Paparan stres tidak bisa dihindari dalam kehidupan kita sehari-hari. Kebanyakan orang mungkin pernah mengalami setidaknya satu stres yang ekstrem (misalnya: situasi traumatis yang berpotensi mengancam jiwa) yang dapat menyebabkan dampak buruk yang serius pada kesehatan mental mereka [1]. Oleh karena itu, resiliensi menjadi isu penelitian yang penting di kalangan peneliti di bidang ilmu kedokteran, kesehatan mental, dan ilmu pengetahuan secara umum untuk dapat membantu orang lain dalam meningkatkan kemampuan untuk menahan stres. Salah satu langkah terpenting untuk dapat meneliti resiliensi secara (...) efektif adalah dengan memberikan definisi yang tepat. Dalam rapat pleno tahunan ke-29, para ahli dari berbagai disiplin ilmu yang tergabung dalam International Society for Traumatic Stress membahas secara tuntas mengenai pengertian resiliensi, termasuk juga ketua rapat (Steven Southwick) dan panelis (George Bonanno, Ann Masten, Catherine Panter-Brick, dan Rachel Yehuda). Rapat pleno tersebut diselenggarakan di Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pada bulan November 2013 [2]. (shrink)

This piece lays out the framework for a special issue on the topic of "Fits and Misfits," published as volume 7, issue 1 of Puncta: A Journal of Critical Phenomenology. We discuss the relationship between the concept of misfitting, coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and debility, coined by Jasbir Puar, in relationship to scholarship on Merleau-Ponty. We then introduce each of the eight articles in the special issue: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's "What Misfitting Makes," Susan Bredlau's "Conversational Accessibility: Healthcare, Community, and the Ethics (...) of Everyday Encounters," Helen A. Fielding's "Being Touched by Wellness: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, and the Intensive Care Unit," Ann Murphy's "The Spirited Interworld: Caregiving and the Liminal Phenomenology of Dementia," Rachel Elliott's "Sharing Time with Misfits: We-Experience across Bodily Difference," David Morris's "An-Archic Time: Melting the Clock as Hypernorm of the I Can -- and Philosophy," Rebecca Longtin's "Merleau-Ponty's Cézanne as Misfit Artist," and, finally, Laura McMahon's "The Politics of Vulnerability and the School for Peace: Insights from Butler, Merleau-Ponty, and Family Systems Theory.". (shrink)

The phenomenon of ambivalence is an important one for any philosophy of action. Despite this importance, there is a lack of a fully satisfactory analysis of the phenomenon. Although many contemporary philosophers recognize the phenomenon, and address topics related to it, only Harry Frankfurt has given the phenomenon full treatment in the context of action theory - providing an analysis of how it relates to the structure and freedom of the will. In this paper, I develop objections to Frankfurt's account, (...) all revolving around the charge that his account contains a serious ambiguity between willing and identifying. With such objections in place, I then develop an analysis that avoids the difficulties and ambiguities that Frankfurt's analysis is prey to. I briefly distinguish ambivalence from other types of internal conflict. This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the phenomenon of ambivalence, which will then allow for discussions about the normative merits and demerits of ambivalence, the effects of ambivalence on autonomous action, and methods of resolution of ambivalence. (shrink)

This chapter offers phenomenological ethics of intimacy for experiences of isolation, reduced haptic relations, and periods when we must hold each other at a distance. How can we practice an ethics of intimacy from a space of separation and suspended activities involving bodily proximity and touch? By drawing on Luce Irigaray’s identification of a “caress before the caress,” I locate a queer, feminist ethics of intimacy born from the experience of undetermined desire or “erotic suspension.” The reduction and disruption of (...) touching, brought about by a crisis such as a pandemic, magnifies the experience of ethical or epistemological uncertainty surrounding haptic relations. But I argue that the experience of erotic suspension before the caress underlies all forms of being-together. One’s relationship to this moment before the caress is critical because it informs and transforms the way we are together. The disruption of our usual forms of being-together may be an opportunity for transformed ethical relations, the expansion of intimacy, and heightened sensation and pleasure. (shrink)

