In reference to the philosophical theology of medieval Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya, this paper outlines a parallel between Taymiyyan thought and Alvin Plantinga’s thesis of ‘Reformed Epistemology’. In critiquing a previous attempt to build an account of ‘Islamic externalism’, the Taymiyyan model offers an account that can be seen as wholly ‘Plantingan’.

Abstract: Sign language recognition is one of the most rapidly expanding fields of study today. Many new technologies have been developed in recent years in the fields of artificial intelligence the sign language-based communication is valuable to not only deaf and dumb community, but also beneficial for individuals suffering from Autism, downs Syndrome, Apraxia of Speech for correspondence. The biggest problem faced by people with hearing disabilities is the people's lack of understanding of their requirements. In this paper we try (...) to fill this gap. By trying to translate sign language using artificial intelligence algorithms, we focused in this paper using transfer learning technique based on deep learning by utilizing a MobileNet algorithm and compared it with the previous paper results[10a], where we get in the Mobilenet algorithm on the degree of Accuracy 93,48% but the VGG16 the accuracy was 100% For the same number of images (43500 in the dataset in size 64*64 pixel ) and the same data split training data into training dataset (70%) and validation dataset(15%) and testing dataset(15%) and 20 epoch . (shrink)

This article aims to draw on the ‘Qur'anic Rationalism’ of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) in elucidating an Islamic epistemology of theistic natural signs, in the lens of contemporary philosophy of religion. In articulating what Ibn Taymiyya coins ‘God's method of proof through signs (istidlāluhu taʿālā bi'l-āyāt)’, it seeks aid in particular from the work of C. Stephen Evans and other contemporary philosophers of religion, in an attempt to understand the relevance and force of this alternative to natural theology within (...) the Islamic tradition. In doing so, it aims to respond to existing criticisms of Ibn Taymiyya's perspective in the literature, and to consider the implications of a Taymiyyan reading of theistic natural signs, on the epistemic function of Qur'anic āyāt as theistic evidence. (shrink)

The design argument has taken on different formulations among Muslim thinkers. Arguably, most of these approaches might be described as Paleyan. In this chapter, however, I seek to develop a non-Paleyan approach toward design discourse by focusing on the thought of the Muslim theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In developing a Taymiyyan model of design-based theistic belief, I argue that this model can resist some of the problems associated with Paleyan approaches. Specifically, it avoids concerns over the soundness or (...) cogency of the Paleyan inference amid Darwinian objections. I argue that this is because on the Taymiyyan model, design-based theistic beliefs are noninferential and concern the ultimate or metaphysical cause of the design in nature, such that they do not rival naturalistic scientific explanations of biological phenomena. Despite three noteworthy objections to the model, I suggest that it offers a plausible way to defend design-based theistic belief. (shrink)

The problem of religious disagreement between epistemic peers is a potential threat to the epistemic justification of one’s theistic belief. In this paper, I develop a response to this problem which draws on the central epistemological thesis of skeptical theism concerning our inability to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for permitting evil. I suggest that this thesis may extend over to our judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, and that when it does so, it can enable theists to remain (...) steadfast amid disagreement with epistemic peers who hold a contrary theistic belief (i.e., atheistic belief). For if we’re unable to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, then for all we know, God has some reason for not revealing Himself to our apparent epistemic peer. Thus, their epistemic credentials needn’t provide reason to reduce one’s confidence to such a degree as to no longer uphold one’s theistic belief. (shrink)

This chapter aims to draw on the critical threads of those vibrant theological conversations within the formative years of Islamic thought in considering the different theological models of the Divine within the broader Islamic tradition under the purview of classical theism as it is understood today in the contemporary philosophy of religion. In doing so, it makes reference to the major strands within the theological (‘ilm al- kalām & atharī scripturalism) and philosophical (falsafa) schools of the Islamic tradition. It aims (...) to consider how these different trends, schools, and thinkers construct a model of God in light of the classical and neo-classical theistic model of God. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how the epistemic problem of religious disagreement has been viewed within the Islamic tradition. Specifically, I consider two religious epistemological trends within the tradition: Islamic Rationalism and Islamic Traditionalism. In examining the approaches of both trends toward addressing the epistemic problem, I suggest that neither is wholly adequate. Nonetheless, I argue that both approaches offer insights that might be relevant to building a more adequate response. So, I attempt to combine insights from both by drawing (...) a distinction between inferential and noninferential reflective responsibility. Given this distinction, I argue that it may be possible for a theist to remain steadfast in upholding their tradition-specific theistic belief, without having to hold that belief by way of inference; but nevertheless, having to be sufficiently reflectively responsible in forming their theistic belief noninferentially. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of religion has been fascinated with questions of the rationality of religious belief. Alvin Plantinga—a prominent Christian philosopher—has contributed greatly to the exploration of these questions. Plantinga’s epistemology is rooted in the intuitions of Thomas Reid’s “common-sense” philosophy and has developed into a distinctive outlook that we may coin, Plantingian (Calvinist) Reidianism. This chapter aims to propose that, in fact, the central ideas of that outlook can be seen prior to Reid (and John Calvin), beyond the confines of (...) exclusively Christian and European circles, in the theological epistemology of the Damascene Islamic theologian, Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In exploring the contours of a Taymiyyan worldview, primed upon the notion of fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya can be seen to have developed a faculty-based account of knowledge, moderate foundationalism, and a distinct “Reformed” epistemology. Within the midst of these developments, Ibn Taymiyya offers a potential framework for a “common-sense” philosophical methodology. Taken together these ideas form the basis for the intuitions of Plantingian Reidianism. Therefore, Plantinga might have looked to an earlier figure working in another tradition for historical support and inspiration for his religious epistemology. (shrink)

