According to theoretical work on epistemic injustice, baseless discrediting of the knowledge of people with marginalized social identities is a central driver of prejudice and discrimination. Discrediting of knowledge may sometimes be subtle, but it is pernicious, inducing chronic stress and coping strategies such as emotional avoidance. In this research, we sought to deepen the understanding of epistemic injustice’s impact by examining emotional responses to being discredited and assessing if marginalized social group membership predicts these responses. We conducted a novel (...) series of three experiments (Total N = 1690) in which participants (1) shared their factual knowledge about how a game worked or their personal feelings about the game; (2) received discrediting feedback (invalidating remarks), validating feedback (affirming remarks), or insulting feedback (general negative social evaluation); and then (3) reported their affect. In all three studies, on average, affective responses to discrediting feedback were less negative than to insulting feedback, and more negative than to validating feedback. Participants who shared their knowledge reported more negative affect after discrediting feedback than participants who shared their feelings. There were consistent individual differences, including a twice-replicated finding of reduced negative affect after receiving discrediting and insulting feedback for Black men compared to White men and women and Black women. Black men’s race-based traumatic symptom scores predicted their affective responses to discrediting and insulting feedback, suggesting that experience with discrimination contributed to the emotional processing of a key aspect of epistemic injustice: remarks conveying baseless discrediting of knowledge. (shrink)

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)

Outlaw emotions are emotions that stand in tension with one’s wider belief system, often allowing epistemic insight one may have otherwise lacked. Outlaw emotions are thought to play crucial epistemic roles under conditions of oppression. Although the crucial epistemic value of these emotions is widely acknowledged, specific accounts of their epistemic role(s) remain largely programmatic. There are two dominant accounts of the epistemic role of emotions: The Motivational View and the Justificatory View. Philosophers of emotion assume that these dominant ways (...) of accounting for the epistemic role(s) of emotions in general are equipped to account for the epistemic role(s) of outlaw emotions. I argue that this is not the case. I consider and dismiss two responses that could be made on behalf of the most promising account, the Justificatory View, in light of my argument, before sketching an alternative account that should be favoured. (shrink)

In this article I argue that characterizations of anger as a hostile emotion may be mistaken. My project is empirically informed and is partly descriptive, partly diagnostic. It is descriptive in that I am concerned with what anger is, and how it tends to manifest, rather than with what anger should be or how moral anger is manifested. The orthodox view on anger takes it to be, descriptively, an emotion that aims for retribution. This view fits well with anger being (...) a hostile emotion, as retribution is punitive. I will argue that a different view of anger deserves our attention. On this alternative view, anger aims for recognition of harms done, rather than for the punishment of those who have committed them. I argue that we have reason to favour a strong view that excludes retribution from anger’s main aims. In addition, I offer a diagnosis of the reasons that led the retributive view of anger to become, and remain, orthodoxy. This diagnosis provides indirect reason to give my descriptive proposal serious consideration, for it highlights that the orthodox view has dominated folk and philosophical conceptions of anger for reasons that do not speak in favour of the view’s veracity. The view that anger is a hostile emotion will therefore emerge as in need of serious scrutiny. (shrink)

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for recognition, (...) I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological (...) and social facts could play these roles? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the connectedness model (e.g. Schroeter 2012, Schroeter and Schroeter 2014, 2015). Our aim in this chapter is to further explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity developed by François Recanati and Simon Prosser. -/- What’s distinctive of our approach is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users. Concepts, on our account, play a crucial normative role in setting regulative ideals for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts – as opposed to a purely causal explanatory role – motivates our approach to concept identity and our toleration of vagueness and borderline cases. (shrink)

It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are individuated in part by causal-historical relations linking token elements of thought.

