Andy Egan recently drew attention to a class of decision situations that provide a certain kind of informational feedback, which he claims constitute a counterexample to causal decision theory. Arntzenius and Wallace have sought to vindicate a form of CDT by describing a dynamic process of deliberation that culminates in a “mixed” decision. I show that, for many of the cases in question, this proposal depends on an incorrect way of calculating expected utilities, and argue that it is (...) therefore unsuccessful. I then tentatively defend an alternative proposal by Joyce, which produces a similar process of dynamic deliberation but for a different reason. (shrink)

The essay approaches the gendered relations of sexual difference and their unsuspected effectsat the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Pará, BelémCampus. Writteninthe first person, it exposes the teacher/researcher's experiences andsharedsituations,glimpsing embodied maps that shout out the violence not confronted at the level of theinstitution. In dialogue with feminist and queer theorists, I seek to expose sexist cardinalpoints and propose an alternative centered on the politicization of prostituted ­ and destitute ­bodies. The conclusion exposes the mutilating framework of (...) a standardizing map that projectslimited futures for students/teachers/technicians who experience reduced diversity. However,it is also an invitation to reimagine ­ through a process of rebellion ­ another collectivecartography, a cartography of. (shrink)

Some claim that Composition as Identity (CI) entails Mereological Essentialism (ME). If this is right, then we have an effective modus tollens against CI: ME is clearly false, so CI is, too. Rather than deny the conditional, I will argue that a CI theorist should embrace ME. I endorse a theory of modal parts such that ordinary objects are spatially, temporally, and modally extended. Accepting modal parts is certainly beneficial to CI theorists, but it also provides elegant solutions to the (...) traditional puzzles of constitution, making it a competitive move in its own right. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” has been widely influential. In both that paper and in the contemporary literature, much attention has been paid to Strawson’s account of blame in terms of reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation. The Strawsonian view of praise in terms of gratitude has received comparatively little attention. Some, however, have noticed something puzzling about gratitude and accountability. We typically understand accountability in terms of moral demands and expectations. Yet gratitude does not (...) express or enforce moral demands or expectations. So, how is it a way to hold an agent accountable? In a more general manner, we might ask if there is even sense to be made of the idea that agents can be accountable—i.e., “on the hook”—in a positive way. In this paper, I clarify the relationship between gratitude and moral accountability. I suggest that accountability is a matter of engaging with others in a way that is basically concerned with their feelings and attitudes rather than solely a matter of moral demands. Expressions of gratitude are a paradigmatic form of this concerned engagement. I conclude by defending my view from the objection that it leads to an overly generous conception of holding accountable and suggest in reply that moral responsibility skeptics may not help themselves to as many moral emotions as they might have thought. (shrink)

The moral status of animals is a subject of controversy both within and beyond academic philosophy, especially regarding the question of whether and when it is ethical to eat meat. A commitment to animal rights and related notions of animal protection is often thought to entail a plant-based diet, but recent philosophical work challenges this view by arguing that, even if animals warrant a high degree of moral standing, we are permitted - or even obliged - to eat meat. (...) class='Hi'>Andy Lamey provides critical analysis of past and present dialogues surrounding animal rights, discussing topics including plant agriculture, animal cognition, and in vitro meat. He documents the trend toward a new kind of omnivorism that justifies meat-eating within a framework of animal protection, and evaluates for the first time which forms of this new omnivorism can be ethically justified, providing crucial guidance for philosophers as well as researchers in culture and agriculture. (shrink)

A very simple contextualist treatment of a sentence containing an epistemic modal, e.g. a might be F, is that it is true iff for all the contextually salient community knows, a is F. It is widely agreed that the simple theory will not work in some cases, but the counterexamples produced so far seem amenable to a more complicated contextualist theory. We argue, however, that no contextualist theory can capture the evaluations speakers naturally make of sentences containing epistemic modals. If (...) we want to respect these evaluations, our best option is a relativist theory of epistemic modals. On a relativist theory, an utterance of a might be F can be true relative to one context of evaluation and false relative to another. We argue that such a theory does better than any rival approach at capturing all the behaviour of epistemic modals. (shrink)

Using as a starting point recent and apparently incompatible conclusions by Saunders and Knox, I revisit the question of the correct spacetime setting for Newtonian physics. I argue that understood correctly, these two versions of Newtonian physics make the same claims both about the background geometry required to define the theory, and about the inertial structure of the theory. In doing so I illustrate and explore in detail the view—espoused by Knox, and also by Brown —that inertial structure is defined (...) by the dynamics governing subsystems of a larger system. This clarifies some interesting features of Newtonian physics, notably the distinction between using the theory to model subsystems of a larger whole and using it to model complete universes, and the scale-relativity of spacetime structure. _1_ Introduction _2_ Newtonian Mechanics and Galilean Spacetime _3_ Vector Relationism and Maxwellian Spacetime _4_ Recovering the Galilei Group: Dynamics of Subsystems _5_ Knox on Inertial Structure _6_ Connections on Maxwellian Spacetime _7_ Knox on Newtonian Gravity _8_ Vector Relationism and Newton–Cartan Theory _9_ Inertial Structure in Newton–Cartan Gravity _10_ Reconciling Knox and Saunders _11_ Conclusions. (shrink)

