The central thesis of Susan Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family—that the ideology of the traditional family is the linchpin of contemporary gender inequality in the US—remains significant more than a quarter-century after the book's publication. On a political register, Okin's insistence on structural analysis of gender inequality is an important corrective to recent mainstream feminist emphasis on individual women's choices. On an academic register, her work reveals the incoherence of scholarly classifications of feminist theories as “liberal feminist” or (...) “radical feminist” by confounding such distinctions. I argue that her thesis is best understood in relation to the early radical feminism of Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate, a book Okin praised. Placing Okin's work in the context of its radical roots clarifies her “linchpin thesis,” but also reveals the limitations of her argument: in her emphasis on what Iris Young has termed the “distributive paradigm of justice,” Okin unnecessarily adopts a much narrower definition of the family than did Mitchell, and overestimates the influence of economic vulnerability after divorce on women's capacity to exit marriage. I suggest modifications to her theory, and conclude by showing the continuing relevance of her argument for analyzing recent legal, policy, and demographic shifts. (shrink)

Hurley here revives a classical idea about rationality in a modern framework, by developing analogies between the structure of personality and the structure of society in the context of contemporary work in philosophy of mind, ethics, decision theory and social choice theory. The book examines the rationality of decisions and actions, and illustrates the continuity of philosophy of mind on the one hand, and ethics and jurisprudence on the other. A major thesis of the book is that arguments drawn from (...) the philosophy of mind may be used to undermine widely-held subjectivist positions in ethics and politico-economic theory. The work is inspired by the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Davidson, but goes on to connect their arguments about interpretation with formal work in decision theory and social choice theory, and with the theory of adjudication. (shrink)

S. L. Hurley's ambitious work brings these two areas of lively debate into overdue contact with each other.

From my Consciousness in Action, ch. 2; see Consciousness in Action for bibligraphy. This chapter revises material from "Kant on Spontaneity and the Myth of the Giving", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1993-94, pp. 137-164, and "Myth Upon Myth", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1996, vol. 96, pp. 253-260.

In this important book, Susan Hurley sheds new light on consciousness by examining its relationships to action from various angles. She assesses the role of agency in the unity of a conscious perspective, and argues that perception and action are more deeply interdependent than we usually assume. A standard view conceives perception as input from world to mind and action as output from mind to world, with the serious business of thought in between. Hurley criticizes this picture, and considers (...) how the interdependence of perceptual experience and agency at the personal level (of mental contents and norms) may emerge from the subpersonal level (of underlying causal processes and complex dynamic feedback systems). Her two-level view has wide implications, for topics that include self-consciousness, the modularity of mind, and the relations of mind to world. The self no longer lurks hidden somewhere between perceptual input and behavioral output, but reappears out in the open, embodied and embedded in its environment. Hurley traces these themes from Kantian and Wittgensteinian arguments through to intriguing recent work in neuropsychology and in dynamic systems approaches to the mind, providing a bridge from mainstream philosophy to work in other disciplines. Consciousness in Action is unique in the range of philosophical and scientific work it draws on, and in the deep criticism it offers of centuries-old habits of thought. (shrink)

Brewer’s Perception and Reason argues, from familiar scenarios of duplicate environments and switching, that a subject’s perceptual experiences must provide reasons for her empirical beliefs. Only perceptual experience can tie reference down to a thing as opposed to its duplicate, and this tying down must be a matter of giving the subject reasons that she can recognize as such. Moreover, such reasons require conceptual contents.

This book shows the Emersonian arc in environmental ethics and nature writing extending into contemporary discussions of those topics. Dunston connects Emerson’s nature literacy and natural philosophy to contemporary forms of eco-feminism, living systems theory, Native American science, Asian philosophy, and environmental activism.

I ARGUE THAT WE RECEIVE PLEASURE FROM TRAGEDIES BECAUSE WE ARE PLEASED TO FIND OURSELVES RESPONDING IN AN UNPLEASANT WAY TO HUMAN SUFFERING AND INJUSTICE. THE PLEASURE IS THUS A METARESPONSE, AND REFLECTS FEELINGS WHICH ARE AT THE BASIS OF MORALITY. THIS HELPS EXPLAIN WHY TRAGEDY IS SUPPOSED TO BE A HIGHER ART FORM THAN COMEDY, AND PROVIDES A NEW WAY OF SEEING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MORALITY OF AN ARTWORK AND ITS VALUE.

Certain empirical results suggest a way of challenging two natural and widespread assumptions about the mind. One assumption is about the relations between perception and action. This shows up in the widespread conception of perception and action in terms of input and output, respectively. Perception is conceived as input from world to mind and action is conceived as output from mind to world. The other assumption is about the relations between mind and world. It influences various opposed views about whether (...) the contents of the mind are in principle independent of the outside world. (shrink)

From my Consciousness in Action, ch. 2; see Consciousness in Action for bibligraphy. This chapter revises material from "Kant on Spontaneity and the Myth of the Giving", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1993-94, pp. 137-164, and "Myth Upon Myth", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1996, vol. 96, pp. 253-260.

