There has been a significant resurgence in the interest of practical philosophy and its contribution to the lives of the public, particularly with the growing popularity of the contemporary philosophical counselling/praxis movement. This renewed interest is partly driven by and stems from a growing recognition, both within and beyond academia, of the value and insight that philosophy can offer. [...] It is against this backdrop of growing interest that the first English translation of Gerd Achenbach’s seminal work, Philosophical Praxis: Origin, (...) Relations, and Legacy, allows the often misunderstood author to finally “have his say on his own terms”, as the translator Michael Picard writes. [...] With this English translation, enriched by the author’s explanations and additional material, the English-speaking world might thus gain closer access to Achenbach’s original vision and ideas for philosophical counselling/praxis. The timing is particularly significant, coinciding with renewed momentum in both philosophical counselling/praxis and philosophy as a way of life, allowing new generations of philosophical counsellors/practitioners to shape their practices in unique ways alongside the help of Achenbach (and the myriad of other approaches). (shrink)

Sheep production is the most representative livestock activities in Brazil and in the world. However, the reproductive performance of these animals is determined by factors genetic, physical environment, management and, especially, nutritional. Thirty half-breed lambs from Dorper × Santa Inês were used, with initial weight and age of 31.87 ± 0.5 kg and 157 days, respectively. These animals were prepared on a diet with three food levels (ad libitum, 30% and 70%). Morphometric measurements were measured at intervals of 16 to (...) 20 days in 56 experimental days. The measurements performed were scrotal circumference (CE), chest circumference (CT), body condition score (ECC), withers height (AC) and scrotal bag thickness (EBE), body weight (CP) and semen collection. Interaction occurrence for biometric measurements between food levels and age (p <0.05). The TC and ECC values were higher in animals fed ad libitum (p <0.001). EBE had higher values in animals ad libitum and at 211 days of age (p <0.001). The CP was increasing for the animals ad libitum and (p <0.05) throughout the experiment, while the T30 was only in the initial period. T70 animals did not grow during the whole experiment. CE was influenced by diet (p <0.001) and age (p <0.001) independently. So that animals under food restriction had less development and was higher in older animals. The AC values were influenced only by age (p <0.001), demonstrating the effect of age growth. We conclude that it is not advantageous to submit lambs, it corrects food reproduction. Although it was not possible to assess whether initial malnutrition would bring future problems for the animal's seminal quality, it proved to be immensely negative for the onset of puberty and the development of reproductive structures. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS AKUMBUGU, F. E., et al. 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LOUW, D. F. J.; JOUBERT, D. M. Puberty in the male Dorper sheep and Boer goat. S. Afr. J. Agric. Sci, v. 7, p. 509-520, 1964. MAIA, A. S. C.; SILVA, R. G.; ANDRADE, P. C. Efeitos da temperatura e da movimentação do ar sobre o isolamento térmico do velo de ovinos em câmara climática. Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia, v. 38, n. 1, p. 104-108, 2009. MARTINS, R. D. et al. Avaliação da sazonalidade reprodutiva de carneiros Santa Inês criados no Distrito Federal. R. Bras. Zootec., Viçosa, v. 32, n. 6, supl. 1, p. 1594-1603, Dec. 2003. MENDES, A. M. P. et al. Zoneamento bioclimático para a raça ovina Dorper no Estado de Pernambuco. Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira, v. 49, n. 12, p. 986-993, 2014. MOULLA, F. et al. Characterization of the onset of puberty in Tazegzawt lambs, an endangered Algerian sheep: Body weight, thoracic perimeter, testicular growth, and seminal parameters. Veterinary world, v. 11, n. 7, p. 889, 2018. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NRC). Nutrient Requirements of Small Ruminants: Sheep, Goats, Cervids, and New World Camelids. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2007. NOTTER, D. R.; LUCAS, J. R.; MCCLAUGHERTY, F. S. Accuracy of estimation of testis weight from in situ testis measures in ram lambs. Theriogenology, v. 15, n. 2, p. 227-234, 1981. SEJIAN, V. et al. Effect of body condition score on the allometric measurements and reproductive performance of Garole X Malpura ewes under hot semi-arid environment. Journal of Dairy, Veterinary & Animal Research, v. 2, n. 6, p. 1-4, 2015. PACHECO, A.; MADELLA-OLIVEIRA, A. F.; QUIRINO, C. R. Biometria e formas dos testículos em cordeiros da raça Santa Inês explorados em regime de manejo intensivo. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Agrárias, v. 5, n. 1, p. 123-128, 2010. REGO NETO, A. A. et al. Population genetic structure of Santa Inês sheep in Brazil. Tropical animal health and production, v. 50, n. 3, p. 503-508, 2018. RHIND, S. M. Effects of maternal nutrition on fetal and neonatal reproductive development and function. Animal Reproduction Science, v. 82, p. 169-181, 2004. RIBEIRO, E. L. A.; GONZÁLEZ-GARCÍA, E. Indigenous sheep breeds in Brazil: potential role for contributing to the sustainability of production systems. Tropical animal health and production, v. 48, n. 7, p. 1305-1313, 2016. RIBEIRO, M. S. et al. Repeatability and effect of age on reproductive characteristics in Santa Ines rams. Archivos de zootecnia, v. 67, n. 257, p. 143-147, 2018. RUSSEL, A. J. F.; DONEY, J. M.; GUNN, R. G. Subjective assessment of body fat in live sheep. The Journal of Agricultural Science, v. 72, n. 3, p. 451-454, 1969. SILVA, N. V. et al. Medidas in vivo e da carcaça e constituintes não carcaça de ovinos alimentados com diferentes níveis do subproduto agroindustrial da goiaba. Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal, v. 17, n. 1, p. 101-115, 2016. SILVA, P. et al. Influence of placentally mediated fetal growth restriction on the onset of puberty in male and female lambs. Reproduction, v. 122, n. 3, p. 375-383, 2001. SIQUEIRA FILHO, E. R. Influência dos níveis protéicos fornecidos na dieta sobre o sistema reprodutivo de carneiros. 2007. 75 f. Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual Paulista, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia de Botucatu, 2007. SOUZA, J. S da et al. Biometric measurements of Santa Inês meat sheep reared on Brachiaria brizantha pastures in Northeast Brazil. Plos one, v. 14, n. 7, p. e0219343, 2019. (shrink)

