It is well-known that naïve realism has difficulty accommodating perceptual error. Recent discussion of the issue has focused on whether the naïve realist can accommodate hallucination by adopting disjunctivism. However, illusions are more difficult for the naïve realist to explain precisely because the disjunctivist solution is not available. I discuss what I take to be the two most plausible accounts of illusion available to the naïve realist. The first claims that illusions are cases in which you are prevented from perceiving (...) properties you would ordinarily perceive and subsequently form a mistaken judgment about the perceived object. The second appeals to an unusual look or appearance that the perceived object instantiates. I argue that neither account is satisfactory and that, consequently, naïve realism ought to be rejected. (shrink)

A perceptual experience of a given object seems to make the object itself present to the perceiver’s mind. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) provides a better account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience than does the content view (the view that to perceive is to represent the world to be a certain way). But the naïve realist account of this phenomenology (...) has a conspicuous shortcoming: it explains the phenomenological directness of veridical perceptual experiences but not of hallucinations. Conversely, I maintain that a particular variety of the content view provides a unified account of the phenomenological directness of both veridical and hallucinatory experiences. If so, then contrary to what is often assumed, the phenomenological facts concerning perceptual experience are explained better by the content view than by naïve realism, and consequently, we have a compelling reason to prefer the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

According to an influential variety of the representational view of perceptual experience—the singular content view—the contents of perceptual experiences include singular propositions partly composed of the particular physical object a given experience is about or of. The singular content view faces well-known difficulties accommodating hallucinations; I maintain that there is also an analogue of Frege's puzzle that poses a significant problem for this view. In fact, I believe that this puzzle presents difficulties for the theory that are unique to perception (...) in that strategies that have been developed to respond to Frege's puzzle in the case of belief cannot be employed successfully in the case of perception. Ultimately, I maintain that this perceptual analogue of Frege's puzzle provides a compelling reason to reject the singular content view of perceptual experience. (shrink)

In Sense and Content , Christopher Peacocke points out that two equally-sized trees at different distances from the perceiver are normally represented to be the same size, despite the fact that in a certain sense the nearer tree looks bigger ; he concludes on the basis of this observation that visual experiences possess irreducibly phenomenal properties. This argument has received the most attention of all of Peacocke’s arguments for separatism—the view that the intentional and phenomenal properties of experiences are independent (...) of one another. However, despite its notoriety, the argument is widely misunderstood and underappreciated. I argue that once the structure of the argument is clarified and the replies that have been offered are considered closely, one must conclude that the trees argument is successful. (shrink)

This article argues that postwar Seventeen magazine, a publication deeply invested in enforcing heteronormativity and conventional models of girlhood and womanhood, was in fact a more complex and multivocal serial text whose editors actively sought out, cultivated, and published girls’ creative and intellectual work. Seventeen's teen-authored “Curl Up and Read” book review columns, published from 1958 through 1969, are examples of girls’ creative intellectual labor, introducing Seventeen's readers to fiction and nonfiction which ranged beyond the emerging “young-adult” literature of the (...) period. Written by young people – including thirteen-year-old Eve Kosofsky (later Sedgwick) – who perceived Seventeen to be an important publication venue for critical work, the “Curl Up and Read” columns are literary products in their own right, not simply juvenilia. Seventeen provided these young authors the opportunity to publish their work in a forum which offered girl readers and writers opportunities for intellectual development and community. (shrink)

"Heidegger on Being a Sexed or Gendered Human Being" is my contribution to a Symposium dedicated to the topic "Heidegger's idea of the human being." Editor Scott Campbell requested that participants (myself, Kevin Aho, Jesús Adrián Escudero, Tricia Glazebrook, Róisín Lally, and Iain Thomson) write a 1000 word statement addressing this question. Participants read each others contributions and submitted a 500 word response. This is my original statement.

