Objective: This study aims to compare the acoustic vocal analysis results of a group of transgender women relative to those of cisgender women.Methods: Thirty transgender women between the ages of 19 and 52 years old participated in the study. The control group was composed of 31 cisgender women between the ages of 20 and 48 years old. A standardized questionnaire was administered to collect general patient data to better characterize the participants. The vowel /a/ sounds of all participants were collected (...) and analyzed by the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program advanced system.Results: Statistically significant differences between cisgender and transgender women were found on 14 measures: fundamental frequency, maximum fundamental frequency, minimum fundamental frequency, standard deviation of fundamental frequency, absolute jitter, percentage or relative jitter, fundamental frequency relative average perturbation, fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, smoothed fundamental frequency perturbation quotient, fundamental frequency variation, absolute shimmer, relative shimmer, voice turbulence index, and soft phonation index. The mean fundamental frequency value was 159.046 Hz for the cases and 192.435 Hz for the controls.Conclusion: Through glottal adaptations, the group of transgender women managed to feminize their voices, presenting voices that were less aperiodic and softer than those of cisgender women. (shrink)

Martha Albertson Fineman's earlier work developed a theory of inevitable and derivative dependencies as a way of problematizing the core assumptions underlying the 'autonomous' subject of liberal law and politics in the context of US equality discourse. Her 'vulnerability thesis' represents the evolution of that earlier work and situates human vulnerability as a critical heuristic for exploring alternative legal and political foundations. This book draws together major British and American scholars who present different perspectives on the concept of vulnerability (...) and Fineman's 'vulnerability thesis'. The contributors include scholars who have thought about vulnerability in different ways and contexts prior to encountering Fineman's work, as well as those for whom Fineman's work provided an introduction to thinking through a vulnerability lens. This collection demonstrates the broad and intellectually exciting potential of vulnerability as a theoretical foundation for legal and political engagements with a range of urgent contemporary challenges. Exploring ways in which vulnerability might provide a new ethical foundation for law and politics, the book will be of interest to the general reader, as well as academics and students in fields such as jurisprudence, philosophy, legal theory, political theory, feminist theory, and ethics. (shrink)

Research involving transgender and gender diverse people (TGD) increased in the last years, mostly concerning healthcare associated to this population. Few studies dedicated their analysis to the impact of parental support on transgender people, even though this is an important aspect in creating a safe environment on which these individuals can build their identity. In addition, the link between family support, TGD identity and homelessness is not completely established. Thus, due to the specificities of the family context of TGD individuals, (...) the aim of this study is to investigate the association between family support and TGD in different moments of the process of gender affirmation. In addition, this study also aims to explore the relationship between a lack of social support and low self-esteem, home abandonment, and dwelling in the street. The survey was designed based on the TransPULSE project and was made available in electronic format. The sample was constituted of 423 TGD residents in two Brazilian states. A Structural Equation Model analysis suggested that the impact of gender affirmation status on homelessness was mediated by parental support, through self-esteem, and the need to move from home. The association between the status of the gender affirmation procedures, family support and self-esteem was significant and indicated that the further TGD individuals advanced in gender affirmation, the more self-esteem and family support they would have. The association between family support and self-esteem indicated that family support was associated with higher self-esteem. Low family support was associated with the willingness to move from home due to one’s TGD status and there was also a significant correlation between low self-esteem and the willingness to move from home due to one’s TGD status. Finally, homelessness was associated with the willingness to move with a large effect size. Limitations include the sample that was constituted by individuals with Internet access and who had more contact with TGD communities. The findings indicate directions for interventions involving TGD people and their families, considering the parental relationship as a critical variable to improve TGD quality of life in the process of gender affirmation. (shrink)

This special supplementary volume of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy contains the proceedings of the Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy held at Oberlin, Ohio in 1986. The exceptionally high quality of the papers, and the format of speaker, reply, and speaker's reply, has resulted in a volume which furthers some issues which are currently the object of keen controversy in ancient philosophy. Contributors include Michael Frede, Terence Irwin, and Martha Nussbaum.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is an annual publication which includes original articles, which may be of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books. Contributors to this volume; Jonathan Barnes, Roger Crisp, T.H. Irwin, Christopher Janaway, Richard J. Ketchum, Voula Tsouna McKirahan, Martha Nussbaum, Dirk Obbink, and Allan Silverman.

The reviewer presents the main theses of Martha Nussbaum's latest book and enters into discussion with it. Although the reviewer does not object to Nussbaum's thesis on the important role of religion in the individual's life, she nevertheless believes that what may arouse controversy is Nussbaum's failure to distinguish between a religious community and sects that may be dangerous to their members. Next, since Nussbaum defends Islam by saying that it is compatible with women's rights, the reviewer challenges this (...) statement by pointing out that Nussbaum's charge against European governments may also be levelled against Muslims themselves. The reviewer also charges Nussbaum with not following, on numerous occasions, the very principles she introduces. (shrink)

Floor Brouwer, Teunis van Rheenan, Shivcharn S. Dhillion, and Anna Martha Elgersma (eds.) Sustainable Land Management: Strategies to Cope with the Marginalisation of Agriculture Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9313-7 Authors Douglas Seale, 21 Turner Ridge Road, Marlborough, MA 01752, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

European competition law is predominantly focused on maximizing consumer welfare. This overarching purpose (which is supported by economic theory) leaves little place for safeguarding non-economic values, such as sustainability. This makes it difficult to allow cooperation between companies to contribute to such non-economic goals. In this article we explore whether it is possible to establish a different normative framework, in which such goals can be taken into account and can be balanced against the economic goal of consumer welfare. To answer (...) this question, we take four steps. First, we discuss current EU competition law and the difficulty of fitting non-economic goals into the dominant interpretation of that law. Second, we propose a different normative framework, based on the capability approach advanced by philosopher Martha Nussbaum and economist Amartya Sen. Third, we argue that there are good principled reasons to incorporate non-economic goals into competition law. Fourth, we apply both the capability approach and the consumer welfare approach to three (illustrative) cases in which non-economic goals are at stake. Overall, we argue that the capability framework, although not without difficulties of its own, may provide a more legitimate theory for the interpretation of European competition law. (shrink)

