenched desires still pull us toward the opposite behavior. But with encouragement, discipline, and often a role model or mentor, practice can make things feel more natural and enjoyable as we gradually develop the internal values and desires corresponding to our outward behavior. Virtue often develops, that is, from the outside in. This is why, when we want to reform our character from vice to virtue, we often need to practice and persevere in regular spiritual disciplines and formational practices for a lengthy period of time. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's iconic exposé of the ‘myth of the given’ taught us that experience must present the world to us as normatively laden, in the sense that the contents of experience must license inferences, rule out and justify various beliefs, and rationalize actions. Somehow our beliefs must be governed by the objects as they present themselves to us. Often this requirement is cashed out using language that attributes agent-like properties to objects: we are described as ‘accountable to’ objects, while objects (...) ‘hold us’ to standards, and so forth. But such language is either deeply anti-naturalistic or trades on a set of metaphors in need of a literal translation. We offer an explanation of how the material features of the world, as received in experience, can rationally constrain our beliefs and practices—one that makes no recourse to this imagery. In particular, we examine the structure of ostensive practices (that is, practices of directing one another's attention to objects and features of the world) and the distinctive role they play in making us jointly beholden to how things actually are. (shrink)

Care workers and families often engage in deception in everyday interactions with people affected by dementia. While benevolent deception can be justified, there are often more respectful and less risky ways to help people with dementia seeking to make sense of their lives.

Many people are worried about developing dementia, fearing the losses and burdens that accompany the condition. Dementia‐specific advance directives are intended to address dementia's progressive effects, allowing individuals to express their treatment preferences for different stages of the condition. But enthusiasm for dementia‐specific advance directives should be tempered by recognition of the legal, ethical, and practical issues they raise. Dementia‐specific advance directives are a simplistic response to a complicated situation. Although they enable people to register their future care preferences, in (...) many cases, those preferences will not, and should not, determine their later care. (shrink)

I welcome the efforts described by Neal Dickert and his colleagues in “Partnering with Patients to Bridge Gaps in Consent for Acute Care Research” (Dickert et al. 2020). I am a long-time supporter...

Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges (...) but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity. (shrink)

Philosophers have often posited a foundational calling voice, such that hearing its call constitutes subjects as responsive and responsible negotiators of normative claims. I give the name ldquo;transcendental conscience to that which speaks in this founding, constitutive voice. The role of transcendental conscience is not – or not merely – to normatively bind the subject, but to constitute the possibility of the subject's being bound by any particular, contentful normative claims in the first place. I explore the ontological and temporal (...) status of transcendental conscience, using Heidegger's account of conscience in Being and Time as my textual touchstone. I ask what performative structure the call of conscience might have that would enable it to constitute normative responsiveness, and I raise some temporal conundrums surrounding this structure. I argue that it is incoherent to attempt to give a literal, chronological account of the origin of normative grip and response. I suggest that we can best understand the founding calls of conscience, not as literal events occurring in regular time, but as events that can only show up retrospectively, as occurring in an ever-receding, unlocalizable past, and that these calls can only be figured mythically and metaphorically. Appropriating a Derridean term, I claim that the voice of transcendental conscience must be that of a lsquo;ghost, whose call binds us by haunting us – a haunting that is no less transcendentally necessary for its inability to be translated into a literal historical event. (shrink)

In the article “On Avoiding Deep Dementia,” Norman Cantor defends a position that I suspect many readers share. In my years writing and speaking on advance directives and dementia, I've found that most people support one of two positions. They are convinced either that advance choices should control the treatment dementia patients receive or that the welfare of a person with dementia should sometimes take priority over earlier choices. As Cantor points out, I support the second position.I agree with several (...) of Cantor's arguments. Where Cantor and I part ways is over the degree of control that advance directives should exert over the care of persons with moderate dementia. Although I don't welcome the prospect of living with dementia, I believe that people with the condition should be represented in the debate over treatment standards. It's not surprising that many, perhaps most, people unaffected by dementia think that their preferences should control the care they would receive as dementia patients. But people taking this position are neglecting the concerns and interests they may have as dementia patients. (shrink)