Philosophical counselling, a contemporary movement in practical philosophy, continually expands its discourse by introducing novel philosophical ideas and different traditions. Nevertheless, a conspicuous silence persists regarding the introduction of African philosophies in its discourse. This issue becomes apparent when the question “How might one live?”—a fundamental question that the philosophical counsellor deals with—is adequately investigated. However, its current formulation suffers greatly from a much-needed nuance concerning temporal and contextual awareness. To address and transcend this shortcoming, I turn to two distinct (...) African philosophies, namely, the hermeneutic philosophy of Tsenay Serequeberhan and the conversational method of philosophising advocated by Jonathan O. Chimakonam. By incorporating these philosophies, my aim is twofold: first, to promote an interpretative actualisation situated within a conversational framework that might lead to the creation of new concepts and/or the disclosing of different ways of being/becoming, and second, to draw attention to an underlying assumption that might maintain the neglect of philosophical traditions beyond Western philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophical counselling is typically conceptualised as a praxis going beyond academic and theoretical philosophy. However, two problems soon follow, namely the lack of agreed-upon methods and a substantial neglect of different philosophical traditions informing its practice. In this article, I propose reconceptualising philosophical counselling as a distinct method through which academic philosophy can be practised. This allows me to introduce an understanding of African philosophy, inspired by African philosophers Chimakonam and Serequeberhan, that might encourage the philosophical counsellor to render academic (...) philosophy more applicable to the counselee. Moreover, it allows for embodied voices talking from an embedded African lifeworld to create new and more relevant concepts that emerge from that lifeworld. (shrink)

Since independence, at least 28 African countries have legalized some form of gambling. Yet a range of informal gambling activities have also flourished, often provoking widespread public concern about the negative social and economic impact of unregulated gambling on poor communities. This article addresses an illegal South African numbers game called fahfee. Drawing on interviews with players, operators, and regulatory officials, this article explores two aspects of this game. First, it explores the lives of both players and runners, as well (...) as the clandestine world of the Chinese operators who control the game. Second, the article examines the subjective motivations and aspirations of players, and asks why they continue to play, despite the fact that their aggregate losses easily outstrip their aggregate gains. In contrast with those who reduce its appeal simply to the pursuit of wealth, I conclude that, for the (mostly) black, elderly, working class women who play fahfee several times a week, the associated trade-off—regular, small losses, versus the social enjoyment of playing and the prospect of occasional but realistic windfalls—takes on a whole new meaning, and preferences for relatively lumpy rather than steady consumption streams help explain the continued attraction of fahfee. This reinforces the need to understand players’ own accounts of gambling utility rather than simply to moralistically condemn gambling or to dismiss gamblers behaviour as irrational. (shrink)

Method in philosophical counselling is still a contentious topic. That is, there is no consensus on whether the philosophical counsellor should have a method in her practice to help the counsellee resolve philosophical problems. Some philosophical counsellors claim that there should not be any rigid adherence to method(s) as this will render philosophy too dogmatic. Philosophical counselling, in light of this view, promotes a kind of mutual philosophising sans definite goal with the counsellee. What I call "dissentient philosophical counselling" takes (...) this claim even further: the philosophical counsellor lives/practices her philosophical counselling, that is, she embodies and practices philosophy as a way of life. This view is posed as a response to contemporary conceptualisations of philosophical counselling where the philosophical counsellor might stand in a disembodied relationship with her method(s) and tries to have a conversation "from nowhere". Dissentient philosophical counselling, even though more focused on living philosophically , still suffers from certain shortcomings. In this paper, I firstly showcase how even the seemingly innocuous but important question "How might one live?" suffers from a lack of much needed nuance. And secondly, I introduce, via a fictional narrative, a provisional way of practicing this reworked dissentient philosophical counselling. I do this by, firstly, introducing African conversational philosophy, via its method of conversationalism, and secondly, I introduce a peculiar version of Pyrrhonian scepticism especially regarding the notion of bios adoxastōs (life without dogma). (shrink)