De Anna’s book rotates around two notions, the ones of metaphysical realism and mental representation, and around two thinkers, Hilary Putnam, and John Haldane. De Anna’s background is always and only Aquinas, however, and he keeps reconstructing the issues by means of Thomistic arguments with the same tenacity shown by Brian Shanley in his famous paper he dedicated to Haldane. In the first chapter De Anna shows that the conjunction of metaphysical realism and naturalism brings about a (...) form of semantic realism, in the second chapter he reviews the arguments set forth by Putnam to refute semantic realism and per modum tollentem also the conjunction of metaphysical realism and naturalism. The third chapter is dedicated to Putnam’s interest for the interpretation of Aristotelian psychology advanced by Martha Nussbaum, the fourth to Haldane’s response to Putnam, and the fifth recapitulates the whole discussion by going back to what Aquinas says on the reception of sensible forms. For long years, naturalism seemed the inevitable consequence of metaphysical realism. To renounce naturalism would have meant to accept “magical theories” of reference and mental representation like the one proposed by Brentano. In the early 1990s, however, Putnam realizes that intentionality is a property of human beings that cannot be reduced to a natural context. Also for Haldane, of course, intentionality is an irreducible property, but this does not bring him to accept either a panpsychist understanding of matter or the dubious thesis that mental properties are added to inert matter in a way that Putnam would have called magic. Haldane goes back to Aquinas’s position that not only do concepts have a necessary connection with their extension, they also find their explanation as intellectual dispositions, habits, which are used when we state judgments, and De Anna does indeed a great job at clarifying this important discussion. (shrink)

Introduction -- Defining pluralism : Simon Pokagon, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Thomas fortune -- Evolution and American Indian philosophy -- Feminist resistance : Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Labor, empire and the social gospel : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams -- A new name for an old way of thinking : William James -- Making ideas clear : Charles Sanders Peirce -- The beloved community and its discontents : Josiah Royce and the (...) realists -- War, anarchism, and sex : Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger -- Democracy and social ethics : John Dewey -- Naturalism and idealism, fear, and conventionality : Mary Whiton Calkins and Elsie Clews Parsons -- Race riots and the color line : W. E. B. du Bois -- Philosophy reacts : Hartley Burr Alexander and Morris R. Cohen -- Creative experience : Mary Parker Follett -- Cultural pluralism : Horace Kallen and Alain Locke -- War and the rise of logical positivism : Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap -- Mccarthyism and American empiricism : Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and Charles Morris -- The linguistic turn : Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, and W. V. O. Quine -- Resisting the turn : Donald Davidson, Wilfrid Sellars, and the pluralist rebellion -- Philosophy outside : John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson -- Economics and technology : Lewis Mumford, C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith -- Politics : John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Noam Chomsky -- Civil rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright and James Baldwin -- Black power : Malcolm X, James Cone, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Cornel West -- Latin American American philosophy -- Red power, indigenous philosophy : Vine Deloria, Jr. and contemporary American Indian thought -- Feminism -- Engaged philosophy and the environment -- American philosophy today -- Recovering and sustaining the American tradition -- American philosophy revitalized -- The spirit of American philosophy in the new century. (shrink)

Scenarios for the emergence or bootstrap of a lexicon involve the repeated interaction between at least two agents who must reach a consensus on how to name N objects using H words. Here we consider minimal models of two types of learning algorithms: cross-situational learning, in which the individuals determine the meaning of a word by looking for something in common across all observed uses of that word, and supervised operant conditioning learning, in which there is strong feedback between individuals (...) about the intended meaning of the words. Despite the stark differences between these learning schemes, we show that they yield the same communication accuracy in the limits of large N and H , which coincides with the result of the classical occupancy problem of randomly assigning N objects to H words. Key words: lexicon bootstrapping; cross-situational learning; supervised learning; random occupancy problems. (shrink)

An important volume connecting classical studies with feminism, Feminism and Ancient Philosophy provides an even-handed assessment of the ancient philosophers' discussions of women and explains which ancient views can be fruitful for feminist theorizing today. The papers in this anthology range from classical Greek philosophy through the Hellenistic period, with the predominance of essays focusing on topics such as the relation of reason and the emotions, the nature of emotions and desire, and related issues in moral psychology. The volume contains (...) some new, ground-breaking essays on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, as well as previously published pieces by established scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Julia Annas. It promises to be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including those working in classics, ancient philosophy, and feminist theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtue and Circumstances:On the City-State Concept of AreteMargalit FinkelbergIn his discussion of virtue (arete) in books 1 and 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the famous claim that "it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment ()" (Eth. Nic. 1.8 1099a32-33). This is why arete would need what he calls "the external goods" () in order to be actualized:The liberal man will (...) need money for the doing of his liberal deeds, and the just man too will need it for the returning of services (for wishes are hard to discern, and even people who are not just pretend to wish to act justly); and the brave man will need power if he is to accomplish any of the acts that correspond to his arete, and the temperate man will need opportunity; for how else is either he or any of the others to be recognized? It is debated, too, whether the will or the deed is more essential to arete, which is assumed to involve both; it is surely clear that its perfection involves both; but for deeds many things are needed, and more, the greater and nobler the deeds are.1Since arete is essential for achieving the state of happiness (eudaimonia), in the last analysis happiness too would depend on the circumstances of one's life.Aristotle's conditioning of arete on external circumstances had been sharply criticized already in antiquity, mainly by the Stoics. Not a few present-day historians of philosophy also tend to see his approach as unsatisfactory, in that it relies on commonsense intuitions that would not withstand a proper philosophical examination. Compare, for example, Julia Annas's criticism of Aristotle's conception of happiness (eudaimonia), which is intimately connected with his conception of arete:Unreflectively, we associate happiness with success and with actual possession of affluence, worldly goods and success. But the account of happiness [End Page 35] which an ethical theory has to produce must satisfy people who have reflected on virtue and what its significance is in our lives. And to those who do this, it seems clear that worldly success is not the point at all, that what matters is being virtuous, being a moral person as we nowadays say, and that if this is what matters, one has all one needs for happiness even if one loses all the worldly goods."2Accordingly, the Stoic attitude to virtue would contrast favorably with that of Aristotle.According to the alternative view, as represented by Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams, Aristotle in his conditioning of both virtue and happiness on external circumstances does not avoid facing harsh realities of life—the same realities, it must be added, that later attitudes to virtue tended to ignore. Thus, according to Nussbaum, "every Aristotelian philosophical inquiry is conducted within the world of human experience and belief, limited by the limits of that world" (Nussbaum 1986, 318). Likewise, in commenting on the substantial honesty of the attitude to slavery displayed by Aristotle and the Greeks in general, as compared to the view of Seneca and "its various Christian relatives," Williams writes: "Seneca and his various associates can let the social world be unjust, because they can, in accordance with one or another of their fantasies, suppose that one can get out of it. Aristotle knew that one could never get out of it" (Williams 1993, 116).It should not be forgotten, however, that, whatever the universal applications of Aristotle's discussion of virtue may be, this discussion originally addressed Greek society of the fourth century B.C. In what follows, I argue that to understand Aristotle's reasons for treating arete as conditioned on external circumstances, we have to consider his conception against the concrete historical background of this society.Arete in and Out of UseThe usual rendering of the Greek arete as "virtue" would be misleading here, in that it would irreparably distort the sense of the original. This was the opinion of H. D. F. Kitto, for example, who wrote on this "typically Greek word," as he called it, as follows: "When we meet it in Plato we translate it... (shrink)

