I shall argue that Hegel’s concept [Begriff] has emancipatory power [Macht]. In the Science of Logic, Hegel rejects both essentialist conceptions of identity and historical necessity, and he shows that conceiving [begreifen] (or ‘grasping’) is an anticipatory self-movement of thought. The relation between ‘essence’ and ‘concept’ in Book II of the Science of Logic is unlike the relation between ‘essence’ and ‘form’ in Plato to Kant. I will defend this claim not by comparing Hegel’s ‘essence [Wesen]’ with similar categories in (...) the texts of Plato or Kant but, rather, by focusing more narrowly on two transitions in the Logic that illustrate Hegel’s break from prior philosophy with respect to his account of essence. The transition in Book I from ‘the ought [das Sollen]’ to infinity, in combination with the transitions in Book II from Existenz (‘concrete existence’) and appearance to actuality [Wirklichkeit] compose the core of Hegel’s rejection of a Platonic/Kantian normative model of essence. The category of actuality is the turning point of the Logic and shows that Hegel rejects all essentialist conceptions of form. For Herbert Marcuse, actuality is the core of thought’s self-movement, its motility (or, referring to Aristotle as Marcuse does, Hegelian thought’s being qua being). I shall extend Marcuse’s interpretation of the Logic to treat the category of actuality in the context of recent feminism and political theory. (shrink)

Using Blanchot’s Heideggerian conception of “negativity,” this paper argues that the Hegelian conception of desire is defined by its pursuit of comprehension of the concept, but, because of the operation of negativity, the comprehension of the concept perpetually reproduces the desire for further comprehension. Desiring self-consciousness thus perpetually recreates its own opacity to itself, and the pursuit of the object of desire destroys its own fulfilment. The Greek mythical figure of Orpheus, whose gaze destroys the beloved for whom he longs, (...) is used to illustrate self-consciousness desire for identity. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum and Seyla Benhabib have raised the question of how the Western subject might engage with the non-Western other in a non-imperialistic fashion. However, both of these feminist thinkers propose a universalist framework, consistent with Donald Davidson’s conclusions regarding the translatability of ”conceptual schemes”. Drawing upon the thought of G.W.F. Hegel and Walter Benjamin, I argue that the historically constituted subject that emerges in the wake of the Enlightenment affords an account of subjectivity that recasts the meaning of rationality (...) and thus the way in which translation should be understood. I shall argue, with Benjamin, that a linguistic conceptual scheme--in short, a world—needs translation in order to remain vital, and that genuine translation not only translates the other but transforms the self who seeks to translate. (shrink)

Strategic essentialism Coherence Feminist subjectivity.

I maintain that Hegel’s reading of the Antigone underestimates the power of the negativity to which Antigone’s action is dedicated. I argue that the negativity of death and the sacred cannot, contrary to Hegel, to be sublated and thus incorporated into the progression of Spirit. Bataille’s treatment of the sacred better characterizes the unworldly force and the otherness with which Antigone and Creon are confronted when their actions bring the divine and the human into conflict. Antigone’s obedience to what she (...) understands to be her divine obligation is a devotion to a negativity which exceeds and subverts all dialectical comprehension. Although her action brings the divine and the human political sphere into a moment of identity, allowing for the sublation of the ethical world, Antigone’s action is a transgression in Bataille’s sense of the term, and it points toward the limits of reason. The Antigone narrative thus exceeds Hegel’s use of it and is ultimately more consistent with Bataille’s understanding of the sacred. (shrink)