Philosophical counselling is generally understood as the discussion or resolution of everyday problems with the help of philosophy. However, few agree on this definition. This leads to a crisis of definition for philosophical counselling which in turn causes practical problems regarding, inter alia, the teaching of future philosophical counsellors, the question of method, and the potential scope of philosophical counselling. I identify in this study a prevalent therapeutic thesis on the nature of philosophical counselling which ties together some of the (...) more popular conceptions of philosophical counselling. This thesis predominates when philosophical counsellors focus on the counselling part and neglect the philosophical part of philosophical counselling. This stance keeps philosophical counselling firmly contained within a medico-therapeutic framework. In opposition to this predominant view, I propose a reconceptualisation of philosophical counselling which does not subscribe to the therapeutic thesis and by implication works outside of a medical framework. More specifically, in fleshing out my non-therapeutic understanding of philosophical counselling, I propose twelve context-dependent conditions of philosophical counselling by drawing on a Pyrrhonian disposition and also on examples of philosophical counsellors who begin to work outside of the medico-therapeutic framework. I argue that these conditions should be met for philosophical counselling to stay firmly within the realm of philosophy as an aim in itself, thereby remaining true to its origin and basic orientation, and drawing on its innate strengths. With this fundamental reconceptualisation and the accompanying twelve context-dependent conditions, I propose a novel account of philosophical counselling which (i) does not subscribe to the therapeutic thesis, (ii) gives a novel answer to the problem of educating future philosophical counsellors, and (iii) has a clear scope of potential counselees. (shrink)

Philosophical counselling is generally understood as a movement in practical philosophy that helps counselees, i.e. clients, resolve everyday problems with the help of philosophy. Moving outside of the scope of what philosophy can do, however, is a problem. More specifically, when the philosophical counsellor moves outside of the so-called realm of philosophy into the realm of psychotherapy, i.e. medical framework, problem resolution and ameliorative goals might be on the table. This plays into the hands of critics who state that philosophical (...) counselling is encroaching on the terrain of the mental health professions without, inter alia, the proper evidence of its treatment efficacy. This paper is an attempt to keep the philosophical counsellor in the realm of philosophy, and by doing this to keep them busy with philosophising as such, i.e. philosophising as an end in itself. In particular, the article focuses on a novel interpretation of how to approach the counselee’s problem so that the philosophical counsellor does not fall prey to problem resolving and ameliorative endeavours. To substantiate this novel reinterpretation to the counselee’s problem, I turn to the notions of the Pyrrhonian aporia and the Derridean perhaps, in conjunction with a crucial position exclusively available to the counselee in philosophical counselling. (shrink)

In this talk, I focus on, and give a brief overview of, four key dispositions or modes of being that can be extracted from African philosophy, particularly hermeneutic, ubuntu, and conversational philosophy. These key dispositions are (i) the indigenisation and appropriation of philosophical ideas and concepts emerging from non-African lifeworlds – a significant problem in the literature of African philosophy; (ii) the archival-archaeological inventory process of sifting, sieving, filtrating, and fertilising indigenous knowledges by “returning to the source”; (iii) creative struggles (...) that follow the encounter with the other in their radical otherness/alterity; and (iv) the arumarustic relationship (conversational dialectics) that emphasise reciprocity, and mutual constitutive acts of humanness (ubuntu). (shrink)

At the heart of philosophical counselling, an emerging field of practical philosophy, is a modest claim, that the lay public can benefit from all that philosophy has to offer. If accepted, this claim suggests that different philosophical traditions should be incorporated into the philosophical counselling discourse. Even though various philosophical traditions have slowly been incorporated, there are sparse mentions of African philosophy in the philosophical counselling literature. However, Ubuntu philosophy has recently garnered some attention. Nonetheless, in this talk I address (...) this dearth of African philosophical input through the introduction of two alternative notions of African philosophy, namely, African hermeneutics and conversational philosophy. These two schools of thought provide valuable and enriching insights to the philosophical counselling discourse. Through this introduction, I aim to transform two key mechanisms as found in the philosophical counselling literature. These mechanisms, that of a hermeneutical happening and collaborative philosophising, invaluable as they are to our understanding of philosophical counselling, lack a certain contextual nuance and situated sensitivity. Consequently, a problematic value-neutrality is continually reproduced; the philosophical counsellor then emerges as an “unprejudiced and value neutral educator”. With the help of African hermeneutics and conversational philosophy, I aim to positively transform these mechanisms. This transformation involves taking seriously the situated and contextual response, emerging from and responding to, in this case, an African lifeworld. Resultant is an interpretive actualisation through a collaborative undertaking rooted in the very conditions of the philosophical conversation. (shrink)

Contributions of Pierre Hadot pertaining to the notion of philosophy as a way of life have had a profound and enduring influence upon philosophical counselling theory and practice. Various philosophical counsellors, such as Robert Walsh and Arto Tukiainen, have embraced this imperative by living their philosophical counselling practice. Nonetheless, a prevailing trend among these practitioners lies in their exclusive reliance upon either the ancient Greek philosophical tradition as expounded by Hadot, or in their adaptation of contemporary Western philosophies. Regrettably, a (...) conspicuous omission prevails with respect to the incorporation of contemporary African philosophies, notably their philosophical praxes as a way of life/living, within the discourse of contemporary philosophical counselling. The integration of African philosophies into the discourse of philosophical counselling literature holds significant promise, particularly concerning the potential to impact ways of living within a Southern African context. Within the wider landscape of contemporary African philosophy, certain authors have already conceptualised ubuntu philosophy as a way of life/living. This talk, notwithstanding, undertakes to introduce two different African philosophies, namely, hermeneutic African philosophy and conversational philosophy. A novel interpretation of these philosophies will be advanced, positioning them as praxes for philosophical counselling. Emphasis is placed on an interpretative actualisation in response to lived experiences, contextualised within a conversational framework. The implications for philosophical counselling are threefold: firstly, the disclosing of alternative ways of life/living and being/becoming, along with the creation of new concepts; secondly, a profound accentuation of the relational dimension in philosophical counselling, underscored by the notion of collaborative philosophising that emerges from the dynamic interaction between the philosophical counsellor and the counselee; thirdly, a reworked understanding of philosophical counselling that moves beyond methodological constraints while embracing the transformative potential of reflective, creative, and critical conversations. (shrink)