Virtue ethics is now well established as a substantive, independent normative theory. It was not always so. The revival of virtue ethics was initially spurred by influential criticisms of other normative theories, especially those made by Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams. 1 Because of this heritage, virtue ethics is often associated with anti-theory movements in ethics and more recently, moral particularism. There are, however, quite a few different approaches to ethics that can reasonably claim (...) to be versions of virtue ethics. The predominant strand of virtue ethics is broadly Aristotelian, although some accounts bear little resemblance to Aristotle's. In its most general form, virtue ethics is compatible with a wide range of meta-ethical and normative commitments. This diversity makes it difficult to compare virtue ethics as such with other normative theories. It can also be a challenge to see just what the various versions of virtue ethics have in common with each other. Three major types of virtue ethics are represented in the books by Rosalind Hursthouse, Michael Slote, and Christine Swanton, recommended in the following section. Each of these book sets forward a considerably self-standing form of virtue ethics. The authors differ on central issues such as the relationship between virtue and flourishing and the link between virtuous agents and right or virtuous actions. Unlike Swanton and Slote, Hursthouse defends a version of ethical naturalism that has affinities with theories recently defended by Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre. 2 Slote's theory is agent-based, meaning that his account derives judgments about the moral status of actions from moral features of agents. Hursthouse and Swanton defend theories according to which the moral status of an action depends on its broader relationship to human flourishing (Hursthouse) or whether it hits the target of a virtue (Swanton). Although these three books presently form the core of contemporary virtue ethics, there are other approaches that might reasonably be described as versions of virtue ethics, such as those presented by Julia Driver, Linda Zagzebski, and Robert Adams. 3 There are also, of course, a large number of articles in which authors defend or criticize tenets that are central to most versions of virtue ethics. Some recent articles on especially important topics are listed in the following section. Current 'hot topics' in virtue ethics include whether its account of right action is adequate and whether virtue ethics is at odds with empirical psychology. Articles on these debates and others are listed in the following section. Author Recommends: Books These three books are foundational works in contemporary virtue ethics, and represent quite different approaches to virtue ethics. For each book, I have also listed an article by the same author in which he or she articulates some similar themes. Those pressed for time or space on a syllabus might start by examining those articles. 1. Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hursthouse defends a eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics with Aristotelian affinities. *See also Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Normative Virtue Ethics.' How Should One Live? Ed. Roger Crisp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 19–36. 2. Slote, Michael. Morals from Motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Slote defends a version of virtue ethics based on evaluations of motives, drawing on historical figures like Martineau, Hutcheson, and Hume. Note that this book represents a fairly significant departure from his first book in virtue ethics, From Morality to Virtue (New York: Oxford, 1992). *See also Slote, Michael. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics.' Virtue Ethics . Ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 3. Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Swanton defends a pluralistic, non-eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics that draws on influences ranging from Aristotle to Nietzsche to contemporary psychoanalytic theory. *See also Swanton, Christine. 'A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action.' Ethics 112 (2001): 32–52. Articles The following is a selection of articles that address some of the central and controversial topics within virtue ethics. 1. Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing.' Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 78.2 (2004): 61–75. This article addresses the problem of action guidance and the role that an account of right action should play in virtue ethics. 2. Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of the Ethics of Virtue.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Eds. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 83–96. This article articulates the central problems faced by versions of virtue ethics that rely on a conception of human flourishing. 3. Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action.' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003): 324–39. This article raises objections about insularity and circularity to accounts of right action presented by Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton. 4. Doris, John M. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics.' Nous 32 (1998): 504–30. This article argues that situationist psychology undermines the concept of a character trait on which virtue ethicists rely. An expanded version of this criticism can be found in Doris, Lack of Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 5. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Virtue Theory and Abortion.' Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.3 (1991): 223–46. This article argues that virtue ethics is capable of providing action guidance in the difficult problem of abortion. 6. Johnson, Robert N. 'Virtue and Right.' Ethics 113 (2003): 810–34. This article raises several objections against the accounts of right action in virtue ethics, one of which is that they cannot make sense of the rightness of self-improving actions. The criticism is directly primarily at Hursthouse's theory, but Swanton and Slote are discussed as well. 7. Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character.' Ethics 114 (2004): 458–91. This article argues that situationist critiques of virtue ethics rely on a mistaken understanding of virtuous character. 8. Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers.' Philosophical Studies 109 (2002): 197– 222. This article argues for an ideal observer-style account of right action in virtue ethics. 9. Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Ed. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 32–53. This article presents a view of the virtues on which the virtues are excellences in spheres of activity. Although the spheres are common to all humans, the manifestation of excellence in a given sphere is subject to cultural variation. 10. Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution.' Mind 111 (2002): 47–68. This article addresses the situationist critique of character traits by arguing that virtue ethics does not depend on the concept of a character trait as Doris and others understand it. 11. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics.' Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 665–78. This article addresses the relationship between virtue ethics and radical moral particularism, arguing that the latter may have undesirable consequences for virtue ethicists unless they accept the unity of the virtues. 12. Stohr, Karen. 'Contemporary Virtue Ethics.' Philosophy Compass 1.1 (January 2006): 22–7. This article provides an overview and analysis of contemporary virtue ethics. It includes discussion of main problems and challenges for the future. 13. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue.' Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 339–63. This article raises problems for the commonly accepted distinction between virtue and continence, arguing that the mixed emotions normally associated with continence are sometimes characteristic of virtue instead. 14. van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 50–69. This article defends agent-based virtue ethics against objections that it cannot distinguish agent-appraisal from act-appraisal and that it cannot provide adequate action guidance. Anthologies 1. Crisp, Roger, ed. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. This is one of the first virtue ethics anthologies published, and so reflects a correspondingly earlier picture of the field. The essays, however, are important and interesting in their own right, and cover a broad array of topics. 2. Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. This anthology was published over a decade ago and does not capture recent developments in the field. It is, however, an admirably thorough collection of the most influential essays from the early days of virtue ethics, both promoting and criticizing it. 3. Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. This anthology is distinctive in that it includes material from Aristotle, Hutcheson, and Hume, along with some central contemporary sources. 4. Walker, Rebecca L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Working Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. This recent anthology focuses on applied virtue ethics and has an excellent selection of essays by influential thinkers on topics including the environment, business, medicine, war, and poverty. Online Sources 'Virtue Ethics', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ Entry written by Rosalind Hursthouse and updated in 2007. 'Bibliography on Virtue Ethics', maintained by Jörg Schroth. http://www.ethikseite.de/bib/cvirtue.pdf Extensive list of work published in virtue ethics. Updated regularly, listed in both alphabetical and chronological order, and contains abstracts of papers. 'Janusblog', maintained by Guy Axtell. http://janusblog.squarespace.com/ Blog devoted to current work in virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, although with an emphasis on the latter. It contains spirited discussion among the many contributors, as well as a library of papers. Sample Syllabus This syllabus is for a graduate seminar or intense upper-level undergraduate course. Books for purchase for this course might include the Crisp and Slote anthology, the Walker and Ivanhoe anthology, and Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. Week 1: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Anscombe, Elizabeth. 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (Crisp and Slote) Foot, Philippa. 'Virtues and Vices' (Crisp and Slote) MacIntyre, Alasdair. 'The Nature of the Virtues' (Crisp and Slote) Week 2: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Stocker, Michael. 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories' (Crisp and Slote) Williams, Bernard. 'Morality, the Peculiar Institution' (Crisp and Slote) McDowell, John. 'Virtue and Reason' (Crisp and Slote) Week 3: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part I Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106.3 (2006): 283–307. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics' Week 4: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part II Stark, Susan. 'Virtue and Emotion.' Nous 33.5 (2001): 440–55. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue' Week 5: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part III Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of an Ethics of Virtue' Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach' MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals, chapter 10 Week 6: Agent-Based Virtue Ethics Slote, Michael 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics' (Crisp and Slote) Slote, Michael, Morals from Motives, chapters 1 and 3 Week 7: Pluralistic Virtue Ethics Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View , chapters 3, 4, and 11. Week 8: The Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics Doris, John. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics' Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character' Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution' Merritt, Maria. 'Aristotelian Virtue and the Interpersonal Aspect of Ethical Character.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 23–49. Week 11: Right Action – Problems Johnson, Robert. 'Virtue and Right' Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action' Week 12: Right Action – Virtue Ethics Solutions Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing' van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance' Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers' Week 13: Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles Pelligrino, Edmund. 'Professing Medicine, Virtue Based Ethics, and the Retrieval of Professionalism' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Swanton, Christine. 'Virtue Ethics, Role Ethics, and Business Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Sherman, Nancy. 'Virtue and a Warrier's Anger' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Week 14: Virtue Ethics and the Non-Human World Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Environmental Virtue Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Walker, Rebecca. 'The Good Life for Non-Human Animals: What Virtue Requires of Humans' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Focus Questions 1. What is the relationship between virtue and flourishing? Are the virtues necessary for flourishing? Sufficient? 2. Can virtue ethics provide an adequate account of right action? 3. On what concept of a character trait does virtue ethics rely, and does situationist psychology undermine it? 4. Is the project of ethical naturalism a plausible one? To what extent does the success of Aristotelian virtue ethics depend on it? 5. How does virtue ethics affect the way that applied ethics is done? (shrink)