The consensus in contemporary philosophy of mind is that how a perceptual experience represents the world to be is built into its sensory phenomenology. I defend an opposing view which I call ‘moderate separatism’, that an experience's sensory phenomenology does not determine how it represents the world to be. I argue for moderate separatism by pointing to two ordinary experiences which instantiate the same sensory phenomenology but differ with regard to their intentional content. Two experiences of an object reflected in (...) a mirror can possess the same spatial phenomenology while representing that object to occupy different spatial locations. So, contrary to the current consensus, the representation of spatial location is not fixed by an experience's sensory phenomenology. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. However, whether individual epistemic obligations and responsibility entail shared epistemic obligations and responsibility is rarely discussed. Instead, most discussions of doxastic responsibility focus on individuals considered in isolation. In contrast to this standard approach, I maintain that focusing exclusively on individuals in isolation leads to a profoundly incomplete picture of what we're epistemically obligated to do and when we deserve epistemic blame. First, (...) I argue that we have epistemic obligations to perform actions of the sort that can be performed in conjunction with other people, and that consequently, we are often jointly blameworthy when we violate shared epistemic obligations. Second, I argue that shared responsibility is especially important to doxastic responsibility thanks to the fact that we don't have the same kind of direct control over our beliefs that we have over our actions. In particular, I argue that there are many cases in which a particular individual who holds some problematic belief only deserves epistemic blame in virtue of belonging to a group all the members of which are jointly blameworthy for violating some shared epistemic obligation. (shrink)

In her Dinny Gordon series (1958–1965), junior novelist Anne Emery’s heroine manifests intellectual desire, a passionate engagement in the life of the mind along with the desire to connect with like-minded others. Within a genre which focused on socialization and dating, in Dinny, Emery normalizes a studious, inner-directed, yet feminine heroine, passionate about ancient history rather than football captains. Emery’s endorsement of the pleasure Dinny takes in intellectual work, and the friends and boyfriends Dinny collects, challenge stereotypes of intellectual girls (...) as dateless isolates while suggesting an alternative model of girlhood operating within apparent conformism to postwar “good girl” standards. (shrink)

All representationalists maintain that there is a necessary connection between an experience’s phenomenal character and intentional content; but there is a disagreement amongst representationalists regarding the nature of those intentional contents that are necessarily connected to phenomenal character. Russellian representationalists maintain that the relevant contents are composed of objects and/or properties, while Fregean representationalists maintain that the relevant contents are composed of modes of presentation of objects and properties. According to Fregean representationalists such as David Chalmers and Brad Thompson, the (...) Fregean variety of the view is preferable to the Russellian variety because the former can accommodate purported counterexamples involving spectrum inversion without illusion and colour constancy while the latter cannot. I maintain that colour constancy poses a special problem for the Fregean theory in that the features of the theory that enable it handle spectrum inversion without illusion cannot be extended to handle colour constancy. I consider the two most plausible proposals regarding how the Fregean view might be developed in order to handle colour constancy—one of which has recently been defended by Thompson —and argue that neither is adequate. I conclude that Fregean representationalism is no more able to accommodate colour constancy than is Russellian representationalism and, as such, ought to be rejected. (shrink)

It is often assumed that there is a perceptual conflict in looking at a picture since one sees both a two-dimensional surface and a three-dimensional scene simultaneously. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to think that looking at pictures requires the visual system to perform the special task of reconciling inconsistent impressions of space, or competing information from different depth cues. To the contrary, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that the perception of (...) depth in pictures is achieved in much the same way as is the perception of depth in any ordinary case. (shrink)

Using Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness as an inspirational backdrop, a novel whose story unfolds on a genderless planet that nevertheless relies on reproductive sex for the sake of generativity, this paper tackles the sex/gender debate, its entanglements with procreation, and its consequences for transgender pregnancies. More specifically, I analyze three issues that pose barriers to thinking about a more inclusive reproductive ethics: state-sanctioned sterilization, non-reproductive futurism, and access to assisted reproductive technology.

Thanks to the advent of social media, large numbers of Americans believe outlandish falsehoods that have been widely debunked. Many of us have a tendency to fault the individuals who hold such beliefs. We naturally assume that the individuals who form and maintain such beliefs do so in virtue of having violated some epistemic obligation: perhaps they failed to scrutinize their sources, or failed to seek out the available competing evidence. I maintain that very many ordinary individuals who acquire outlandish (...) false beliefs thanks to their use of popular social media platforms (and other similar internet technologies) deserve little or no blame for believing these falsehoods. Such individuals would be fully blameworthy only if they had formed or maintained the relevant beliefs partly in virtue of violating some epistemic obligation and had no excuse for violating that obligation. However, the nature of these internet technologies provides excuses for violating the relevant epistemic obligations, and so individuals are excused for holding the resulting false beliefs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are unconvincing, (...) we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss. (shrink)

Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such (...) falsehoods have systematic negative impacts on our doxastic attitudes that we can neither prevent nor correct. So, when there is clear expert consensus on a given scientific issue, while it is permissible for experts to consume anti-consensus material, laypeople have an epistemic obligation to avoid such material. This argument has important consequences for philosophical discussions of our epistemic obligations to perform or omit belief-influencing actions. Such discussions typically abstract away from the important differences between experts and laypeople. Accordingly, we should reject this typical practice as problematic, and insist instead that laypeople and experts have fundamentally different epistemic obligations. (shrink)

Comments and replies from the 2021 Eastern APA book symposium on Jill North's Physics, Structure, and Reality.

