There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the (...) scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge. (shrink)

The paper identifies the phenomenal rise of increasingly invasive forms of elective cosmetic surgery targeted primarily at women and explores its significance in the context of contemporary biotechnology. A Foucauldian analysis of the significance of the normalization of technologized women's bodies is argued for. Three "Paradoxes of Choice" affecting women who "elect" cosmetic surgery are examined. Finally, two utopian feminist political responses are discussed: a Response of Refusal and a Response of Appropriation.

This paper provides an argument for a more socially relevant philosophy of science (SRPOS). Our aims in this paper are to characterize this body of work in philosophy of science, to argue for its importance, and to demonstrate that there are significant opportunities for philosophy of science to engage with and support this type of research. The impetus of this project was a keen sense of missed opportunities for philosophy of science to have a broader social impact. We illustrate various (...) ways in which SRPOS can provide social benefits, as well as benefits to scientific practice and philosophy itself. Also, SRPOS is consistent with some historical and contemporary goals of philosophy of science. We’re calling for an expansion of philosophy of science to include more of this type of work. In order to support this expansion, we characterize philosophy of science as an epistemic community and examine the culture and practices of philosophy of science that can help or hinder research in this area. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to inaccurate (...) descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

Online shaming is a subject of import for social philosophy in the Internet age, and not simply because shaming seems generally bad. I argue that social philosophers are well-placed to address the imaginal relationships we entertain when we engage in social media; activity in cyberspace results in more relationships than one previously had, entailing new and more responsibilities, and our relational behaviors admit of ethical assessment. I consider the stresses of social media, including the indefinite expansion of our relationships and (...) responsibilities, and the gap between the experiences of those shamed and the shamers’ appreciation of the magnitude of what they do when they shame; I connect these to the literature suggesting that some intuitions fail to guide our ethics. I conclude that we each have more power than we believe we do or than we think carefully about exerting in our online imaginal relations. Whether we are the shamers or the shamed, we are unable to control the extent to which intangible words in cyberspace take the form of imaginal relationships that burden or brighten our self-perceptions. (shrink)

Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such (...) heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Imperfectionist Ethic,’ could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis-centered, nonideal ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis-centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. (shrink)

The failure of psychiatry to validate its diagnostic constructs is often attributed to the prioritizing of reliability over validity in the structure and content of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here I argue that in fact what has retarded biomedical approaches to psychopathology is unwarranted optimism about diagnostic discrimination: the assumption that our diagnostic tests group patients together in ways that allow for relevant facts about mental disorder to be discovered. I consider the Research Domain Criteria framework (...) as a new paradigm for classifying objects of psychiatric research that solves some of the challenges brought on by this assumption. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policy makers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead of delineating a specific kind of engaged philosophy of science, as previous accounts have done, this article draws on literature from outside the discipline to develop a framework for analyzing different forms of broadly engaged philosophy of science according to two key dimensions: social interaction and epistemic integration. Clarifying the many (...) forms of engagement available to philosophers of science can advance future scholarship on engagement and promote more strategic engagement efforts. (shrink)

(In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, edited by Glen Pettigrove and Robert Enright) This chapter discusses forgiveness conceived as primarily a volitional commitment, rather than an emotional transformation. As a commitment, forgiveness is distal, involving moral agency over time, and can take the form of a speech act or a chosen attitude. The purpose can be a commitment to repair or restore relationships with wrongdoers for their sake or the sake of the relationship, usually by forswearing (...) one’s hostile attitudes toward a particular wrongdoing; the commitment may also be to oneself for one’s own sake, to be a person with a virtue of forgivingness. It can be incident-specific, that is, a response to a particular occasion of harm, or a forward-looking disposition, an aim to cultivate the habit of being a forgiving person in advance. The enabling conditions of forgivingness as a virtue may be more basic master virtues including integrity and humility, motivations that also underpin commitments to be unforgiving, so this chapter concludes with some careful consideration of the ethics of unforgivingness to others, and the commitment to be unforgiving of oneself. (shrink)