This engaging, interactive and pedagogical introduction to ethics combines the best features of a textbook and an anthology. The Moral Domain: Guided Readings in Philosophical and Literary Texts contains numerous readings from key philosophical writings in ethics along with captivating literary selections that bring the ethical issues to life. Offering extensive excerpts from major figures in the history of Western ethics--Aquinas, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Mill and Plato--the book also integrates work from non-Western perspectives, including selections from the Bhagavad Gita, (...) Confucian views and Hsun-Tzu. It also represents women's voices with readings by Julia Annas, Sarah Broadie, Carol Gilligan, Martha Nussbaum and others. Literary selections--including work from the Bible, Camus, Dostoevsky, Golding, Sophocles, Tolstoy, Twain and Wharton--enable students to grasp deep ethical concepts at an intuitive level. The Moral Domain features a unique built-in study guide that helps students to better comprehend and interact with the material. It introduces each selection with orienting questions and then intersperses explanations, commentary and study questions (designed to test comprehension and provoke reflection) throughout the readings. Each chapter includes a "Further Discussion and Applications" section that demonstrates how ethical theory affects such contemporary moral debates and problems as abortion, euthanasia, feminism, hunger, warfare and more. An exemplary text for introduction to ethics and moral philosophy courses, The Moral Domain provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to all facets of ethics; its foundations, history, debates and current real-life controversies. (shrink)