Sign Language Recognition (SLR) aims to translate sign language into text or speech in order to improve communication between deaf-mute people and the general public. This task has a large social impact, but it is still difficult due to the complexity and wide range of hand actions. We present a novel 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) that extracts discriminative spatial-temporal features from photo datasets. This article is about classification of sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible (...) although there are also similarities among different sign languages. They are the foundation of local Deaf cultures and have evolved into effective means of communication. Although signing is primarily used by the deaf and hard of hearing, hearing people also use it when they are unable to speak, when they have difficulty speaking due to a health condition or disability (augmentative and alternative communication), or when they have deaf family members, such as children of deaf adults. In this article we use the 43500 image in the dataset in size 64*64 pixel by use CNN Architecture and achieved 100% accuracy. (shrink)

The extent to which individuals with a variety of cultural backgrounds differ in empathic responsiveness is unknown. This article describes the differences in trait empathy in one independent and one interdependent society (i.e., the US and Iran, respectively). The analysis of data collected from self-reported questionnaires answered by 326 adults indicated a significant difference in the cognitive component of empathy concerning participants’ affiliation to either egocentric or socio-centric society: Iranian participants with interdependent cultural norms, reported higher cognitive empathy compared to (...) American participants who share independent cultural norms. In line with previous studies, gender differences were observed in all subscales of questionnaires, except the Empathy Quotient (EQ). Female participants demonstrated more empathy than males in both samples. Implications for understanding the cross-cultural differences of various components of empathy are discussed. (shrink)

In this chapter, I describe my “post-diagnosis” experiences as the parent of an autistic child, those years in which I tried, but failed, to make sense of the overwhelming and often nonsensical information I received about autism. I argue that immediately after being given an autism diagnosis, parents are pressured into making what amounts to a life-long commitment to a therapy program that (they are told) will not only dramatically change their child, but their family’s financial situation and even their (...) entire mode of existence. Moreover, despite information overload, many treatment programs for autism rely on empty jargon and make completely unrealistic promises, so parents are left feeling overwhelmed and panicked. Even well respected therapy programs encourage parents to spend liberally. Indeed, autistic therapists, who help construct what I refer to as the Culture of Autism, advise parents to commit to a minimum of 35 to 45 hours of intensive therapy every week. The implications are clear: for a parent who works full-time, their autistic child becomes a second full-time job. Autism is big business right now, and therapists are pushing parents to the brink of desperation. So it is not too surprising that there is a desperate cry for a more permanent solution—which is why researchers seek to cure autism. But there are two ways to conceptualize cure. A Therapeutic Cure model (TC) conceives of a cure as a beneficial treatment for the patient that eliminates or ameliorates the harms of the disease or condition. But the notion of a therapeutic cure for autism is highly implausible, given the complexities of autism. Indeed, at this point, the vast majority of researchers have come to the conclusion that the idea of a therapeutic cure for autism is simply a non-starter. Therefore the bulk of research seeking a cure for autism focuses instead on a second approach, which I refer to as the Negative Eugenics Cure model (NEC). With this model, the intention is to eliminate the disease or condition without regard for the health or well-being of the organism carrying the disease or condition. So, with regard to autism, researchers are focusing on identifying genetic markers for autism that can be detected in utero, or in embryos, so that autistic fetuses can be eliminated and autism eradicated by preventing the existence of autistic individuals. I review both models and argue that both fail to provide convincing arguments that the “solution” either offers is desirable. Both rest on the assumption that autism renders a life not worth living which, all things considered, is false. Instead of pushing to cure autism, an idea pervasive in this Culture of Autism, I contend that autistics are individuals with lives worth living. Moreover, rather than expend millions on research to search for the means to eliminate autism, we should instead expend our resources to ensure autistic individuals have access to support they may need. If the phenomenology of autism were better understood and appreciated, the panicked demand for a cure for autism might abate and perhaps autism could be seen as having value in and of its own right. (shrink)

