Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Labor's historic mission, by Brian Ellis, Pamphleteer series No. 1, Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The swerve: How the renaissance began, by Stephen Greenblatt, Publisher The Bodley Head, London 2011.

Ives, Rosslyn When over two hundred people gathered in Amsterdam in 1952 and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union, they had available to them a range of words to describe their non-religious worldview; among them atheist, ethicist, freethinker, humanist, rationalist and secularist. Why then, did those at the inaugural congress chose 'Humanism' over all the other available options?

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Murphy's law and the pursuit of happiness: A history of the civil celebrant movement, by Dally Messenger III, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne 2012. $35 p and p.

Ives, Rosslyn For thousands of years religions have been the main source of answers to life's 'big questions': Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? How shall we live?

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The age of genius: The seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury 2016, $34.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically, by Peter Singer, Text Publishing Melbourne 2015.

"What does it really mean to "be undocumented," particularly in the contemporary United States? Political philosophers, policymakers and others often define the term "undocumented migrant" legalistically-that is, in terms of lacking legal authorization to live and work in one's current country of residence. Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice challenges such a pure "legalistic understanding" by arguing that being undocumented should not always be conceptualized along such lines. To be socially undocumented, it argues, is to possess a real, visible, and (...) embodied social identity that does not always track one's actual legal status in the United States. By integrating a descriptive/phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity with a normative/political account of how the oppression with which it is associated ought to be dealt with as a matter of social justice, this book offers a new vision of immigration ethics. It addresses concrete ethical challenges associated with immigration, such as the question of whether open borders are morally required, the militarization of the Mexico-U.S. border, the perilous journey that many Mexican and Central American migrants undertake to get to the United States, the difficult experiences of many socially undocumented women who cross U.S. borders to seek prenatal care while visibly pregnant, and more"--. (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Arguably, by Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Books London, 2011.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The god argument: The case against religion and for humanism, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury, London 2013. $30.

Kant claims that an intuitive understanding—such as God would possess—could cognize things in themselves. This claim has prompted many interpreters of Kant's theoretical philosophy to propose that things in themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. In contrast, I argue that Kant's theoretical philosophy does not endorse the common proposal that all things in themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. Instead, Kant's theoretical philosophy maintains that things in themselves might or might not correspond (...) to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. I then consider whether Kant's moral philosophy and theory of reflecting judgment might provide alternative grounds for claiming that we should regard things in themselves as corresponding to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. I argue that Kant's moral philosophy does not provide such grounds, but his theory of reflecting judgment does. Thus, interpretations of Kant's transcendental idealism should attend to the differences between Kant's theoretical philosophy, moral philosophy, and theory of reflecting judgment in assessing the relationship between intuitive understanding and things in themselves. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe novel coronavirus is linked to increases in emotional distress and may be particularly problematic for those with pre-existing mental and physical conditions, such as chronic pain and posttraumatic stress disorder. However, little empirical research has been published on resilience factors in these individuals. The present study aims to examine authenticity as a resilience factor among those with chronic pain and/or PTSD.MethodsPrior to the national response to the pandemic, participants were screened for pain-related disability and PTSD symptoms, and on the (...) basis of those responses were categorized into one of four groups: healthy, chronic pain only, PTSD only, or comorbid chronic pain and PTSD. During the CV-19 pandemic, participants responded again to the ODI and PCL-5, in addition to the Wood Authenticity Scale, Brief Pain Inventory, and items related to the CV-19 pandemic.ResultsA total of 110 participants, aged 42.19, completed the survey during the pandemic. The comorbid group endorsed higher levels of CV-19 Threat and Impact compared to all other groups. Authenticity moderated this relationship relevant to CV-19 Threat among those in the chronic pain only group, and not in any other group.ConclusionThe comorbid group endorsed higher levels of CV-19 Threat and Impact compared to all other groups. Importantly, greater authenticity was associated with less CV-19 Threat in the chronic pain only group, and not in any other group. The present study also highlights the importance of engaging authentically for those with chronic pain during the pandemic. (shrink)

People are unable to report how they decide whether to move backwards or forwards to catch a ball. When asked to imagine how their angle of elevation of gaze would change when they caught a ball, most people are unable to describe what happens although their interception strategy is based on controlling changes in this angle. Just after catching a ball, many people are unable to recognise a description of how their angle of gaze changed during the catch. Some people (...) confidently choose incorrect descriptions that would guarantee failure of interception demonstrating unconscious knowledge co-existing with systematically different conscious beliefs. Where simple solutions to important evolutionary problems exist, unconscious perception needs to be impervious to conscious beliefs. (shrink)