The fact that each of us has significantly greater confidence in the claims of co-partisans – those belonging to groups with which we identify – explains, in large part, why so many people believe a significant amount of the misinformation they encounter. It's natural to assume that such misinformed partisan beliefs typically involve a rational failure of some kind, and philosophers and psychologists have defended various accounts of the nature of the rational failure purportedly involved. I argue that none of (...) the standard diagnoses of the irrationality of misinformed partisan beliefs is convincing, but I also argue that we ought to reject attempts to characterize these beliefs as rational or consistent with epistemic virtue. Accordingly, I defend an alternative diagnosis of the relevant epistemic error. Specifically, I maintain that such beliefs typically result when an individual evaluating testimony assigns more weight to co-partisanship than he ought to under the circumstances, and consequently believes the testimony of co-partisans when better alternatives are available. (shrink)

Health care providers (HCPs) are routinely placed into morally challenging situations that have the potential to cause moral distress. This is especially true for HCPs working in the military, whether they are on deployment outside their typical contexts of practice such as in disaster relief (e.g., Haiti and the Ebola missions in West Africa), or in more typically military settings such as peace keeping or armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria). Moral distress refers to “painful feelings and/or psychological disequilibrium” (Nilsson, Sjöberg, (...) Kallenberg, & Larsson, 2011, p. 50) that occur when an individual is aware of a morally appropriate action in a moral dilemma but obstruction prevents them from carrying it out, or when in a situation where they must choose between upholding equally treasured but conflicting moral values. Similarly, moral distress can occur when faced with a ‘tragic choice’ where all available courses of action require something of moral significance to be given up, such as surgical triage in a mass casualty event (Hunt, Sinding, & Schwartz, 2012). In the literature, moral distress has been connected to negative psychological effects and even stress related mental health issues including compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Owen & Wanzer, 2014; Gustafsson, Eriksson, Strandberg, & Norberg, 2010; Litz, et al., 2009). (shrink)

The fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience’s phenomenology doesn’t need to match that object). On the other hand, you can’t have a perceptual experience that presents some object unless (...) you stand in the right sort of causal relation to that object (no matter how closely your experience’s phenomenology matches some object). According to the continuity thesis, property perception is similar to object perception in these two respects. A standard reason to reject the continuity thesis is the assumption that the environmental properties that a perceptual experience presents are determined by its phenomenal properties (which are not determined by the environmental properties that cause the experience). I maintain that the continuity thesis is false but for a different reason: perceptual experiences present both objects and properties via manners of presentation; but, whereas perceptual manners of presentation for objects are purely relational, perceptual manners of presentation for properties are satisfactional. (shrink)

When you have a perceptual experience of a given physical object that object seems to be immediately present to you in a way it never does when you consciously think about or imagine it. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) can provide a satisfying account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience while the content view (the view that to perceive is to (...) represent the world to be a certain way) cannot. I argue that this claim is false. Specifically, I maintain that the only acceptable naïve realist account of the relevant phenomenology is circular and that the content view can provide a similar account. In addition, I maintain that a certain specific variety of the content view provides a non-circular and thus more satisfactory account of this phenomenology. If so, then contrary to what is commonly assumed there are powerful phenomenological grounds for preferring the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

The issue of how best to combat the negative impacts of misinformation distributed via social media hangs on the following question: are there methods that most individuals can reasonably be expected to employ that would largely protect them from the negative impact that encountering misinformation on social media would otherwise have on their beliefs? If the answer is “yes,” then presumably individuals bear significant responsibility for those negative impacts; and, further, presumably there are feasible educational remedies for the problem of (...) misinformation. However, I argue that the answer is “no.” Accordingly, I maintain that individuals do not bear significant responsibility for the negative impacts at issue; and, further, I maintain that the only effective remedies for the problem of misinformation involve changing the information environment itself. (shrink)

