I bring several ecofeminist critiques of deep ecology to bear on mainstream animal rights theories, especially on the rights and utilitarian treatments of the animal research issue. Throughout, I show how animal rights issues are feminist issues and clarify the relationship between ecofeminism and animal rights.

In both the _Treatise and the first _Enquiry, Hume offers an argument from analogy comparing how humans and animals make causal inferences. Yet in these and other texts, he suggests that there are certain differences between human and animal reasoning. This paper discusses Hume's argument from analogy, and examines how Hume can argue for differences in human and animal reasoning without having to attribute to either a special capacity that the other lacks. Hume's empiricism and his claims about sympathy also (...) give him good reason to hold that in animals just as in humans, reason is a virtue. (shrink)

Aristotle, pundits often say, has a 'nous'-body problem. The psychophysical account that succeeds in the case of other psychological faculties and activities, they charge, breaks down in the case of the intellect. One formulation of this difficulty claims that the definition of the soul given in 'De Anima' II.1 is incompatible with the account of 'nous' in 'De Anima' lll and elsewhere in the corpus. Indeed there are four psychological concepts that raise the 'nous'-body problem: the faculty for thought as (...) described in 'De Anima' III.4, the intellection of indivisible objects of thought in 'De Anima' III.6, the active intellect of 'De Anima' III.5 and the type of thinking likened to the activity of the divine mind in _Metaphysics<D> XII.6-8 and _Nicomachean Ethics<D> X.6-8. I consider each in turn and argue that Aristotle is on firmer ground here than is often believed. (shrink)

the philosophical writings ofx Lady Mary Shepherd were apparently well regarded in her own time, but dropped out of view in the mid-nineteenth century.1 Some historians of philosophy have recently begun attending to the distinctive arguments in Shepherd's two books, but the secondary literature that exists so far has largely focused on her critiques of Hume and Berkeley. However, many other themes and arguments in Shepherd's writings have not yet been explored. This paper takes up one such issue, what Shepherd (...) means by 'mind,' 'soul,' and 'self.' Shepherd held the unusual view that the mind is an enduring capacity that causes (whether on its own or in conjunction with other partial causes, such as... (shrink)

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the Perception (...) of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

In recent discussions on the meaning of derogatory terms, most theorists base their investigations on the assumption that slurring terms could in principle have some neutral, i.e. purely descriptive, counterpart. Lauren Ashwell has recently shown that this assumption does not generalize to gendered slurs. This paper aims to challenge the point and benefit of approaching the meaning of derogatory terms in contrast to their allegedly purely descriptive counterparts. I argue that different discursive practices among different communities of practice sometimes change (...) the semantics of a term. By the example of the term ‘black,’ I show in what ways these different practices may amount to semantic contestations which complicate the assessment of whether a specific politically significant term is purely descriptive. My discussion of politically significant terms provides insights into further phenomena such as the appropriation of derogatory terms by the target group or meaning change more generally. Moreover, it not only accounts for the political aspects of a linguistic phenomenon, but equally highlights and explains the oft-neglected but crucial role that language plays in social and political struggles. It thus contributes to ongoing discussions both in philosophy of language and in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Before sailing past the sirens' “flowery meadow,” Ulysses instructed his sailors to lash him to the mast so that he would not succumb to the siren's singing. His advance directive demonstrated that he valued his dispositional or long-term autonomy over his unquestioned right to make decisions. He also indicated to his oarsmen that he understood the nature of temptation and his inability to resist it. Ideas of autonomy and sexual choice are central to this discussion of new AIDS treatments, especially (...) the trials of preventative vaccines. Questions arise over the rights of individuals and the extent that these should be limited by concerns of the gay community. Should the gay community intervene in the risky decisions of individuals if no explicit advance directive exists? If so, how do they justify their paternalism? Could their aims not be better served through strengthening the individual dispositional autonomy of trial participants rather than making specific claims about the common good? (shrink)

Have social media sites like Facebook become such a significant part of our social fabric that people face negative consequences for not joining and sharing? What role does a right to privacy play in circumstances where self-disclosure is the norm? We surveyed students about teammate preferences for team members based on information availability and Facebook membership. Students report a strong preference for teammates for whom there is information and Facebook participation.