Contemporary literary theory takes truth and meaning to be dependent on shared conventions in a community of discourse and views authors’ intentions as irrelevant to interpretation. This view, argues Reed Way Dasenbrock, owes much to Anglo-American analytic philosophy as developed in the 1950s and 1960s by such thinkers as Austin and Kuhn, but it ignores more recent work by philosophers like Davidson and Putnam, who have mounted a counterattack on this earlier conventionalism. This book draws on current analytic philosophy (...) to resuscitate the notion of objective truth and intentionalist models of meaning and interpretation, thereby moving beyond the antifoundationalism of postmodern theory. It addresses the work of Rorty and Fish as representative of literary conventionalism, discusses the futility of Derrida’s anti-intentionalism, and shows how poststructuralist thinkers like Althusser and Foucault have contributed to the "new thematics" of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation that dominates literary theory today. Examining the counter-arguments of conventionalists to have their theory judged by its consequences, Dasenbrock shows how damaging this antiobjectivism and anti-intentionalism have been for literary studies. (shrink)

Donald Davidson is probably the most eminent living analytic philosopher, and his writings in philosophy of language and philosophy of action have shaped much of the recent work in both these fields. However, despite the obvious shared concerns of literary theory and these aspects of philosophy, up to this point literary theorists have not paid much attention to Davidson's ideas or have only known about them through the interpretations of other philosophers like Richard Rorty. Literary theorists have seen more relevance (...) to their concerns in Continental philosophy and, among analytic philosophers, in the essentially anti-analytic work of J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein than in the harder tradition of analytic philosophy—more concerned with logic and philosophy of science—represented by the work of Donald Davidson. _Literary Theory after Davidson _challenges both views, stressing the variety of ways in which Davidson's thought can contribute to the development of literary theory. Davidson himself has contributed a new essay to the collection that explores the interrelations between his theories of language and literature. (shrink)

This article examines the role of emotions during insurgent conditions by focusing on the Nicaraguan revolution, in particular the two-year period (1977–1979) leading to the overthrow of the Somoza regime. Based on an analysis of testimonial accounts from an oral history volume, ¡Y Se Armó La Runga!, and a NVivo-10 content analysis of testimonies therein, it sets out to make a case for the significance of hope as a dominant emotion during guerrilla offensives. The manuscript answers the following questions: 1) (...) What is the role of hope during guerrilla offensives?; 2) what other emotions are in play during these events?; and 3) in what ways does hope combine with other emotions to maintain insurgent activism? In addition to defining and coding eleven negative and positive emotions (analyzed as secondary emotions), it evaluates the varied relationships these have to hope. To accomplish the latter varied emotion chains are identified for each respective secondary emotion. (shrink)

Plato seems to have been pessimistic about how most people stand with regard to virtue. However, unlike the Stoics, he did not conclude that most people are vicious. Rather, as we know from discussions across several dialogues, he countenanced decent ethical conditions that fall short of genuine virtue, which he limited to the philosopher. Despite Plato's obvious interest in this issue, commentators rarely follow his lead by investigating in detail such conditions in the dialogues. When scholars do investigate what kind (...) of virtue, if any, Plato thinks is open to non-philosophers, they typically look to the Republic. But in the Republic Plato sets out an ideal city; therefore, the virtue available to non-philosophers there is likely different from what he thinks is available to them in the real world. If we want to determine Plato's thoughts about the virtue of actual non-philosophers, we must look elsewhere. In this paper, I set my sights on the Phaedo. (shrink)

Some disability rights advocates criticise prenatal testing and selective abortion on the grounds that these practices express negative attitudes towards existing persons with disabilities. Disability rights advocates also commonly criticise and oppose physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia on the same grounds. Despite the structural and motivational similarity of these two kinds of arguments, there is no literature comparing and contrasting their relative merits and the merits of responses to them with respect to each of these specific medical practices. This paper (...) undertakes such a comparison. My thesis is that a number of potentially significant weaknesses of the expressivist argument against reproductive technologies are avoided when the argument is used against PAS. In particular, I try to show that three common criticisms of the expressivist argument applied to reproductive technologies, whatever merit they have, have even less merit when they are used to reply to the expressivist argument applied to PAS. This is important because the expressivist argument applied to the end of life scenario does not get as much attention as the argument applied to the beginning of life scenario, and yet it has a relatively stronger position. (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Bigger or better: Australia's population debate, by Ian Lowe, University of Queensland Press, 2012, $34.95.

Ives, Rosslyn On February 12, Humanists and many others around the world will celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday. We do this because his most significant contribution to human knowledge, as set out in On Origin of the Species, is the evidence and arguments for evolution by natural selection. By taking a scientific approach, Darwin along with many others changed the way humans understand their origins and place in the biosphere. We are not the product of special creation, but rather naturally (...) evolved beings, fully interdependent with the rest of the natural world. (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn The emergence of freethought in Western Europe and its colonies seems to be an almost inevitable outcome of the many changes that had occurred during the preceding centuries - changes that expanded knowledge and understanding about the place of humans in the scheme of things.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Forgotten war, by Henry Reynolds, NewSouth, 2013. $29.99.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Reclaiming Epicurus, by Luke Slattery, Penguin Specials, 2012. $9.99.

I argue that Aristotle believes that virtue comes in degrees. After dispatching with initial concerns for the view, I argue that we should accept it because Aristotle conceives of heroic virtue as the highest degree of virtue. I support this interpretation of heroic virtue by considering and rejecting alternative readings, then showing that heroic virtue characterized as the highest degree of virtue is consistent with the doctrine of the mean.