This paper argues that, although Margaret Cavendish’s main philosophical contributions are not in philosophy of religion, she makes a case for a defense of God, in spite of the worst sorts of harms being present in the world. Her arguments about those harms actually presage those of contemporary feminist ethicists, which positions Cavendish’s scholarship in a unique position: it makes a positive theodical contribution, by relying on evils that contemporary atheists think are the best evidence against the existence of God. (...) To demonstrate that Cavendish’s work should be considered as early modern feminist theodicy, this paper will briefly introduce the contemporary feminist worry about theodicy as a project, show that Cavendish shares the contemporary feminist view about situated evil, and argue that her theodicy aims for agreement about how to eradicate great moral evils while preserving free will—and so, carves out a space for future female philosophers of religion who aim to be agents of healing in the face of such evil. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article takes Judith Butler’s epistemological problem of “framing” alongside Dana S. Belu’s notion of “reproductive enframing” to analyze whose bodies lie outside the borders of who is considered the appropriate reproductive citizen. Are all bodies subject to reproductive enframing under a totalizing technological ideology that Martin Heidegger refers to as Gestell? Or, does Belu’s notion of “partial enframing” allow a space to queer, or upset, our current understanding of such ideology? By queering the way that we currently view (...) assisted reproductive technology, can we widen the frame or cross its borders? In this article, I am primarily concerned with the necessity to queer French reproductive policy, though the questions I raise can be extended to any critiques of ART. (shrink)

What kind of rhetoric frames French reproductive policy debate? Who does such policies exclude? Through an examination of the “American import” of gender studies, along with an analysis of France’s Catholic heritage and secular politics, I argue that an unwavering belief in sexual difference as the foundation of French society defines the productive reproductive citizen. Sylviane Agacinski is perhaps the most vocal public philosopher who has framed the terms of reproductive policy debate in France, building an oppositional platform to reproductive (...) technology around anthropological assertions of sexual difference. This paper engages with Agacinski to examine rhetorical claims of sexual difference and how such claims delayed passage of France’s revised bioethics legislation that extends access of assisted reproductive technology (ART) to “all women.” Though the “PMA pour toutes” [ART for all women] legislation was eventually passed, such rhetoric motivated the explicit exclusion of all trans person from its extension, thus hardly permitting ART to all women. (shrink)

This paper uses the figure of the nomad from the work of Rosi Braidoti to critically examine rhetoric about vaccine and masking mandates, and the science of covid more broadly. I draw out the tensions and ambivalence felt as we navigate this on-going crisis in ways epitomized by the phrase “I have a healthy mistrust of authority, and I am still vaccinated.” Though ambivalent, the nomadic subject finds an affirmative ethics, navigating the “right” response to incite positive change and expose (...) our current states of subjectivity. Recognizing the ambivalence of this state may be useful for feminists who critique medicine for its historical sexist and racist “objectivism,” while also supporting medical science and trust in the case of vaccine mandates. (shrink)

Le climat politique actuel en France abonde de débats à propos de l’identité nationale et du voile; en fait, le voile est devenu un symbole séparant l’idée d’une nation française et d’une nation islamique. Cependant, peu d’attention est portée sur la façon dont la perception de la différence de la femme est essentielle à la formation du citoyen français. Au lieu de se demander simplement “que veut dire être Français?” une seconde interrogation devrait suivre sur la façon dont se construit (...) la femme voilée dans la société française. En faisant appel à la philosophie de Hegel, les réflexions philosophiques employées pour ce projet cherchent à poser de nouvelles questions pouvant éclairer le débat sur l’identité nationale: la femme voilée est-elle l’Antigone des temps modernes? Quel est l’enjeu de dévoiler la femme voilée? D’où vient ce désir de la dévoiler? (shrink)

The reports of individuals who have had their vision restored after a long period of blindness suggest that, immediately after regaining their vision, such individuals are not able to recognize shapes by vision alone. It is often assumed that the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the relationship between visual and tactile representations of shape. However, I maintain that, immediately after having their sight restored, at least some newly sighted individuals undergo visual experiences that instantiate basic (...) shape phenomenology but which do not present (that is, neither represent nor involve acquaintance with) the corresponding shape properties. Consequently, the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the role that perceptual phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties—it tells us that the properties presented by perceptual experiences are not determined by or “built into” perceptual phenomenology. In addition, I maintain that the evidence concerning sight restoration suggests an alternative theory concerning the role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties. Specifically, it suggests that, while not inherently representational, sensory phenomenal properties can serve as vehicles for the representation of an object’s properties. (shrink)