In the final chapters of her 1824 Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Lady Mary Shepherd considers what it means for an organism to be alive. The physician William Lawrence had...

Recently, there has been growing interest in methodological issues of non-ideal theoretical philosophy. While some explicitly commit to non-ideal theorising, others doubt that there is anything useful about the ideal/non-ideal distinction in theoretical philosophy. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I propose a way of doing non-ideal theoretical philosophy, once we realise how limited certain idealised projects are. Since there is a big overlap between projects that are called non-ideal and applied, the second aim is (...) to distinguish between these categories in order to show that applied theoretical philosophy is only worth pursuing if it operates in a non-ideal framework. I argue that we should be pluralistic about possible non-ideal theories and view the ideal/non-ideal differences as a matter of degree, rather than kind. As an example, I show how my version of non-ideal theory is useful to a concrete debate in philosophy of language. My proposal allows us to identify already existing non-ideal approaches to linguistic meaning and encourages us to further engage in the debate on non-ideal theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

This commentary is an attempt to begin to identify and think through some of the ways in which sociocultural theory may contribute to understandings of the relationship between humans and digital data. I develop an argument that rests largely on the work of two scholars in the field of science and technology studies: Donna Haraway and Annemarie Mol. Both authors emphasised materiality and multiple ontologies in their writing. I argue that these concepts have much to offer critical data studies. I (...) employ the tropes of companion species, drawn from Haraway, and eating data, from Mol, and demonstrate how these may be employed to theorise digital data–human assemblages. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars made profound and lasting contributions to nearly every area of philosophy. The aim of this collection is to highlight the continuing importance of Sellars’ work to contemporary debates. The contributors include several luminaries in Sellars scholarship, as well as members of the new generation whose work demonstrates the lasting power of Sellars’ ideas. Papers by O’Shea and Koons develop Sellars’ underexplored views concerning ethics, practical reasoning, and free will, with an emphasis on his longstanding engagement with Kant. Sachs, (...) Hicks and Pereplyotchik relate Sellars’ views of mental phenomena to current topics in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Fink, deVries, Price, Macbeth, Christias, and Brandom grapple with traditional Sellarsian themes, including meaning, truth, existence, and objectivity. Brandhoff provides an original account of the evolution of Sellars’ philosophy of language and his project of "pure pragmatics". The volume concludes with an author-meets-critics section centered around Robert Brandom’s recent book, From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars, with original commentaries and replies. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

‘Supererogation’ is the notion of going beyond the call of duty. The concept of supererogation has received scrutiny in ethical theory, as well as clinical bioethics. Yet, there has been little attention paid to supererogation in research ethics. Supererogation is examined in this paper from three perspectives: (1) a summary of two analyses of ‘supererogation’ in moral theory, as well as an examination as to whether acts of supererogation exist; (2) a discussion of supererogation in clinical practice, including arguments that (...) both physicians and patients can practice acts of supererogation; (3) a discussion as to why researchers, qua researchers, are not routinely recognized to perform acts of supererogation, while at the same time the very nature of research subject participation involves supererogation. The article concludes by considering three examples of supererogation on the part of researchers, with a plea that researchers’ supererogatory actions be recognized as such. (shrink)

Laspro et al. (2024) present an insightful survey of ethical issues emerging in first-in-human whole eye transplants (WET). Their discussion is applicable to a broad range of first-in-human surgica...

Beyond Subjectivity and Representation extensively explores a connection in the thinking of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty in relation to the interconnections among perception, creation, truth, and value in a way that allows the work of each author to shed light upon the others' ideas. Deborah Carter Mullen develops a non-dualistic notion of truth and value rooted in embodied, earthly existence, and considers them as ongoing happenings of metamorphosis rather than as static ideas. This idea of metamorphosis leads to an (...) understanding of the relationships among self, other, and world as temporal happenings of the flesh. In an intertwining relationship with one another, I and other, I and world, past, present, and future are considered occurrences of the moment that are redefined in each perception and in each expression, as each questions and responds to the other, creating a "mirror-play of flesh." Mullen proposes that reversibility and metamorphosis give rise to an aesthetic sense of truth and values that are not absolute, but truths that happen as they are expressed and values that occur as they are lived. (shrink)