Hohwy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called ‘EEE1 cognition’). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a ‘Markov blanket’ demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of (...) tension that Hohwy depicts. On the contrary, they actively favour the EEE story. This is because the Markov property, as exemplified in biological agents, picks out neither a unique nor a stationary boundary. It is this multiplicity and mutability– rather than the absence of agent-environment boundaries as such - that EEE cognition celebrates. (shrink)

This study aims to evaluate whether the idea of ultimate reality in world religions contributes to the characteristics of the world religion paradigm, which is hierarchical cosmology or “subject-object cosmology.” Several research on this topic claims that one of the characteristics of the world religion paradigm is its hierarchical perspective. Discussing this issue is important to distinguish the world religions as the paradigm and the world religions as the most widely embraced religion. This study argues that the hierarchical perspective of (...) the world religion paradigm can be rooted in the idea of ultimate reality, that there is a supreme, foremost, and most principal reality in the continuity of this universe, namely the supernatural or God. The hierarchical cosmology consists of three main domains: supernatural/God, culture/human, and nature. This study uses a literature study methodology, relying on books, journals, and texts related to research questions. This study finds that the world religion paradigm or hierarchical cosmology or “subject-object cosmology” is prominent, especially in Abrahamic religions such as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, even though the concept of ultimate reality in these three religions is different. (shrink)

J.M. Coetzee’s book, 'Elizabeth Costello' is one of the stranger works to appear in recent years. Yet if we focus our attention on the book’s two chapters dealing with animals, two preoccupations emerge. The first sees Coetzee use animals to evoke a particular conception of ethics, one similar to that of the philosopher Mary Midgley. Coetzee’s second theme connects animals to the phenomena of scapegoating, as it has been characterized by the philosophical anthropologist René Girard. While both themes involve human (...) interactions with animals, each transcends application to that particular issue and raises deeper questions, respectively concerning the foundations of morality and the therapeutic allure of political violence. Making explicit these two preoccupations enhances our understanding of Coetzee’s fiction, particularly Disgrace. However, when Coetzee’s two philosophical strands are analyzed in their own terms, the ethics of sympathy is shown to be a more coherent notion than the understanding of politics he takes over from Girard. (shrink)

This public philosophy piece examines moral responsibility and alternatives to angry blame as exemplified in the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Abstract: Many contemporary philosophers believe that there is an important connection between holding someone responsible and being angry at them. The British philosopher P.F. Strawson argued that to blame someone‐to hold them responsible for a wrongdoing‐is just to feel and express certain kinds of moral anger toward them. Classical Buddhist thought suggests that anger is one of the poisons (...) in our nature, something that gives rise to pain and suffering. Angry blame plays an important role in some of its most important positive moments‐Katara confronting Pakku and Iroh defending the moon spirit, for instance. But Avatar: The Last Airbender ( ATLA ) highlights that people can choose not to be angry with wrongdoers. Media for children and young adults have an important role to play here, even for adults. In this role, ATLA succeeds in many ways. (shrink)

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a United States taken over by a fundamentalist dictatorship called Gilead that also resembles Plato’s ideal city. Attempts to explain Gilead’s debt to Plato face two challenges. First, aspects of Gilead that recall Plato also contain features that differ, at times dramatically, from the Platonic original. Second, Gilead invokes distorted versions of ideas from philosophies other than Plato’s. I explore two ways of making sense of Gilead’s distorted philosophical appropriations. The explanations differ over whether such distortions (...) are best explained by the nature of the philosophies they misrepresent, or by the nature of Gilead. The explanation that emphasizes Gilead’s own agency is ultimately best able to make sense of how illiberal regimes misappropriate philosophical concepts, both in the novel and in reality, in order to limit the political imagination of their subjects. (shrink)

During long-term refugee displacements, it is common for the refugees’ country of origin to be called on to recognize a right of return. A long-standing tradition of philosophical theorizing is sceptical of such a right. Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan are contemporary proponents of this view. They argue that, in many cases, it is not feasible for entire refugee populations to return home, and so the notion of a right of return is no right at all. We can call Adelman (...) and Barkan’s view the feasibility objection. Many defenders of rights will deny that empirical facts such as the kind to which Adelman and Barkan appeal are relevant to determining whether a moral entitlement amounts to a right. In contrast, I offer a response to the feasibility objection that does admit the relevance of facts. In my view, considerations of feasibility do matter when determining what rights human beings possess. Nevertheless, the feasibility objection is undone by its failure to acknowledge a distinction between two different kinds of feasibility constraints. ‘Hard’ constraints include logical, nomological and biological considerations. ‘Soft’ constraints include political, cultural and institutional factors. A necessary condition of a moral entitlement achieving the status of a right, I argue, is that it be feasible in the hard sense. Crucially, however, a right need not always be feasible in the soft sense. Refugees can have rights that it is not currently possible to implement politically. (shrink)