Constitutivist accounts in metaethics explain the normative standards in a domain by appealing to the constitutive features of its members. The success of these accounts turns on whether they can explain the connection between normative standards and the nature of individuals they authoritatively govern. Many such explanations presuppose that any member of a norm-governed kind must minimally satisfy the norms governing its kind. I call this the Threshold Commitment, and argue that constitutivists should reject it. First, it requires constitutivists to (...) restrict the scope of their explanatory ambitions, because it is not plausibly true of social kinds. Second, despite the frequent reliance on physical artifacts in constitutivists’ illustrations of the Threshold Commitment, it counter-intuitively entails that physical artifacts can cease to exist without being physically destroyed. Third, it misconstrues the normative force of authoritative norms on very defective kind-members because it locates this force not in the norm, but in the threat of non-existence. Fortunately, constitutivism can be decoupled from the Threshold Commitment, and I close by sketching a promising alternative account. (shrink)

In this introductory essay, I describe feminist ethics as a kind of approach to morality that says we ought to pay attention to the facts on the ground and empirical information in order to know whether and how a moral problem is a gendered problem. One of the best accounts of feminist ethics is by Hilde Lindemann, who wrote that feminist ethics aims “to understand, criticize, and correct how gender operates within our moral and social beliefs and practices.” She doesn’t (...) define feminism as a theory about women, and neither do I. The term 'feminist' has more to do with the sources of this approach to ethics than the ultimate goals of such theorists; women were influential and early advocates of the view that sometimes a moral problem is a problem because it is gendered. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with (...) others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain. (shrink)

In recent work, Michael Smith argues that particular desires are constitutive of ideal agency and draws on his dispositional account of reasons to establish the normative significance of those desires. In a sustained critique, Michael Bukowski objects that Smith’s recent arguments that particular desires are constitutive of ideal agency rely on indefensible premises and his dispositional account of reasons is unable to establish the normative significance of such desires. On the contrary, I argue not only that Smith has the resources (...) to respond to these objections but also that the form of Smith’s constitutivist explanation has unappreciated explanatory strengths. (shrink)

With David Cooper and others, I argue that it is conceptually and ethically good to broaden the conception of misanthropy beyond that of hatred of humans. However, I hold that not everyone with misanthropic thoughts is a misanthrope. I propose thinking of a misanthrope as one who appraises the moral perception of misanthropy to be appropriate, weighty, and governing of other aspects of one’s moral outlook or character. I conclude that pessimism without misanthropy may be more ethically appropriate for some (...) of us with misanthropic thoughts who wish to reject the identity of a misanthrope. (shrink)

Our attitudes toward human culpability for environmental problems have moral and emotional import, influencing our basic capacities for believing cooperative action and environmental repair are even possible. In this paper, I suggest that having the virtue of forgivingness as a response to environmental harm is generally good for moral character, preserving us from morally risky varieties of pessimism and despair. I define forgivingness as a forward-looking disposition based on Robin Dillon’s conception of preservative forgiveness, a preparation to be deeply and (...) abidingly accepting yet expecting human error. As with other virtues, however, preservative forgiveness is available to some of us more than others; in the second half of this paper, I consider the deep challenge posed by rational pessimism, especially on the part of those who have been given many reasons not to hope for the very moral improvements for which they strive. I conclude that for those of us with the power roles and personal resources especially conducive to environmental activism, preservative forgiveness inclines us to remain engaged in environmental activism with fellow flawed human beings, recognizing our own mutual depredations while committing us to cooperatively respond. (shrink)

Philosophers generally prescribe against complaining, or endorse only complaints directed to rectification of the circumstances. Notably, Aristotle and Kant aver that the importuning of others with one’s pains is effeminate and should never be done. In this paper, I reject the prohibition of complaint. The gendered aspects of Aristotle’s and Kant’s criticisms of complaint include their deploring a self-indulgent "softness" with respect to pain, yielding to feelings at the expense of remembering one’s duties to others and one’s own self-respect. I (...) argue that complaining may also take the form of mindful attention to shared suffering. A complainer may observe affective duties, such as commiseration and invitations to disclose pains. Against more contemporary views that justify only constructive complaints directed to change, I suggest that quotidian, unconstructive complaining sometimes fulfills important social functions, including the amelioration of loneliness and affective solidarity, for the sake of others as well as oneself. (shrink)