Thomas Reid famously claimed that our perceptual experiences reveal what primary qualities are in themselves, while providing us with only an obscure notion of secondary qualities. I maintain that this claim is largely correct and that, consequently, any adequate theory of perception must explain the fact that perceptual experiences provide significantly less insight into the nature of secondary qualities than into the nature of primary qualities. I maintain that neither naïve realism nor the standard Russellian variety of the content view (...) can provide a satisfying explanation; instead, in order to provide a satisfying explanation, we must posit that perceptual experiences represent properties via Fregean modes of presentation. Further, I maintain that we must depart from the standard Fregean variety of the content view in two important respects. First, the relevant modes of presentation must be characterized without appealing to causal relations between perceptual experiences and perceived properties; and second, we must posit that primary and secondary qualities are represented via modes of presentation of different kinds. The resulting view is that primary qualities are represented via perceptual modes of presentation analogous to highly detailed descriptions, while secondary qualities are represented via perceptual modes of presentation analogous to impoverished descriptions. (shrink)

On Oct. 24, 2019, French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski was scheduled to speak at the Université de Bordeaux-Montaigne on « l’être humain à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique » [the human being in the era of its technological reproducibility]. Amidst “violent threats” and their purported inability to assure the safety of Agacinski, the organizers cancelled the event. Agacinski and other French intellectuals lament what they perceive to be part of a “drifting liberticide”, a form of censorship that forbids the exchange of (...) ideas and forecloses open space for debate. The story goes that Agacinski, notable for her staunch opposition to surrogacy and extending assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) to non- heterosexual couples, as well as her anthropological claim that the fabric of our social order relies on the heteronormative structure of sexual difference, has been silenced. In a communiqué to the university, student organizations such as Riposte Trans and Mauvais Genre-s pleaded “no platform”, indicating that Agacinski’s reactionary homophobic and transphobic positions run contrary to the university’s mission of safeguarding against discrimination. What to do when an incitement to (epistemic) violence masks itself as free speech? Bring Sara Ahmed’s hammer to France. (shrink)

Cet article parle de la nécessité de repenser la notion de la différence sexuelle après le mal appropriation de celle-ci par « la manif pour tous ». Chaque tentative de former une ontologie fondée sur cette différence risque une favorisation de l’hétéronormativité et de l’essentialisme. En me servant de la philosophie d’Elizabeth Grosz sur Darwin, j’essaie de reformuler la différence sexuelle en des termes positifs et de voir celle-ci comme une notion qui facilite (plutôt que limite) la diversité. Le texte (...) est divisé en deux parties : 1. L’instrumentalisation de la différence sexuelle pour promouvoir l’hétéronormativité, et 2. Repenser une ontologie fondée sur la différence sexuelle. (shrink)

A feminist reading of how Heidegger may have responded to an unanswered questioned he posed in 1923, "Problem: What is woman?" while using his thought to better understand how contemporary society replies to questions in the realms of law, bioethics, pedagogy, and politics.

Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that property illusions—cases in which we perceive a property, but that property is not the property it seems to us to be in virtue of our perceptual experience—and veridical illusions—cases in which we veridically perceive an object’s properties, but our experience of some specific property is nonetheless unsuccessful or illusory—can occur. I defend the contrary view. First, I maintain that there are compelling reasons to conclude that property illusions and veridical illusions can’t occur; (...) and second, I maintain that the considerations supporting the possibility of such cases are uncompelling. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Exaltation views’ of humility are grounded on a kenotic view of humility, such that divine blessing comes proportionate to the extent to which an agent humbles herself. This article rejects exaltation views of humility which define humility kenotically, justify their arguments from a divine hiddenness perspective, and which conclude that divine concurrence with evil is justified as long as all humble believers eventually are exalted and blessed. Rather, I will contend that exaltation views misunderstand the meaning of both ‘humility’ and (...) ‘exaltation,’ even from their own Christian standpoint. I ultimately offer an alternate response to the problem of evil based on an existentially grounded conception of ‘humility’, which provides for a transmuted turn away from individual kenotic acts and toward community to transform those who suffer from atrocities. (shrink)