. This article seeks to outline how a Muslim believer can deflect a defeater for Islamic belief put forward by Erik Baldwin and Tyler McNabb. In doing so, it aims to reject the suggestion that an Islamic religious epistemology is somehow antithetical to a model of Reformed epistemology which is not fully compatible with Plantingian. Taken together with previous work on Islam and RE, the article not only aims to provide reason to think that Baldwin and McNabb’s proposed epistemic defeater (...) for Islamic belief isn’t problematic, it also seeks to show how the concerns raised by Baldwin and McNabb over a Plantingian model of RE in Islamic milieu, are no longer tenable. (shrink)

This paper sets out a research agenda for a political theory of climate displacement, by critically examining one prominent proposal—the idea of a normative status for ‘climate refugees’—and by proposing an alternative. Drawing on empirical work on climate displacement, I show that the concept of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. I argue that, because of this complexity and heterogeneity, approaches to climate displacement that put the concept of the climate refugee at their centre will (...) fail to treat like cases alike and relevantly different cases differently. In response to these failings, I outline an alternative—the pluralist theory of climate displacement—which confronts the specific challenges that climate displacement poses in different practical and institutional contexts, whilst also treating climate displacement as a unified phenomenon at the second-order level of burden-sharing. (shrink)

The principle of sufficient reason threatens modal collapse. Some have suggested that by appealing to the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth, the threat is neutralized. This paper argues that this is not so. If the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth is developed in an analogous fashion to the most promising models of the indefinite extensibility of the concept set, plausible principles permit the derivation of modal collapse.

The most public-facing forms of contemporary Darwinism happily promote its worldview ambitions. Popular works, by the likes of Richard Dawkins, deflect associations with eugenics and social Darwinism, but also extend the reach of Darwinism beyond biology into social policy, politics, and ethics. Critics of the enterprise fall into two categories. Advocates of Intelligent Design and secular philosophers (like Mary Midgley and Thomas Nagel) recognise it as a worldview and argue against its implications. Scholars in the rhetoric of science or science (...) communication, however, typically take the view that Darwinism isn't a worldview, but a scientific theory, which has been improperly embellished by some; they uphold the distinction between is and ought and argue that science is restricted to the former. This prompts an is–ought problem on another level. I catalogue the ways in which Darwinism plainly is a worldview and why commentators' beliefs that it ought not to be distorts their analysis. Hence, it is their own worldview that precludes them from accepting Darwinism's worldview implications. (shrink)

In this article, I present a two-pronged argument for the immorality of contemporary, asymmetric drone warfare, based on my new interpretations of the just war principles of “proportionality” and “moral equivalence of combatants” (MEC). The justification for these new interpretations is that drone warfare continues to this day, having survived despite arguments against it that are based on traditional interpretations of just war theory (including one from Michael Walzer). On the basis of my argument, I echo Harry Van der Linden’s (...) call for “an international treaty banning all weaponized UAV [uninhabited aerial vehicles].”. (shrink)

The word semantics, in robotics and AI, has no canonical definition. It usually serves to denote additional data provided to autonomous agents to aid HRI. Most researchers seem, implicitly, to understand that such data cannot simply be extracted from environmental data. I try to make explicit why this is so and argue that so-called semantics are best understood as data comprised of conventions of human behaviour. This includes labels, most obviously, but also places, ontologies, and affordances. Object affordances are especially (...) problematic because they require not only semantics that are not in the environmental data (conventions of object use) but also an understanding of physics and object combinations that would, if achieved, constitute artificial superintelligence. (shrink)

Both realist and anti-realist accounts of natural kinds possess prima facie virtues: realists can straightforwardly make sense of the apparent objectivity of the natural kinds, and anti-realists, their knowability. This paper formulates a properly anti-realist account designed to capture both merits. In particular, it recommends understanding natural kinds as ‘categorical bottlenecks,’ those categories that not only best serve us, with our idiosyncratic aims and cognitive capacities, but also those of a wide range of alternative agents. By endorsing an ultimately subjective (...) categorical principle, this view sidesteps epistemological difficulties facing realist views. Yet, it nevertheless identifies natural kinds that are fairly, though not completely, stance-independent or objective. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causal explanation, in the version presented by Jim Woodward, has been recently claimed capable of buttressing the widely felt—though poorly understood—hunch that high-level, relatively abstract explanations, of the sort provided by sciences like biology, psychology and economics, are in some cases explanatorily optimal. It is the aim of this paper to show that this is mistaken. Due to a lack of effective constraints on the causal variables at the heart of the interventionist causal-explanatory scheme, as presently (...) formulated it is either unable to prefer high-level explanations to low, or systematically overshoots, recommending explanations at so high of a level as to be virtually vacuous. (shrink)