Philosophical counselling, a relatively new field in practical philosophy, offers to potentially edify the layperson’s everyday life with the help of philosophy. This lofty ideal is upheld by philosophical practitioners introducing various contemporary philosophies to its growing literature. However, many philosophical traditions beyond contemporary philosophy still somewhat suffer from an unwarranted neglect. Presently, African philosophy faces an almost complete absence in the philosophical counselling literature. It is thus a given that a prevalent lack of inquiry exists regarding its use in (...) philosophical counselling. Despite this silence, fertile grounds exist for innovative contributions to further advance the development of African philosophy in philosophical counselling. -/- In this talk, I will introduce a novel reading of African philosophy to the literature of philosophical counselling. This understanding of African philosophy is greatly inspired and influenced by the work of Tsenay Serequeberhan and Jonathan Chimakonam. More specifically, the notion of African philosophy gathered from these philosophers seek to advance the critical interpretation/hermeneutic actualised from a specific philosophical place or lifeworld through the method of conversationalism. Furthermore, the very rootedness of this notion of philosophy, stemming from a concrete lifeworld, actively problematises philosophies that reproduce a supposed and untenable value neutrality. -/- Developing this understanding of African philosophy in a philosophical counselling context, I offer an initial critique of uncritical applications of philosophies originating from distinct philosophical places under the guise of a value neutrality. In maintaining this unwarranted silence on different philosophical traditions, philosophical counsellors might promote the use of philosophies as if universally applicable. And secondly, I propose that following from this understanding of African philosophy, philosophical counselling as such can begin to foster an environment in which new concepts can be co-created. Consequently, and in conjunction with conversationalism, radically new ways of being/becoming can be explored which might hold greater contextual significance. (shrink)

This is a description and analysis of the intellectual culture of the eighteenth-century Church of England. Challenging conventional perceptions of the Church as an intellectually moribund institution, the study traces the influence of thinkers such as Locke, Newton, Burke, and Gibbon on theological debate in England during this period.

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

In common with traditional forms of epistemic internalism, epistemological disjunctivism attempts to incorporate an awareness condition on justification. Unlike traditional forms of internalism, however, epistemological disjunctivism rejects the so-called New Evil Genius thesis. In so far as epistemological disjunctivism rejects the New Evil Genius thesis, it is revisionary. -/- After explaining what epistemological disjunctivism is, and how it relates to traditional forms of epistemic internalism / externalism, I shall argue that the epistemological disjunctivist’s account of the intuitions underlying the New (...) Evil Genius thought experiment is at best incomplete. As presented, therefore, epistemological disjunctivism is unable to accommodate the core guiding intuitions of epistemic internalism. Given the stated aim of not being revisionary on this score, the view is at a dialectical disadvantage over the traditional forms of epistemic internalism the position is meant to replace. Unfortunately, therefore, at present, the impasse between internalism and externalism remains. (shrink)

Some objections to the idea that disputed territories should be auctioned.

In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does (...) have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief. (shrink)

What is it to be a woman? What is it to be a man? We start by laying out desiderata for an analysis of 'woman' and 'man': descriptively, it should link these gender categories to sex biology without reducing them to sex biology, and politically, it should help us explain and combat traditional sexism while also allowing us to make sense of the activist view that gendering should be consensual. Using a Putnam-style 'Twin Earth' example, we argue that none of (...) the existing analyses in the feminist literature succeeds in meeting all of our desiderata. Finally, we propose a positive account that we believe can satisfy all the desiderata outlined. According to our theory, the genders 'woman' and 'man' are individuated not by their contemporary connections to sex biology, but by their historical continuity with classes that were originally closely connected to sex biology. (shrink)

In general, epistemic internalists hold that an individual’s justification for a belief is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons for thinking that the contents of her beliefs are true. Applying this to the epistemology of testimony, a hearer’s justification for beliefs acquired through testimony is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons to think that the contents of the speaker’s testimony is true. A consequence of internalism is that subjects that are alike with respect to their reflectively accessible reasons are alike (...) with respect to what they have justification to believe. Testimony should be thought no different: hearers that are alike with respect to reflectively accessible reasons to think that a speaker’s testimony is true are alike with respect to their justification for beliefs based upon that testimony. But it has been recently argued that this view faces powerful counterexamples. So the central question is this: assuming that a hearer can acquire justification to believe a proposition through the testimony of a speaker, can epistemic internalism provide the resources to explain how such justification is possible? My aim in this paper is to address these counterexamples, and in so doing, defend epistemic internalist accounts of testimony. (shrink)