(Part of a symposium on an OUP collection of Paul Russell's papers on free will and moral responsibility). Paul Russell’s The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell’s attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell’s position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates the (...) tension between Russell’s critical and compatibilist commitments. The problem is not obviously insurmountable, and as a compatibilist who is sympathetic to the view, my aim is to spark further discussion. (shrink)

A lump theorist claims that ordinary objects are spread out across possible worlds, much like many of us think that tables are spread out across space. We are not wholly located in any one particular world, the lump theorist claims, just as we are not wholly spatially located where one’s hand is. We are modally spread out, a trans-world mereological sum of world-bound parts. We are lump sums of modal parts. And so are all other ordinary objects. In this paper, (...) I explore lump theory and investigate five arguments against it. These arguments may be the primary reasons why lump theory has not been widely accepted––or extensively explored––until now. I maintain that these arguments can be answered, and moreover, that accepting lump theory has distinct advantages, making it a competitive view in its own right. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, (...) there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

This article brings animal protection theory to bear on Temple Grandin’s work, in her capacity both as a designer of slaughter facilities and as an advocate for omnivorism. Animal protection is a better term for what is often termed animal rights, given that many of the theories grouped under the animal rights label do not extend the concept of rights to animals. I outline the nature of Grandin’s system of humane slaughter as it pertains to cattle. I then outline four (...) arguments Grandin has made defending meat-eating. On a protection-based approach, I argue, Grandin’s system of slaughter is superior to its traditional counterpart. Grandin’s success as a designer of humane slaughterhouses however is not matched by any corresponding success in offering a moral defence of meat-eating. Despite, or perhaps because of, the popularity of her work, Grandin’s arguments for continuing to eat animals are noteworthy only in how disappointing and rudimentary they are. If we can thank Grandin for making a difference in the lives of millions of farm animals, her work can also be criticized for not engaging the moral status of animals with the depth and rigor that it deserves. (shrink)

Many of us think that ordinary objects – such as tables and chairs – exist. We also think that ordinary objects have parts: my chair has a seat and some legs as parts, for example. But once we are committed to the (seemingly innocuous) thesis that ordinary objects are composed of parts, we then open ourselves up to a whole host of philosophical problems, most of which center on what exactly this composition relation is. Composition as Identity (CI) is the (...) view that the composition relation is the identity relation. While such a view has some advantages, there are many arguments against it. In this essay, I discuss several versions of the most common objection against CI, and show how the CI theorist can maintain that these arguments – contrary their initial intuitive appeal – are nonetheless unsound. (shrink)

Freeganism is the practice of eating food that is free. It is commonly associated with recovering food that grocery stores and restaurants have thrown away, but vegetables grown in one’s garden and other free foods, such as leftovers from a work event, would also qualify. It is worth asking whether there is a form of freeganism that can be justified in new omnivorist terms. Could it be consistent with animal protection to eat meat, just so long as we don’t pay (...) for it? -/- I argue that from an animal protection point of view, freegan meat consumption faces two difficulties. The first is that when it involves the consumption of animal flesh conventionally regarded as edible (chicken, pork, beef, etc.) but not other types of flesh commonly considered inedible (mice, dogs, etc.), the practice is likely to be rooted in speciesism. This runs contrary to new omnivorism’s own principles, which are anti-speciesist. In addition, when the meat in question is the product of animal agriculture, consuming it will amount to a form of complicity in the industry’s wrong-doing, as the rationale for the animal’s slaughter will be retroactively endorsed. Either of these two considerations taken by itself will suffice to generate a presumption against freegan meat consumption. -/- My analysis, however, does not address every conceivable defense of freegan meat consumption. In particular, neither consideration generates a reason to avoid all animal by-products, such as eggs from backyard chickens that are well cared for. But given that the by-products in question will not be industrially produced, such consumption is likely to be permissible only in exceptional instances, rather than a practice available to society at large. (shrink)