Contadini—peasant farmers—are central figures of belonging in a Northern Italian winegrowing community. The skills and languages in which contadini are fluent and who is recognized as one of them organize the values attached to various roles in this world. I show how the immigrant vineyard workers who maintain local landscapes engage with this identity, producing new selves through the labor of caring for vines. Earning the title of contadino allows some immigrants to cross social boundaries usually policed by strict ethnic (...) lines in Italy, generating recognition and benefits unavailable from the state. At the same time, Italian employers’ relation to the land changes as they hand off ways of knowing and doing to categorical outsiders. ‘Traditional’ labor and products are what pull these two groups into a collaborative encounter, but rather than simply keeping the past in practice, immigrants and Italians also generate new forms of personhood and value. (shrink)

Pragmatism has enjoyed a major resurgence in Anglo-American philosophy over the course of the last decade or two, and Robert Brandom’s work – particularly his 1994 tome Making it Explicit (MIE) – has been at the vanguard of this resurgence (Brandom 1994).2 But pragmatism comes in several surprisingly distinct flavours. Authors such as Hubert Dreyfus find their roots in certain parts of Heidegger and in phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, and they privilege embodied, preconceptual skills as opposed to discursive practices as (...) the basic sites of meaning and agency (Dreyfus 1991; Dreyfus 1992; Todes 2001). With strong inheritances from Dewey and Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty has championed a pragmatism whose core emphasis is on the rejection of transcendental truth and high metaphysical theorizing (Rorty 1982), and this anti-theoretical banner has been taken up by several prominent ethicists, among others. For his part, Brandom, who purports to offer a systematic theory of language and meaning grounded on a foundation of pragmatic normative relationships between speakers, looks back instead to Sellars and Quine for his stripe of pragmatism. Near the start of MIE, he writes: The explanatory strategy pursued here is to begin with an account of social practices, identify the particular structure they must exhibit in order to qualify as specifically linguistic practices, and then consider what different sorts of semantic contents those practices can confer on states, performances, and expressions caught up in them in suitable ways. (Brandom 1994, xiii) Despite his professed pragmatism, Brandom is no foe of high theory or metanarratives, and he is vastly more interested in language and theoretical reason than in the rest of human bodily activity. For Brandom, inferentially articulated discourse forms an autonomous domain of normativity, while our bodily encounters with the world in perception and in action serve as language entry and exit points respectively.. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of art and aesthetics is the application of the methods of experimental philosophy to questions about art and aesthetics. By taking a scientific approach to experiences with art and aesthetic phenomena, it is continuous with the longstanding research program in psychology called empirical aesthetics. However, it is also continuous with traditional research in philosophy of art and aesthetics because it is centered on many of the same timeless questions. Like other branches of experimental philosophy, such as experimental moral (...) philosophy, it involves gathering data using empirical methods and bringing analyses of the data to bear on theorizing on a wide range of topics in philosophy of art and aesthetics: definition of art, ontology of art, aesthetic properties, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic adjectives, morality and aesthetics, and emotion and art. In this entry, we briefly examine the history prior to the current movement’s emergence in the 2010s, extensively survey extant works in this movement on each of the topics, and consider methodological debates regarding this movement. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 4-6, March‐April 2022.

Charles S. Peirce’s and Sigmund Freud’s theories may be used to interpret Jean Cocteau’s film La Belle et la Bête (1946). This film has a specific set of codes which connote its filmic language. Cocteau uses fetishistic objects as symbols and icons to reflect the psychological meaning of the film’s narrative. Peirce’s icons and symbols include the connection a person may make through the conventions and expressions of language a person links with the object or idea being observed. Peirce’s semiotic (...) theory functions as a theory of communication. His theory refocuses on culture. Freud’s theories can be linked with ideas produced by Peirce in forming sign relations with the interpretation of the film and the role of imagination in the film. Especially important are Freud’s ideas of repression, conscious and unconscious as they relate to Cocteau’s filmic narrative and the film’s main character Belle. (shrink)