The partnership between a visually impaired runner (VIR) and sighted guide runner (SGR) constitutes a unique sporting dyad. The quality of these partnerships may profoundly impact the sport and physical activity (PA) experiences of visually impaired (VI) people, yet little is known about the experiences of VIRs and SGRs. This study aimed to explore qualitatively the running experiences of VIRs and SGRs. Five VIRs and five SGRs took part in in-depth, semi-structured interviews (M length = 62 minutes) exploring their running (...) journeys and perceptions of running-together. We analysed the dataset using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were generated, comprising: becoming and being a running team; a multifaceted intercorporeal experience; running-together promotes change; and disabling social interaction within running. Participants were generally positive about their running experiences, highlighting a range of benefits derived from the activity. Nevertheless, some examples of barriers to participation were also identified. Although the positive experiences described by the runners suggest guided running holds promise to increase PA in VI people, our findings illustrate the importance of directing attention towards developing high-quality relationships between VIRs and guides, alongside reinforcing the need for further change to promote inclusivity. (shrink)

American Sign Language, or ASL as its acronym is commonly known, is a fascinating language, and many people outside of the Deaf community have begun to recognize its value and purpose. It is a visual language consisting of coordinated hand gestures, body movements, and facial expressions. Sign language is not a universal language; it varies by country and is heavily influenced by the native language and culture. The American Sign Language alphabet and the British Sign Language alphabet are completely contrary. (...) Fingerspelling is one-handed in ASL and two-handed in BSL, with the exception of the letter C. AI technologies, particularly deep learning, can play an important role in breaking down communication barriers between deaf or hearing-impaired people and other communities, significantly contributing to their social inclusion. Recent advances in sensing technologies and AI algorithms have paved the way for the development of a wide range of applications aimed at meeting the needs of the deaf and hearing-impaired communities. To that end, the purpose of this paper is By attempting to translate sign language using artificial intelligence algorithms, we focused in this paper on a transfer learning technique based on deep learning using a ResNet algorithm and compared it to previous papers in which we used VGG19[1]and mobileNet [2], where we get in the ResNet algorithm on the degree of Accuracy 93,48% e number of images (43500 in the dataset in size 64*64 pixel ) and the data split training data into training dataset (70%) and validation dataset(15%) and testing dataset(15%) and 20 epoch. (shrink)

there is a communication gap between hearing-impaired people and those with normal hearing, sign language is the main means of communication in the hearing-impaired population. Continuous sign language recognition, which can close the communication gap, is a difficult task since the ordered annotations are weakly supervised and there is no frame-level label. To solve this issue, we compare the accuracy of each model using two deep learning models, Inception and Xception . To that end, the purpose of this paper is (...) By attempting to translate sign language using deep learning models, we focused in this paper a comparing between Inception and Xception ¬¬¬¬¬ algorithm and compared it to previous papers in which we used VGG19[1], mobileNet [2], where we get in the Inception and Xception algorithm on the degree of Accuracy 99.32%, 99,43% respectively. number of images (29000 in the dataset in size 75*75 pixel ) and the data split training data into training dataset (70%) and validation dataset(15%) and testing dataset(15%) and 20 epoch. (shrink)

Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. This (...) survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change. (shrink)

Unjustifiable assumptions about sex and gender roles, the untamable potency of maleness, and gynophobic notions about women's bodies inform and influence a broad range of policy-making institutions in this society. In December 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continued this ignoble cultural pastime when they decided Everson v. Michigan Department of Corrections. In this decision, the Everson Court accepted the Michigan Department of Correction's claim that “the very manhood” of male prison guards both threatens the safety (...) of female inmates and violates the women's “special sense of privacy in their genitals” and declared that sex-specific employment policies for prison guards is not impermissibly discriminatory. I believe that the Court's decision relies on unacceptable stereotypes about sex, gender and sexuality and it significantly undermines Title VII's power to end discriminatory employment practices. (shrink)

In the present article, I offer a new reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, specifically her argument that ideologies such as racism engender totalitarianism when the lonely and disenfranchised laborers of modern society develop a pathological fixation on formal logic, which I term “logomania.” That is, such logical deductions, from horrifically false premises, are the closest thing to thinking that individuals can engage in after their psyches, relationships, and communities have broken down. And it is only thus that (...) totalitarianism can achieve power, since it offers at least some form of connectedness and meaning, regardless how terrifying and violent. The danger persists, clearly, with the resurgence of the far Right, including in the extraordinary regime of Trump in the United States. From this I conclude that, along with the admirable calls to fight loneliness and rebuild our communities, we should also supplement all formal logical instruction and community education with instruction in creative thinking (including aesthetics), thereby discouraging the monomaniac reliance on formal logic as inadvertent weapon of totalitarianism. (shrink)