I argue against two of the most influential contemporary theories of moral responsibility: those of Harry Frankfurt and John Martin Fischer. Both propose conditions which are supposed to be sufficient for direct moral responsibility for actions. (By the term direct moral responsibility, I mean moral responsibility which is not traced from an earlier action.) Frankfurt proposes a condition of 'identification'; Fischer, writing with Mark Ravizza, proposes conditions for 'guidance control'. I argue, using counterexamples, that neither is sufficient for direct moral (...) responsibility. -/- My counterexample cases are based on recent research in psychology which reveals many surprising causes of our actions. Some of this research comes from the field of situationist social psychology; some from experiments which reveal the influence of automatic processes in our actions. Broadly, I call such causes 'subverting' when the agent would not identify with her action, if she knew all the causes of the action. When an action has subverting causes, the agent is not directly morally responsible for it, even though she may meet the conditions specified by Frankfurt and Fischer. -/- I also criticise the theories of Eddy Nahmias and John Doris, who have both engaged specifically with the threats posed to moral responsibility by situationist research. Against Doris and Nahmias, I argue that their conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient for direct moral responsibility. -/- My final objective is to argue that there are many everyday actions for which we mistakenly hold agents morally responsible. I review evidence that there are many everyday actions which have subverting causes. Many of those are actions for which we currently hold agents morally responsible. But I argue that, in many of those same actions, the agents are not in fact morally responsible – they bear neither direct nor traced moral responsibility. (shrink)

Most ordinary folks think that there are ordinary objects such as trees and frogs. They do not think there are extraordinary objects such as the mereological sum of trees and frogs, as the permissivist does. Nor do they deny the existence of ordinary composite objects such as tables, as the eliminativist does. In his recent book, Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary, Korman positions himself alongside ordinary folk. He deftly defends the common sense view of ordinary objects, and argues against (...) the permissivist and eliminativist. One of the ways he does this is by launching what he calls ‘arguments from counterexample’. In this paper, I focus on the dialectical effectiveness of such arguments generally. I discuss whether and how we might sometimes be justified in using arguments from counterexample and commonsense in philosophical debate, even if they appear to be (or are) question-begging. I conclude that, given some of Korman’s other commitments, there is little reason for his opponents to take his arguments from counterexample seriously. (shrink)

The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng perform a ritual pilgrimage (hajj) to the top of Mount Bawakaraeng (as a sacred space). This ritual is often considered heretical and deviant. These negative assumptions are the result of the monopoly definition of “sacred place” by the world religion paradigm which is only limited to the doctrine of the holy book and is hierarchical-exclusive. Meanwhile, in the indigenous religion paradigm, “sacred place” is closely related tothe surrounding environment (nature) which also (...) gives life to indigenous peoples. The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng construct the sacredness of the mountain, not only as a place for religious rituals but also as a guarantor of their life. There were lacking previous researches discussing “sacred place” through the indigenous religion paradigm approach. This research contributes to that lack. This study examines how the indigenous religion paradigm interprets “sacred place”. The research method used in this research is qualitative. This study argues that there is no better way to understand why indigenous people perform rituals on Mount Bawakaraeng than using the indigenous religion paradigm. This study also shows that the “sacred place” associated with Mount Bawakaraeng is a way for the indigenous people who live around the mountain to preserve the nature around them which has enabled them to live and make a living such as accessing water, gathering medicines from nature, and so on. Eventually, with research that provides a better explanation of what a “sacred place” is in the indigenous religion paradigm, negative assumptions about indigenous people who regard a mountain as sacredplace can be better understood. (shrink)

Philosophers have highlighted a dilemma for the criminal law. Unjust, racist policies in the United States have produced conditions in which the dispossessed are more likely to commit crime. This complicity undermines the standing of the state to blame their offenses. Nevertheless, the state has reason to punish those crimes in order to deter future offenses. Tommie Shelby proposes a way out of this dilemma. He separates the state’s right to condemn from its right to punish. I raise doubts about (...) Shelby’s proposed resolution. So long as punishment is widely and reasonably understood to condemn crime, Shelby’s proposal does not resolve the dilemma. Moreover, there is reason to think the blaming aspect of punishment plays a role in the justification of its hard treatment. I conclude by considering some other ways out of the dilemma, focusing especially on how the United States might take responsibility for its complicity. (shrink)

Religious discourse is one of the instruments that are often used by the dominant class (the majority, who are in power) to carry out a symbolic violence mechanism against the dominated class (the minority, who are ruled). For example, through religious discourses that seem plural and open, the power and domination of the dominant class are continuously perpetuated. This study aims to analyze the symbolic violence that occurs in religious discourse in Indonesia, especially in the study of religion, by reviewing (...) the discourse of “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama”. The symbolic violence referred to here is, according to Pierre Bourdieu's theory, violence that does not appear asviolence and is latent. Victims of this type of violence do not feel that they are victims ofviolence as if what happened was natural and it should have been. This study also argues that symbolic violence in religious discourse in Indonesia is widely produced in educational institutions, especially through the hands of academics, because through educational institutions, discourses of “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama” are formulated and then implemented in government policies, as if the discourse has accommodated all religions and beliefs, but only perpetuates the way of thinking and tastes of the dominant class. In short, this study argues that religious discourses such as “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama” are produced by the dominant class through educational institutions and so on and produce symbolic violence. (shrink)