The acquisition of a new skill usually proceeds through five stages, from novice to expert, with a sixth stage of mastery available for highly motivated performers. In this chapter, we re-state the six stages of the Dreyfus Skill Model, paying new attention to the transitions and interrelations between them. While discussing the fifth stage, expertise, we unpack the claim that, “when things are proceeding normally, experts don’t solve problems and don’t make decisions; they do what normally works” (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, (...) 1988, pp. 30 – 31). This leads us to offer an account of the “perspectival deliberation” that arises for experts and masters and that is distinct from the calculative deliberation characteristic of the lower stages of skillfulness. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that self-awareness is intertwined with one's awareness of possibilities for action. I show this by critically examining Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self. I argue that the distinction Zahavi makes among 'pre-reflective minimal', 'interpersonal', and 'normative' dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call 'pre-reflective self-understanding'. The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person’s (...) pre-reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre-reflective self-understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi’s claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre-reflective self-awareness. To carve off self-awareness from the self’s practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre-reflective action shows that pre-reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-understanding are co-constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience. (shrink)

This chapter first surveys general issues in the epistemic internalism / externalism debate: what is the distinction, what motivates it, and what arguments can be given on both sides. -/- The second part of the chapter will examine the internalism / externalism debate as regards to the specific case of the epistemology of memory belief.

In the wake of the advent of genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated protein 9), there has been a global debate around the implications of manipulating the human genome. While CRISPR-based germline gene editing is new, the debate about the ethics of gene editing is not – for several decades now, scholars have debated the ethics of making heritable changes to the human genome. The arguments that have been raised both for and against the use of (...) genetic technologies in human reproduction reiterate much of the arguments made in the pre-CRISPR debate. As such, it is instructive for South Africa to reflect on these arguments now, in considering our position on the regulation of the use of this novel biotechnology. There are two dominant schools of thought in this area, bioliberalism and bioconservatism. Bioconservatives raise concerns about the risks of genetic manipulation, and argue that it ought to be limited or prohibited to avert these risks to human health and human nature. Bioliberal scholars are more open to the prospect of genetic manipulation, because of its potential utility. In this article, I conclude that in liberal democracies such as our own, bioliberal arguments ought to be seriously considered when formulating policy on human genome editing because of the extent to which they resonate with our Constitutional values and human rights. I further suggest that there is a need for an enquiry into the relevance of African perspectives on the ethical questions that arise concerning germline genome editing. (shrink)

Does the recent success of Podemos and Syriza herald a new era of inclusive, egalitarian left populism? Because leaders of both parties are former students of Ernesto Laclau and cite his account of populism as guiding their political practice, this essay considers whether his theory supports hope for a new kind of populism. For Laclau, the essence of populism is an “empty signifier” that provides a means by which anyone can identify with the people as a whole. However, the concept (...) of the empty signifier is not as neutral as he assumes. As I show by analyzing the role of race in his theory, some subjects are constituted in a way that prevents their unmediated identification with the people. Consequently, Laclau’s view should be read as symptomatic of the problems with populist logic if its adherents are to avoid reproducing its exclusions and practice a more inclusive politics. (shrink)

The current resurgence of interest in cognition and in the nature of cognitive processing has brought with it also a renewed interest in the early work of Husserl, which contains one of the most sustained attempts to come to grips with the problems of logic from a cognitive point of view. Logic, for Husserl, is a theory of science; but it is a theory which takes seriously the idea that scientific theories are constituted by the mental acts of cognitive subjects. (...) The present essay begins with an exposition of Husserl's act-based conception of what a science is, and goes on to consider his account of the role of linguistic meanings, of the ontology of scientific objects, and of evidence and truth. The essay concentrates almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations of 1900/01. This is not only because this work, which is surely Husserl's single most important masterpiece, has been overshadowed first of all by his Ideas I and then later by the Crisis. It is also because the Investigations contain, in a peculiarly clear and pregnant form, a whole panoply of ideas on logic and cognitive theory which either simply disappeared in Husserl's own later writings or became obfuscated by an admixture of that great mystery which is 'transcendental phenomenology'. (shrink)

In 2035 global egg demand will have risen 50% from 1985. Because we are not able to tell in the egg whether it will become a male or female chick, billons of one day-old male chicks will be killed. International research initiatives are underway in this area, and governments encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling of day-old male chicks. The Netherlands holds an exceptional position in the European egg trade, but is also the (...) only country in the European Union where the downside of the egg sector, the practice of killing day-old male chicks, is a recurrent subject of societal debate. ‘Preventing the killing of young animals’ and ‘in ovo sex determination’ are the two alternative approaches available to solve this problem. It is clear that both approaches solve the problem of killing day-old male chicks, either by keeping them alive or by preventing them from living, but they also raise a lot of new animal welfare-related dilemmas. A thorough analysis was undertaken of these dilemmas and the results are presented in this article. The analysis resulted in an ethical framework based on the two main approaches in bioethics: a consequentialist approach and a deontological approach. This ethical framework was used to develop an online survey administered to ascertain Dutch public opinion about these alternative approaches. The results show that neither alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an insight into the motives that are important for people’s choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the approach chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