Chapter: WHITE PRIVILEGE AND THE COLOR OF FEAR This chapter focuses on the role that power, innocence and ignorance play in maintaining the position of white privilege. There are times when white people use their privilege in ways that overtly attempt to put and keep people of color in their places, but more often white privilege is less obvious. White privilege does not stand out in white peoples’ behavior at all times. When white behavior is normalized, it is masked. At (...) these times, white privilege and power hide behind the masks of innocence and the masks of ignorance. White people can mask from themselves and others their location with relations to power. In the film, The Color of Fear, David C. hides his power. As he hides his power, he keeps his privilege invisible, that is, behind a mask. In this chapter, we focus on the masking and unmasking of innocence and ignorance to get a better look at how the process of normalization of these masks makes whiteness powerful and consequently hides white privilege. The logic of power and privilege is reflected in the following relationship: -/- innocence + ignorance = Invisibility (of White Privilege) -/- . (shrink)

This project was provoked by the almost nonexistent pushback from the Democratic liberal establishment to the (2020) exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, despite his acknowledged killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters against the police murder of George Floyd. It builds on three prior articles arguing for the revival of ancient Dionysian practice, Haitian Vodou, and Indigenous South American shamanism to empower leftist revolution. In essence, I propose an assemblage of spiritual practices that are accessible today for the neo-colonized 99% of (...) the global population, by synthesizing and reconstructing three democratic, lower-SES, Indigenous religions, all of which share a militant defiance of their respective tyrannical plutocracies. To avoid cultural appropriation, I center these reconstructed spiritual practices on the figure of the “mage,” a psychosocial healer loosely analogous to a shaman. And the mage’s signature activity, “magic,” I redefine naturalistically as free interpersonal performative action, practiced using two theoretical disciplines (philosophy and psychology) and two practical disciplines chosen by each mage. More precisely, Spirit/Dance channels the “spirits” of dead ancestors, historical figures, legendary heroes, mythical beings, and fictional characters, into the three ultimate objectives of “mindfulness” for psyches/souls, “liberation” for mindful bodies, and “social justice” for liberated communities, indirectly empowering long-term revolution. (shrink)

After stating "I am gay" Navy Lieutenant Paul G. Thomasson was honorably discharged from the military. In Thomasson v. Perry (1996), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth District affirmed Thomasson's discharge. Thomasson is now considered the leading case evaluating the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In this paper, I show that the court's analysis of the Department of Defense policy rests of two unarticulated and undefended assumptions about sexuality. The first is that an act of (...) sex is essentially defined in terms of the sexual orientation of the persons engaging in that act. The second is that whether or not a person is an open homosexual determines the essential nature of the homosexual acts of others. I conclude that both assumptions are untenable, therefore the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is indefensible. (shrink)

This article reviews three books written by Larry May concerning the foundations of international criminal law: Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account (2005), War Crimes and Just War (2007), and Aggression and Crimes Against Peace (2008).

This article responds to Nir Eisikovits’ recent book Sympathizing with the Enemy: Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Negotiation (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010).

Although typical arguments for knitting are that it is useful, therapeutic or the latest trend, I argue that knitting can play a life-changing part in the creation of a person’s self. Knitting can be a genuinely powerful activity, one worthy of respect and admiration.

How can researchers use race, as they do now, to conduct health-care studies when its very definition is in question? The belief that race is a social construct without “biological authenticity” though widely shared across disciplines in social science is not subscribed to by traditional science. Yet with an interdisciplinary approach, the two horns of the social construct/genetics dilemma of race are not mutually exclusive. We can use traditional science to provide a rigorous framework and use a social-science approach so (...) that “invisible” factors are used to adjust the design of studies on an as-needed basis. One approach is to first observe health-care outcomes and then categorize the outcomes, thus removing genetic differences as racial proxies from the design of the study. From the outcomes, we can then determine if there is a pattern of conceivable racial categories. If needed, we can apply dynamic notions of race to acknowledge bias without prejudice. We can use them constructively to improve outcomes and reduce racial disparities. Another approach is nearly identical but considers race not at all: While analyzing outcomes, we can determine if there are biological differences significant enough to identify classifications of humans. That is, we look for genetic patterns in the outcomes and classify only those patterns. There is no attempt to link those patterns to race. (shrink)