This original and authoritative book offers a first-ever attempt to define a poetics of the editing arts. It proposes a new field of editing studies, in which the 'ideal editor' can be understood in relation to the long-theorised author and reader. The book's premise is that editing, like other forms of 'making', is mostly invisible and can only be brought into full view through a comparative analysis that includes the insights of practitioners. The argument, laid down in careful layers, is (...) supported by a panoramic historical narrative that tracks the shifts in textual authority from religious and secular institutions to the romanticised self of the digital present. The dangers posed by the anti-editing rhetoric of this hybrid romanticism are confronted head-on. To the traditional perception of editing as the imposition of closure, A Poetics of Editing adds a perspective on a dynamic process with a sense of the possible. (shrink)

China has undergone a media revolution that has transformed the domestic context for making foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The commercialization of the mass media has changed the way leaders and publics interact in the process of making foreign policy. As they compete with one another, the new media naturally try to appeal to the tastes of their potential audiences. Editors make choices about which stories to cover based on their judgments about which ones will resonate best with (...) audiences. In China today, that means a lot of stories about Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, the topics that are the objects of Chinese popular nationalism. The publicity given these topics makes them domestic political issues because they are potential focal points for elite dis-agreement and mass collective action, and thereby constrains the way China' leaders and diplomats deal with them. Even relatively minor events involving China' relations with Japan, Taiwan, or the United States become big news, and therefore relations with these three governments must be carefully handled by the politicians in the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Because of the Internet, it is impossible for Party censors to screen out news from Japan, Taiwan or the United States that might upset the public. Common knowledge of such news forces officials to react to every slight, no matter how small. Foreign policy makers feel especially constrained by nationalist public opinion when it comes to its diplomacy with Japan. Media marketization and the Internet have helped make Japan China' most emotionally charged international relationship. (shrink)

The 2008 financial crisis has raised serious ethical questions about behaviors associated with the free market system and the effectiveness of undergraduate business ethics education. We offer opposing interpretations of the crisis, a “Markets Work” and a “Critical” perspective, in order to provide students with an opportunity to examine their ethical assumptions. We frame our discussion around legitimacy; therefore, we utilize an institutional theory lens to frame the processes by which financial organizations are rewarded with social legitimacy for using “proper” (...) structures and following “appropriate” procedures and punished when they do not. By presenting these two opposing narratives of the crisis, we provide a richer framework for discussing the crisis and relating it to the larger issue of corporate malfeasance. We draw upon a wealth of readily available, easily accessible material. We identify films, readings, and provide notes that may use to set the direction and tenor of classroom discussion. (shrink)

In 1946, Tom Brock spent part of his summer dumping mustard gas bombs off a barge into the Atlantic Ocean. Brock was a civilian employed by the United States Army Transport Service in Charleston, South Carolina. His job was to dispose of surplus bombs and drums filled with mustard gas. Sulphur mustard, commonly called “mustard gas,” can take several forms: a liquid, a solid, or a vapour. Mustard gas, named for its mustard-like color and smell, is a vesicant that is (...) toxic to humans and causes blistering and burns, affecting the lungs, eyes, and skin. Brock recalled that he and the soldiers enjoyed watching the occasional bomb explode as it sunk into the water. “We thought it was fun,” explained Brock. “I was 18 or 19 years old. We weren’t scared. We didn’t fear any explosive. We thought we were immortal.” Later that summer he was required to guard a barge of bombs that were leaking mustard gas, which looked to him like hot molasses. Due to the known health risks, Brock was told to wear a protective suit and gas mask. However, it was a hot day so he loosened the straps around his legs. As a result, enormous blisters developed, swelling out like a balloon from his toes to his knees. His summer job was no longer fun as he experienced firsthand the health hazards of exposure to mustard gas. (shrink)

In response to Frontiers’ 2020 Call for Papers on “Stereotypes and Intercultural Relations: Interdisciplinary Integration, New Approaches, and New Contexts,” my paper integrates the scientific study of stereotypes with a literary-theatrical exploration of stereotyping. The focus is on Tibor Egervari’s post-Auschwitz adaptation of Shakespeare’s anti-Semitic comedy The Merchant of Venice, with a very brief look at his related work on Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and his 1998 collaboration with conductor Georg Tintner on a touring production of composer Viktor (...) Ullmann’s and librettist Peter Kien’s one-act opera, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death’s Refusal, composed in the “model” concentration camp Terezín, in 1943–1944. Egervari’s theater art critically deconstructs what he calls “the Old Jew” stereotype in specific ways highly readable using the Stereotype Content Model and Behavior from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes map. Theater performance can sometimes embody the forceful dynamic traced by the BIAS map, from cognition to affect to behavior. Egervari’s original adapation, which sets The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz, reveals this dynamic clearly. My interdisciplinary study of Egervari’s theatrical-cultural work validates the SCM and BIAS map for literary studies and interprets the Shylock stereotype in the terms of those models and through the lens of Egervari’s anti-Nazi adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant. (shrink)