Many of us think that ordinary objects – such as tables and chairs – exist. We also think that ordinary objects have parts: my chair has a seat and some legs as parts, for example. But once we are committed to the thesis that ordinary objects are composed of parts, we then open ourselves up to a whole host of philosophical problems, most of which center on what exactly the composition relation is. Composition as Identity is the view that the (...) composition relation is the identity relation. While such a view has some advantages, there are many arguments against it. In this essay, I will briefly canvass three different varieties of Composition as Identity, and suggest why one of them should be preferred over the others. Then I will outline several versions of the most common objection against CI. I will suggest how a CI theorist can respond to these charges by maintaining that some of the arguments are invalid. (shrink)

Mathematically, gauge theories are extraordinarily rich --- so rich, in fact, that it can become all too easy to lose track of the connections between results, and become lost in a mass of beautiful theorems and properties: indeterminism, constraints, Noether identities, local and global symmetries, and so on. -/- One purpose of this short article is to provide some sort of a guide through the mathematics, to the conceptual core of what is actually going on. Its focus is on the (...) Lagrangian, variational-problem description of classical mechanics, from which the link between gauge symmetry and the apparent violation of determinism is easy to understand; only towards the end will the Hamiltonian description be considered. -/- The other purpose is to warn against adopting too unified a perspective on gauge theories. It will be argued that the meaning of the gauge freedom in a theory like general relativity is (at least from the Lagrangian viewpoint) significantly different from its meaning in theories like electromagnetism. The Hamiltonian framework blurs this distinction, and orthodox methods of quantization obliterate it; this may, in fact, be genuine progress, but it is dangerous to be guided by mathematics into conflating two conceptually distinct notions without appreciating the physical consequences. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed the rise of chefs to a position of cultural prominence. This rise has coincided with increased consciousness of ethical issues pertaining to food, particularly as they concern animals. We rank cookbooks by celebrity chefs according to the minimum number of sentient animals that must be killed to make their recipes. On our stipulative definition, celebrity chefs are those with their own television show on a national network in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. (...) Thirty cookbooks by 26 such chefs were categorized according to the total number of cows, pigs, chicken, fish and other species they included as ingredients. The total number of animals killed was divided by the number of non-dessert recipes to generate an average number of animal deaths per recipe for each book. We outline the rationale for our project and its methodology before presenting a ranked table of 30 cookbooks by celebrity chefs. This method generates several interesting findings. The first concerns the wide variation in animal fatalities among cookbooks. The chef with the heaviest animal footprint killed 5.25 animals per recipe, while the omnivorous chef with the smallest footprints killed 0.19 per recipe. Clearly, not all approaches to meat eating are equal when it comes to their animal mortality rate. Pigs and large ruminants are all substantially bigger than poultry, which are themselves bigger than many fish. The prime determinant of a chef’s place in the index was the number of small animals his or her recipes required. Whether a chef cooked in the style of a particular cuisine (Italian, French, Mexican etc.), by contrast, had no discernible influence on his or her ranking. We analyze how different chefs present themselves—as either especially sensitive or insensitive to ethical issues involving animals and food—and note cases where these presentations do or do not match their index ranking. -/- . (shrink)

One of the starting assumptions in the debate over the ethical status of animals is that someone who is committed to reducing animal suffering should not eat meat. Steven Davis has recently advanced a novel criticism of this view. He argues that individuals who are committed to reducing animal suffering should not adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, as Tom Regan an other animal rights advocates claim, but one containing free-range beef. To make his case Davis highlights an overlooked form (...) of animal harm, that done to field animals in crop production. Yet while Davis's argument is ingenious and thought-provoking, it is not a successful challenge to vegetarianism and veganism's status as the diets that most advance animal rights. Scientific studies of crop production that Davis draws on document two different forms of harm done to field animals: those that are directly killed by harvesting equipment and those that are killed by other animals. Once this distinction is made explicit, the degree to which such studies pose a problem for animal protection theory considerably weakens. Davis also overlooks philosophically significant forms of harm to human beings that are present in beef production but not crop harvesting. Finally, he bases his argument on the controversial assumption that there is no difference between deliberate and accidental killing - either of animals or people. Although these problems defeat Davis's attempt to offer an immanent critique of Regan's animal rights position, his analysis does have important dietary ramifications that animal advocates should take into account. (shrink)