We advance the understanding of the philosophy and psychology of curiosity by operationalizing and constructing an empirical measure of Nietzsche’s conception of inquisitive curiosity, expressed by the German term Wissbegier, (“thirst for knowledge” or “need/impetus to know”) and Neugier (“curiosity” or “inquisitiveness”). First, we show that existing empirical measures of curiosity do not tap the construct of inquisitive curiosity, though they may tap related constructs such as idle curiosity and phenomenological curiosity. Next, we map the concept of inquisitive curiosity and (...) connect it to related concepts, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility. The bulk of the paper reports four studies: an Anglophone exploratory factor analysis, an Anglophone confirmatory factor analysis, an informant study, and a Germanophone exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. (shrink)

Among the many ontological questions the philosophy of religion endeavors to address, perhaps the most controversial is the existence of God. Unraveling this complex question has puzzled philosophers for ages and has kept the spark lit in this theological debate to this day. Along with arguments for—and against—God, there are topics which inevitably follow from such a debate, namely the divine attributes of God and divine action. This essay will briefly expand upon arguments for God’s existence evidenced by some of (...) the most notable theories and concepts about His attributes and how He relates to His creations, namely humans. In addition to assertions made by credible philosophers and theologians, the claims in this essay will also be informed by my own understanding of Christian faith and values. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that an utterance can function to conserve or maintain the truth of its asserted content, what I call conservative speech. Conservative utterances can work to preserve the truth of their asserted content in two ways. In the first, directive conservatives, the utterance serves as an indirect directive for interlocutors to act in ways that serve to maintain the asserted content. In the second, constitutive conservatives, serve to partly constitute the truth conditions of the asserted content (...) directly. Constitutive conservatives, I argue, are particularly important because they are a central tool for how social groups enforce and thereby maintain facts about group norms and values in the face of deviation. They thus have a central role to play in understanding the role of language in the abilities of social groups to create and maintain their norms and values. (shrink)

I am persuaded both by the theory of evil advanced by Claudia Card in The Atrocity Paradigm and by the idea that there are evils done to the environment; however, I argue that the theory of evil she describes has difficulty living up to her claim that it "can make sense of ecological evils the victims of which include trees and even ecosystems" (2002, 16). In this paper, I argue that Card's account of evil does not accommodate the kinds of (...) harms inflicted on ecosystems and such nonhuman individuals as trees. I consider the possibility that Card intends a much broader version of evils than the language of the atrocity paradigm lets on, with its attention to sentience and dignity. I'm so persuaded by the atrocity paradigm, however, that I retain the centrality of suffering and introduce the idea that atrocities are intuitively massive, that is, done to groups or generations and not an individual person, animal or tree, so that the paradigm encourages us to think of evil as it relates to far more holistic entities which include the sentient. Evil may require the sort of suffering that only sentience can give rise to, which is not to say we let out trees but says rather that it is impossible to identify wrongs to ecosystems and groups that are not also intertwined with the fates of their sentient dependents. I conclude that Card is right to emphasize victims' suffering as a chief component of evil, and that the ontology of what constitutes a victim must be interpreted broadly, not the notion of suffering. (shrink)

Making sense of MacKinnon’s claim that pornography silences women requires attention to the discursive and interpretive frameworks that pornography establishes and promotes. Treating pornography as a form of hate speech is promising, but also limited. A close examination of a legal case, in which pornographic images were used to sexually harass, focuses on the hate speech analogy while illustrating the broad and lasting impact of such depictions when targeted at an individual. Applying the distinction between Absolutist and Reclaimer approaches to (...) hate speech and derogatory terms, the article concludes with a discussion of the possibility of creative development of discursive practices within a context that undermines the semantic authority of members of certain groups. (shrink)

This essay takes a first step in comparative ethics by looking to Aristotle and the Aztec's conceptions of the good life. It argues that the Aztec conception of a rooted life, neltiliztli, functions for ethical purposes in a way that is like Aristotle's eudaimonia. To develop this claim, it not only shows just in what their conceptions of the good consist, but also in what way the Aztecs conceived of the virtues (in qualli, in yectli).