Largely thanks to Mill’s influence, the suggestion that the state ought to restrict the distribution of misinformation will strike most philosophers as implausible. Two of Mill’s influential assumptions are particularly relevant here: first, that free speech debates should focus on moral considerations such as the harm that certain forms of expression might cause; second, that false information causes minimal harm due to the fact that human beings are psychologically well equipped to distinguish truth and falsehood. However, in addition to our (...) moral obligations, we also have a distinct set of epistemic obligations—and even when a false belief doesn’t harm anyone, it constitutes an epistemically bad outcome. Moreover, Mill was profoundly mistaken about human psychology: human beings are vulnerable to the influence of a wide variety of false claims via a wide variety of psychological mechanisms. Consequently, there is a purely epistemic justification for restricting the distribution of misinformation: because each of us has an individual epistemic obligation to avoid unnecessary exposure to misinformation, and because avoiding such exposure is simply too difficult when acting alone, we all have a shared epistemic obligation to establish laws or regulations restricting the widespread distribution of misinformation. (shrink)

Même si ce livre ne compte pas plus d’une centaine de pages, l’analyse qu’il offre de Heidegger et de sa relation à l’environnement s’avère plutôt exhaustive. Si Casey Rentmeester le fait débuter par une brève histoire du développement de la philosophie environnementale, précisant comment cette discipline a largement affaire à l’éthique appliquée et l’éthique normative, il y explique bientôt comment des philosophes tels que Naess, Thomson et Toadvine emploient aujourd’hui des méthodes non-traditionnelles — ecofeminism, ecophenomenology, deep ecology — pour explorer (...) des aspects négligés par le courant philosophique qui y domine. Avant de s’appuyer sur l’œuvre heideggérienne pour répondre aux questions peu examinées par cette tradition de pensée, l’A. décrit brièvement la manière dont certains des représentants de celle-ci — Siedel, Zimmerman et Foltz notamment — se servent de celle-là pour mieux saisir la position de l’homme dans la nature. À l’en croire, son but est double : utiliser d’abord la critique phénoménologique de la métaphysique établie par Heidegger pour montrer comment, au sein de cette dernière, notre compréhension de l’être a mené à une destruction de l’environnement, puis penser avec Heidegger pour chercher à ce problème une réponse post-métaphysique qu’il s’agirait d’esquisser si tant est qu’il y en ait une. Or, tel est le cas pour Casey Rentmeester, qui se tourne en définitive vers le taoïsme pour lui emprunter son image d’un environnement durable. (shrink)

A short overview, written for a primarily scientific audience, of how conceptual analysis and philosophy of science can assist in nanoscience research.

Epistemic contextualists like David Lewis allow that we have substantially infallibilist reflective intuitions about knowledge even though our everyday talk accepts fallibilist attributions of knowledge. They give serious weight to both our everyday talk and our propensity to assent to the skeptic's conclusions, and give us a concept of knowledge that accommodates both. The skeptic would, of course, leverage such infallibilist intuitions in order to undermine the legitimacy of our everyday attributions. Most contemporary epistemologists would simply argue that our concept (...) of knowledge is fallibilist, but this doesn't give them a particularly convincing reply to intuitively compelling skeptical arguments. ;This essay, most generally, takes up the question of how best to argue about skepticism. I claim that a philosophical account of knowledge that responds to skepticism should be able to clearly accommodate our epistemic agency. In chapter 1 I explain how skepticism challenges our naIve conception of agency and introduce two criteria for an adequate response to skepticism. In chapter 2, I discuss contextualist solutions; I argue they fail to satisfy our criteria and fail on their own terms; I explain how both failures relate to a failure to adequately treat epistemic agency. In chapter 3 I develop a conception of epistemic agency that describes what it is to be an active, reasoning source of belief. This picture is at odds with a dominant strain of epistemology that has it that one is substantially subject to belief, not effectively responsible for it; I criticize an influential argument by Bernard Williams that claims belief is not an attitude we control. This discussion in chapter 3 gives support to, a rationale for, the anti-insulationism requirement set out in chapter 1. Finally, in chapter 4 I return to the methodological issues of how to argue about skepticism. I first defend the idea that a knowledge-based skepticism is worth philosophical attention. I then offer an interpretation of what the skeptic is up to, and discuss what an effective counterstrategy might look like; I suggest that a particular sort of normative argument is the best way with the skeptic. (shrink)