Epistemic internalism, by stressing the indispensability of the subject’s perspective, strikes many as plausible at first blush. However, many people have tended to reject the position because certain kinds of beliefs have been thought to pose special problems for epistemic internalism. For example, internalists tend to hold that so long as a justifier is available to the subject either immediately or upon introspection, it can serve to justify beliefs. Many have thought it obvious that no such view can be correct, (...) as it has been alleged that internalism cannot account for the possibility of the justification of beliefs stored in memory. -/- My aim in this paper is to offer a response that explains how memory justification is possible in a way that is consistent with epistemic internalism and an awareness condition on justification. Specifically, I will explore the plausibility of various options open to internalists, including both foundationalist and non-foundationalist approaches to the structure of justification. I intend to show that despite other difficult challenges that epistemic internalism might face, memory belief poses no special problems that the resources of internalism cannot adequately address. (shrink)

According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

Influential cases have been provided that seem to suggest that one can fail to have knowledge because of the social environment. If not a distinct kind of social defeater, is there a uniquely social phenomenon that defeats knowledge? My aim in this paper is to explore these questions. I shall argue that despite initial appearances to the contrary, we have no reason to accept a special class of social defeater, nor any essentially social defeat phenomenon. We can explain putative cases (...) of social defeat with our existing epistemological apparatus. (shrink)

The discipline of applied ethics already has a certain familiarity in the Anglo-Saxon world, above all through the work of Peter Singer. Applied ethics uses the tools of moral philosophy to resolve practical problems of the sort which arise, for example, in the running of hospitals. In the University at Buffalo (New York) there was organized on April 24-25 1998 the world's first conference on a new, sister discipline, the discipline of applied ontology. Applied ontologists seek to apply ontological tools (...) to solving practical problems of the sort which arise in various extra-philosophical domains, including law and government administration. (shrink)

Through an analysis of a part of Thomas’ arguments on the rational soul’s subsistence, the article exposes the reasons why it is necessary and possible to affirm that the human soul is a substance in its proper sense, even if it does not have the entire human essence when it subsists apart from the body. Thus the article intends to answer a question raised by B.C. Bazán. The analysis is articulated applying the principle nihil agit nisi secundum quod est actu (...) in different ways in order to make explicit the reason why the soul is the suppositum of intellectual operations and faculties and therefore a substance; then the article reaffirms that the substantial form’s definition is related to the act of being in order to distinguish the “virtual” way in which any substantial form has the entire species, from the “real” way in which any substance has an entire substantial essence. (shrink)

(Added April 2023: This draft is superseded by Briggs, R.A., & George, B.R. (2023). 'What Even Is Gender?'. Routledge. DOI 10.4324/9781003053330, and in particular by the first three chapters thereof. While this much earlier draft remains available for archival purposes, you are encouraged to read and cite the 2023 book and to use its terminology.) -/- This paper presents a new taxonomy of sex/gender concepts based on the idea of starting with a few basic components of the sex/gender system, and (...) exhausting the possible types of simple associations and identities based on these. The resulting system is significantly more fine-grained than most competitors, and helps to clarify a number of points of confusion and conceptual tension in academic and activist conversations about feminism, transgender politics, and the social analysis of gender. (shrink)

In its most basic form, Simple Reliabilism states that: a belief is justified iff it is formed as the result of a reliable belief-forming process. But so-called New Evil Demon cases have been given as counterexamples. A common response has been to complicate reliabilism from its simplest form to accommodate the basic reliabilist position, while at the same time granting the force of NED intuitions. But what if despite initial appearances, Simple Reliabilism, without qualification, is compatible with the NED intuition? (...) What we can call the Dispositionalist Response to the New Evil Demon problem is fascinating because it contends just that: Simple Reliabilism is fully compatible with the NED intuition. It is claimed that all we need to do to recognize their compatibility is appreciate that reliability is a dispositional property. In this paper I shall critically evaluate the Dispositionalist proposal. (shrink)

In this introduction, we cover some ways in which the topic of noise is discussed today, and then point to some important open questions about noise and its experience. We then provide a synopsis of the papers collected in the volume.

My interest lies in offering a phenomenological perspective on how noise is experienced, with particular attention to what may be common to different sorts of noise phenomena. As a counterpoint to the notion that noise is an empty or constructed notion, I argue for two desiderata of a phenomenological account of noise; accommodating a plurality of noise experiences, on the one hand, and clarifying their specific phenomenal character, on the other. I then pursue these desiderata by turning to an examination (...) of some contemporary views of perception that have implications for how the phenomenal character of perceptual noise in particular is to be understood; an epistemic misfire view and a sensory misfire view. After clarifying each and its appeal, I convey concerns about the one and the other. I propose a third alternative for further exploration - a perceptual disjoint view - and point to how it ought to explored. On the premise that there is something like a unity of consciousness or experience, I lay out the idea that there may then be many forms of 'disunities' of experience. From an analysis of the latter, I suggest, one may account for many different types of experiences of noise, though with a common ‘phenomenal’ thread running through them. (shrink)

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and (...) in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1. (shrink)