This thesis was a critique of Hegel from a Heideggerian standpoint focusing on the role of action in community. It argues, first, that Heidegger has a more highly developed account of the present of action than does Hegel on account of his theory of temporality. On the basis of a discussion of the nature of action and its site, I examine the way in which action functions in community in both Hegel and Heidegger. For Hegel, action is essential to community; (...) intersubjective relations and mutual recognition depend upon it. For Heidegger, it is precisely the non-acting moment, the moment of vision (Augenblick), which forms the basis for community. Community, for Heidegger, would thus be prior to action, issuing from a place proper to Dasein which precedes all action in the world. I argue that the existence of a moment, the moment of vision, which would initially seem to refuse community in Heidegger actually provides a rich sense of the intersubjective because it allows for the experience of that which is totally Other. On the basis of this experience, Dasein -- the being that each and every one of us is -- would thus be capable of recognizing the essential alienness of the everyday communal world to it. Dasein would thus be able to recognize its difference and thus the difference of others from how their actions are taken up in the communal sphere. Action would thus not be the basis for community. For Hegel, action is essential to mutual recognition, which is the fabric of community. The radical otherness that is found in Heidegger when he articulates the authentic moment would be dismissed by Hegel as an affront to the possibility of community (Hegel’s beautiful soul). For Hegel, we are what we do and we are recognized exclusively on the basis of our actions. Consequently, I argue that Heidegger has a deeper and more radical sense of community than Hegel. This dissertation was inspired by the work of Maurice Blanchot. (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that this equality cannot (...) be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

As we age, many physical, perceptual and cognitive abilities decline, which can critically impact our day-to-day lives. However, the decline of many abilities is concurrent; thus, it is challenging to disentangle the relative contributions of different abilities in the performance deterioration in realistic tasks, such as road crossing, with age. Research into road crossing has shown that aging and a decline in executive functioning is associated with altered information sampling and less safe crossing decisions compared to younger adults. However, in (...) these studies declines in age and EFs were confounded. Therefore, it is impossible to disentangle whether age-related declines in EFs impact on visual sampling and road-crossing performance, or whether visual exploration, and road-crossing performance, are impacted by aging independently of a decline in EFs. In this study, we recruited older adults with maintained EFs to isolate the impacts of aging independently of a decline EFs on road crossing abilities. We recorded eye movements of younger adults and older adults while they watched videos of road traffic and were asked to decide when they could cross the road. Overall, our results show that older adults with maintained EFs sample visual information and make similar road crossing decisions to younger adults. Our findings also reveal that both environmental constraints and EF abilities interact with aging to influence how the road-crossing task is performed. Our findings suggest that older pedestrians' safety, and independence in day-to-day life, can be improved through a limitation of scene complexity and a preservation of EF abilities. (shrink)

In this article, I lend support to Miranda Fricker's work in social epistemology from a post-Kantian point of view. In Epistemic Injustice: Power and The Ethics of Knowing, Fricker writes that, at times, social power, rather than the actual possession of knowledge, determines whether a speaker is believed (Fricker, 2007, 1-2). I will develop Miranda Fricker's project in feminist epistemology by examining the post-Kantian linguistic sign with a view to showing how G.W.F. Hegel and Jacques Derrida transform the Kantian analytic/synthetic (...) contrast in their semiologies. Epistemic injustice arises not only from cultural stereotypes and impoverished categories of identity but, also, from the dynamic way that language generates meaning. (shrink)

-/- In the prime years of Hegel’s philosophical career, Prussia made progressive reforms to childhood education. Hegel had long supported reform. In his early Stuttgart Gymnasium Valedictory Address (1788), he had advocated for a public interest in widespread public education as a means for developing the children’s potential. Like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hegel believed in education’s power to promote individual development (Bildung) as a path of freedom, which is achieved largely by expanding the student’s linguistic capacity since language, as Humboldt (...) understands it, is “the formative organ of thought [das bildende Organ des Gedanken]”. By combining Humboldt’s insights on language (especially his discussion of the power of Sanskrit) with themes in Hegel’s Science of Logic, I will demonstrate that the mind’s power to make judgments is a forward movement that can be arrested by epistemic injustice. Humboldt’s reflections on linguistic flowering and the factors that might impede it can help us understand epistemic injustice as an interference in linguistic cognitive mediation. -/- . (shrink)

In this article, I defend the view that conscience exemption clauses for medical practitioners (doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists) should be limited by patient protection clauses. This view was also defended by Mark Wicclair, in his book on conscience exemptions in medicine (Cambridge UP, 2011). In this article, I defend Wicclair’s view by supplementing it with Hegelian ethical theory and feminist critical theory. Conscience exemptions are important to support as a matter of human rights. They support an individual’s right to protect (...) their deepest value-commitments. A true understanding of conscience is dialectical, however, and it requires patient protection clauses because they, too, protect individuals in their deepest value-commitments. In this article, I show that the defense of patient protection clauses is historically supported by the theory of “conscience [Gewissen]” developed by G.W.F. Hegel in the nineteenth century (mostly in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)). (shrink)

In this article, I will chart the development of G.W.F. Hegel’s ‘concept [Begriff]’ in the Science of Logic. I show that Hegel could not arrive at the concept until the end of Book II, after his treatment of the categories of modality, especially contingency.