Moral perception, as the term is used in moral theory, is the perception of normatively contoured objects and states of affairs, where that perception enables us to engage in practical reason and judgment concerning these particulars. The idea that our capacity for moral perception is a crucial component of our capacity for moral reasoning and agency finds its most explicit origin in Aristotle, for whom virtue begins with the quality of perception. The focus on moral perception within moral theory has (...) made a comeback in the last few decades, especially in the hands of self-proclaimed neo-Aristotelians such as John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Nancy Sherman. For these writers, our perceptual capacities are not static, and the laborious honing of our perceptual skills is a crucial moral task. On this picture, as Nancy Sherman puts it, “How to see becomes as much a matter of inquiry as what to do.”Moral particularists—including but not restricted to the neo-Aristotelians—have emphasized the centrality of moral perception to moral agency and judgment, as a corrective to moral theories that treat deliberation in terms of universal principles as the privileged keystone of moral agency. (shrink)

Background: Since presenteeism is related to numerous negative health and work-related effects, measures are required to reduce it. There are initial indications that how an organization deals with health has a decisive influence on employees’ presenteeism behavior.Aims: The concept of health-promoting collaboration was developed on the basis of these indications. As an extension of healthy leadership it includes not only the leader but also co-workers. In modern forms of collaboration, leaders cannot be assigned sole responsibility for employees’ health, since the (...) leader is often hardly visible or there is no longer a clear leader. The study examines the concept of health-promoting collaboration in relation to presenteeism. Relationships between health-promoting collaboration, well-being and work ability are also in focus, regarding presenteeism as a mediator.Methods: The data comprise the findings of a quantitative survey of 308 employees at a German university of applied sciences. Correlation and mediator analyses were conducted.Results: The results show a significant negative relationship between health-promoting collaboration and presenteeism. Significant positive relationships were found between health-promoting collaboration and both well-being and work ability. Presenteeism was identified as a mediator of these relationships.Conclusion: The relevance of health-promoting collaboration in reducing presenteeism was demonstrated and various starting points for practice were proposed. Future studies should investigate further this newly developed concept in relation to presenteeism. (shrink)

We can understand objectivity, in the broadest sense of the term, as epistemic accountability to the real. Since at least the 1986 publication of Sandra Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism, so-called standpoint epistemologists have sought to build an understanding of such objectivity that does not essentially anchor it to a dislocated, ‘view from nowhere’ stance on the part of the judging subject. Instead, these theorists have argued that a proper understanding of objectivity must recognize that different agential standpoints offer (...) different access to objective truths, with some standpoints holding better epistemic potential than others. As Harding puts it, standpoint epistemology calls for “a critical evaluation of which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims” so as to identify those standpoints that “produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations” (1991, 142, 149). Which standpoints enable the most objectivity with respect to a particular inquiry is, for the standpoint theorists, always an empirical at least as much as a conceptual question; it requires attention to the actual, material relationship between knowers, knowledge practices, and objects known. Standpoint epistemology was developed primarily by self-identiªed feminist epistemologists. Virtually all developments of standpoint episte-. (shrink)

Media use is a pervasive aspect of children’s home experiences but is often not considered in studies of the home learning environment. Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other literacy-enhancing activities like shared reading and decrease the quantity and quality of caregiver-child interaction. Thus, the current study asked whether media use is associated with gains in children’s language and literacy skills both at a single time point and across a school year (...) and whether age moderates any association. Children (N = 1583) were from preschool through third grade classrooms and language and literacy skills were measured in the fall and spring of the school year. Parents reported how much time their child spends using media on a typical school day. Regression analyses showed that using 4 hours or more of media was related to lower literacy gains, but not to language gains. Multilevel models conducted as a robustness check showed that this effect did not hold when accounting for classroom. In neither set of models was there an interaction between age and media use. Single-time-point models did show some associations that did not manifest in more stringent models, highlighting the limitations of correlational designs that do not have measures of children’s skills over time. Given the concern and popular press coverage around children’s media use, it is important to acknowledge nonsignificant effects in this domain. These nonsignificant associations suggest that societal fears around children’s media use may be exaggerated. Notably, however, characteristics of children’s media use, like educational content or adult co-use, may moderate any effects. The relation between media use and language and literacy growth did not differ across the age range investigated suggesting that, within this range, younger children are not more vulnerable to detrimental effects. (shrink)