What words we use, and what meanings they have, is important. We shouldn't use slurs; we should use 'rape' to include spousal rape (for centuries we didn’t); we should have a word which picks out the sexual harassment suffered by people in the workplace and elsewhere (for centuries we didn’t). Sometimes we need to change the word-meaning pairs in circulation, either by getting rid of the pair completely (slurs), changing the meaning (as we did with 'rape'), or adding brand new (...) word-meaning pairs (as with 'sexual harassment'). A problem, though, is how to do this. One might worry that any attempt to change language in this way will lead to widespread miscommunication and confusion. I argue that this is indeed so, but that's a feature, not a bug of attempting to change word-meaning pairs. The miscommunications and confusion such changes cause can lead us, via a process I call transformative communicative disruption, to reflect on our language and its use, and this can be further, rather than hinder, our goal of improving language. (shrink)

In his article “Nudging and Informed Consent,” Shlomo Cohen (2013) argues, among other things, that 1) “to the extent that the nudge-influenced decision making is rational—in whatever sense,” there...

An analysis of the identity issues involved in facial allograft transplantation is provided in this paper. The identity issues involved in organ transplantation in general, under both theoretical accounts of personal identity and subjective accounts provided by organ recipients, are examined. It is argued that the identity issues involved in facial allograft transplantation are similar to those involved in organ transplantation in general, but much stronger because the face is so closely linked with personal identity. Recipients of facial allograft transplantation (...) have the potential to feel that their identity is a mix between their own and the donor’s, and the donor’s family is potentially likely to feel that their loved one ‘‘lives on’’. It is also argued that facial allograft transplantation allows the recipients to regain an identity, because they can now be seen in the social world. Moreover, they may regain expressivity, allowing for them to be seen even more by others, and to regain an identity to an even greater extent. Informing both recipients and donors about the role that identity plays in facial allograft transplantation could enhance the consent process for facial allograft transplantation and donation. (shrink)

'Hands Tied' brings together two very different films about hands: Maria Lassnig's Palmistry (1973) and Ayesha Hameed's A Rough History (of the Destruction of Fingerprints) (2016). These works are contextualised and their scope extended further by a roundtable discussion featuring participants Rachel Aumiller, Sam Dolbear, Nadine El-Enany, Amelia Groom, Clio Nicastro, Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen, and M. Ty., who discuss their relation to fate, work, pleasure, touch, and surveillance.

Although I agree with Sabine Muller’s conclusion that we should first seek to find alternatives to amputation for patients suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), I disagree with one of the major premises that she uses to argue for her claim. Muller argues that patients with BIID are likely not autonomous when they request that the limb be amputated. Muller’s argument that BIID suffers are not autonomous is flawed because she conflates philosophical conceptions of autonomy with the conception of (...) autonomy that is operative in the context of medicine. (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering involves revising our concepts. It can be pursued as a specific philosophical methodology, but is also common in ordinary, non-philosophical, contexts. How does our capacity for conceptual engineering fit into human cognitive life more broadly? I hold that conceptual engineering is best understood alongside practices of conceptual exploration, examples of which include conceptual supposition (i.e., suppositional reasoning about alternative concepts), and conceptual comparison (i.e., comparisons between possible concept choices). Whereas in conceptual engineering we aim to change the concepts (...) we use, in conceptual exploration, we reason about conceptual possibilities. I approach conceptual exploration via the linguistic tools we use to communicate about concepts, using metalinguistic negotiation, convention-shifting conditionals, and metalinguistic comparatives as my key examples. I present a linguistic framework incorporating conventions that can account for this communication in a unified way. Furthermore, I argue that conceptual exploration helps undermine skepticism about conceptual engineering itself. (shrink)