O artigo tem foco central na relação entre conhecimento científico e realidade do lugar, bem como as repercussões geopolítica desta relação, haja vista que o debate sobre o impacto das representações geográficas sobre os espaços, pode auxiliar no esclarecimento de como são pensadas as estratégias de desenvolvimento para os mesmos. Objetivo problematizar o saber geográfico que informa o ambiente e a vida humana à beira da Transamazônica. Parto de uma metodologia de base fenomenológica para dar visibilidade à fragilidade do diálogo (...) entre a vida nos lugares e o conhecimento científico e reproduzido no plano educativo sobre tais lugares, a saber: os grupos de pequenos produtores que vivem entre Pacajá e Anapu, no estado do Pará. Realizo pesquisa de campo (ainda em curso), desde 2012, na modalidade observação participante, registros imagéticos, entrevistas e pesquisa bibliográfica sobre o tipo de saber científico e educativo acerca do espaço de pesquisa. Concluo que há uma distância profunda entre o saber e o viver, em função de uma não prioridade da escala do lugar no conhecimento padrão do território, bem como uma despersonalização dos indivíduos e grupos que vivem à beira da Transamazônica, somado à manutenção de uma imagética ambiental que não condiz com a realidade, ensinada nos livros didáticos que, inevitavelmente, decretam a inexistência dos que deles se servem, as crianças e professores que se educam nestes lugares, passam a ser pano de fundo para a estrada, objeto centralmente valorizado no saber geográfico e na geopolítica do espaço transamazônico paraense. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt argued that refugees pose a major problem for liberalism. Most liberal theorists endorse the idea of human rights. At the same time, liberalism takes the existence of sovereign states for granted. When large numbers of people petition a liberal state for asylum, Arendt argued, these two commitments will come into conflict. An unwavering respect for human rights would mean that no refugee is ever turned away. Being sovereign, however, allows states to control their borders. States supposedly committed to (...) human rights will thus often violate the rights of refugees by denying them entry. I attempt to defend liberalism from Arendt’s criticism by outlining a rights-based model of asylum that is enforceable by sovereign states. This approach avoids the question of what border-enforcement measures, if any, are defensible at the level of ideal justice, and instead seeks to outline a framework of refugee rights that can be realized in a world in which migration controls are a fact of life. Central to my argument is a distinction between the place where a person is recognized as a rights-bearing agent and the potentially different place where he or she exercises those rights. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a protracted debate over the semantics of epistemic modals. According to contextualists, epistemic modals quantify over the possibilities compatible with some contextually determined group’s information. Relativists often object that contextualism fails to do justice to the way we assess utterances containing epistemic modals for truth or falsity. However, recent empirical work seems to cast doubt on the relativist’s claim, suggesting that ordinary speakers’ judgments about epistemic modals are more closely in line with contextualism than relativism (...) (Knobe & Yalcin 2014; Khoo 2015). This paper furthers the debate by reporting new empirical research revealing a previously overlooked dimension of speakers’ truth-value judgments concerning epistemic modals. Our results show that these judgments vary systematically with the question under discussion in the conversational context in which the utterance is being assessed. We argue that this ‘QUD effect’ is difficult to explain if contextualism is true, but is readily explained by a suitably flexible form of relativism. (shrink)

Marginal comments on student essays are a near-universal method of providing feedback in philosophy. Widespread as the practice is, however, it has well-known drawbacks. Commenting on students' work in the form of a video has the potential to improve the feedback experience for both instructors and students. The advantages of video feedback can be seen by examining it from both the professor's and the student's perspective. In discussing the professor's perspective, this article shares observations based on the author's experience delivering (...) feedback through video. Turning to the student's view, it discusses qualitative feedback solicited from students that indicates a clear preference for video feedback over written marginalia. In particular, students describe video feedback as more informative, more personal, better at suggesting improvements on future assignments, enhancing the professor's ability to communicate through tone of voice and gesture, and easier to understand compared to written feedback. (shrink)

Religions today, actively participate in the daily life of most people on the planet, producing different relationships and conflicts too, from a reference to the transcendent existence, so the construction of their space of action - their territories - cut out ways different society, especially in big cities, where the clash of different world views imply different ways of living and feeling the city and others in this city. We propose here the discussion about territory and identity of the Church (...) of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more popularly known as Mormons, in Belem, from the phenomenological method, highlighting the experience of church members as central to relational and hierarchical production that territory, so that it becomes a source of affirmation geo-symbolic group in the city and the world. Clarifying the designation of territorial identity and explaining their sacred ways of acting and conceiving the world contributed to deepen the debate in key categories to suit the social sciences in general: space and culture, and also debating and rethinking of the specific concepts geography in their culture perspective. (shrink)

This study explores the core teachings of Buddhism and Confucianism, especially about homosexuality, and compares the two. This study argues that the attitude of Buddhism and Confucianism towards homosexuality is highly dependent on the cultural context in which these religions exist and are practiced. In other words, certain Buddhist/Confucian societies are sometimes more tolerant of homosexual practices than other Buddhist/Confucian societies. That is, the core teachings of religions cannot be merely a measure; culture participates in shaping religious responses to homosexuals. (...) However, it also does not mean that these two religions do not have a unique view on homosexuality. Using the literature study method, this study will focus on exploring the attitudes of these two religions, Buddhism and Confucianism, towards the practice of homosexuality, especially to queering the core teachings of both. The results of this study indicate that in both Buddhism and Confucianism, acceptance and rejection of homosexual practices exist, and almost all use their respective core teachings as arguments. In short, this study contributes to providing an overview of how homosexuality is accepted and rejected in Buddhism and Confucianism. (shrink)