In The Passion for Happiness, I attempt to situate Johnson alongside Hume within a common Enlightenment culture and, in so doing, to give us a better idea of what that culture is, or may be said to be. I am concerned in the book to analyze what I see as their shared debts to classical eudaimonism, particularly as it is presented in the philosophical dialogues of Cicero. In this regard, my book builds upon Peter Jones’s Hume’s Sentiments: Their Ciceronian and (...) French Contexts ; I am also deeply indebted to some recent re-interpreters of Hellenistic ethics, especially to Martha Nussbaum, Julia Annas, and Lawrence Becker. A third of my book, however, is devoted to a discussion of Johnson and Hume’s roughly parallel—and, I think, mutually illuminating—careers as political writers and commentators, including the political and moral casts of their historiographical writings. The titles of chapters 7 through 9—“The Passions and Patterns of History,” “Enthusiasm and Empire,” “Constancy”—suggest at least my hopes that The Passion for Happiness might be of some interest to intellectual and political historians. (shrink)

IntroductionIntelligent Virtue is a great book on virtue: an eminently sensible book, and I agree with virtually all of it. For me describing a philosophy book as sensible and indeed commonsensical is real praise, for much philosophy exemplifies a vice to which Martha Nussbaum has drawn our attention in ‘Saving Aristotle’s Appearances.’See Language and Logos Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. Malcolm Schofield and Nussbaum , pp. 267–293, 277. This is the intellectual vice of philosophers who got ‘fascinated with (...) the internal progress of their argument, even though it ended in a place incredibly remote from and at odds with, human belief.’ Annas’s work is well grounded in the endoxa .I could list all the important theses with which I agree, ranging from the central claim that virtue is analogous to a practical skill, to the very important claim that happiness is not reached by attaining “stuff” such as money, power, prope .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deaconesses and Ritual ImpurityCatherine Brown TkaczCultural diversity underlies the differences between deaconesses of the East and of the West.1 In the West, women were recognized by their faith as able to catechize others and to assist women at baptism; in some parts of the East, only a deaconess could take these roles. Again, only in some areas of the East, women at certain times were not permitted to enter (...) the church building, but deaconesses could take the Eucharist to these housebound women. In religious life, corresponding differences existed. In the West, nuns were fitted by their vows to take various roles in the Liturgy of the Hours; in the East, in some areas, only a diaconal abbess could take these roles. In remote monasteries which might lack a priest for some time, the diaconal abbess could distribute pre-consecrated communion to the community. Long has cosmic dualism been recognized as a trait of the Eastern groups that had deaconesses. Now another trait can be identified: [End Page 187] apparently the groups which retained the Levitical laws of ritual impurity were the ones that needed the gender-specific ministry of deaconesses. Examining the theological and cultural context in which that office arose helps explain this varied history. Next, the Western deaconess is most clearly limned by comparing the pertinent Latin ceremonies. This also sheds unexpected light on how the Roman Catholic Church protected the property rights of consecrated women.The Context in Which Deaconesses AroseJesus taught a new doctrine: the call to sanctification: "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt 5:48). Again, he commanded them to imitate him, to take up their cross daily and follow him (Luke 9:23). The post-Gospels New Testament continued to suggest ways for the believer to imitate Christ (for example, Heb 13:10–15). These teachings ground the doctrine that every human person is called to be holy and like Christ. To ensure that his followers knew that this vocation to holiness concerns women equally with men, Jesus demonstrated and emphasized the spiritual equality of the sexes throughout his time on earth.2 In an unprecedented way, he provided balanced examples of male and female in his interactions with men and women, in his healings, resurrection miracles, parables, and prophecies.3 In contrast, in the Old Testament and in the Jewish Haggadah, [End Page 188] paired male and female examples are "quite rare."4 While Tannaite Jews "exempted" women from reciting Shema and other acts of ritual worship and required only domestic devotions, Jesus elicited a public profession of faith from a woman as well as from a man—Peter (John 6:69) and Martha of Bethany (John 11:27)—and hers proves to be fuller.5 This dynamically demonstrated the spiritual equality of the sexes, and Eustathios of Antioch, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others praised Martha for teaching the faith.6From the start, both men and women were instructed in the faith, baptized, and received communion.7 Women also participated with men in evangelizing others. This began at Jesus's presentation in the Temple, his first public appearance, when the prophetess Anna announced the coming of the Messiah (Luke 2:36–38). The Samaritan woman evangelized her community: as soon as she learned of Jesus through conversation with him, she actively instructed others, so that many believed in him "because of the woman's testimony" (John 4:28–30, 39–42). The evangelical work of Priscilla was reported, with the account of her teaching a man (Acts 18:2, 26). That is, Christians interacted without a strict segregation of the sexes. When the apostles learned of neglect of the Greek widows, they obviously did not think that only other women could respond to this social need, for the apostles appointed men to do so (Acts 6:1–6).8Contrast this to the Jewish understanding of the roles of men and women. In the Temple, only Jewish men were allowed inside; women were relegated to the women's court. This segregation continued in medieval synagogues.9 [End Page 189] Likewise, as noted above, the Tannaite Jews "exempted" women from public worship. In Christian churches, however... (shrink)

If there is an area of discourse in which disagreement is virtually absent, it is mathematics. After all, mathematicians justify their claims with deductive proofs: arguments that entail their conclusions. But is mathematics really exceptional in this respect? Looking at the history and practice of mathematics, we soon realize that it is not. First, deductive arguments must start somewhere. How should we choose the starting points (i.e., the axioms)? Second, mathematicians, like the rest of us, are fallible. Their ability to (...) recognize whether a putative proof is correct is not infallible. In most cases, disagreement over the correctness of a putative proof is, however, evanescent. Once an error is spotted and communicated, the disagreement disappears. But this is not always the case. Sometimes it is recalcitrant; that is, it persists over time. In order to zoom in on this type of disagreement and explain its very possibility, we focus on a single case study: a decades-long (1921-1949) controversy between Federigo Enriques and Francesco Severi, two prominent exponents of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. We suggest that the instability of the mathematical community to which they belonged can be explained by the gap between an abstract criterion of rigor and local criteria of acceptability. It is this instability that made the existence of recalcitrant disagreement over putative proofs possible. We do not condemn speculative mathematics but rather its pretense of being rigorous mathematics. In this respect, we show that the overly self-confident Severi and the more intuitive, visionary Enriques had a completely different attitude. (shrink)