This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshua Guilfoyle, Careen Khoury, Elizabeth van Monsjou, Joni Sasaki, Curtis Phills, Rebecca Young, and Zdravko (...) Marjanovic. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac emphasizes values of receptivity and perceptivity that appear to be mutually reinforcing, critical to an ecological conscience, and cultivatable through concrete and embodied experience. His priorities bear striking similarities to elements of the ethics of care elaborated by feminist philosophers, especially Nel Noddings, who notably recommended receptivity, direct and personal experience, and even shared Leopold’s attentiveness to joy and play as sources of moral motivation. These commonalities are so fundamental that ecofeminists can and should (...) see Leopold as a philosophical ally. The three ecofeminist scholars who have devoted the most concerted attention to Leopold’s work argue that his Land Ethic is not, and does not provide a basis for, an ecofeminist ethic. I dispute the main criticisms of these scholars, and conclude that ecofeminists should attend more often to Leopold’s work, which extends possibilities for excellent praxis. (shrink)

A growing body of research suggests that students achieve learning outcomes at higher rates when instructors use active-learning methods rather than standard modes of instruction. To investigate how one such method might be used to teach philosophy, we observed two classes that employed Reacting to the Past, an educational role-immersion game. We chose to investigate Reacting because role-immersion games are considered a particularly effective active-learning strategy. Professors who have used Reacting to teach history, interdisciplinary humanities, and political theory agree that (...) it engages students and teaches general skills like collaboration and communication. We investigated whether it can be effective for teaching philosophical content and skills like analyzing, evaluating, crafting, and communicating arguments in addition to bringing the more general benefits of active learning to philosophy classrooms. Overall, we find Reacting to be a useful tool for achieving these ends. While we do not argue that Reacting is uniquely useful for teaching philosophy, we conclude that it is worthy of consideration by philosophers interested in creative active-learning strategies, especially given that it offers a prepackaged set of flexible, user-friendly tools for motivating and engaging students. (shrink)

Our experiences with many sorts of evils yield debates about the role of forgiveness as a possible moral response. These debates include (1) the preliminary question whether evils are, by definition, unforgivable, (2) the contention that evils may be forgivable but that forgiveness cannot entail reconciliation with one’s evildoer, (3) the concern that only direct victims of evils are in a position to decide if forgiveness is appropriate, (4) the conceptual worry that forgiveness of evil may not be genuine or (...) complete if hard feelings recur, (5) the interest of many in holding that forgiveness is never required, and (6) the concern that analyses of evil ought to prioritize the suffering, and credit the perspectives, of victims of evils, in tension with the possibility that forgiveness concerns the well-being of offenders. In this paper, I critically evaluate these concerns from the perspective of nonideal theory. I conclude that crediting victims’ perspectives is importantly basic to empirically informed moral theory, and that objections to forgiveness including (1) evil’s unforgivability ignore victims’ differing accounts. When we take actualities and experiences to be informative and central, some of the usual debates become less pressing, perhaps even moot. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer's “The World as Will and Representation” is a continuation and completion of the Kantian philosophical project. Schopenhauer proposes that rather than causality being an empirical consequence, as Kant implies in his Critique of Pure Reason, causality is an a priori phenomenon, happening independent of any knowledge of causality itself. Therefore, he challenges Kantian rationalism with pessimism. To begin this work stating the stark contrast between Kant’s epistemology and Schopenhauer’s, I note the few yet crucial characteristics to consciously consider (...) from Schopenhauer’s aesthetics: (1) there is no rationality to nature; (2) there is no ‘purposeness’ in life; and (3) human beings are not fundamentally rational. These each are expanded upon and discussed in unison with Kant's sentiments. In describing Schopenhauer's philosophy of the human experience, it is useful to refer to his interest in Indian philosophies and religions, which is briefly mentioned in this work by way of the famous paradox proposed by Nāgārjuna. The major point of divergence, it appears, between the two great minds reveals itself in their conception of the human experience and perception. Kant describes a reality consisting of mental representations whose nature is suggested to be a posteriori, Schopenhauer understands reality to be noumenal and its perception by sentient life to be indirect, subject-dependent, and consequently a priori. (shrink)