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take responsibility for (...) safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

In Postpolitics and the Limits of Nature, Andy Scerri offers a comprehensive overview of the relationship between Critical Theory and the US environmental movement from the 1960s to the present, refracted through the lens of the American Left. He examines why past generations of radical ecological and social justice scholarship have been ineffective in the fight against injustice and rampant environmental exploitation. Scerri then engages a new wave of radicals and reformists who, in the wake of the Occupy movement (...) and the 2016 presidential election, are reinventing the radical project as a challenge to injustice in the Anthropocene era. Along the way, he provides a fresh account of the thought of one of the major contributors to critical theory, Theodor Adorno, and of recent work that seeks to link Adorno’s ideas to the so-called new realism in political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

The relations between territory, religion and geopolitics seem to assume a central role in the contemporary world. I try to contribute to debate here, from a survey in Belém of Pará on the territory and the identity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. Instrumentalized by semi-structured interviews, field observation, research of official documents of religion trought an existential phenomenological interpretation, I conclude that: there is a geopolitical war in evidence nowadays; territorial Mormons follow a metropolitan (...) spatial pattern; the identity of Mormon remount its geohistory in fruitful and tense negotiation with new cultural groups in seeking territorial expansion; the expansion of the territory demands a insurmountable relationship between domain and ownership, to sustain the tense unity of the group. (shrink)

The phenomenon of abbreviation used on Instagram is an interesting thing since the users modify the abbreviation form of expansion words making deviation from the original meaning. The principle of meaning relation between abbreviations and their expansions is used to make a change to the purposes of Instagram users. This research was aimed to describe the principle of abbreviation used in Instagram. An exploitation method was used by the technique of making screenshots and recording the abbreviation data. The results of (...) research indicate that the principle of abbreviation consists of three forms namely inclusion, contact, and complementary. The results of this research can be very effective in understanding as well as how to use abbreviations, especially on Instagram. The Novelty of the study is in investigating the abbreviation used in Instagram. (shrink)

This dossier emerges as an attempt to understand our current plight in which we necessarily failed. Some figures were transformed in escapist lines that brought confrontation within our reach in face of these "blockaded access future", where the body – the personal and the aggregate, in different communal places – screams at the top of lungs or remains silent in a fierce pursuit of life, cutting off these pandemic geographies of feverish horizons. It is in this abysmal situation that geographical (...) representations are reestablished, coupled with experienced landscapes, lost territories, and all those original space-time projects. (shrink)

I developed an activity in the classroom: to draw the image of the place. I communicate the results to interpret how the students subjectivate the place and perfect the teaching practice. Reflections move between subjectivity, place and violence, from a phenomenological contribution in dialogue with the historical-cultural approach, supported in the drawings, dialogue with students and intuition of the shareable singularity. I conclude: a) the image of the place is violence in the murderous-victim dyad; b) the mortal dyad serves as (...) mapper of the island; c) there is a fracture in relations with the place, which requires educational practices focused on subjectivity and corporal commitment to face this "crushing" of the subjective senses. (shrink)

In Transamazônica Paraense places do not exist in the geographical representations that shows the road, a regional and territorial domination project. The goal is to consider the emergency between -places to the road made of migrants from different geohitories that “ whether vicinam” and the implications of this context to the world of readings of/ on transamazônica geographicity. The experienced research focus is on the Vicinal of Adam, between Pacajá and New Repartimento (PA). Settlement Rio Cururuí. Methodologically, we start from (...) action-research, audiovisual recording of interviews with residents in their places, life histories and documentary survey interpreted the existential phenomenological contribution and concluded: a) the geographical debate, the educational plan, tends to declare the absence of They are living on the edge Transamazônica or “strip”; b) the sense of place is not strictly localizable or remarkable is not stable, constituting limit-spaces-s; c) Another language emerges from the between-place with the creative potential of communicative actions to clarify anding at multiple scales. (shrink)

Efforts to ‘green’ civic republican thought link environmentalist with democratic ends. Such efforts cast both as contributions to virtuous world-making that contests ‘actually existing unsustainability’ and, so, seeks to realize freedom as nondomination. In the context of the erosion of both democratic and environmentalist achievements since the 1970s, however, a focus on contestation’s other side, the ‘world-unmaking’ virtue of obstruction, is warranted. ‘Democratic’ interpreters of Niccolò Machiavelli’s work urge such an understanding of political virtue, which they ground not in equal (...) freedom as nondomination but in civic liberty. Civic liberty is realized when all are able (1.) to participate in formulating rules and (2.) to defend procedures sufficient to subject all to constraint by so-formulated rules. Civic liberty therefore requires mobilization of majorities’ latent capacity to (re.1.) contest ‘public’ government decisions and (re. 2.) obstruct elites’ ‘private’ capacity to act with impunity in relation to such rules. This concept offers two insights into the current ‘crises’ of democracy and the environment. First, if, as empirical observers suggest, a significant cohort of elites have ‘seceded’ from electoral democracies, the normative concept ‘civic liberty’ unsettles contestatory presumptions about the deliberative character of contemporary politics. Second, if it is also true that a significant cohort of the poor are ‘seceding’ from mainstream politics out of frustration with the inegalitarian consequences of elite malfeasance, then the emphasis the concept places on the politics of majoritarian veto-power aimed at reining-in elite impunity might be useful to those who hope to make anti-democratic populists less attractive to at least some of this cohort. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...) modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed. (shrink)