Abstract -/- “The Obvious Invisibility of the Relationship Between Technology and Social Values” -/- We all too often assume that technology is the product of objective scientific research. And, we assume that technology’s moral value lies in only the moral character of its user. Yet, in order to objectify technology in a manner that removes it from a moral realm, we rely on the assumption that technology is value neutral, i.e., it is independent of all contexts other than the context (...) in which it is used morally or immorally by someone. However, there is a power to technology. At the very least, technology should be seen as reflecting the values that it rises from: a developmental context. Consequently, we can make the invisible moral realm visible as we investigate the relationship between culture and technology. Pragmatically, we can trace how cultural values inform what counts as a scientific question. When we look at the 1980s epidemiological model for AIDS we see how the presuppositions within a culture frame the type of question asked, i.e. What population do we see AIDS occurring in? This question initially leads scientific research away from actual individual behaviors until a different question is asked that leads the question towards behavioral epidemiological models rather than population models. Secondly, we can make visible the circumstance that depicts that what constitutes a scientific problem has a direct relationship to the types of technologies that are developed. We can more clearly see this circular relationship between culture and technology by looking at clinical research and practice regarding heart disease. Men who were dying of diagnosed heart disease were showing symptoms of problems in large arteries of the heart. Women were also dying of heart disease, but since their large arteries were not overwhelmingly compromised they were not being properly diagnosed until recently. Different technologies and protocol were needed to “see” different symptoms in the smaller vessels of women. Thirdly, I show how the types of technology developed, in turn, can create new values or enhance preexisting values within a culture. DNA research can be used to investigate long, unanswered questions about qualitative dimensions of life in quantitative manners. Yet, long held unanswered questions about a biological basis of race or intelligence are themselves rarely challenged as uninteresting or misguided even when they are tied to prejudicial qualitative assumptions if the chance of a “scientific” answer is possible. When existing technologies or modifications of existing technologies can be used they seem to direct human reactions and behaviors in predictable ways. The technologies themselves may be said to direct culture in ethically valenced manners. (shrink)

In the fourteenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari develop a dichotomy between two kinds of space – the smooth and the striated. What I want to focus on in this chapter is the status of these two conceptions of space. As Deleuze and Guattari note, these two forms of space are only discovered in a mixed form, yet are capable of being analysed de jure through their separation. In this sense, the plateau on the smooth and striated (...) can be seen as something like a transcendental deduction of their ontology of spaces. I will explore what Deleuze and Guattari mean when they say that they want to construct a theo-noology of smooth and striated spaces. I want to look at the ethical implications of this distinction, before looking at some alternative approaches to the issue of space. It should be noted that the question of the striation of space is one that is shared by Bergson, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre among others. The novelty of Deleuze and Guattari’s account is in their formulation of the notion of smooth space as a response. I will begin by looking at the notion of striated space itself, and in particular will explore the degree to which we should see it as a structure or as a method, and the interrelation between these two characterisations. (shrink)

Past work has demonstrated that people’s moral judgments can influence their judgments in a number of domains that might seem to involve straightforward matters of fact, including judgments about freedom, causation, the doing/allowing distinction, and intentional action. The present studies explore whether the effect of morality in these four domains can be explained by changes in the relevance of alternative possibilities. More precisely, we propose that moral judgment influences the degree to which people regard certain alternative possibilities as relevant, which (...) in turn impacts intuitions about freedom, causation, doing/allowing, and intentional action. Employing the stimuli used in previous research, Studies 1a, 2a, 3a, and 4a show that the relevance of alternatives is influenced by moral judgments and mediates the impact of morality on non-moral judgments. Studies 1b, 2b, 3b, and 4b then provide direct empirical evidence for the link between the relevance of alternatives and judgments in these four domains by manipulating (rather than measuring) the relevance of alternative possibilities. Lastly, Study 5 demonstrates that the critical mechanism is not whether alternative possibilities are considered, but whether they are regarded as relevant. These studies support a unified framework for understanding the impact of morality across these very different kinds of judgments. (shrink)

This paper critiques the new mechanistic explanatory program on grounds that, even when applied to the kinds of examples that it was originally designed to treat, it does not distinguish correct explanations from those that blunder. First, I offer a systematization of the explanatory account, one according to which explanations are mechanistic models that satisfy three desiderata: they must 1) represent causal relations, 2) describe the proper parts, and 3) depict the system at the right ‘level.’ Second, I argue that (...) even the most developed attempts to fulfill these desiderata fall short by failing to appropriately constrain explanatorily apt mechanistic models. -/- *This paper used to be called "The Emperor's New Mechanisms". (shrink)