A characteristic form of philosophical inquiry seeks to answer ‘what is x?’ questions. In this paper, we ask how philosophers do and should adjudicate debates about the correct answer to such questions. We argue that philosophers do and should rely on a distinctive type of pragmatic and meta-representational reasoning – a form of rationalizing self-interpretation – in answering ‘what is x?’ questions. We start by placing our methodological discussion within a broader theoretical framework. We posit a necessary connection between epistemic (...) methodology and metasemantics. In our view, the correct semantic assignment for a representation must be justifiable from the epistemic perspective of the subject herself, given suitable empirical information and cognitive powers. So the upshot of your own ideal, fully informed epistemic methods will determine the correct answers to ‘what is x?’ questions. The bulk of the paper is devoted to articulating and defending our rationalizing self-interpretation account of philosophical methodology. By working through a specific example, we seek to isolate the relevant inputs into deliberation and the methods for adjudicating between competing answers to a ‘what is x?’ question. We suggest that the self-interpretive methods we isolate generalize across the board as a way of identifying the real nature of familiar topics. We also explain how these methods undercut the case for a priori conceptual analysis. (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-anger has been overlooked in the contemporary literature on emotion. This is a failing we should seek to remedy. In this paper I provide the first ef-fort towards a philosophical characterization of self-anger. I argue that self-anger is a genuine instance of anger and that, as such, it is importantly distinct from the negative self-directed emotions of guilt and shame. Doing so will uncover a potentially distinctive role for self-anger in our moral psychology, as one of the (...) strongest affective motiva-tors for self-change. (shrink)

In this article I present a disagreement between classical and constructive approaches to predicativity regarding the predicative status of so-called generalised inductive definitions. I begin by offering some motivation for an enquiry in the predicative foundations of constructive mathematics, by looking at contemporary work at the intersection between mathematics and computer science. I then review the background notions and spell out the above-mentioned disagreement between classical and constructive approaches to predicativity. Finally, I look at possible ways of defending the constructive (...) predicativity of inductive definitions. (shrink)

Various philosophers authors have argued—on the basis of powerful examples—that we can have compelling moral or practical reasons to believe, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. This paper explores an alternative story, which still aims to respect widely shared intuitions about the motivating examples. Specifically, the paper proposes that what is at stake in these cases is not belief, but rather acceptance—an attitude classically characterized as taking a proposition as a premise in practical deliberation and action. I suggest that acceptance’s (...) theoretical usefulness in the ethics of belief has been hidden by its psychological obscurity. I thus aim to develop an empirically adequate and mechanistically specific psychological profile of acceptance. I characterize acceptance as centrally involving a cognitive gating function, in which we prevent a target belief state from having its characteristic downstream effects on reasoning, cognition, and action, and restructure those downstream processes. I then argue that there is substantial empirical support for the existence of the cognitive mechanisms needed to instantiate this view, coming from the science of emotion regulation. I argue that acceptance involves deploying the same mechanisms used in emotional response modulation to belief states: acceptance is doxastic response modulation. I then propose that having a better understanding of the psychological profile of acceptance leaves us better positioned to appreciate its potential usefulness for making progress on various puzzles within the ethics of belief. (shrink)

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the “I love to you” of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray’s account of (...) love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation. (shrink)

Is democracy a requirement of justice or an instrument for realizing it? The correct answer to this question, I argue, depends on the background circumstances against which democracy is defended. In the presence of thin reasonable disagreement about justice, we should value democracy only instrumentally (if at all); in the presence of thick reasonable disagreement about justice, we should value it also intrinsically, as a necessary demand of justice. Since the latter type of disagreement is pervasive in real-world politics, I (...) conclude that theories of justice designed for our world should be centrally concerned with democracy. (shrink)

In this paper I lay the foundations for the construction of an affective quality space. I begin by outlining what quality spaces are, and how they have been constructed for sensory qualities across different perceptual modalities. I then turn to tackle four obstacles that an affective quality space might face that would make an affective quality space unfeasible. After showing these obstacles to be surmountable, I propose a number of conditions and methodological constraints that should be satisfied in attempts to (...) construct an affective quality space. Before concluding, I detail the high explanatory pay-off such a project promises. (shrink)