A lexical unit of meaning, or the concept, involves not just two moments, the rule and the following of the rule, but two reciprocally dependent moments. I argue that this links meaning to value. As a reciprocal relation, truth as normative is constituted by what Hegel calls ethical substance, which exists only between more than one consciousness, or, as Hegel would say, moments of consciousness. I read these two moments as the two shapes of consciousness that Hegel calls the master (...) and slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit. (shrink)

This thesis is a critique of Hegel from a Heideggerian standpoint focusing on the role of action in community. It argues, first, that Heidegger has a more highly developed account of the present of action than does Hegel on account of his theory of temporality. On the basis of a discussion of the nature of action and it's site, I examine the way in which action functions in community in both Hegel and Heidegger. For Hegel, action is essential to community (...) and intersubjective relations and mutual recognition depends upon it. For Heidegger it is precisely the non-acting moment, the moment of vision, which forms the basis for community. Community, for Heidegger would thus be prior to action, issuing from a place proper to Dasein which precedes all action in the world. I argue that the existence of a moment, the moment of vision, which would initially seem to refuse community in Heidegger actually provides a rich sense of the intersubjective because it allows for the experience of that which is totally Other. On the basis of this experience, Dasein would thus be capable of recognizing the essential alienness of the everyday communal world to it. It would thus be able to recognize its difference and thus the difference of others from how their actions are taken up in the communal sphere. Action would thus not be the basis for community. For Hegel, action is essential to the mutual recognition which is the fabric of community. The radical otherness that is found in Heidegger when he articulates the authentic moment is dismissed as an affront to the possibility of community. For Hegel, we are what we do and we are recognized exclusively on the basis of our actions. Consequently, I argue that Heidegger has a deeper and more radical sense of community than Hegel. (shrink)

The concept of essence is thought by many political theorists to be a residue of the patriarchal onto-theological tradition of metaphysics that needs to be (or has been) overcome by more progressive aims. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of essentialism in light of the treatment of the concept of essence in Hegel’s Science of Logic, and within the context of recent issues in critical race theory and feminism. I will argue that the role of an (...) essence underlying appearance is a valuable one within a Hegelian framework, and that it is politically important to reassess it. There are reasons that we should want to uphold the distinction between essence and an inessential appearance. We should want to uphold the irreducibility of essence to the Hegelian self-determining concept, and I argue in this paper that there is a basis for doing so in Hegel’s own text. Despite the well established impossibility of claiming that there is a property or set of properties that all women share, to dissolve essence as an illusory side-effect of the show of appearance is both to misunderstand essence, and to relinquish a tool needed in the struggle for justice. Essence cannot be dismissed by claiming that it is an illusory side-effect of the show of appearance because essence and the inessential do not exhibit the characteristic of reciprocity. (shrink)

Hegel thought Sophocles' Antigone was the finest tragedy, and he put drama atop his hierarchy of the arts, precisely at the point where his system transitions from aesthetics to the philosophy of religion. Hegel concluded his Aesthetics by writing, "Of all the masterpieces of the classical and modern world, the Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and satisfying work of art."1The Antigone owes its place in Hegel's hierarchy to its focus on Antigone's uncanny self-certainty. Positioned at the (...) juncture between Hegel's aesthetics and his philosophy of religion, it has at its centre a funeral rite, the most ancient and universal of all religious rituals. Antigone's perception of what she is called upon to .. (shrink)