The inclusion of attendance and participation in course grade calculations is ubiquitous in postsecondary syllabi, but can penalize the silent or anxious student unfairly. I outline the obstacles posed by social anxiety, then describe an assignment developed with the twin goals of assisting students with obstacles to participating in spoken class discussions, and rewarding methods of participation other than oral interaction. When homework assignments habituating practices of writing well-justified questions regarding well-documented passages in reading assignments are the explicit project of (...) weekly class meetings, participation increases on the part of all students. My focus shifted away from concern that I must get students to talk more, and turned instead to ensuring their marks reflected their learning rather than their speaking. Students’ improved engagement as a result of the assignment bears out evidence in the literature for active learning and for alternatives to taking attendance and quantifying participation. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic epithets) have long played various roles and achieved diverse ends in works of art. Focusing on basic aspects of an aesthetic object or work, this article examines the interpretive relation between point of view and content, asking how aesthetic contextualization shapes the impact of such terms. Can context, particularly aesthetic contexts, detach the derogatory force from powerful epithets and racist and sexist images? What would it be about aesthetic contexts that would make this possible? The (...) article puts into aesthetic contexts both Absolutist and Reclaimer views about the power of derogatory terms, applying an inferential role semantics, developed for language, to both words and images. The Reclaimer’s position, that derogation is a matter of pragmatics, of use, emphasizes the context-sensitivity of the term, that is matters who says it, to whom, when, where, and why. Understanding derogatory terms used as hate speech helps to make this position clear. The Absolutist’s position, that no contextual variations can detach the derogation from these deeply derogatory terms, is developed here through attention to subordinating images in pornography. The article argues that art may be able to achieve the deviant interpretations that the Reclaimer needs to undermine the derogations while maintaining sensitivity and awareness of the history of oppression. (shrink)

I offer a brief survey of thematic elements in contemporary literature on forgiveness and then an overview of the responses to that literature comprising the contents of this volume. I concentrate on the extent to which work in moral psychology provides a needed corrective to some excesses in philosophical aversion to empirically informed theorizing. I aim to complicate what has been referred to at times as the standard or classic view, by which philosophers often mean the predominant view of forgiveness (...) in the first half of the thirty-year boom in contemporary philosophy of forgiveness. I conclude by enjoining philosophers to further consider psychological contexts in which forgiveness may be seen primarily as a commitment rather than primarily as an emotional state. (shrink)

A curious feature of Aztec philosophy is that the basic metaphysical question of the “Western” tradition cannot be formulated in their language, in Nahuatl. This did not, however, prevent the Aztecs from developing an account of 'reality', or whatever it is that might exist. The article is the first of its kind to compare the work of Aristotle on ousia (being) and the Aztecs on teotl and ometeotl. Through this analysis, it suggests that both of the Nahuatl terms are fundamental (...) for expressing the basic character of reality as process for the Aztecs. It also defends their notion as prima facia reasonable, despite its wide divergence from Aristotle's view. (shrink)

In this contribution, I advocate diminishing the vision of marriage as an isolated and perfectly free choice between two individuals in love, in order to unseat the extent to which students resist the view that marriage is, among other things, a social contract. I summarize views of Immanuel Kant and Claudia Card, then describe my class presentation of the social significance of marriage. I conclude that students at an individualistic and self-creating point in their lives can be under-appreciative of what (...) their public avowals mean to others, and marriage, in one sense, is indeed public. (shrink)

This paper makes a case for the centrality of the passion of curiosity to Hobbes’s account of human nature. Hobbes describes curiosity as one of only a few capacities differentiating human beings from animals, and I argue that it is in fact the fundamen- tal cause of humanity’s uniqueness, generating other important difference-makers such as language, science and politics. I qualify Philip Pettit’s (2008) claim that Hobbes believes language to be the essence of human difference, contending that Pettit grants language (...) too central a place in Hobbes’s psychology. Language is, for Hobbes, a tech- nology adopted on account of curiosity. Further, curiosity is necessary not only for linguistic but also for scientific activity. Only after what he calls original knowledge has been gathered are names employed to generate the conditional propositions that con- stitute science. Finally, curiosity can resolve another puzzle of Hobbesian psychology that Pettit leaves unanswered: our tendency towards strife. Hobbes believes that inso- far as human beings have an implacable hunger for knowledge of the future, we are unable to rest content with present gains and must always aspire to secure the best possible outcome for ourselves. (shrink)