Both Martin Heidegger and Harry Frankfurt have argued that the fundamental feature of human identity is care. Both contend that caring is bound up with the fact that we are finite beings related to our own impending death, and both argue that caring has a distinctive, circular and non-instantaneous, temporal structure. In this paper, I explore the way Heidegger and Frankfurt each understand the relations among care, death, and time, and I argue for the superiority of Heideggerian version of this (...) nest of claims. Frankfurt claims that we should conceive of the most basic commitments which practically orient a person in the world and define his identity (“volitional necessities”) as naturalistic facts, foundational for and located completely without the normative space of reasons. In support of this he appeals to the supposedly foundational role played in human life by the instinct for self-preservation, what Frankfurt calls the “love of living.” The claim is that in questions of practical identity there is a definite priority of the factual over the normative. Frankfurt’s naturalistic model of volitional necessity is motivated by a misunderstanding of the temporal structure of care, a misunderstanding that helps lead him to an implausible conception of the basic structures of human identity. Heidegger advances an anti-naturalistic conception of caring, one bound up with his way of understanding how human beings relate to their own future. I argue that the existential, temporal, and normative significance that Frankfurt attributes to the naturalized “love of living” is better captured by the Heideggerian claim that human identity is defined by being “for-the-sake-of” certain projects and commitments, a way of being lived out in the way Heidegger calls “being-towards-death.”. (shrink)

The copy provided on ths site is a late draft. It provides a philosophical argument for the view that by and large it is morally wrong to buy shares in a company that is behaving badly unless you (if necessary acting together with others) are able and willing to prevent the misbehaviour. A key lemma in my argument concerns a chain of authorisation from the shareholders to the company's board to the CEO -- one in virtue of which shareholders are (...) ultimately responsible for major patterns of wrongdoing by the company. (shrink)

In The Realm of Reason (2004), Christopher Peacocke develops a “generalized rationalism” concerning, among other things, what it is for someone to be “entitled”, or justified, in forming a given belief. In the course of his discussion, Peacocke offers two arguments to the best explanation that aim to undermine scepticism and establish a justification for our belief in the reliability of sense perception, respectively. If sound, these ambitious arguments would answer some of the oldest and most vexing epistemological problems. In (...) this paper I will evaluate these arguments, concluding that they are inconclusive at best. Despite offering some interestingly original arguments, Peacocke gives us no reason to think that scepticism is false, and that perception is generally reliable. (shrink)

Early Heidegger argues that a “homogenous space of nature” can be revealed by stripping away the intelligibility of Dasein's everyday world, a process he calls “deworlding.” Given this, some interpreters have suggested that Heidegger, despite not having worked out the details himself, is also committed to a notion of deworlded time. Such a “natural time” would amount to an endogenous sequentiality in which events are ordered independently of Dasein and the stand it takes on its being. I show that Heidegger (...) was indeed committed to such a temporal realism even though his treatment of these issues is somewhat scattered and pulled in different directions. In the course of my reconstruction, I renew an interpretation of Heidegger that stresses Dasein's thrownness into nature and I answer William Blattner's powerful interpretation of Heidegger as a failed temporal idealist who was unable to derive the sequentiality of ordinary time from Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality. Heidegger did not attempt to derive sequentiality; instead, he understood it as a built-in feature of the natural universe by which Dasein's activities are constrained. World-time turns out to be a co-production of Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality and the endogenous sequentiality of events in nature. (shrink)

These days the two most popular approaches to belief ascription are Millianism and Contextualism. The former approach is inconsistent with the existence of ordinary Frege cases, such as Lois believing that Superman flies while failing to believe that Clark Kent flies. The Millian holds that the only truth-conditionally relevant aspect of a proper name is its referent or extension. Contextualism, as I will define it for the purposes of this essay, includes all theories according to which ascriptions of the form (...) ‘S believes that a is F’ and ‘S believes that b is F’, where ‘a’ and ‘b’ are coreferential proper names, may, depending on the context, differ in truth-value even though in those very contexts each ascription relates the same believer to the very same proposition. What the two theories have in common is the claim that names are Millian. What separates the two theories is what they say about belief contexts. In this essay I prove that Millianism is true, Contextualism is true, or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. As a consequence, my argument is a proof that either names and many general terms are Millian or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. (shrink)

Proponents of the problem of animal suffering claim that the millions of years of apparent nonhuman animal pain and suffering provides evidence against the existence of God. Neo-Cartesianism attempts to avoid this problem mainly by denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. However, neo-Cartesian options regarding animal minds have failed to compel many. In this essay, I explore an answer to the problem of animal suffering inspired by the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Instead of focusing on phenomenal consciousness, (...) the neo-Thomistic view of animal minds focuses on self-awareness. After proposing and providing evidence for this view, I conclude that nonhuman animal suffering is not morally significant. (shrink)

Philosophers have cataloged a range of genealogical methods by which different sorts of normative conclusions can be established. Although such methods provide diverging ways of pursuing genealogical inquiry, they typically converge in eschewing historiographic methodology, in favor of a uniquely philosophical approach. In contrast, one genealogist who drew on historiographic methodology is Michel Foucault. This article presents the motivations and advantages of Foucault's genealogical use of such a methodology. It advances two mains claims. First, that Foucault's early 1970s work employs (...) a distinct genealogical method, which borrows from contemporary historiographic models of explanation to expand the range of objects that are proper to genealogical accounts of historical change. I demonstrate how Foucault modifies two central commitments of Nietzsche by broadening the dimensions of genealogical inquiry and explanation. Second, that historical method has normative relevance for genealogy, insofar as different historiographic choices can lead to different normative conclusions. I motivate this second claim by explaining how Foucault's multidimensional genealogical method expands both (a) the range of objects that are subject to evaluative assessment, and (b) the set of possible prescriptive recommendations that follow from such assessment. (shrink)