Is privacy the key ethical issue of the internet age? This coauthored essay argues that even if all of a user’s privacy concerns were met through secure communication and computation, there are still ethical problems with personalized information systems. Our objective is to show how computer-mediated life generates what Ernesto Laclou and Chantal Mouffe call an “atypical form of social struggle”. Laclau and Mouffe develop a politics of contingent identity and transient articulation (or social integration) by means of the notions (...) of absent, symbolic, hegemonic power and antagonistic transitions or relations. In this essay, we introduce a critical approach to one twenty-first-century atypical social struggle that, we claim, has a disproportionate effect on those who experience themselves as powerless. Our aim is to render explicit the forms of social mediation and distortion that result from large-scale machine learning as applied to personal preference information. We thus bracket privacy in order to defend some aspects of the EU GDPR that will give individuals more control over their experience of the internet if they want to use it and, thereby, decrease the unwanted epistemic effects of the internet. Our study is thus a micropolitics in in the Deleuzian micropolitical sense and a preliminary analysis of an atypical social struggle. [Added note: the contract law specialist cited twice in this article (Jonathan R. Bruno) is a graduate of Harvard Law and is presently located at University of Michigan Law School (Ann Arbor) (not identical to the 'data scientist' of the same name that populates the first page of links brought up by a Google-search on this proper name.]. (shrink)

This collection of writings on aesthetics includes selections from Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Amy Mullin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Frederich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. This collection may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University bookstore.

This collection for a course in Social Thought and the Critique of Power includes selections from Sandra Bartkey, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Juergin Habermas, Margaret Kohn, Saskia Sassen, Margit Mayer, David Ciavatta, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Jeremy Waldron. Selections include material on the city, neoliberalism, computer-mediated life, precarity, cosmopolitanism, and gender. This packet may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University Bookstore.

This out-of-print collection in the area of European twentieth-century political philosophy includes selections from Adorno, Benjamin, Benhabib, Marcuse, Ciavatta, Comay, Honneth, and Fraser.

This collection in the area of continental philosophy of language, aesthetics, and semiotics includes articles and book selections from Derrida, Ricouer, McCumber, Oliver, Sheshradi-Krooks, Lacan, and Kristeva. This collection is available in the University of Guelph bookstore.

This out-of-print collection on animal rights, applied ethics, and continental philosophy includes readings by Martin Heidegger, Karin De Boer, Martha Nussbaum, David De Grazia, Giorgio Agamben, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, David Morris, Michael Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Sue Donaldson, Carolyn Merchant, and Jacques Derrida.

This out-of-print, two-volume, photocopy packet, in the area of "Surrealism and the Politics of the Particular" includes readings on language, meaning, and surrealism from Adorno, Benjamin, McCumber, Breton, Heidegger, Freud, Kristeva, Ricouer, and Bataille.

This out-of-print collection in the area of the history, politics, ethics, and theory of privacy includes selections from Peter Gay, Alan Westin, Walter Benjamin, Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, Anita Allen, Ann Jennings, Charles Taylor, Richard Sennett, Mark Wicclair, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Nozick.

Hegel’s treatment of Sophocles’s Antigone exposes a tension in our own landscape between religious and civil autonomy. This tension reflects a deeper tension between unreflective, implicit norms and reflective, explicit norms that can be autonomously endorsed. The tension is, as Hegel recognizes, of particular importance to women. Hegel’s characterization of this tension in light of Antigone is, as H.S. Harris argues, both a more developed and a more fundamental moment in the Phenomenology of Spirit than the moment of Enlightenment autonomy (...) (with its powers of reflective self-critique). Indeed, George Steiner has remarked that, for the German idealists, Antigone exemplifies the very “pivot of consciousness,” so fundamental is the tension that it expresses. I argue that, while Hegel demonstrates the necessity of the modern transition to explicit norms that can be autonomously endorsed, explicit norms nevertheless depend on a background of unreflective norms for their force. Moreover, Hegel uses the conflict between Antigone and Creon to illustrate the tension and mutual dependence between these two types of norms. (shrink)