In his recent bookThe Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen suggests that political philosophy should move beyond the dominant, Rawls-inspired, methodological paradigm – what Sen calls ‘transcendental institutionalism’ – towards a more practically oriented approach to justice: ‘realization-focused comparison’. In this article, I argue that Sen's call for a paradigm shift in thinking about justice is unwarranted. I show that his criticisms of the Rawlsian approach are either based on misunderstandings, or correct but of little consequence, and conclude that the Rawlsian (...) approach already delivers much of what Sen himself wants from a theory of justice. (shrink)

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definition of health adopted by the WHO—‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO in Preamble to the constitution of (...) the World Health Organization as adopted by the international health conference, The World Health Organization, 1948)—and its role in providing tools to understand what health is in the contemporary context. More specifically, we argue that this context requires to take into account the role of the environment both in medical theory and in the healthcare practice. To do so, we analyse WHO documents dated 1984 and 1986 which define health as ‘coping with the environment’. We develop the idea of ‘coping with the environment’, by focusing on two cardinal concepts: adaptation in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. We argue that the notions of adaptation and adaptivity can be of major benefit for the characterization of health, and have practical implications. We explore some of these implications by discussing two recent case studies of adaptivity in public health, which can be valuable to further develop adaptive strategies in the current pandemic scenario: community-centred care and microbiologically healthier buildings. (shrink)

Feminists debate whether women can autonomously embrace their own subordination. Some argue that it is the process of identifying with desires and values that matters; others, that it is the content of the desires and values that matters. In this paper, I introduce a novel class of cases of ‘thwarted autonomy,’ in which women pursue autonomy but in ways that reinforce gendered subordination, and draw on these cases to develop an expressivist view of women’s autonomy. On this view, agents must (...) embody desires and values in the social world if they are to achieve self-understanding, such that the social world mediates the relation-to-self. Oppressive meanings and norms can channel this expressive activity in ways that violate women’s physical integrity and involve self-abnegation that is incompatible with autonomy. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub‐debates, and highlights (...) areas for future research in the field. (shrink)

Moorean constructions are famously odd: it is infelicitous to deny that you believe what you claim to be true. But what about claiming that p, only to immediately put into question your evidence in support of p? In this paper, we identify and analyse a class of quasi-Moorean constructions, which we label counterevidentials. Although odd, counterevidentials can be accommodated as felicitous attempts to mitigate one’s claim right after making it. We explore how counterevidentials differ from lexicalised mitigation operators, parentheticals, and (...) anaphoric mitigation devices, and consider some cognate non-assertoric constructions. We conclude by exploring the implications of our analysis for theorising about linguistic responsibility, assertion, and lying. (shrink)

The question of whether or not one should procreate is rarely cast as a personal choice in philosophical discourse; rather, it is presented as an ethical choice made against a backdrop of aggregate concerns. But justifications concerning procreation in popular culture regularly engage with the role that identity plays in making procreative decisions; specifically, how one’s decision will affect who they are and who they might be in the future. Women in particular cite the personally transformative aspects of becoming a (...) parent — personal circumstances, including socioeconomic status, age, health, and relationship status — as the most important considerations for the decision they make regarding possible parenthood, and not the more aggregate concerns that an ethics of procreation prioritizes. I highlight women because when women undergo a transformative experience related to parenthood, they do so in contexts where the social, economic, and emotional effects related to pregnancy and motherhood are extensive and impose greater effects on women than men. These harmful material effects threaten a woman’s economic stability, career development, social relationships, and emotional health. Because of this, I argue that an ethics of procreation must engage with the ways in which women’s identities are transformed through procreative decisions. (shrink)