Late Tokugawa society and the crisis of community -- Before the Kojikiden : the divine age narrative in Tokugawa Japan -- Motoori Norinaga : discovering Japan -- Ueda Akinari : history and community -- Fujitani Mitsue : the poetics off community -- Tachibana Moribe : cosmology and community -- National literature, intellectual history, and the new Kokugaku -- Conclusion : imagined Japan(s).

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1995, given by Susan Hurley, an American philosopher.

This research study was an interpretive inquiry into the experience of contemporary peacekeepers healing from trauma. Ten contemporary peacekeepers were interviewed who have sought treatment from trauma resulting from deployments to Somalia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. A thematic analysis of the text was undertaken, in which themes emerged to document and understand the ways in which contemporary peacekeepers heal from trauma. Narratives from the transcribed interviews were reviewed with the participants and reflective journaling by the researcher provided further clarification (...) of the data to understand the experience. The peacekeepers’ descriptions of the situations of their bodies in time, space and relation provided a fresh way into understanding the embodied nature of healing from trauma. Three overarching themes: the centrality of brotherhood and grieving loss in the military family; the centrality of time and the body in healing from trauma; and the military response as betrayal and creating trauma from within emerged from the inquiry which will contribute to more effective practice guidelines for the care of contemporary peacekeepers healing from trauma. (shrink)

This essay examines the risks of racialized science as revealed in the American mustard gas experiments of World War II. In a climate of contested beliefs over the existence and meanings of racial differences, medical researchers examined the bodies of Japanese American, African American, and Puerto Rican soldiers for evidence of how they differed from whites.

Why is neural activity in a particular area expressed as experience of red rather than green, or as visual experience rather than auditory? Indeed, why does it have any conscious expression at all? These familiar questions indicate the explanatory gap between neural activity and ‘what it’s like’-- qualities of conscious experience. The comparative explanatory gaps, intermodal and intramodal, can be separated from the absolute explanatory gap and associated zombie issues--why does neural activity have any conscious expression at all?. Here I (...) focus on comparative gaps: why is neural activity in a given area expressed as this type of experience rather than that type of experience? (shrink)

We all know about the vehicle/content distinction (see Dennett 1991a, Millikan 1991, 1993). We shouldn't confuse properties represented in content with properties of vehicles of content. In particular, we shouldn't confuse the personal and subpersonal levels. The contents of the mental states of subject/agents are at the personal level. Vehicles of content are causally explanatory subpersonal events or processes or states. We shouldn't suppose that the properties of vehicles must be projected into what they represent for subject/agents, or vice versa. (...) This would be to confuse the personal and subpersonal levels. (shrink)

Dandruff is a common scalp condition, which frequently causes psychological distress in those affected. Dandruff is considered to be caused by an interplay of several factors. However, the pathogenesis of dandruff remains under‐investigated, especially with respect to the contribution of the hair follicle. As the hair follicle exhibits unique immune‐modulatory properties, including the creation of an immunoinhibitory, immune‐privileged milieu, we propose a novel hypothesis taking into account the role of the hair follicle. We hypothesize that the changes and imbalance of (...) yeast and bacterial species, along with increasing proinflammatory sebum by‐products, leads to the activation of immune response and inflammation. Hair follicle keratinocytes may then detect these changes in scalp microbiota resulting in the recruitment of leukocytes to the inflammation site. These changes in the scalp skin immune‐microenvironment may impact hair follicle immune privilege status, which opens new avenues into exploring the role of the hair follicle in dandruff pathogenesis. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/mEZEznCYtNs. (shrink)

An ethnographic field study about the informed consent process in investigational drug trials for seriously ill persons with hepatitis C suggests that nurses and physicians referred to these trials as giving treatment, even though they involved placebos. Interview data and informed consent documents contained frequent references to the term `treatment trial' or `treatment'. Although these findings were unexpected and not the original focus of our study, we consider them in the light of an extensive literature on the `therapeutic misconception' that (...) has been described among physicians and patients with AIDS and other serious illnesses. We also suggest that certain organizational and professional characteristics of nursing and medicine reinforce this tendency to refer to the trials as treatment. Implications for further research are provided. (shrink)