Extreme Contemporary is a concise intellectual biography of Maurice Blanchot, a figure whose name, Leslie Hill claims, marks the site where the most important ideas of 19th and 20th century European philosophy overlap, intersect, and indeed, come to their fruition. It situates Blanchot as the radical heir to the questions concerning totality, experience, limit, Being, and Other, which G.W.F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger left in their wake, and it distinguishes him from George Bataille and Emmanuel Levinas, his friends and close (...) counterparts. It does justice to the subtlety and elusive quality of Blanchot's writing. (shrink)

Kathleen Dow Magnus' Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit is a welcome exposition of the role of the symbol in Hegel's philosophy, and it is an important contribution to scholarship on Hegel's philosophy of language, aesthetics, and theology. Magnus is concerned to provide an alternative to the view that Hegel fails to recognize the value of the symbol in the course of privileging the sign. As Jacques Derrida writes, "The sign, as the unity of the signifying body and the (...) signified ideality, becomes a kind of incarnation". Magnus' accords Derrida's perspective the seriousness it deserves, while considering it within a close reading of Hegel himself. (shrink)

Kathleen Dow Magnus' Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit is a welcome exposition of the role of the symbol in Hegel's philosophy, and it is an important contribution to scholarship on Hegel's philosophy of language, aesthetics, and theology. Magnus is concerned to provide an alternative to the view that Hegel fails to recognize the value of the symbol in the course of privileging the sign. As Jacques Derrida writes, "The sign, as the unity of the signifying body and the (...) signified ideality, becomes a kind of incarnation". Magnus' accords Derrida's perspective the seriousness it deserves, while considering it within a close reading of Hegel himself. (shrink)

Older adults often have long-term relationships, and many of their goals are intertwined with their respective partners. Joint goals can help or hinder goal progress. Little is known about how accurately older adults assess if a goal is joint, the role of over-reporting in these perceptions, and how joint goals and over-reporting may relate to older partners' relationship satisfaction and physical health. Two-hundred-thirty-six older adults from 118 couples listed their three most important goals and whether they thought of them as (...) goals they had in common with and wanted to achieve together with their partner. Two independent raters classified goals as “joint” if both partners independently listed open-ended goals of the same content. Goal progress and relationship satisfaction were assessed 1 week later. Allostatic load was calculated using nine different biomarkers. Results show that 85% self-reported at least one goal as joint. Over-reporting– the perception that a goal was joint when in fact it was not mentioned among the three most salient goals of the spouse – occurred in one-third of all goals. Multilevel models indicate that the number of externally-rated joint goals was related to greater goal progress and lower allostatic load, but only for adults with little over-reporting. More joint goals and higher over-reporting were each linked with more relationship satisfaction. In conclusion, joint goals are associated with goal progress, relationship satisfaction, and health, but the association is dependent on the domain of functioning. (shrink)

The only hope of survival for children with a number of life-threatening illnesses is a successful bone marrow transplant (BMT). Unlike the treatment source for most therapies, the raw material for transplant therapy comes from a human being. Although, many BMTs are autologous, utilizing the patient's own bone marrow, a large percentage of childhood BMTs rely on bone marrow from children or adolescents who are biological siblings to the sick child. Medical and legal systems are confronted with a dilemma when (...) healthy children are needed to undergo minimally risky, yet somewhat painful, procedures for the benefit of their critically ill siblings. This article reviews legal issues involved in sibling bone marrow donation and psychological research that is relevant to those issues. The article concludes with proposed directions for future psycholegal research and a discussion of ethical issues that are not amenable to empirical investigation. (shrink)

Although many of the factors that may influence donation have been identified, the timing of the interview in which families are asked for their authorisations seems to be decisive. However, there are few studies that analyse this process when the interview takes place. Qualitative techniques such as Participant Observation could help to better understand this process. One of the most recurring arguments against carrying out this type of study is the difficulty in complying with all the ethical requirements for any (...) research as defined in biomedical research guidelines and committees. This article aims to contribute to a discussion on the ethical viability of conducting an in situ study on family interviewing and proposes a strategy for minimising possible risks in designing a study of these characteristics. (shrink)