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands basic-rights protection (...) and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a new account of the liberal view that principles of justice are meant to justify state coercion, and consider its implications for the question of global socioeconomic justice. Although contemporary proponents of this view deny that principles of socioeconomic justice apply globally, on my newly developed account this conclusion is mistaken. I distinguish between two types of coercion, systemic and interactional, and argue that a plausible theory of global justice should contain principles justifying both. The (...) justification of interactional coercion requires principles regulating interstate interference; that of systemic coercion requires principles of global socioeconomic justice. I argue that the proposed view not only helps us make progress in the debate on global justice, but also offers an independently compelling and systematic account of the function and conditions of applicability of justice. -/-. (shrink)

The rejection of research results is sometimes thought to be justified in cases of individuals embracing fringe ideas that depart significantly from prevailing orthodoxy, or in cases of individuals who lack appropriate expertise or credentials. The case of John Garcia exhibits both of these dimensions, and illustrates that such rejection can delay scientific advancements. Garcia’s work decisively challenged what was the orthodoxy in psychology in the midcentury: behaviorism. Behaviorist learning theorists suffered from theory-entrenchment insofar as they failed to acknowledge Garcia’s (...) anomalous research findings that ran counter to their theoretical expectations. The case study also illustrates that theories on the margins can become embraced as a result of advancements in adjacent research fields. Studying how Garcia’s work moved from fringe to mainstream results in lessons for the philosophy of science and epistemology more generally. Only when we see the mechanisms of exclusion at work can we understand how science and other knowledge production systems can inadvertently act counterproductively via gatekeeping practices that filter out unorthodox points of view. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Recent debates in metaphysics have highlighted the significance of type theories, such as Simple Type Theory (STT), for our philosophical analysis. In this chapter, I present the salient features of a constructive type theory in the style of Martin-Löf, termed CTT. My principal aim is to convey the flavour of this rich, flexible and sophisticated theory and compare it with STT. I especially focus on the forms of quantification which are available in CTT. A further aim is to argue that (...) a comparison between a plurality of theories is beneficial to the philosophical analysis. We may, for example, discover helpful features of one theory that we may want to import into another context, thus enriching our repertoire of formal tools. Or, through comparison with a less well-known theory, we may gain a better understanding of the characteristics of the theories we are familiar with. As argued in this chapter, CTT has much to offer in all of these respects. (shrink)

This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of Gender Studies. We document how our decolonial feminist activism is actualised in our pedagogy, which is guided by feminist interpretations of ‘wonder’ (Irigaray, 1999; Ahmed, 2004; hooks, 2010) read alongside decolonial theory, including that of Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter D. Mignolo and María Lugones. Using notions of wonder as pedagogy, we attempt to create spaces in our classrooms where critical self-reflection and (...) critical intellectual and embodied engagement can emerge. Our attempts to create these spaces include multiple aspects or threads that, when woven together, might enable other ways of knowing-being-doing that works towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality in the Australian context. (shrink)

In this essay, we explore how digital publishing can intervene in these processes and serve as a form of feminist activism. We take as our focus the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP), founded in 2011 to expand the perspectives and standpoints that count as scholarly knowledge production and provide graduate students with editorial experience. As three long-standing members of the journal’s editorial collective, we have firsthand knowledge of how JITP’s publishing methods were developed through debate, struggle, and dialogue, (...) including many missteps and failures along the way. We argue that JITP's collaborative knowledge practices of inclusive editorial governance, open access, and open peer review are fundamentally feminist, as they diversify scholarly voices and increase access to the material channels in and through which knowledge circulates. At stake in our reflective analysis is a broader claim that extends beyond the parameters of our work with one particular journal: that feminist digital publishing methods can expand what counts as knowledge production. (shrink)

A globalized world, some argue, needs a global democracy. But there is considerable disagreement about whether global democracy is an ideal worth pursuing. One of the main grounds for scepticism is captured by the slogan: “No global demos, no global democracy.” The fact that a key precondition of democracy—a demos—is absent at the global level, some argue, speaks against the pursuit of global democracy. The paper discusses four interpretations of the skeptical slogan—each based on a specific account of the notion (...) of “the demos”—and concludes that none of them establishes that the global democratic ideal must be abandoned. In so doing, the paper (i) systematizes different types of objections against global democracy, thus bringing some clarity to an otherwise intricate debate and (ii) offers a robust but qualified defense of the global democratic ideal. (shrink)

Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant-inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant-inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project successful? In this (...) research note I argue that it is not. First, I suggest that Ripstein's notion of freedom is viciously circular. It is meant to ground all rights, but in fact it presupposes an account of those rights. Second, I show that—independently of its inability to ground a whole political morality—such a moralized understanding of freedom is normatively unappealing. (shrink)

Background: When infertility is diagnosed, physicians have the difficult task to break bad news. Their communication skills play a central role in improving patients' coping abilities and adherence to infertility treatments. However, specific guidelines and training courses on this topic are still lacking. The aim of the present study is to provide some practical advice for improving breaking bad news in infertility diagnosis through a systematic literature review of qualitative and quantitative studies. Methods: Electronic searches were performed in the MEDLINE, (...) Embase, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection databases. All articles focusing on the communication of the diagnosis of infertility were included. The main findings of each included article were then summarized. Results: Literature search identified 11,838 references that were screened for eligibility. Full texts of 81 articles were retrieved, and their analysis led to the inclusion of 4 articles, which treated the theme of communication of infertility only partially. The main addressed aspects concerning the communication of the infertility diagnosis were the following: the value that patients give to healthcare professionals' communication skills; the importance of giving clear information on diagnostic procedures and treatments in order to decrease patients' anxiety; and the importance of involving both partners. Conclusions: This review pointed out that the communication of the infertility diagnosis is still underinvestigated. Specific guidelines are currently not available, but other protocols could be used. Taking into account the principal aspects of communication highlighted with this review, in this study, we suggested an adaptation of the original SPIKES protocol that could be used by healthcare professionals for the communication of the infertility status. (shrink)

O renascimento do pragmatismo foi acompanhado por uma série de filósofas feministas que se esforçaram para resgatar do esquecimento as pensadoras que fizeram parte do movimento pragmatista clássico do final do século XIX e primeira metade do século XX. O presente trabalho visa introduzir aos leitores de língua portuguesa esse trabalho a partir de uma breve exposição das pensadoras Jane Addams, Mary Parker Follet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Whiton Calkins e Ella Flagg Young.

Although it is now commonplace to take emotions to be the sort of phenomena for which there are reasons, the question of how to cash out the reason- responsiveness of emotions remains to a large extent unanswered. I highlight two main ways of thinking about reason-responsiveness, one that takes agential capacities to engage in norm-guided deliberation to underlie reason-responsiveness, and another which instead takes there to be a basic reason-relation between facts and attitudes. I argue that the latter approach should (...) be preferred. Not only does a reasons-basic approach promise to fare better in accounting for cases that its opponent struggles to accommodate, but it promises also to uncover a sui generis relation between emotions and their reasons which is at best obscured and at worst denied by its opponent. (shrink)

A prominent view in contemporary political theory, the ‘associative view’, says that duties of justice are triggered by particular cooperative relations between morally significant agents, and that ‘therefore’ principles of justice apply only among fellow citizens. This view has been challenged by advocates of global justice, who point to the existence of a world-wide cooperative network to which principles of justice apply. Call this the challenge from geographical extension. In this paper, I pose a structurally similar challenge to the associative (...) view: the challenge from species extension. This says that the existing network of cooperation extends beyond the human species, to encompass some non-human animals, particularly domesticated dogs. In light of this, if one believes that (i) certain non-human animals are morally significant (i.e. objects of moral concern), and that (ii) justice applies to fellow cooperators, one should also hold that domesticated dogs are owed justice in much the same way our human fellow citizens are. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the associative view, and animal-rights theory. (shrink)