In theoretical work about the language of personal taste, the canonical example is the simple predicate of personal taste, 'tasty'. We can also express the same positive gustatory evaluation with the complex expression, 'taste good'. But there is a challenge for an analysis of 'taste good': While it can be used equivalently with 'tasty', it need not be (for instance, imagine it used by someone who can identify good wines by taste but doesn't enjoy them). This kind of two-faced behavior (...) systematically arises with complex sensory-evaluative predicates, including those with other appearance verbs, such as 'look splendid' and 'sound nice'. I examine two strategies for capturing these different uses: one that posits an ambiguity in appearance verbs, and one that does not. The former is in line with an approach to 'look'-statements prominent in work in philosophy of perception, and I consider how the motivation given in that tradition carries over to the present context. I then show how the data used to support the verbal ambiguity approach can equally be captured on the second strategy, which appeals only to independently-motivated flexibility in adjective meaning. I close by discussing some considerations that are relevant for choosing between the two options. (shrink)

Simple claims with the verb ‘seem’, as well as the specific sensory verbs, ‘look’, ‘sound’, etc., require the speaker to have some relevant kind of perceptual acquaintance (Pearson, 2013; Ninan, 2014). But different forms of these reports differ in their perceptual requirements. For example, the copy raising (CR) report, ‘Tom seems like he’s cooking’ requires the speaker to have seen Tom, while its expletive subject (ES) variant, ‘It seems like Tom is cooking’, does not (Rogers, 1972; Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012). (...) This contrast has led some theorists to hold that the matrix subject in CR constructions is uniformly interpreted as the perceptual source (p-source) (Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012; Rett and Hyams, 2014). Others, based on examples of CR reports that seem not to require perception of the referent of the matrix subject, have taken the p-source interpretation instead to be non-uniform across CR reports (Landau, 2011; Doran, 2015). We reconsider these theoretical approaches to copy raising in light of new experimental work probing the sensitivity of these requirements to the matrix verb, the embedded ‘like’-clause, and the context. While we find some motivation for a non-uniform p-source analysis, it comes from importantly different cases than those others have relied on. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt on the prevalent assumption that the perceptual requirements of CR reports are to be captured solely by the presence or absence of the p-source interpretation. We suggest that the data motivating a non-uniform p-source view are better captured by an alternative approach, which makes use of a more minimal evidential source role, in place of the perceptual source role. We close by considering the relationship between English copy raising and evidential constructions cross-linguistically. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

Determinations of ability/disability are rooted in coloniality, specifically in categorizations of race, gender, and animality as they bear on social formations. I elucidate this rootedness by weaving the “coloniality of ability” into María Lugones’ accounts of the coloniality of gender and the colonial-modern system as founded on the “human-nonhuman” difference. This enables me to reveal an “ability system” based on the “ability-bestiality” difference and delineate with more specificity liminal sites of oppression and resistance across the heterogeneous socialities of coloniality-modernity. From (...) the perspective of the coloniality of ability that I develop, I focus on the liminality of the white woman Victorian invalid and that of the colonized “bestial” body in order to distinguish between two forms of colonial-modern liminality—“light” and “dark.” I also draw from this discussion two forms of colonial-modern oppression—“dehumanizing” and “bestializing”—and two related modalities of anticolonial resistance—“humanizing” and “decolonial.”. (shrink)

Plato’s attitude towards women in his major political works, the Republic and Laws, is complex. On the one hand, Plato argues that in well-run cities, women should hold positions of rule; but on the other, he suggests that women are inferior to men with respect to virtue. To reconcile these conflicting attitudes, some scholars argue that Plato’s progressive proposals are about women as they could be given the right education and environment, while his derogatory comments are about women as they (...) are. Surprisingly, however, commentators who defend this line of thought fail to identify which aspect or aspects of women’s current social position is the problem. I argue that a central problem is women’s role in the private family. More specifically, I argue that Plato thinks the institution of the private family and household is an impediment to virtue; since the private family and household is the primary domain of women, they will be particularly susceptible to its ill effects. In short, individuals’ characters are shaped by the institutions they inhabit; the private family and household is a character-shaping institution that is the primary domain for women, and as a result their characters will be shaped for the worse. (shrink)