Insect molting is elicited by a class of polyhydroxylated steroids, ecdysteroids, that originate in the prothoracic glands. Ecdysteroid synthesis in the prothoracic glands is controlled in large measure by a peptide hormone from the brain, prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH), which exists in two forms and is released into the general circulation as a result of environmental and developmental cues. The means by which PTTH activates the prothoracic glands has been examined at the cellular level and the data reveal the involvement of (...) cAMP, calcium, calmodulin, cAMP‐dependent protein kinase and the ultimate phosphorylation of a 34 kDa protein tentatively identified as ribosomal protein S6. (shrink)

The second wave of devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been linked to dramatic declines in well-being. While much of the well-being literature is based on descriptive and correlational studies, this paper evaluates a growing body of causal evidence from high-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that test the efficacy of positive psychology interventions (PPIs). This systematic review analyzed the findings from 25 meta-analyses, 42 review papers, and the high-quality RCTs of PPIs designed to generate well-being that were included within (...) those studies. Findings reveal PPIs have the potential to generate well-being even during a global pandemic, with larger effect sizes in non-Western countries. Four exemplar PPIs—that have been tested with a high-quality RCT, have positive effects on well-being, and could be implemented during a global pandemic—are presented and discussed. Future efforts to generate well-being can build on this causal evidence and emulate the most efficacious PPIs to be as effective as possible at generating well-being. However, the four exemplars were only tested in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic) countries but seem promising for implementation and evaluation in non-WEIRD contexts. This review highlights the overall need for more rigorous research on PPIs with more diverse populations and in non-WEIRD contexts to ensure equitable access to effective interventions that generate well-being for all. (shrink)

This paper discusses the value in implementing photography as a means of assessment in philosophy courses. I specifically discuss how I utilize this interdisciplinary method in my honors environmental philosophy course with encouraging results, and how it can be easily employed in other philosophy courses as well. Photography is the basis for one of my larger course projects, the environmental philosophy in photo project (EPPP). The EPPP offers students novel methods of applying and understanding environmental ethical theories and new ways (...) of making meaning. In the following, I offer a defense of photographic methods for philosophical assessments, project instructions, student learning objectives and feedback, overall effectiveness of the project, and potential uses of photographic methods in other philosophy courses. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit model in more (...) detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...) correspond to the true, but not the false, components of possibilities. Second, there is a key interaction: it is easier to infer that a situation is possible as opposed to impossible, whereas it is easier to infer that a situation is not necessary as opposed to necessary. Third, individuals make systematic errors of omission and of commission. We contrast the theory with theories based on formal rules. (shrink)

Este trabajo sostiene que Egidio Romano y Dante Alighieri han utilizado el Liber de Causis como fuentede sus tratados de filosofía política. Asimismo, ambos autores han trasladado al ámbito político el modelode causalidad neoplatónico para defender tesis opuestas respecto del problema de la autonomía de los poderesespiritual y temporal. Mientras que, para fundamentar la intervención directa del papa en los asuntosdel poder temporal, Egidio postula la anulación de las causas segundas que actúan sobre la realidad; en la teoríade Dante sobre (...) el imperio, la no cancelación de los poderes intermedios entre el emperador y los súbditospermite establecer conceptualmente una cierta autonomía del poder temporal respecto del espiritual.This paper argues that the Liber de Causis was a source for both Egidio Romano`s and Dante Alighieri`s philosophical and political treatises. Both authors used a Neoplatonic model of causality in orderto sustein opposite theories on the relationship between temporal and spiritual powers. Egidio bases thedirect intervention of the pope in temporalibus on the annulment of the second causes which operate inCreation. On the contrary, in Dante`s political theory, the intermediary powers between the emperor and the subjects are precisely that which allows —from a theoretical point of view— a certain independence of the temporal power from the spiritual one. (shrink)

Ian Hacking proposes that ways of talking about autistic experience can shape, or even transform, what it is like to be autistic. I explore the grounds for two nonexclusive interpretations of this thesis. The informative interpretation holds that, because nonautistics cannot read mental states into autistic behaviour as they normally do with one another, autistic self‐narratives give nonautistics unique insights into what it is like to be autistic. This in turn affects how nonautistics interact with autistic individuals, enriching their social (...) environment in various ways. The more radical, transformative interpretation holds that autistic experience is itself moulded under the influence of developing a language‐game for talking about autistic experience. I endorse both theses, albeit with some cautionary remarks. (shrink)

I argue there is no pacifist commitment implied by the practice of mothering, contrary to what Ruddick suggests. Using violence in certain situations is consistent with the goals of this practice. Furthermore, I use Ruddick's valuable analysis of the care for particular individuals involved in this practice to show why pacifism may be incompatible with caring passionately for individuals. If giving up passionate attachments to individuals is necessary for pacifist commitment as Ghandi claims, then the price is too high.

