Much has changed since the beginnings of the gay liberation movement and the feminist movement in the 1970s in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Yet, to a degree, the invisibility of gay male, lesbian and transsexual lifestyles as well as individual struggles for rights and recognition remains. The diverse contributions in this book discuss how the reframing of ‘queer’ as a proud, border-crossing identity challenges conventional views of gay, lesbian, transsexual and heterosexual identities. At the heart of queer politics and theory lies the (...) double irony that ‘queers’ still experience different social positions and are confronted differently by public challenges, and they also seldom agree about how, and for what political reasons, sexuality should be defined and categorised. In this book, 'queer' brings together wide-ranging commentaries on the history, politics and culture of thirty years of sexual history in Aotearoa/New Zealand. (shrink)

This book is a study of Aristotle's metaphysics in which the central argument is that Aristotle's views on substance are a direct response to Plato's Theory of Forms. The claim is that Aristotle believes that many of Plato's views are tenable once one has rejected Plato's notion of separation. There have been many recent books on Aristotle's theory of substance. This one is distinct from previous books in several ways: firstly, it offers a completely new, coherent interpretation of Aristotle's claim (...) that substances are separate in which substances turn out to be specimens of natural kinds. Secondly, it covers a broad range of issues, including Aristotle's criticism of Plato, his views on numerical sameness and identity, his epistemology and his account of teleology. There is also a discussion of much of the recent literature on Aristotle. (shrink)

Spellman argues that Aristotle developed his views about substance in response to Plato’s theory of forms. In particular, she argues that Aristotelian substances are as much like Platonic forms as possible, minus the latter’s separation. Whether ASs are like PFs depends, of course, not only on what one takes ASs to be like, but also on what one takes PFs to be like; accordingly, Spellman provides accounts of both. She argues that ASs are what she calls specimens of (...) natural kinds. A specimen of a natural kind is not Socrates, but Socrates-qua-human-being: Socrates insofar as he is a human being. She argues that Socrates, and Socrates-qua-human-being are numerically the same, but not identical. They are not identical, because not everything true of Socrates is true of Socrates-qua-human-being. Socrates, for example, is snub-nosed, but Socrates-qua-human-being is not; for the latter has all and only the properties contained in the definition of human being. (shrink)

In this study, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz argues that Basil and Gregory develop an understanding of divine simplicity which does not require that God be identical with the properties of God or that these be identical with one another. Their motivation is that they want to hold that we cannot, in all eternity, know God's essence and yet that we have knowledge of God. Radde-Gallwitz argues that, for Basil and especially Gregory, in addition to our "conceptualizations" (epinoiai), we also have knowledge of (...) propria, properties necessarily connected to God's essence.In the early chapters, Radde-Gallwitz surveys the background to the Cappadocians, beginning with the second century. He argues that in early Christianity the .. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to examine the claim that it would be possible for us now to do something which would be the posterior efficient cause of some past event. I am not prepared to discuss the physics of elementary particles, and I will not consider what is sometimes called time reversal. Rather my analysis will be limited to cases in which it is alleged that we, in a world of middle-sized physical objects where most causes precede or are (...) simultaneous with their effects, could conceivably do something so that something else should have happened. I will argue that some of the cases which meet this description are indeed backwards causation if one is prepared to make certain assumptions about time. I will not evaluate these assumptions; rather I will try to clarify them and to make plain their implications for causality. For the argument about backwards causation is most fundamentally, or so I will try to show, an argument about the nature of time. (shrink)

Objective: To examine i) how ethical frameworks can be used in concrete cases of parent–doctors’ disagreements for extremely preterm infants born in the grey zone to guide such difficult decision-making; and ii) what challenges stakeholders may encounter in using these frameworks. Design: We did a case analysis of a concrete case of parent–doctor disagreement in the grey zone using two ethical frameworks: the best interest standard and the zone of parental discretion. Results: Both ethical frameworks entailed similar advantages and challenges. (...) They have the potential 1) to facilitate decision-making because they follow a structured method; 2) to clarify the situation because all relevant ethical issues are explored; and 3) to facilitate reaching an agreement because all parties can explain their views. We identified three main challenges. First, how to objectively evaluate the risk of severe disability. Second, parents’ interests should be considered but it is not clear to what extent. Third, this is a value-laden situation and different people have different values, meaning that the frameworks are at least partially subjective. Conclusions: These challenges do not mean that the ethical frameworks are faulty; rather, they reflect the complexity and the sensitivity of cases in the grey zone. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated papers resulting from the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control convened in June 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Society of Law, Medicine, Ethics. Each of the papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities for public health practitioners; legal competencies public health practitioners and legal and policy decision makers need (...) for use of these laws and authorities; crossdisciplinary and cross-jurisdiction coordination of law-based public health actions; and information on public health law best practices. Collectively, they are referenced as the “white papers.”Our purpose is to offer action options that will help to improve the legal competencies of public health practitioners and policy decision makers with respect to drafting, interpreting. (shrink)

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm that (...) features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can (...) be fully material beings without being identical to our bodies. The Constitution View yields answers to the questions 'What am I most fundamentally?', 'What is a person?', and 'What is the relation between human persons and their bodies'? Baker argues that the complex mental property of first-person perspective enables one to conceive of one's body and mental states as one's own. (shrink)

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains (...) us persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the use of the concept of human flourishing with regard to children. We will argue that the concept can meaningfully be applied to parts of human lives, specifically one's childhood, and discuss when we can meaningfully speak of a flourishing child. Viewing children's lives in terms of whether they are flourishing may be able to help us understand and articulate in which ways a child's life may go better or worse. This is (...) relevant, firstly, to the overall evaluation of people's lives, and secondly, because a flourishing childhood could be instrumentally necessary for adult flourishing. But, most importantly, childhood is a period of life that is good in itself irrespective of its contribution to adult flourishing, that is, being able to be a child has intrinsic goodness. Children have particular characteristics that can optimally function in childhood. While these contribute to the overall evaluation of a flourishing life, they are not regarded as valuable only because of this contribution. (shrink)