Two meta-analyses of 66 behavioral studies examined variables influencing functional cerebral lateralization of each language of brain-intact bilingual adults. Functional lateralization was found to be primarily influenced by age of onset of bilingualism: bilinguals who acquired both languages by 6 years of age showed bilateral hemispheric involvement for both languages, whereas those who acquired their second language after age 6 showed left hemisphere dominance for both languages. Moreover, among late bilinguals, left hemisphere involvement was found to be greater for those (...) less proficient in their second language, those whose second language was English, and for studies involving dichotic listening paradigms; early bilinguals instead showed bilateral involvement in every condition. Implications of the observed differences in lateralization between early and late bilinguals are explored for existing theories of bilingualism and for neurocognitive models of brain functional organization of language. (shrink)

Some assertions give rise to the acquaintance inference: the inference that the speaker is acquainted with some individual. Discussion of the acquaintance inference has previously focused on assertions about aesthetic matters and personal tastes (e.g. 'The cake is tasty'), but it also arises with reports about how things seem (e.g. 'Tom seems like he's cooking'). 'Seem'-reports give rise to puzzling acquaintance behavior, with no analogue in the previously-discussed domains. In particular, these reports call for a distinction between the specific acquaintance (...) inference (that the speaker is acquainted with a specific individual) and the general acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with something or other of relevance). We frame a novel empirical generalization -- the specific with stage-level generalization -- that systematizes the observed behavior, in terms of the semantics of the embedded 'like'-clause. We present supporting experimental work, and explain why the generalization makes sense given the evidential role of 'seem'-reports. Finally, we discuss the relevance of this result for extant proposals about the semantics of 'seem'-reports. More modestly, it fills a gap in previous theories by identifying which reports get which of two possible interpretations; more radically, it suggests a revision of the kind of explanation that should be given for the acquaintance behavior in question. (shrink)

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) is a syndrome of impaired health and performance that occurs as a result of low energy availability (LEA). Whilst many health effects associated with RED-S have been widely studied from a physiological perspective, further research exploring the psychological antecedents and consequences of the syndrome is required. Therefore, the aim of this study was to qualitatively explore athlete experiences of RED-S. Twelve endurance athletes (female n= 10, male n= 2; M age = 28.33 years) reporting (...) past or current experiences of RED-S, associated with periods of LEA, took part in semi-structured interviews designed to explore: contexts and mechanisms underpinning the onset of RED-S; the subjective experience of RED-S; and contexts and mechanisms influencing “recovery” from RED-S. Regardless of how RED-S was initiated, all athletes experienced a multitude of physiological impairments, accompanied by significant psychological distress. This paper contributes novel understanding of the complex interplay between physiological and psychological components of RED-S from the perspective of information-rich cases. The findings suggest that system-wide educational prevention and awareness interventions are vital for athletes and support personnel, such as coaches, parents, dieticians, psychologists, and sports medicine staff. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

We offer an interpretation of the mental files framework that eliminates the metaphor of files, information being contained in files, etc. The guiding question is whether, once we move beyond the metaphors, there is any theoretical role for files. We claim not. We replace the file-metaphor with two theses: the semantic thesis that there are irreducibly relational representational facts (viz. facts about the coordination of representations); and the metasemantic thesis that processes tied to information-relations ground those facts. In its canonical (...) statement, the ‘file’-theory makes reference to a certain kind of relational representational feature, and a certain kind of mental activity. Mental files need not come into it. In short, we posit mental filing without mental files. Our interpretation avoids awkward problems that arise on the standard interpretation and clarifies the explanatory commitments of the theory. (shrink)