Some philosophers (Duff, Hampton) conceive of punishment as a way of communicating a message to the punished and argue that this communicative function justifies the harm of punishment. I object to communicative theories because punishment seems intuitively justified in cases in which it fails as a method of communication. Punishment fails as communication when the punished ignores the intended message or fails to understand it. Among those most likely to ignore or fail to understand the message of punishment are the (...) most hardened criminals, whom we typically think are appropriate targets of punishment. I suggest that an alternative justificatory strategy, one that focuses not on the successful receipt of the message of punishment by the wrongdoer but on the expression of condemnation by the community, is not subject to the same worry. The norms of successful expression are more easily met than those of communication, so that expressing condemnation toward a criminal might be justified even if he is unreceptive in the face of the expression. (shrink)

In the essay I intend to revalue the descriptive principle in the contemporaryAmazonian geography, as presented to us by the geographer from Pará EidorfeMoreira (1960). Laterally, I call the attention of Amazonian geographers to thesensitivity of his work, which is not present in the bibliography of the training coursesin Geography in Pará. The methodological strategy is descriptive-interpretative with aphenomenological tone. I conclude: the refusal of the description is installed by aprejudiced effect of our current formation in relation to the procedures (...) consideredtraditional; the production of knowledge, eager for explanation/analysis, can produceethical violence; the abstraction - which flirts with abstractionism - imposed by thehasty generalization of certain ideas about the Amazon, from geographical studies,installs an artificial cut between the symbolic and the emotional in the act of makinggeography in our region. (shrink)

GEOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS IN PANDEMIC TIMES -/- Held amid the impacts and mobilizations caused by the spatialization of the phenomenon of COVID-19, the book of an essayistic nature tries to make the moment feel, opening up issues geographically engaged by different geographers and from different philosophical perspectives. An invitation to experience longings, desires, defeats, hopes and mobilizations together in a pandemic world.

This paper reveals the concept of ma'rifa developed by Ibn al-'Arabi (d.1260), , especially in his magnum opus, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, the late work considered to the synthesis of his doctrine of metaphysics represented through the wisdom of each prophet; their uniqueness of divinely inspired and their epitome of spiritual perception, concerning the knowledge of God. It shows the transformative role of the prophet’s messages involving in the deeper creative process of divine-human dialogue, calling and response, that is repeatedly mentioned in (...) the Qur’an. Ibn ‘Arabi emphasized the importance of perceiving the direct relationship between all of creation and the divine Names and Attributes (al-asmā’ wa-l-sifāt al-ilāhiyyah), between creation as outward manifestation and as inward spiritual awareness (rūh). Everything that exists and is experienced in reality is the manifestation (tajallī) of different divine Names. (shrink)

Toward a Political Philosophy of Race, by Falguni Sheth, SUNY Press, 2009. Events involving the persecution of African‑Americans and other racial groups are normally thought to involve a pre-existing minority being singled out out for persecution. In Toward a Political Philosophy of Race, Falguni Sheth argues that this understanding gets the causal story backwards. In reality, a group that is perceived to pose a political threat has a racial identity imposed upon it by the state during episodes of oppression. On (...) Sheth's account, racial identity is the product of anxiety and panic on the part of the wider society. As she puts it, 'I distinguish between racial markers - skin type, phenotype, physical differences, and signifiers such as 'unruly' behaviors.' The former, in my argument, are not the ground of race, but the marks ascribed to a group that has already become (or is in on the way to becoming) outcasted." This review critically assesses Sheth's argument for her position and her accompanying critique of liberalism. (shrink)

There is an uneasy tension between our ordinary talk about beliefs and desires and the ontological facts supported by neuroscience. Arguments for eliminative materialism can be fairly persuasive, yet error theory about folk psychological discourse may be unacceptable. One solution is to accept mental fictionalism: the view that we are (or should be) fictionalists about mentality. My aim in this paper is to explore mental fictionalism as a viable theoretical option, and to show that it has advantages over other fictionalist (...) views in the literature, as well as advantages over other theories of mind. However, mental fictionalism faces particular objections that do not plague other fictionalist accounts, nor other theories of the mind. These objections may provide some explanation as to why mental fictionalism has not (until recently) gained much traction in the literature. I end with some suggestions on how the mental fictionalist can address these objections, hopefully paving the way for further development of mental fictionalism as a live philosophical position in philosophy of mind. -/- . (shrink)