D’après Heidegger, chaque époque/épochè est caractérisé par un certain mode de révélation des étants, qui est à la fois une dissimulation d’une façon de l’Être. Ce mode particulier paraît ne venir de nulle part en ce qu’il se base sur un certain oubli. Dana S. Belu le met en scène pour son livre en faisant valoir la tendance de Heidegger « to treat the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) as a noncausal succession of universal principles of intelligibility that presupposes the forgetting (...) (Seinsvergessenheit) of the clearing (die Lichtung) as their source » (p. 15). L’oubli de notre époque est marqué par une divulgation technologique dans le mode de l’arraisonnement (Gestell) où les étants se révèlent comme partie du fonds (Bestand) d’être calculés, manipulés, exploités, et mis en réserve pour un usage ultérieur. La phénoménologie féministe de l’A. essaie de faire sens à la gestation, la maternité et la procréation médicalement assistée (PMA) qui font aux femmes faire partie de ce fonds et ouvre, parmi les paramètres du Gestell, la porte à une ère « sans mère ». (shrink)

Despite being one of life's most disruptive, painful, and puzzling experiences, grief has been rather neglected within philosophical scholarship until recently.

If we acknowledge that a perceptual experience’s sensory phenomenology is not inherently representational, we face a puzzle. On the one hand, sensory phenomenology must play an intimate role in the perception of ordinary physical objects; but on the other hand, our experiences’ purely sensory element rarely captures our attention. I maintain that neither indirect realism nor the dual component theory provides a satisfactory solution to this puzzle: indirect realism is inconsistent with the fact that sensory phenomenology typically goes unnoticed by (...) perceivers; while, the dual component theory cannot do justice to the important role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of physical objects. I argue that in order to avoid the difficulties with each of the standard alternatives, we must characterize sensory phenomenology as functioning in the way that linguistic symbols function in thought. (shrink)

Né dans le sillage d’un « significant renewal of interest in Bergsonism and a greater recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy » (p. 1), ce livre ne pouvait que poser des questions sur le temps, ramenant également à la philosophie de Heidegger, à qui l’on doit l’une des pensées les plus originales à ce sujet. Aussi Heath Massey s’emploie-t-il lire les textes de Bergson qui tentent de repenser la notion traditionnelle de temps à côté de ceux de Heidegger, mettant (...) plus particulièrement en lumière l’influence de celui-là sur celui-ci, une influence largement passée inaperçue. L’importance de cette œuvre tient dans la façon dont l’A. conteste la philosophie du temps que Heidegger attribue à Bergson. Notre guide considère la lecture bergsonienne de Heidegger comme une « oversimplication » (p. 84) et vise à éclaircir comment, malgré les propos du penseur allemand, le philosophe français a été capable de radicalement repenser le temps d’un point de vue ontologique. Dès lors, l’ouvrage s’achève sur un goût de soupçon, celui-ci faisant dire que Heidegger a essayé de se distinguer de Bergson pour ne pas admettre ce dont il lui est redevable. (shrink)