What is so striking about Breaking Bad is how centrally impairment and disability feature in the lives of the characters of this series. It is unusual for a television series to cast characters with visible or invisible impairments. On the rare occasions that television shows do have characters with impairments, these characters serve no purpose other than to contribute to their ‘Otherness.’ Breaking Bad not only centralizes impairment, but impairment drives and sustains the story lines. I use three interrelated themes (...) from Disability Scholarship to analyze Breaking Bad. The first theme, Bodily Control, is that good bodies are controlled bodies and that uncontrolled, messy bodies are frightening, bad bodies. Indeed, the messiness of impairment and disability is so bad, that impaired and disabled individuals are excluded or shut out or excluded from many areas of public life. The second theme, Normalcy, is that the effect of hiding away impairment, of attempting to conceal disability, is that society becomes defined by, and structured around, the concept of normalcy. Normalcy, being normal, attaining and maintaining normalcy, is the preoccupation of most in society. To fail to be normal, or to fall from what is considered to be normal, is a source of tremendous anxiety for most people. These two themes, Bodily Control and Normalcy are conceptually connected: impairment, disease and dying are so feared because they are socially invisible and, therefore unknown and unknowable. They are the undiscussable taboos. The third theme, Bodily Realism, is that having a realistic view of the body, which would at minimum require accepting the fact that human bodies are fragile things, prone to disease and accident and are ultimately destined to die, makes one more at ease in the world, and able to live better lives and live as a better person. Indeed, so the argument goes, our lives would be richer, more rewarding—emotionally and morally—if we cared less about normalcy because of a dread of abnormalcy, but instead learned to accept if not positively value the physical variability of human existence. (shrink)

If one can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners, one can surely judge a society by how it treats cognitively- and learning-impaired children. In the United States children with physical and cognitive impairments are subjected to higher rates of corporal punishment than are non-disabled children. Children with disabilities make up just over 13% of the student population in the U.S. yet make up over 18% of those children who receive corporal punishment. Autistic children are among the most (...) likely to receive corporal punishment. -/- Although they may deny or redescribe particular instances of corporal punishment or their use of restraints, educators defend such actions as legitimate punishment. In this paper, I assess the logic underlying the use of restraints and corporal punishment on autistic children by educators. The rationalizations for the corporal punishment or restraint of autistics stems from the educator’s desire to control the autistic children so as to end typical autistic behaviors such as rocking, repetitive verbalizations, or “flapping” but also the autistic child’s non-affective responses such as not appearing to feel remorse or shame or the absence of a verbal acknowledgement of remorse or shame. The educators assume that the autistic’s failure to exhibit the desired responses is evidence of the autistic’s moral incorrigibility and is, therefore, evidence of the appropriateness of corporal punishment. But this assumption of the incorrigibility of the autistic child is questionable. -/- Indeed accepting this incorrigibility assumption reveals two important problems. First, instructors using physical punishment on autistic children do not understand autism. Second, they are not working with a tenable conception of punishment. Any action undertaken to induce socially acceptable behaviors (whether it be the end of autistic acts or responses such as remorse) is to fail to understand what the legitimate punishment of children is about. (shrink)

This book examines autism from the tradition of analytic philosophy, working from the premise that Autism Spectrum Disorders raise interesting philosophical questions that need to be and can be addressed in a manner that is clear, jargon-free, and accessible. The goal of the original essays in this book is to provide a philosophically rich analysis of issues raised by autism and to afford dignity and respect to those impacted by autism by placing it at the center of the discussion.

This article is part of a larger project that explores how to channel people’s passion for popular arts into legal social justice by reconceiving law as a kind of poetry and justice as dance, and exploring different possible relationships between said legal poetry and dancing justice. I begin by rehearsing my previous new conception of social justice as organismic empowerment, and my interpretive method of dancing-with. I then apply this method to the following four “ethico-political choreographies of justice”: the choral (...) dance of souls qua winged chariot-teams, a dancingly beautiful friendship with the community, a tightrope-dance of the cool, and humans dancingly reimagined as positioned actors in fluidly moving groups. I then synthesize these analyses into “dancing justice,” defined as the dynamic equilibrium sustained by a critical mass of a community’s members comporting themselves like social dancers. (shrink)

What is it about a person's becoming an adult that makes it generally inappropriate to treat that person paternalistically any longer? The Standard View holds that a mere difference in age or stage of life cannot in itself be morally relevant, but only matters insofar as it is correlated with the development of capacities for mature practical reasoning. This paper defends the contrary view: two people can have all the same general psychological attributes and yet the mere fact that one (...) person is at the beginning of a life and another in the middle of one can justify treating the younger person more paternalistically than the older one. Recognising the moral relevance of age, moreover, is crucial if one is to accommodate both the liberal moral ideal of respect for autonomy and our demanding educational aims, given that these otherwise come into conflict with one another. (shrink)