What is "race"? What role, if any, should race play in our moral obligations to others and to ourselves? Ethics along the Color Line addresses the question of whether black Americans should think of each other as members of an extended racial family and base their treatment of each other on this consideration, or eschew racial identity and envision the day when people do not think in terms of race. Anna Stubblefield suggests furthermore that white Americans should consider the (...) same issues. She argues, finally, that for both black and white Americans, thinking of races as families is crucial in helping to combat anti-black oppression. Stubblefield is concerned that the philosophical debate—argued notably between Kwame Anthony Appiah and Lucius Outlaw—over whether or not we should strongly identify in terms of race, and whether or not we should take race into account when we decide how to treat each other, has stalled. Drawing on black feminist scholarship about the moral importance of thinking and acting in terms of community and extended family, the author finds that strong racial identification, if based on appropriate ideals, is morally sound and even necessary to end white supremacy. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel account of the contents of memory. By drawing on insights from the philosophy of perception, I propose a hybrid account of the contents of memory designed to preserve important aspects of representationalist and relationalist views. The hybrid view I propose also contributes to two ongoing debates in philosophy of memory. First, I argue that, in opposition to eternalist views, the hybrid view offers a less metaphysically-charged solution to the co-temporality problem. Second, I show how the (...) hybrid view conceives of the relationship between episodic memory and other forms of episodic thinking. I conclude by considering some disanalogies between perception and memory and by replying to objections. I argue that, despite there being important differences between memory and perception, those differences do not harm my project. (shrink)

The classification of algebraic surfaces by the Italian School of algebraic geometry is universally recognized as a breakthrough in 20th-century mathematics. The methods by which it was achieved do not, however, meet the modern standard of rigor and therefore appear dubious from a contemporary viewpoint. In this article, we offer a glimpse into the mathematical practice of the three leading exponents of the Italian School of algebraic geometry: Castelnuovo, Enriques, and Severi. We then bring into focus their distinctive conception of (...) rigor and intuition. Unlike what is often assumed today, from their perspective, rigor is neither opposed to intuition nor understood as a unitary phenomenon – Enriques distinguishes between small-scale rigor and large-scale rigor and Severi between formal rigor and substantial rigor. Finally, we turn to the notion of mathematical objectivity. We draw from our case study in order to advance a multi-dimensional analysis of objectivity. Specifically, we suggest that various types of rigor may be associated with different conceptions of objectivity: namely, objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The debate over the objects of episodic memory has for some time been stalled, with few alternatives to familiar forms of direct and indirect realism being advanced. This paper moves the debate forward by building on insights from the recent psychological literature on memory as a form of episodic hypothetical thought (or mental time travel) and the recent philosophical literature on relationalist and representationalist approaches to perception. The former suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic memory will (...) have to be a special case of an account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought more generally. The latter suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought will have to combine features of direct realism and representationalism. We develop a novel pragmatist-inspired account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought that has the requisite features. (shrink)

The viability of a naïve realist theory of memory was a lively debate for philosophers of mind in the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, though, naïve realism has been largely abandoned as a non-starter in the memory literature, with representationalism being the standard view held by philosophers of memory. But rather than being carefully argued, the dismissal of naïve realism is an assumption that sits at the back of much recent theorizing in the philosophy of memory. In (...) this paper, we identify three reasons why philosophers of memory have felt compelled to outright reject naïve realism. We argue that none of those reasons are successful. Thus, far from being a non-starter, we argue that naïve realism is a theoretical perspective that needs to be given serious consideration in current philosophy of memory debates. (shrink)

Governments are widely viewed by academics and practitioners as the key societal actors who are capable of compelling businesses to practice corporate social responsibility. Arguably, such government involvement could be seen as a technocratic device for encouraging ethical business behaviour. In this paper, we offer a more politicised interpretation of government engagement with CSR where “CSR” is not a desired form of business conduct but an element of discourse that governments can deploy in structuring their relationships with other social actors. (...) We build our argument through a historical analysis of government CSR discourse in the Russian Federation. Laclau and Mouffe's social theory of hegemony underpins our research. We find that “CSR” in the Russian government’s discourse served to legitimise its power over large businesses. Using this case, we contribute to wider academic debates by providing fresh empirical evidence that allows the development of critical evaluation tools in relation to governments’ engagement with “CSR”. We find that governments are capable of hijacking CSR for their own self-interested gain. We close the paper by reflecting on the merit of exploring the case of the Russian Federation. As a “non-core”, non-western exemplar, it provides a useful “mirror” with which to reflect on the more widely used test-bed of Western industrial democracies when scrutinising CSR. Based on our findings, we invite other scholars to adopt a more critical, politicised stance when researching the role of governments in relation to CSR in other parts of the world. (shrink)

What is at stake in determining how to translate the central term of Greek ethical philosophy, that of eudaimonia? The volume Eudaimonia and Well-Being (a collection of ten papers presented at a conference at the University of Cincinnati in 1993) shows that English terms such as happiness, well-being, and flourishing can have significantly different connotations which complicate our understanding of the Greek term. The volume’s contributors work in both ancient Greek ethics and Anglophone contemporary moral philosophy, and although not all (...) the papers bridged the divide between classics and philosophy, on the whole the volume succeeds in elucidating the different meanings “happiness” has for both contemporary and ancient Greek philosophers. The ten papers address five topics, in each case with one author presenting a thesis and another responding as discussant. Most of the papers were revised for publication, and many of the discussants’ papers can stand as independent contributions. Additionally, the editor (who was a participant at the conference) provides a helpful introduction which underscores key themes addressed by many of the papers. The topics examined were whether virtue is sufficient and necessary for happiness (Annas and Sumner); the relationship between fear of death and happiness in Epicurean philosophy (Mitsis and Lesses); the development of the concept of happiness amongst peripatoi in the Hellenistic Lyceum (White and Inwood); the nature of the ethical philosophizing in the sixth book of Polybius’ Histories (Hahm and Jost); and the neo-Aristotelian “capabilities” social philosophy espoused by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. The volume includes an index locurum, but no comprehensive bibliography. Let me first summarize the debate on the individual topics and then speak to a couple general themes. Given the richness of the papers, space constrains me to restate only the main arguments. (shrink)