Whether anorexic patients should be able to refuse treatment when this potentially has a fatal outcome is a vexed topic. A recent proposal for a new category of ‘terminal anorexia’ suggests criteria when a move to palliative care or even physician assisted suicide might be justified. I argue that this proposed diagnosis presents a false sense of certainty of the illness trajectory by conceptualizing anorexia in analogy with physical disorders and stressing the effects of starvation. Furthermore, this conceptualization is in (...) conflict with the claim that individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for terminal anorexia have decision making capacity. It should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

It is well known that in the Republic, Socrates presents a view of the soul or the psyche according to which it has three distinct parts or aspects, which he calls the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts. Socrates’ clearest characterization of these parts of the soul occurs in Republic IX, where he suggests that they should be understood in terms of the various goals or ends that give rise to the particular desires that motivate our actions. In Republic X, however, (...) Socrates uses the phenomenon of cognitive conflict about matters of fact to show that the soul has only two parts, the rational and the irrational. Moreover, he characterizes these parts in terms of cognitive tendencies, such as forming beliefs on the basis of reason versus forming beliefs on the basis of perceptual appearances. In this chapter, I explain how these divergent accounts of the soul and its parts are legitimate alternative characterizations. A consequence of my argument is that we should not think of the divided soul as primarily a division of desires, but rather as a division of cognitive attitudes towards the world, each of which yields different sorts of desires. (shrink)

Assertions about appearances license inferences about the speaker's perceptual experience. For instance, if I assert, 'Tom looks like he's cooking', you will infer both that I am visually acquainted with Tom (what I call the "individual acquaintance inference"), and that I am visually acquainted with evidence that Tom is cooking (what I call the "evidential acquaintance inference"). By contrast, if I assert, 'It looks like Tom is cooking', only the latter inference is licensed. I develop an account of the acquaintance (...) inferences of appearance assertions building on two main previous lines of research: first, the copy raising literature, which has aimed to account for individual acquaintance inferences through the "perceptual source" semantic role; second, the subjectivity literature, which has focused on the status of acquaintance inferences with predicates of personal taste, but hasn't given much attention to the added complexities introduced by appearance language. I begin by developing what I take to be the most empirically-sound version of a perceptual source analysis. I then show how its insights can be maintained, while however taking anything about perception out of the truth conditions of appearance sentences. This, together with the assumption that appearance assertions express experiential attitudes, allows us to capture the acquaintance inferences of bare appearance assertions without making incorrect predictions about the behavior of appearance verbs in embedded environments. (shrink)

A sentimentalist theory of morality explains all moral evaluations as manifestations of certain emotions, ones that David Hume and Adam Smith, in their related but divergent accounts, call moral sentiments. The two theories have complementary successes and failures in capturing familiar features of the experience of making moral evaluations. Thinking someone courageous or dishonest need not involve having goals or feelings of desire, and Hume’s theory captures that well; but its account of how our moral evaluations are about or directed (...) toward people or actions is deficient. Smith’s theory readily explains how moral sentiments can be about things (and which things they are about), but at the cost of construing some central moral evaluations as goal-directed desires that are simply not like that. Present-day sentimentalists also face the challenge of combining these two desiderata. (shrink)

In his rich and suggestive paper, Alvaro Vallejo argues for the novel thesis that Plato posits a form of pleasure in the Republic and the Philebus. Vallejo argues that the notion of a Platonic form of pleasure best explains other things that Plato says about pleasure. First, Plato draws a distinction between true pleasure and the appearance of pleasure. Second, Plato uses the same language to describe the relationship between forms and their inferior instantiations as he uses to describe the (...) relationship between true and false pleasures. In these comments, I argue that we do not need to posit a form of pleasure to explain these features of the text. Moreover, I argue that on Vallejo’s account of the form of pleasure, the form could not do the job required of it, namely, it could not explain the problem with false pleasures. (shrink)