Ronald de Sousa is one of the few analytic philosophers to have explored the ineffability of emotion. Ineffability arises, for de Sousa, from attempts to translate experience, which involves non-conceptual content, into language, which involves conceptual content. As de Sousa himself rightly notes, such a characterization construes all perceptual experience as ineffable and does not explain what might set emotional ineffability apart. I build on de Sousa’s insights regarding what makes emotional ineffability distinctive by highlighting that in the case of (...) emotion the content in question is, crucially, evaluative. Evaluative content has normativity that makes the ineffability of emotion both particularly salient as well as particularly relevant, as the way in which an object is valuable is felt to be merited despite the experience’s ineffability. After proposing an improved working definition of emotional ineffability, I move to the question of how language and emotional experience interact, and whether these interactions can be evaluated in any systematic way. While de Sousa is pessimistic regarding the prospects of such an evaluation, I argue that if we move beyond an individual level of analysis it is possible to characterize cases where the ineffability of emotion leaves members of particular social groups vulnerable to a range of epistemic and affective injustices. I argue that we can similarly characterize cases where the ineffability of emotion holds radical potential to challenge and transform unjust social arrangements. I end by proposing that the representational content of emotion involves what I call ‘modal complexity’ and that this makes emotions particularly well-suited to play such radical roles. (shrink)

Trust is a core feature of the physician-patient relationship, and risk is central to trust. Patients take risks when they trust their providers to care for them effectively and appropriately. Not all patients take these risks: some medical relationships are marked by mistrust and suspicion. Empirical evidence suggests that some patients and families of color in the United States may be more likely to mistrust their providers and to be suspicious of specific medical practices and institutions. Given both historical and (...) ongoing oppression and injustice in American medical institutions, such mistrust can be apt. Yet it can also frustrate patient care, leading to family and provider distress. In this paper, I propose one way that providers might work to reestablish trust by taking risks in signaling their own trustworthiness. This interpersonal step is not meant to replace efforts to remedy systemic injustice, but is an immediate measure for addressing mistrust in occurrent cases. (shrink)

The creation of guidelines has long been a popular means of conveying normative requirements in scientific and medical research. The recent case of He Jiankui, whose research flouted both widely accepted ethical standards and a set of field-specific guidelines he co-authored, raises the question of whether guidelines are an effective means of preventing misconduct. This paper advances the theory that guidelines can facilitate moral rationalization, a form of motivated reasoning. Moral rationalization in research occurs when individuals justify their actions with (...) plausible reasons that cohere with their moral standards. This allows them to act as they want while believing in their own goodness. If guidelines facilitate moral rationalization, this has implications for research ethics training and for the work of applied ethicists. Research ethics training ought to incorporate reflection on conative features of reasoning, including incentives to commit misconduct, and applied ethicists ought to be circumspect about their use of ethics guidelines. Otherwise, they are feeding the fire of rationalization with the cognitive material practitioners need to accomplish their desired ends. (shrink)

The present essay provides an overview of the images of seventeenth-century philosophy in the Rivista di storia della filosofia (then retitled Rivista critica di storia della filosofia) in the years 1946–1983. Founded in 1946 by Mario Dal Pra, the journal promoted a new anti-idealistic approach to the history of philosophy. Based on philological accuracy, this approach enhanced the complexity of history and the interdependence of different fields of knowledge. In particular, the unprecedented emphasis on the connections between science and philosophy (...) entailed a preeminent place for empiricism in the Rivista. This explains why this essay focuses on empiricist currents in seventeenth-century philosophy and especially on three of their representatives, namely Galileo Galilei, Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon. (shrink)

Moods have global and profound effects on our thoughts, motivations and behavior. To understand human behavior and cognition fully, we must understand moods. In this paper I critically examine and reject the methodology of conventional ?cognitive theories? of affect. I lay the foundations of a new theory of moods that identifies them with processes of our cognitive functional architecture. Moods differ fundamentally from some of our other affective states and hence require distinct explanatory tools. The computational theory of mood I (...) propose places them within the context of other mental phenomena and is consistent with the empirical data on moods. (shrink)