The classification of algebraic surfaces by the Italian School of algebraic geometry is universally recognized as a breakthrough in 20th century mathematics. The methods by which it was achieved do not, however, meet the modern standard of rigor and therefore appear dubious from a contemporary viewpoint. In this article, we offer a glimpse into the mathematical practice of the three leading exponents of the Italian School of algebraic geometry: Castelnuovo, Enriques, and Severi. We then bring into focus their distinctive conception (...) of rigor and intuition. Unlike what is often assumed today, from their perspective, rigor is neither opposed to intuition nor understood as a unitary phenomenon –Enriques distinguishes between _ small-scale rigor _ and _ large-scale rigor _ and Severi between _ formal rigor _ and _ substantial rigor _. Finally, we turn to the notion of mathematical objectivity. We draw from our case study in order to advance a multi-dimensional analysis of objectivity. Specifically, we s... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics, Theory and the NovelLeon SuretteEthics, Theory and the Novel, by David Parker; x & 218 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, $54.95.David Parker’s stated purpose in Ethics, Theory and the Novel is to ground the value of “canonical works” of literature in the “ethical interest,” which each of them embodies in the meditation and exploration of “the clashes of moral value” (p. 38). He is self-consciously responding (...) to the strictures of neo-Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction which allegedly see “the canon simply as the repository of conservative values” and therefore reject it (p. 51). In order to demonstrate this capacity of imaginative literature Parker provides ethical analyses of scenes in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and D. H. Lawrence’s The White Peacock, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The book divides into two projects, since Parker also argues for the pertinence of ethics itself quite apart from the value of imaginative literature as a repository of serious ethical thought. Part one makes the theoretical case, and part two applies the theory.For the theory he takes as his champions Martha Nussbaum, Iris Murdoch, the late Australian critic, S. L. Golberg, and the Canadian political scientist, Charles Taylor. From Nussbaum he derives the claim that “literature can be moral philosophy” (p. 34). From Taylor he takes a triadic schema of Western [End Page 247] culture: Judeo-Christian-Kantian, Liberal-Enlightenment-rational, and Romantic-irrational-egoistic (p. 20) as the sources of our ethical thinking. Murdoch and Goldberg are deployed as predecessors in his own practice of ethical analysis of literary works. Parker’s claim is that imaginative literature exhibits the dynamic tensions of these conflicting ethical discourses.Parker’s discussion is intelligent and well-informed. His position is, in my view, perfectly defensible—indeed traditional. That said, this book seems to be as much a symptom of the malaise afflicting literary criticism as a cure. To this reader the theoretical portion is not faithful to any of his champions, but is a dog’s breakfast of “theoretical” postures gathered from Derrida, Cavell, de Man, Rorty, Foucault, and Frederic Jameson—as well as from those named above. The problem is not that Parker misunderstands or misrepresents their thought, but rather that he treats theoretical discourse as a flea market from which he can assemble pre-owned furniture for his own residence.The practice of literary criticism encourages such rummaging among other people’s belongings. It is appropriate for commentators on a literary work of art to select from previous commentary those observations and insights they regard as sound, and to reject or ignore those viewed as unsound. Nonetheless it is difficult to understand how a discourse which finds one leg in Marxist discourse, a second in Freudian, a third in phenomenological, and a fourth in Heideggerean or Derridean discourse can be expected to stand four square.Ethics, Theory and the Novel can be defended as an exercise in bricolage—and quite an impressive one in its own way. Like the handyman, Parker has cobbled together an ethicist criticism out of what is available or ready-at-hand in other discourses. But—as with many a home project—one can still see its flea market provenance. In his critical analysis of the novels, Parker shows himself to be a careful and perceptive reader. But I must confess that his ethical analyses seemed very like old-fashioned moral analysis of character motivation. I would not disagree with his claim that “an ethical vocabulary... is essential to the full understanding of the created fictional situation” (p. 191). However, his argument for a dialogic plurivocity in the ethical discourse of Western fiction is one that has been previously put by Mikhail Bakhtin from within Marxism. It is, I think, a serious oversight that Bakhtin is never mentioned—even though Parker’s position is distinguishable from Bakhtin’s in that his dialogue is between perennial ethical schemata and Bakhtin’s is between hegemonic and subversive discourses.Leon SuretteUniversity of Western OntarioCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This collection consists of a two-part Introduction by the editors Martha Nussbaum and Amelie O. Rorty ; nineteen articles, mostly published here for the first time, by M. F. Burnyeat, Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam, S. Marc Cohen, Jennifer Whiting, Michael Frede, K. V. Wilkes, Alan Code and Julius Moravcsik, G. E. R. Lloyd, Charlotte Witt, Gareth B. Matthews, Richard Sorabji, Cynthia Freeland, Malcolm Schofield, Dorothea Frede, Julia Annas, Franz Brentano, L. A. Kosman, Charles Kahn, and Henry S. Richardson ; (...) an extremely useful Bibliography of works cited in these twenty chapters with important additions; an Index Locorum; and a Name Index. (shrink)

O que é o lembrar? Quando podemos dizer que um sujeito lembra um evento do passado? Essas são duas questões centrais na filosofia da memória, uma área que vem experimentando uma rápida expansão nos últimos anos. Por quase meio século, a teoria causal da memória, inicialmente proposta por Martin e Deutscher, dominou o debate sobre como devemos responder às duas questões iniciais. Mais recentemente, no entanto, a teoria causal se tornou alvo de duras críticas, o que motivou os filósofos da (...) memória a desenvolverem duas novas teorias sobre o lembrar: a teoria simulacionista e a teoria funcionalista. Neste artigo, exploramos essas teorias em mais detalhes com o objetivo de tornar mais claro quais são seus comprometimentos, assim como suas vantagens e desvantagens. (shrink)

The aim of the eugenics movement in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century was to prevent the degeneration of the white race. A central tactic of the movement was the involuntary sterilization of people labeled as feebleminded. An analysis of the practice of eugenic sterilization provides insight into how the concepts of gender, race, class, and dislability are fundamentally intertwined. I argue that in the early twentieth century, the concept of feeblemindedness came to operate as (...) an umbrella concept that linked off-white ethnicity, poverty, and gendered conceptions of lack of moral character together and that feeblemindedness thus understood functioned as the signifier of tainted whiteness. (shrink)