In this article, I focus on the media's framing of non-mainstream body modification as a social problem. I demonstrate, through an analysis of a sample of 35 newspaper articles on body modification, that a mutilation discourse is one of the dominant frames of meaning used to make sense of body modifiers in the mainstream media. This framing, which effects the pathologization of body modifiers, utilizes the claims making of mental-health experts and relies on a gendered account of body modification as (...) a social problem. While news accounts are a medium for presenting body modification to a large `community of speakers', I find that they have precluded the legitimacy of the claims of subcultural actors. I argue from a poststructuralist perspective that body modifiers' `claims from the underside' are subjugated by accounts that problematize body modification through the dominant discourse of the mental-health model. I suggest that this frame is problematic for its silencing of `underside' or marginal embodied knowledges, which include, for example, alternative accounts of female embodiment. (shrink)

Few seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between religious and secular institutions, yet there is widespread disagreement regarding what "religion" actually means. Indeed, some go so far as to question whether there is anything at all distinctive about religions. Hence, formulating a definition of "religion" that can command wide assent has proven to be an extremely difficult task. In this article I consider the most prominent of the many rival definitions that have been proposed, the majority falling within three basic (...) types: intellectual, affective and functional definitions. I conclude that there are pragmatic reasons for favouring the formerly popular view that essentialist definitions of "religions" are inadequate, and that religions should be construed, instead, as possessing a number of "family resemblances". In so arguing, I provide a response to the view that there is nothing distinctive about religions, as well as to the recent claim that religions do not exist. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

Hackles have been raised in biosemiotic circles by T. L. Short’s assertion that semiosis, as defined by Peirce, entails “acting for purposes” and therefore is not found below the level of the organism (2007a:174–177). This paper examines Short’s teleology and theory of purposeful behavior and offers a remedy to the disagreement. Remediation becomes possible when the issue is reframed in the terms of the complexity sciences, which allows intentionality to be understood as the interplay between local and global aspects of (...) a system within a system. What is called “acting for purposes” is not itself a type of behavior so much as a relationship between a dynamic system that “exists for a purpose” and its microprocesses that “serve purposes.” The “intentional object” of philosophy is recast here as the holistic self-organized dynamics of a system, which exists for the purpose of self-maintenance, and that constrains the parts’ behaviors, which serve the purpose of forming the system. (A “system” can be any emergent, e.g. an abiotic form, an adapted species, a self, a conditioned response, thought, or a set of ideas.) The self-organized whole, which is represented to the parts in their own constrained behaviors, assumes the guiding function so long attributed to the mysterious “intentional object.” If emergent self-causation is not disallowed, creative originality, as well as directionality, becomes part of the definition of purposeful behavior. Thus, key tools used here, required for understanding emergence, come from poetics rather than semoitics. In the microprocesses of self-organization, I find what I call “accidental” indices and icons — which are poetic in the sense that they involve mere metonymic contiguity and metaphoric similarity — and which are preferentially selected under constrained conditions allowing radically new connections to habituate into an “intentional” self-organized system that, not coincidentally, has some of the emergent characteristics of a conventional symbolic system. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the view widely held among feminists that nurturing and competition are incompatible. I also explore the following two more specific objections against competition: (1) competitions are "mini-wars" which encourage hatred; (2) while not "mini-wars," competitions foster a war-like mentality. Underlying these objections is the fear that too strong a sense of self makes war likely by severing connection with others. I argue that because patriarchy encourages women to have too little sense of self, some (...) competition may be useful. (shrink)