What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the Rest of the World Considers As The Most Ruthless Men: Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Radovan Karadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator By Jill Louise Starr NJ USA -/- Read My Entire Book Here (True Story) http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-th e-rest-of-the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-ratko-mladic-goran-hadzic-and-radovan-karadzi c-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator -/- Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of wine and chatting (...) about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about. Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally LPCYU Home Website -/- Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case By Jill Starr I want to stress, in this particular meeting , there was no observer status at the ICC Preparatory Meetings at the United Nations in New York City in 2001. What I did, made a historical precedent. I was asked by, Darko Trifunovic 1st Secretary of the Bosnian MIssion, to take his place, in a CLOSED DOOR UNITED NATIONS MEETING. This means, ONLY HEADS OF AMBASSADORIAL MISSIONS WERE ALLOWED IN THE MEETING. There was no "Observer Status for say NGO's such as Amnesty International." I represented a Country as an American Citizen that day; the Repuklika Srpska. This never occurred before to my knowledge ever. It was an error. My former professor, Arnold Stark, walked me in, A former State Dept. man chosen to be the former Ambassador from the USA to Bonn/Germany (and he declined years back because of his wife at the time). He knew it was illegal. It said on these paper I picked up in the meeting, Anyone, Richard Holbrooke, sat across from me, discussing this meeting outside the meeting itself thereafter , "would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of int'l law." I heard the Ambassadors of the world ALL DISCUS TRADING MONEY FOR ICC AND ICTY COURT VERDICT AS WELL AS FUTURE JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS -/- http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/home/irrefutable-proof-icty-is-corrupt-c ourt-irrefutable-proof-the-hague-court-cannot-legitimately-prosecute-karadzic-case -/- http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa/IrrefutableProofICTYIsCorruptCourtIrrefutabl# (The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images) OR http://community.jigsaw.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/903610# -/- Rea dMore Here _> Read the entire story here My testimonial video on Youtube _> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs -/- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs (My YouTube VIDEO) -/- This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not. -/- Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states having a substantial conversations, and, openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others. -/- I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding. -/- Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.” -/- ((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked! The idea was “let’s discuss it.” "It’s a great topic to discuss." -/- Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate topic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.)))))))))))))))))))))))))))) -/- In particular., since “Spain” was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, “Spain” must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was “socially acceptable” for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student. -/- SPAIN’s diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally!SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN “INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.” -/- I represented the state interests’ of the Former Yugoslavia, in Diplomat Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf. http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa (My Political Satire Blog) Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite -/- -/- . 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This article is a review of David Hummel’s The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, a book that questions whether the academic debate around dispensationalism is truly dead. By exploring through the lens of metaphorical theology, we look at how commercialization caused academic dispensationalism to self-cannibalize. Applying analysis to both the ouroboros and butterfly metaphors we can examine whether dispensationalism is dead or if there is a potential for a newer, stronger version of academic debate on the topic to resurface once (...) again. Equally as plausible, is the notion that dispensationalism has changed its meaning through the metamorphosis process of changing from academic dispensationalism to pop-dispensationalism. By looking at the meaning change that occurs at the point of transaction, we see that the biography of dispensationalism shows a significant shift in meaning as it becomes a commercial hit. (shrink)

The current informal practice of pharmacometrics as a combination art and science makes it hard to appreciate the role that informatics can and should play in the future of the discipline and to comprehend the gaps that exist because of its absence. The development of pharmacometric informatics has important implications for expediting decision making and for improving the reliability of decisions made in model-based development. We argue that well-defined informatics for pharmacometrics can lead to much needed improvements in the efficiency, (...) effectiveness, and reliability of the pharmacometrics process. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the pervasive yet often poorly appreciated role of informatics in improving the process of data assembly, a critical task in the delivery of pharmacometric analysis results. First, we provide a brief description of the pharmacometric analysis process. Second, we describe the business processes required to create analysis-ready data sets for the pharmacometrician. Third, we describe selected informatic elements required to support the pharmacometrics and data assembly processes. Finally, we offer specific suggestions for performing a systematic analysis of existing challenges as an approach to defi ning the next generation of pharmacometric informatics. (shrink)

A chapter reviewing recent experimental work on people's conceptions of ownership rights.

Psychedelic experiences are often compared to “transformative experiences” due to their potential to change how people think and behave. This study empirically examines whether psychedelic experiences constitute transformative experiences. Given psychedelics’ prospective applications as treatments for mental health disorders, this study also explores neuroethical issues raised by the possibility of biomedically directed transformation—namely, consent and moral psychopharmacology. To achieve these aims, we used both inductive and deductive coding techniques to analyze transcripts from interviews with 26 participants in psychedelic retreats. Results (...) indicate that psychedelic experiences can constitute transformative experiences. Twenty participants reported experiences or insights that were seemingly inaccessible or impossible to attain if not for the psychoactive effects of psychedelics. All participants besides one reported some change in identity, values, beliefs, desires, and behavior—changes in behavior being the most common. Participants also reported feeling capable deciding to use psychedelics in part due to information seeking prior to their retreats. Finally, several participants reported an enhanced capacity for enacting changes in their lives. Our results underscore both the importance of subjective embodiment to transformation and the role of transformative agency in shaping outcomes of the psychedelic experience. We examine our results relative to neuroethical issues and advocate for centering the person in psychedelic research and neuroethical inquiry about psychedelics to avoid pitfalls associated with psychedelics’ potential as moral psychopharmacological agents. (shrink)

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen (...) music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety. (shrink)

Staff reported paranormal experiences in connection with the outpatient Medical Assistance in Dying room at the hospital. This case study reports on staff experiences and illustrates how the Ethics team’s role expanded to deal with this novel situation by facilitating an interdisciplinary response.