The history of Canadian parks systems, within the realm of environmental history, has been deeply affected by contemporary social, environmental, and political beliefs. The rhetoric of human domination over nature and the inherent separation of the two was entrenched throughout historical works on Canadian parks in the early to mid- twentieth century. The liberalization of history within the past forty years has served to shift this trend. The inclusion of scientific knowledge in historical research, the limitation of past prejudices and (...) biases concerning nature and humanity, and the questioning of political policies affecting nature have aided in the growth of a body of historical research and interpretation that questions past perceptions of the natural. The historiographical exploration of parks history offers researchers an exciting opportunity to identify historical factors impacting the practice of environmental history while also discerning and encouraging future trends in environmental history. Using recent historical publications on Canadian parks history as examples, this paper seeks to both uncover the historical factors impacting past historical practice and acknowledge the major philosophical and practical shifts in historical practice that have fostered an exciting new body of work in environmental history. In questioning what it means to be human, what it means to be Canadian, and what the relationship between humanity and nature is and can be, increasingly nuanced historical work offers readers and historians new realms of exploration – both philosophically and practically. (shrink)

Ces deux ouvrages, de format différent, partagent la volonté de faire sortir de l’ombre des trajectoires de femmes à la croisée de la vie publique et de la vie privée. Ils participent à l’essor d’une démarche de type prosopographique qui s’affirme en ce moment avec la publication en trois volumes aux Éditions des femmes du Dictionnaire universel des créatrices (sous la direction de Béatrice Didier, Antoinette Fouque et Mireille Calle-Gruber, 2013) et celle, prévue en 2015, du Dictionnaire des...

Ce livre destiné aux étudiants des universités anglaises ou américaines constitue le 41e volume d’une série consacrée à l’histoire européenne. La série s’ouvre depuis une décennie aux spécialistes de l’histoire des femmes et du genre, puisqu’elle a publié dès 2000 la deuxième édition du livre de Merry Wiesner sur l’époque moderne et, plus récemment, les travaux de Rachel Fuchs sur le genre et la pauvreté au xixe siècle, ainsi que ceux de Katherine Crawford sur les sexualités européennes entre...

In this chapter, DeYoung looks at the culturally and historically recognized virtue of courage. She specifically questions how we should think of all the pictures of courage and where we might look for Christlike examples of courage. To do this, DeYoung explores courage as it relates to fear and love and then delves into how courage can be a Christian practice.

This paper interprets von Trier’s Dogville as a suspension of belief that provokes a re-evaluation of contemporary moral values. Reading Dogville through the Stoic concept of phantasms and Nietzsche’s perspectivism, I analyze the plot and visual techniques as revealing how we form, evaluate, and re-evaluate our beliefs based on changing impressions and shifting perspectives. The philosophy of the Stoics and Nietzsche and the visual techniques of Dogville demonstrate that the recognition of the artificiality of appearances serves a moral purpose by (...) forcing us to examine our beliefs more deeply. In this way, von Trier presents film as a powerful art form for suspending and evaluating how we see and understand the world. (shrink)

This paper applies Karl Jaspers’ and Martin Heidegger’s accounts of transcendence to their descriptions of Van Gogh’s art. I will contrast Jaspers’ more vertical account of immanent transcendence to Heidegger’s horizontal one. This difference between their separate understandings of transcendence manifests itself in their estimations of the significance of Van Gogh’s art. Using phenomenology to understand Van Gogh’s art in light of immanent transcendence, moreover, illuminates a new understanding of transcendence as the ‘beyond’ that is always already here in the (...) immanent and reveals the ability of an object to point beyond itself. Both of these concepts are at work in Van Gogh’s art as well as modern art in general as the expansion of reality through new sight. Immanent transcendence and Van Gogh’s art are different but interconnected ways of rethinking experience beyond the limits of positivism and the myth of the given. Van Gogh’s art thus embodies a sensible world transformed. In particular, Van Gogh’s landscapes and still life series suggest the inexhaustibility of the things we so often overlook in our everyday experience. (shrink)