Open Access: Trudy Govier (FR) argues for “conditional unforgivability,” yet avers that we should never give up on a human being. She not only says it is justifiable to take a “hopeful and respectful attitude” toward one’s wrongdoers, she indicates that it is wrong not to; she says it is objectionable to adopt an attitude that any individual is “finally irredeemable” or “could never change,” because such an attitude “anticipates and communicates the worst” (137). Govier’s recommendation to hold a hopeful (...) attitude seems to follow from one’s knowing that an appropriate object of unforgivability is also an agent capable of moral transformation. I appeal to Blake Myers-Schultz’s and Eric Schwitzgebels’ account of knowledge without belief, and Schwitzgebels’ account of attitudes, to argue that a victim’s knowledge that a wrongdoer has the capacities of a moral agent does not entail belief in the possibility that a wrongdoer will exercise those moral capacities, nor does knowledge of a wrongdoer’s moral capacities entail hopeful attitudes toward the prospects of an individual wrongdoer’s moral transformation. I conclude that what victims can hope for should not be that which victims are held to as a moral minimum. (shrink)

Forgiveness has enjoyed intense scholarly interest since the 1980s. I provide a historical overview, then identify themes in the literature, with an emphasis on those relevant to the moral psychology of forgiveness in the twenty-first century. I conclude with some attention to dual-process theories of moral reasoning in order to suggest that key debates in forgiveness are not at odds so much as they may be aligned with the different moral aims of moral and mental processes that differ in kind. (...) I argue for the view that the moral aims of forgiveness are multiple, following scholars who maintain a multidimensional account of forgiveness with a focus on the functions of forgiveness in relationships and the importance of forgiveness to its practitioners rather than a unified definition or justification that applies to all moral occasions. (shrink)

In this case discussion, Barnhill and Devine collect and present a significant amount of recent research on the various reasons why people struggle to succeed in weight loss programmes. Specifically, the authors focus on what they call ‘behavioural weight loss interventions’, which are ‘research, clinical or public health efforts to promote individual healthy eating and physical activity behaviours’. As defined, this is a very broad category of interventions and presumably includes all kinds of dieting and weight loss programmes or promotion (...) efforts short of private or independently chosen programmes. The authors argue, in a nutshell, that these clinical, research, and public health interventions have low efficacy, and while they may have some health or other benefits, the balance of evidence presented shows that they harm people in multiple ways. (shrink)

Open Access: Social media participation undermines individual autonomy in ways that ought to concern ethicists. Discussions in the philosophical literature are concerned primarily with egregious conduct online such as harassment and shaming, keeping the focus on obvious ills to which no one could consent; this prevents a wider understanding of the risks and harms of quotidian social media participation. Two particular concerns occupy me: social media participation carries the risks of (1) negatively formative experiences and (2) continuous partial attention due (...) to our habituation to the variable rewards that social media platforms provide. Although social media offer benefits as well as risks, self-knowledge of whether one benefits more than one suffers from one’s social media participation is vexed by the very processes involved in participating. We are not as free to leave social media as we are to enter. I conclude with a consideration and rejection of the objections that the ubiquity of the practice indicates implied consent to risks, and that users of social media can simply choose not to use such communication technologies at all. I argue that we cannot be said to consent to enter into social media usage meaningfully, even implicitly, and we do not all have equally easy options to avoid the contexts that provide the stimuli of persistent desires. (shrink)

Resident microbiota do not just shape host immunity, they can also contribute to host protection against pathogens and infectious diseases. Previous reviews of the protective roles of the microbiota have focused exclusively on colonization resistance localized within a microenvironment. This review shows that the protection against pathogens also involves the mitigation of pathogenic impact without eliminating the pathogens (i.e., “disease tolerance”) and the containment of microorganisms to prevent pathogenic spread. Protective microorganisms can have an impact beyond their niche, interfering with (...) the entry, establishment, growth, and spread of pathogenic microorganisms. More fundamentally, we propose a series of conceptual clarifications in support of the idea of a “co-immunity,” where an organism is protected by both its own immune system and components of its microbiota. -/- . (shrink)