My aim is twofold: first, to root out the metaphysical assumptions that generate the problem of mental causation and to show that they preclude its solution; second, to dissolve the problem of mental causation by motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to it. There are three features of this metaphysical background picture that are important for our purposes. The first concerns the nature of reality: all reality depends on physical reality, where physical reality consists of (...) a network of events.1 The second concerns the nature of causation, and the third concerns the conception of behavior. I try to vindicate a robust idea of mental causation. (shrink)

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant‐directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, (...) and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. (shrink)

The very rules of our language games contain mechanisms of disregard. Philosophy of language tends to treat speakers as peers with equal discursive authority, but this is rare in real, lived speech situations. This paper explores the mechanisms of discursive inclusion and exclusion governing our speech practices, with a special focus on the role of gender attribution in undermining women’s authority as speakers. Taking seriously the metaphor of language games, we must ask who gets in the game and whose moves (...) can score. To do this, I develop an eclectic analysis of language games using basic inferential role theory and the concept of a semantic index, and develop the distinction between positional authority and expertise authority, which often conflict for members of oppressed groups. Introducing the concepts of master switches and sub-switches that attach to the index and change scorekeeping practices, I argue that women’s gender status conflicts with our status as authoritative speakers because sex marking in semantics functions as a master switch—“the F-switch”—on the semantic index, which, once thrown, changes the very game. An advantage of using inferentialism for understanding disregard of women’s discursive authority is that it locates the problem in the sanctioned moves, in the deontic structure of norms and practices of scorekeeping, and not primarily in the individual intentions of particular people. (shrink)

This two-part article summarizes the major arguments of Lynne Huffer’s 2010 book, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. The second part of the piece is a dialogue between Huffer and feminist theorist Elizabeth Wilson about the implications of the book’s arguments about rethinking queer theory, interiority, psychic life, lived experience and received understandings of Michel Foucault’s work.

Toxic speech inflicts individual and group harm, damaging the social fabric upon which we all depend. To understand and combat the harms of toxic speech, philosophers can learn from epidemiology, while epidemiologists can benefit from lessons of philosophy of language. In medicine and public health, research into remedies for toxins pushes in two directions: individual protections (personal actions, avoidances, preventive or reparative tonics) and collective action (specific policies or widespread “inoculations” through which we seek herd immunity). This paper is the (...) beginning of a project of identifying potential inoculations and antidotes to toxic speech. The essay brings a social practice theory of language, with special reliance on language‐games and inferential roles, into conversation with concepts from the study of biologic toxins. Some speech harms are acute while others are chronic and insidious; they have different methods of delivery, come in variable doses, and not everyone is equally susceptible to the power to harm. I argue that of the many kinds of challenges we might issue against toxic speech, challenging its expressive commitments has the greatest potential to stop the damage. The essay explores the different sorts of protections that inoculations and antidotes might offer against discursive toxins and sketches how to imagine these in the practices that govern our speech. The paper does not make policy recommendations, but an epidemiology of discursive toxicity reveals several kinds of “more speech” that might fight against “bad speech.”. (shrink)

Human flourishing is the topic of an increasing number of books and articles in educational philosophy. Flourishing should be regarded as an ideal aim of education. If this is defended, the first step should be to elucidate what is meant by flourishing, and what exactly the concept entails. Listing formal criteria can facilitate reflection on the ideal of flourishing as an aim of education. We took Aristotelian eudaimonia as a prototype to construct two criteria for the concept of human flourishing: (...) human flourishing is regarded as intrinsically worthwhile and flourishing means ‘actualisation of human potential’. The second criterion has three sub-criteria: flourishing is about a whole life, it is a ‘dynamic state’ and flourishing presupposes there being objective goods. (shrink)

According to the Constitution View of persons, a human person is wholly constituted by (but not identical to) a human organism. This view does justice both to our similarities to other animals and to our uniqueness. As a proponent of the Constitution View, I defend the thesis that the coming-into-existence of a human person is not simply a matter of the coming-into-existence of an organism, even if that organism ultimately comes to constitute a person. Marshalling some support from developmental psychology, (...) I give a broadly materialistic account of the coming-into-existence of a human person. I argue for the metaphysical superiority of the Constitution View to Biological Animalism, Thomistic Animalism, and other forms of Substance Dualism. I conclude by discussing the single implication of the Constitution View for thinking about abortion. Footnotesa Thanks to Gareth Matthews and Catherine E. Rudder for comments. I am also grateful to other contributors to this volume, especially Robert A. Wilson, Marya Schechtman, David Oderberg, Stephen Braude, and John Finnis. (shrink)

relation between, say, a lump of clay and a statue that it makes up, or between a red and white piece of metal and a stop sign, or between a person and her body? Assuming that there is a single relation between members of each of these pairs, is the relation “strict” identity, “contingent” identity or something else?1 Although this question has generated substantial controversy recently,2 I believe that there is philo- sophical gain to be had from thinking through the (...) issues from scratch. Many of the charges and countercharges are based on the following dichotomy: For any x and y that are related as the lump of clay is to the statue that it makes up, either x is identical to y, or x and y are separate entities, independent of each other. By giving up this dichotomy, we will be able to begin to make sense, I hope, of an intermediate unity relation that holds promise for solving a raft of philosophical problems, including the problem of how persons are related to their bodies.3 And if I am correct, then this relation—constitution without identity—is ubiquitous and interesting in its own right, apart from the light that it sheds on human persons. (shrink)