Faultless disagreement and faultless retraction have been taken to motivate relativism for predicates of personal taste, like ‘tasty’. Less attention has been devoted to the question of what aspect of their meaning underlies this relativist behavior. This paper illustrates these same phenomena with a new category of expressions: appearance predicates, like ‘tastes vegan’ and ‘looks blue’. Appearance predicates and predicates of personal taste both fall into the broader category of experiential predicates. Approaching predicates of personal taste from this angle suggests (...) that their relativist behavior is due to their experience-sensitivity, rather than their evaluative meaning. Furthermore, appearance predicates hold interest beyond what they can teach us about predicates of personal taste. Examination of a variety of uses of appearance predicates reveals that they give rise to relativist behavior for a variety of reasons—including some that apply also to other types of expressions, such as epistemic modals and comparative terms. This paper thus serves both to probe the source of relativist behavior in discourse about personal taste, as well as to map out this kind of behavior in the rich and under-explored discourse about appearances. (shrink)

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

This essay interprets the epoché of ancient scepticism as the perpetual conversion of the love of one into the love of two. The process of one becoming two is represented in Plato’s Symposium by Diotima’s description of the second rung of ‘the ladder,’ by which one ascends to the highest form of philosophical devotion (Pl. Sym. 209e-210e). Diotima’s ladder offers a vision of philosophy as a total conversion of both the lover and the object of love (or philosopher and object (...) of knowledge). I suggest that scepticism, however, is found in the frustration of Platonic ascension, which results in a partial conversion. Because the process of conversion (from the love of one to the love of One) remains suspended midway, the sceptic’s transformation is erotic—this is to say, driven by a desire that is characterised by a split (which may be identified between subject and object, between incompatible objects of desire or knowledge, or within the subject herself). (shrink)

Pyrrhonian sceptics claim, notoriously, to assent to the appearances without making claims about how things are. To see whether this is coherent we need to consider the philosophical history of ‘appearance’(phainesthai)-talk, and the closely related concept of an impression (phantasia). This history suggests that the sceptics resemble Plato in lacking the ‘non-epistemic’ or ‘non-doxastic’ conception of appearance developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. What is distinctive about the Pyrrhonian sceptic is simply that the degree of doxastic commitment involved in his (...) assent to an impression is asymptotally low. (shrink)

From Augustine’s (death) drive towards an imaginary time before speech to Marx’s drive toward an imaginary time after speech as we know it, we learn that we are always already within the bonds of the mother tongue. In the late twentieth-century, Derrida turns to both Augustine and Marx to repeat the fantasy of escaping the mother (tongue). Derrida responds to Marx’s analysis of our repeated failure to forget the mother tongue by turning to Augustine’s analysis of the mother’s touch: we (...) cannot forget the mother tongue because it is licked upon our skin. Drawing on Derrida’s relationship to Augustine and Marx on the topic of touch and language, I argue that although the bond of the mother tongue is inescapable, its very real grip upon our skin is founded upon a number of fantasies: the fantasy of the Mother, of a cut with the Mother by the Mother, which separates us from an original shared skin and binds us to the Mother tongue, the fantasy of self-articulation in the death of the Mother. I suggest that the symptoms of the fantasmatic foundation of our entrapment by the mother tongue-touch is expressed in barely perceptible glitches—a shiver passing over one’s skin, a stutter in one’s speech. (shrink)

In Talking about, Unnsteinsson defends an intentionalist theory of reference by arguing that confused referential intentions degrade reference. Central to this project is a “belief model” of both identity confusion and unconfused thought. By appealing to a well‐known argument from Campbell, I argue that this belief model falls short, because it fails to explain the inferential behavior it promises to explain. Campbell's argument has been central in the contemporary literature on Frege's puzzle, but Unnsteinsson's account of confusion provides an opportunity (...) for more clarity about how the argument is best interpreted, and what it shows. (shrink)

This chapter identifies two contrasting methodological reductions utilized in philosophical scepticism: withdrawal/doubt [R–]; immersion/attention [R+]. Moving toward a feminist ethics grounded in phenomenological scepticism, Aumiller explores how reduction relates to experiences of personal and global uncertainty such as a pandemic. Reduction involves our entire embodied being, challenging how we are fundamentally in touch with the world. How we respond to being disrupted makes all the difference.