There has been an increasing interest into how to build Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs) that make moral decisions on the basis of causation rather than mere correction. One promising avenue for achieving this is to use a causal modelling approach. This paper explores an open and important problem with such an approach; namely, the problem of what makes a causal model an appropriate model. I explore why we need to establish criteria for what makes a model appropriate, and offer-up such (...) criteria which appeals to normative considerations. (shrink)

Reference to the state is ubiquitous in debates about global justice. Some authors see the state as central to the justification of principles of justice, and thereby reject their extension to the international realm. Others emphasize its role in the implementation of those principles. This chapter scrutinizes the variety of ways in which the state figures in the global-justice debate. Our discussion suggests that, although the state should have a prominent role in theorizing about global justice, contrary to what is (...) commonly thought, acknowledging this role does not lead to anti-cosmopolitan conclusions, but to the defense of an “intermediate” position about global justice. From a justificatory perspective, we argue, the state remains a key locus for the application of egalitarian principles of justice, but is not the only one. From the perspective of implementation, we suggest that state institutions are increasingly fragile in a heavily interdependent world, and need to be supplemented—though not supplanted—with supranational authorities. (shrink)

Errett Bishop's work in constructive mathematics is overwhelmingly regarded as a turning point for mathematics based on intuitionistic logic. It brought new life to this form of mathematics and prompted the development of new areas of research that witness today's depth and breadth of constructive mathematics. Surprisingly, notwithstanding the extensive mathematical progress since the publication in 1967 of Errett Bishop's Foundations of Constructive Analysis, there has been no corresponding advances in the philosophy of constructive mathematics Bishop style. The aim of (...) this paper is to foster the philosophical debate about this form of mathematics. I begin by considering key elements of philosophical remarks by Bishop, especially focusing on Bishop's assessment of Brouwer. I then compare these remarks with ``traditional'' philosophical arguments for intuitionistic logic and argue that the latter are in tension with Bishop's views. ``Traditional'' arguments for intuitionistic logic turn out to be also in conflict with significant recent developments in constructive mathematics. This rises pressing questions for the philosopher of mathematics, especially with regard to the possibility of offering alternative philosophical arguments for constructive mathematics. I conclude with the suggestion to look anew at Bishop's own remarks for inspiration. (shrink)

Philosophers tended to identify happiness with either subjective psychological states or conditions (feelings, emotions or a set of judgments), or with the objective conditions of a life—how well the life is going for the person living it. Each approach captures different but important features of our intuitions, making it difficult to accept either a purely subjective or objective view. This has led some philosophers to suggest that these are not competing accounts of one thing, ‘happiness,’ but accounts of several different (...) things. Others propose that happiness is a matter of possessing both the relevant subjective and objective properties. I think this latter view is right, but that we need to better understand why or how these two elements are important and how they might be linked. In this paper I argue that an affect theory of happiness is best able to reconcile both the subjective and objective strands of our intuitions about happiness. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion of human rights has long been monopolised by what might be called the ‘natural-law view’. On this view, human rights are fundamental moral rights which people enjoy solely by virtue of their humanity. In recent years, a number of theorists have started to question the validity of this outlook, advocating instead what they call a ‘political’ view. My aim in this article is to explore the latter view in order to establish whether it constitutes a valuable alternative to (...) the ‘natural-law view’. In particular, I distinguish between three ways in which human rights can be political: in relation to their (1) iudicandum, (2) justification and (3) feasibility constraints. I argue that it makes sense to think of human rights as political in relation to both their iudicandum and their justification but in a way that is not always adequately captured by proponents of the political view. Moreover, I also claim that, if we take the political view seriously, we still need to engage in the sort of abstract moral reasoning that characterises the natural-law approach and which proponents of the political view significantly downplay. (shrink)