There has been a significant increase in the use of radiological services in the past 30 years. There are many reasons for this, but one has received little attention: the increased role of patient autonomy in healthcare. Patients demand x rays, CT scans, MRI, and positron emission tomography scans. The key question in this article is how a moral principle, such as respect for patient autonomy, can influence the extension of radiological services. A literature review reveals how patient autonomy is (...) acknowledged in radiology, and how it is used both to explain and to justify the increase in radiological examinations. Furthermore, it also shows how the premises favouring patients’ exercise of their autonomy are not always present, which makes patient autonomy subject to adverse side effects and even abuse. Patient autonomy can be used to reduce the professionals’ responsibility for radiological examinations , to increase the popularity of the profession , to increase the income of the professionals or their institutions, and to promote professional activity. Patient autonomy intended to reduce paternalism, to legitimise otherwise morally unjustifiable actions , and to protect patients, can easily be used as a moral means for opposite ends. These adverse effects are not peculiar to radiology. However, they emerge particularly clearly in explanations and justifications of the substantial increase in radiological services, as well as in debates on overuse of radiological services. (shrink)

This paper investigates a well-known case of simultaneous discovery in twentieth-century chemistry, the origins of the concept of hybridisation, in the light of Kuhn's insights. There has been no ambiguity as to who discovered this concept, when it was "rst in print, and how important it was. The full-#edged form of the concept was published in 1931 independently by two American scientists John C. Slater (1900}1976) and Linus Pauling (1901}1994), although both of them had made their ideas public earlier: Slater (...) at the American Physical Society meetings in 1930, and Pauling in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1928. Slater and Pauling both argued for the necessity of using an s orbital as well as three p orbitals in the carbon atom in order to explain carbon's four valences and the tetrahedral structure of methane. The metaphor &hybridisation' for denoting this mix of s and p orbitals was "rst used by Robert S. Mulliken and J. H. Van Vleck before gaining currency with the scienti"c community around 1935.2 The concept of hybridisation was indeed indispensable for extending the quantum-mechanical interpretation of the chemical bond as an electron pairing from diatomic molecules to polyatomic ones. To be sure, the emergence of hybridisation attests to scientists' growing interest in exploring the borderland between physics and chemistry, a trend that led to the creation of physical chemistry in the late nineteenth century and of chemical physics and quantum chemistry in the 1920s and 30s. Slater and Pauling themselves experienced and on many occasions talked about the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary research; and historians have legitimately illuminated their works by examining them in this broad context.3 Yet the careful analysis of their research notes and published papers reveals that Slater and Pauling were working in quite disparate disciplinary traditions, with di!erent approaches, for di!erent audiences, and towards di!erent goals. The aim of this paper is to explore their di!erent routes to a common destination*hybridisation*and thereby to explicate tensions existing between physics and chemistry amidst the institutional and conceptual overlapping of the two disciplines. (shrink)

If knowledge requires safety, then one might think that when the epistemic source of knowledge is testimony, that testimony must itself be safe. Otherwise, will not the lack of safety transfer from testimony to hearer, such that hearer will lack knowledge? Resisting this natural line of reasoning, Goldberg (2005; 2007) argues that testimonial knowledge through unsafe testimony is possible on the basis of two cases. Lackey (2008) and Pelling (2013) criticize Goldberg’s examples. But Pelling goes on to provide his own (...) example that attempts to show that Goldberg’s thesis is true: one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. If any of these counterexamples were correct, they would undermine the main reason to think that knowledge based on unsafe testimony is impossible. My aim in this paper is to critically assess these arguments, and to consider the possibility of knowledge through unsafe testimony. Drawing a general moral from the analysis of these cases, I shall contend that it is impossible to acquire safe belief solely on the basis of unsafe testimony. If so, then testimonial knowledge based solely on unsafe testimony is impossible. (shrink)

In addition to the notion of defeat, do we need to expand the epistemological repertoire used in accounting for the context dependence of justification? It has recently been argued that we ought to admit a hitherto unrecognized fundamental epistemic kind called ‘disqualifiers’. Disqualifiers are taken to be not reducible to any other epistemic notion. Rather, they are meant to be primitive. If this is correct, it is a surprising and novel discovery, and so it is worthy of further epistemological investigation. (...) In this paper I shall first argue that the cases given do not motivate positing the notion of a disqualifier. Conclusions drawn about the existence of disqualifiers do not follow from the considerations advanced. Second, I shall directly argue that an essential core claim of those who would posit disqualifiers, that so-called disqualifiers actually do prevent epistemic bases from conferring justification, is false. In sum, I shall argue that there are no disqualifiers. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of the existential conception of selfhood that follows from Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception. On this view, people relate to themselves not by “looking within” in acts of introspection but, first, by “looking without” at the field of solicitations in which they are immersed and, eventually, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, by “making explicit” the “melodic unity” or “immanent sense” of their behavior. To make sense of this, I draw out a distinction latent in Merleau-Ponty’s view between a (...) pre-reflective sense of self and a reflective self-interpretation. The former is a suite of abilities and dispositions in light of which a person is aware of and drawn to act in a situation. This sense of self undergoes transitions over time, is constitutively susceptible to moments of disorientation, and tends toward but never achieves full coherence. Reflective self-interpretation is an activity whereby someone—provisionally and defeasibly—clarifies, articulates, and gets a better “grip” on how they are prereflectively drawn to act. I ground this interpretation in a detailed reading of Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of romantic love and I corroborate it by examining his account of the emergence of class-consciousness in the self-interpretation of a worker. (shrink)