This paper critiques of the privileging of seriousness in modern scholarship and particularly in the humanities, on account of its purported neutrality and objectivity, the resulting foreclosing of all other emotions and insights, and the potentially subversive and enriching potential of laughter, as discussed in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of laughter and seriousness.

It has become popular of late to identify the phenomenon of thinking a singular thought with that of thinking with a mental file. Proponents of the mental files conception of singular thought claim that one thinks a singular thought about an object o iff one employs a mental file to think about o. I argue that this is false by arguing that there are what I call descriptive mental files, so some file-based thought is not singular thought. Descriptive mental files (...) are mental files for which descriptive information plays four roles: determines which object the file is about, if any, it sets limits on possible mistakes that fall within the scope of successful reference for the file, it acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ for the file, and it determines persistence conditions for the file. Contrary to popular assumption, a description playing these roles is consistent with the file-theoretic framework. Recognising this allows us to distinguish the notion of singular thought from that of file-thinking and better understand the nature and role of both. (shrink)

WINNER BEST SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY BOOK IN 2021 / NASSP BOOK AWARD 2022 -/- Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by herself. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral (...) agents hold jointly, but not as unified collective agents. To think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of “massively shared obligations” to large-scale moral problems such as global poverty. (shrink)

A generally ignored feature of Plato’s celebrated image of the cave in Republic VII is that the ascent from the cave is, in its initial stages, said to be brought about by force. What kind of ‘force’ is this, and why is it necessary? This paper considers three possible interpretations, and argues that each may have a role to play.

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

Following Freud’s analysis of the fragile line between the uncanny double and its comic redoubling, I identify the doubling of the double found in critical moments of Hegelian dialectic as producing a kind of comic effect. It almost goes without saying that two provides greater pleasure than one, the loneliest number. Many also find two to be preferable to three, the tired trope of dialectic as a teleological waltz. Two seems to offer lightness, relieving one from her loneliness and lacking (...) the complications of a third who comes in between. And yet, we learn through Marx and Freud that the double (even the double of tragedy and farce) borders on something closer to horror than comedy. -/- In the following, I would like to explore why four is funnier than two in my staging of dialectic as the doubling of the double or, to borrow a movie title from Laurel and Hardy, “Twice Two” (Roach et al. 1933a). I will begin by exploring the formulations of the double in the form of a pair of opposites and in the form of a pair of twins. The literary tropes of the double as the odd couple, on one side, and the twins, on the other, appear to serve very different narrative functions, which incite different kinds of affective responses from the audience. However, the form of the opposed double sometimes conceals the realization that the empty or fragmented content of the first is only reduplicated in the second. The “straight man” of the odd couple cannot see himself in his counterpart “the comic.” The redoubling of the double, however, forces not only the audience, but the original double on stage to confront what was already present, but unrealized, from the beginning. To illustrate this redoubling of the double within the opening of Hegel’s Science of Logic, I consider two short films by Laurel and Hardy in which the comic duo redoubles itself. The formula (2 x 2) produces a comic excess through the dialectical redoubling of there uncanny double. (shrink)

This paper’s most general aim is to illuminate the disagreement between singularists about thought (who claim there are non-descriptive thoughts about ordinary external objects), and descriptivists about thought (who claim all thought about ordinary external objects is descriptive). It does this by clarifying the common claim that singular thoughts have an anchoring role with respect to thought in general and by making two further claims: 1) some of the putative disagreements between singularists and descriptivists are illusory once properly understood, and (...) 2) singularists can more productively argue for their view by separating it from some of the framework in which it is commonly packaged. Separating the singular/descriptive thought distinction from the structured content framework, and casting the singularist’s central claim as one about the structure or form of what I will call referentially anchored thoughts, allows us to move past a common kind of impasse. (shrink)