Whiteness theorists argue that whiteness has two essential features. First, whiteness colonizes, appropriates and controls the Other. Whiteness is, then, racist.Second, whiteness is constructed unwittingly. Whites are, it is claimed, unaware of the harms they inflict on a genocidal scale because whiteness, like the air we breathe, is “invisible” to those who construct it and are constructed by it. Whiteness is, then, innocent. I think defining whiteness as innocent racism is troubling for two reasons. First, it leaves whites unaccountable for (...) the acts of racism they perpetuate. Second, I think that the claim that whiteness is invisible “like the air we breathe,” while a powerful and fascinating metaphor, is mistaken. I will argue that whiteness is closeted; and while the closet makes the acknowledgement of whiteness difficult, it does not make it impossible. Thus, though closeted, whites are morally accountable for the acts of racism they commit. (shrink)

In this article, I apply Australian logician and ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, specifically its alternative logic of “the dance of interaction,” to a controversial community-engagement program in my home state of Alabama. At Rural Studio, Auburn University students design free housing and public works for one of the poorest regions in the United States, known as the “Black Belt.” Through the lens of Plumwood’s ecofeminist dancing logic, the marginalized source of Rural Studio’s survival is (...) revealed to be the resilience of the disempowered majority-Black community. Inspired thereby, I sketch an ecofeminist choreography with three “dancing” concepts (namely Plumwood’s “the master model,” Vandana Shiva’s “nature’s logic,” and Ariel Salleh’s “holding”), acknowledging the resilience of the disempowered as a necessary step toward an ethically-sustainable aesthetics. (shrink)

Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked our (...) participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (69.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change. (shrink)

Consonant with the ongoing “aesthetic turn” in legal scholarship, this article pursues a new conception of law as poetry. Gestures in this law-as-poetry direction appear in all three main schools in the philosophy of law’s history, as follows. First, natural law sees law as divinely-inspired prophetic poetry. Second, positive law sees the law as a creative human positing (from poetry’s poesis). And third, critical legal theory sees these posited laws as calcified prose prisons, vulnerable to poetic liberation. My first two (...) sections interpret two texts at the intersections among these three theories, namely Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Shelley identifies a poetic rebirth in the ruins of natural law, suggesting a philosophy of law as “natural poesis.” And Tocqueville names several figurative aristocracies capable of redeploying aristocratic law against democratic despotism, suggesting a philosophy of law as “aristo-poetic counterforce.” Finally, I propose a new theory of law as poetry bridging these two theories, “natural aristo-poetic counterforce.”. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the nature of the Star Maker in Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, as well as Stapledon’s exploration of the theological problem of evil, as compared with philosophical conceptions of God and their respective theodicies in the tradition of classical theism, as propounded by philosophers such as Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Avicenna. It argues that Stapledon’s philosophical divergence from classical theism entails that the Star Maker of the novel is more demiurge than true divinity, and that this (...) divergence is integral to the basically amoral character of the Star Maker, as well as the purely aesthetic resolution of the problem of evil articulated in Star Maker. This analysis, in turn, will hopefully bear on future studies touching on the trope of quasi-divinities, evolved and contingent gods, present in the work of other SF authors. (shrink)

In this article, I build on my recent conceptions of law as poetry and of justice as dance by articulating three new conceptions of the relationship between law and justice. In the first, “poetry-based justice”, justice consists of a rigid choreography to a kind of musical recitation of the law’s poetry. In the second, “dancing-based law”, justice consists of spontaneous, freely improvised movement patterns that the poetry of the law tries to capture in a kind of musical notation. And in (...) the third, “reciprocal-legal justice”, justice and law consist of a reciprocally determining artistic collaboration between the democratic dancing masses and the aristocratic poetising elites. Given that each of these predominates in one of three types of community, I then present a reclassification of right-leaning, centrist and leftist societies as dominated by “literalist”, “kinetic” and “mutualist” communities (respectively), and offer suggestions for legislators and activists working in each type. In conclusion, law and justice, qua poetry and dance, become more flexible, inclusive and open to creative improvising and collaboration, a new form that I name, after Astraea, Greek goddess of divine justice, “astral legal justice”. (shrink)

Against caricatures of the poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller as an unoriginal popularizer of Kant, or a forerunner of totalitarianism, Frederick Beiser reinterprets him as an innovative, classical republican, broadening his analysis to include Schiller’s poetry, plays, and essays not widely available in English translation, such as the remarkable essay, “On Grace and Dignity.” In that spirit, the present article argues that the latter text, misperceived by Anglophone critics as self-contradictory, is better understood as centering on gender and dance. In brief, grace (...) is a virtuous power of beautiful gestures associated with women, while dignity is a power of sublime gestures associated with men, and the improvised combination thereof is a divinely androgynous power of gesture that I term “stateliness,” in a three-step choreography of aesthetic education. (shrink)