This paper traces the intellectual trajectories of the first stand-alone theories of action, understood as both axiologically neutral and quasi-scientific from a methodological point of view. I argue that the rise of action theory of this kind corresponds to a particular moment of dissatisfaction within Western thought, and as such, it tells us far more about the history of philosophy than the subject itself. I conclude by explaining why subsequent failures to provide an acceptable theory of action are not accidental. (...) On the contrary, such failures owe themselves probably to the fact that formulating a theory of action is neither propitious nor useful. Thus, the most valuable lesson we can learn from philosophical desires for a theory of action is that we should take co-action as the starting point in our normative investigations, rather than positing action simpliciter as a problem to solve. That is, we should move away from propounding a theory of action, and instead focus on a paradigm shift, whereby we move away from a representational, towards a co-actional, model of action. (shrink)

The goal of the present study was to investigate the interaction between different senses of polysemous nouns (metonymies and metaphors) and different meanings of homonyms using the method of event-related potentials (ERPs) and a priming paradigm. Participants read two-word phrases containing ambiguous words and made a sensicality judgment. Phrases with polysemes highlighted their literal sense and were preceded by primes with either the same or different – metonymic or metaphorical – sense. Similarly, phrases with homonyms were primed by phrases with (...) a consistent or inconsistent meaning of the noun. The results demonstrated that polysemous phrases with literal senses preceded by metonymic primes did not differ in ERP responses from the control condition with the same literal primes. In contrast, processing phrases with the literal sense preceded by metaphorical primes resulted in N400 and P600 effects that might reflect a very limited priming effect. The priming effect observed between metonymic and literal senses supports the idea that these senses share a single representation in the mental lexicon. In contrast, the effects observed for polysemes with metaphorical primes characterize lexical access to the word’s target sense and competition between the two word senses. The processing of homonyms preceded by the prime with an inconsistent meaning, although it did not elicit an N400 effect, was accompanied by a P600 effect as compared to the control condition with a consistent meaning of the prime. We suppose that the absence of the N400 effect may result from inhibition of the target meaning by the inconsistent prime, whereas the P600 response might reflect processes of reanalysis, activation, and integration of the target meaning. Our results provide additional evidence for the difference in processing mechanisms between metonymies and metaphors that might have separate representations in the mental lexicon, although they are more related as compared to homonyms. (shrink)

Si la praxéologie mérite aujourd’hui notre attention, c’est parce qu’elle permet de remonter aux origines des « théories de l’action », des sociologies de l’action ou des philosophies de l’action qui ont marqué le xxe siècle. Que veut dire, au fond, étudier l’action, en proposer ensuite une théorie, à visée soit descriptive soit normative? Dans ce qui suit, on va étudier la question en compagnie de Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886-1981), philosophe analytique, et de Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011), sociologue hétérodoxe. Ce texte défend (...) l’idée selon laquelle parmi les conséquences les plus marquantes du travail de Garfinkel se trouve la démystification de la « théorie de l’action », et que certaines intuitions similaires sont déjà très présentes chez Kotarbiński (dont les travaux sur l’action constituent, selon Garfinkel, un « échec extrêmement important »). La praxéologie chez les deux auteurs n’est pas une discipline, mais une façon de voir la pratique étudiée comme un tout, à l’instar des recherches menées par les théoriciens de la Gestalt. La dimension athéorique de l’étude de l’action humaine proposée ici permet d’espérer qu’un jour, les phénomènes qui nous entourent vont pouvoir être étudiés pour ce qu’ils sont, et non pas pour ce qu’une théorie élégante permet d’en dire. (shrink)

This paper develops an inference system for natural language within the ‘Natural Logic’ paradigm as advocated by van Benthem, Sánchez and others. The system that we propose is based on the Lambek calculus and works directly on the Curry-Howard counterparts for syntactic representations of natural language, with no intermediate translation to logical formulae. The Lambek -based system we propose extends the system by Fyodorov et~al., which is based on the Ajdukiewicz/Bar-Hillel calculus Bar Hillel,. This enables the system to deal with (...) new kinds of inferences, involving relative clauses, non-constituent coordination, and meaning postulates that involve complex expressions. Basing the system on the Lambek calculus leads to problems with non-normalized proof terms, which are treated by using normalization axioms. (shrink)

This paper argues that the function of moral education in the biomedical context should be exactly the same as in a general, philosophical framework: it should not provide ready-to-use kits of moral principles; rather, it must show the history, epistemology and conceptual structure of moral theories that would enable those who have to make decisions to be as informed and as responsible as possible. If this complexity cannot be attained, an incomplete product—i.e. bioethics or bioethical principles—should not be seen as (...) a viable substitute. This theoretical position is subsequently illustrated by a case study involving research ethics committees. It is argued that within these committees, that are carefully formed multidisciplinary bodies, what makes competent decision-making possible is not a bioethical theory, nor even a sound philosophical ethics, but the dynamics of the discussion of a number of experts coming from different disciplines. This multidisciplinary expertise is necessary and sufficient to undertake the challenges of complex decisions in the biomedical context. (shrink)

Indonesia is a multicultural country with a variety of different cultures and ethnicities. The cultural diversity that exists in Indonesia makes language as an identity of an ethnic group different. When moving to a new environment, of course, adaptation is needed, especially language adaptation to rejuvenate migrants and residents in interaction as happened in Bayur Hamlet, Balik Bukit District, West Lampung Regency. The purpose of this study itself is to analyze how the adaptation process that occurs between Javanese ethnic migrants (...) and Lampung natives also analyzes communication patterns that occur in the process of language adaptation. In this study, researchers used a qualitative type of research with a descriptive approach. The informants of this research amounted to five people who were traditional stakeholders, two ethnic residents of Lampung and two ethnic transmigrants of Java. The theory used is speech code. The results of this study show that the adaptation that occurs between Javanese ethnic transmigrants and indigenous Lampung ethnic is cultural hybridity or cultural mixing, especially in terms of language and the communication pattern that occurs in the process of language adaptation is circular. (shrink)