In Against Purity, Alexis Shotwell takes up a multiplicity of tasks with respect to what I think of as non-ideal ethical theory. In what follows, I trace the relationship of her work to that of non-ideal theorists whose work influences mine. Then, more critically, I probe her analysis of gender voluntarism in Chapter 5, “Practicing Freedom: Disability and Gender Transformation,” partly to better understand what she takes it to be, and partly to advance a cautious defense of some of the (...) moral functions of individualistic performances of gender voluntarism that non-ideal theory leads me to value. I conclude that my interest in retaining a positive account of individualistic gender voluntarism as a form of resistance to a hostile world is due to my tendency to take non-ideal theory as a recommendation for some pessimism, whereas Shotwell’s similar commitments turn out to inform her more optimistic philosophy. (shrink)

Feminists have urged women to take semantic authority. This article explains what such authority is, how it depends upon community recognition, and how it differs from privilege and from authority as usually conceived under patriarchy. Understanding its natures and limits is an important part of attaining it. Understanding the role of community explains why separatism is the logical conclusion of this project, and why separatism is valuable even to those who do not separate.

One of the deepest assumptions of Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, is that there is an important difference between human persons and everything else that exists in Creation. We alone are made in God’s image. We alone are the stewards of the earth. It is said in Genesis that we have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps (...) upon the earth.” It is difficult to see how a traditional theist could deny the significance of the difference between human persons and the rest of Creation. We human persons are morally and ontologically special. (shrink)

In this review essay, I consider the challenge advanced by editors Eva Kittay and Ellen Feder in their collection, The Subject of Care, that “we must take account of the fact of dependency in our very conceptions of the self,” as well as Kittay’s own statements in her contribution that independence is a fiction and that we are all, ultimately, dependents of a sort. I distinguish broader and narrower senses of dependency as used by different contributors, to develop a conception (...) of what I refer to as dependency-in-relation which is neither inevitable nor derivative. I conclude that human dependence upon nonhumans is a neglected aspect of dependency in this collection, but the collection is persuasive that we are all, at least, interdependent if not actually dependents. (shrink)

“I am still in despair over losing my identity,” said a blog comment in a discussion about post-menopause weight gain. Instead of recovering an identity, for some of us, as women age, our attitudes toward fitness may require forging new identities. But the challenge in coming to desire fitness, post-menopause, is a project of actually changing my desires. Habituating a good practice can lead to a change in our appetites, so that instead of losing our identities, we may become the (...) characters that we set goals to be. (shrink)

Open Access: This essay argues that Claudia Card numbers among important contributors to nonideal ethical theory, and it advocates for the worth of NET. Following philosophers including Lisa Tessman and Charles Mills, the essay contends that it is important for ethical theory, and for feminist purposes, to carry forward the interrelationship that Mills identifies between nonideal theory and feminist ethics. Card's ethical theorizing assists in understanding that interrelationship. Card's philosophical work includes basic elements of NET indicated by Tessman, Mills, and (...) others, and further offers two important and neglected elements to other nonideal ethical theorists: her rejection of the “administrative point of view,” and her focus on “intolerable harms” as forms of “extreme moral stress” and obstacles to excellent ethical lives. The essay concludes that Card's insights are helpful to philosophers in developing nonideal ethical theory as a distinctive contribution to, and as a subset of, nonideal theory. (shrink)

I argue that humans have moral relationships with dogs and cats that they could adopt, but do not. The obligations of those of us who refrain from incurring particular relationships with dogs and cats are correlative with the power of persons with what Jean Harvey calls “interactive power,” the power to take the initiative in and direct the course of a relationship. I connect Harvey’s points about interactive power to my application of Eva Kittay’s “dependency critique,” to show that those (...) of us who refrain from incurring particular relationships of dependency rely on caregivers in our communities and regions to fulfill the moral and social demands that an abundance of unowned companionable animals makes on the community. (shrink)

Brentano's philosophy of art, contained primarily in his book, Grundzuge der Ästhetik, is the result of an original theory of intrinsic value that was derived from Brentano's philosophical psychology. In his aesthetics, Brentano endeavored to find an objective ground for the value of aesthetic contemplation through his theory of the intentional objects of emotions and desires. The lack of attention Brentano's aesthetics has received is surprising, given that two of the many students Brentano influenced, Husserl (through the development of the (...) phenomenological movement) and Ehrenfels (through the development of Gestalt psychology) have had an extraordinary influence on twentieth century perceptions of art. In this paper I will attempt to redress some of this neglect by outlining Brentano's analysis of aesthetic intentions and the relationship his aesthetics bears to his overall philosophical system. (shrink)