As consequence to the coronavirus outbreak, governments around the world imposed drastic mitigation measures such as nationwide lockdowns. These measures included the closures of schools, hence, putting parents into the position of juggling school and work from home. In the present study, we investigated the well-being of parents with school-aged children and its connection to mitigation measures with particular focus on parental roles “caregiver,” “worker,” and “assistant teacher” as stressors. In addition to direct effects, we expected indirect effects on well-being (...) through changes in household dynamics. Data were collected via an online survey (N= 1313, 85.5% female; 53.2% university degree) conducted during the first wave of school closures in Germany. We observed that during the early COVID-19 pandemic, parental well-being in general was quite positive. Comparing the positive and negative PANAS subscales, parents agreed significantly more with the positive than with the negative items,t(1299) = 28.55,p< 0.001. Parents also reported an increase in positive family activities during the lockdown,t(1272) = 43.96,p< 0.001. Although a significant increase in negative household dynamics, such as disputes, was also observed to a lower extent,t(1295) = 7.78,p< 0.001. Using structural equation modeling, we observed that “homeoffice” was not significantly related to parents’ well-being, but positively affected household dynamics. Taking on the role of “assistant teacher” was negatively related to household dynamics. Additionally, we found a significant direct effect on negative affect for “assistant teacher.” We conclude that parents of school-aged children have mostly been able to establish positive dynamics in their households during the lockdown given the extra time they got to spend with their children by working from home. However, our results identify the role of “assistant teacher” as a potential stressor for parents. Bridging the gap between teachers and parents seems warranted especially if (some) distance-learning continues, in order to avoid long-term consequences for the students. (shrink)

The product rule has been used to calculate the risk of a research study, in which the risk of harm is calculated as the product of the degree of harm multiplied by the likelihood that the harm will occur. This article challenges the product rule, especially when used to calculate "minimal risk" studies.

School-based sexuality education is a type of sexology directed at specific bodies: `unfinished' adolescent bodies in the process of becoming sexual bodies. This article explores notions of the adolescent `unfinished' body in the context of HIV/aids education for young people. Drawing on empirical research carried out in Australian secondary schools, we look at the concepts of the project of the self and reflexivity as they are articulated by young people in their evaluation of HIV/aids education. The open character of self (...) identity and the reflexively monitored nature of the body were emphasized by the young people in their attempted construction of intimacy and sexuality. The discourses of openness and trust and the reliance on both `expert' and `experiential' knowledges were evident in the ways in which they dealt with the risk of HIV/aids. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these data for the theorizing of risk and reflexivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 78-98 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience:The Role of Knowledge in Our Art Viewing Experiences Richard Lachapelle, Deborah Murray, and Sandy Neim [Figures] Thinking calls for images, and images contain thought. Therefore, the visual arts are a homeground of visual thinking. 1A common misconception about the nature of art and of aesthetic appreciation is that these activities are (...) essentially a question of "feeling," as if tuning in to the right feeling will automatically lead to a full understanding of the work of art. Another widespread misunderstanding essentially reduces art viewing to a simple question of perception, as if looking long and hard isalways enough to apprehend the work of art's message. Fortunately, a growing body of research into adults' art viewing experiences is debunking these widely held beliefs as oversimplifications of the art viewing process. We can now assert, with a good degree of certainty, that our art viewing experiences solicit four key areas: the affective, perceptual, communicative, and cognitive dimensions of human experiencing. 2 Therefore, we would be hard-pressed not to agree with Rudolph Arnheim's reflections, presented above, on the important role of thought in shaping our artistic and aesthetic experiences.While acknowledging at the outset the essential roles of affect, perception, and communication in our art viewing experiences, this paper focuses more specifically on aspects of the intellectual dimension of this experience. First, we will present and discuss a model that we have developed over the last several years. This model identifies the kinds of knowledge and learning involved in art viewing activities. Second, we will present the results of an empirical study conducted to provide support for the model. Finally we will briefly discuss the model's usefulness for the purposes of aesthetic education. [End Page 78] The Model of Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience The Model of Aesthetic Understanding as Informed Experience provides an explanation of the process of understanding and appreciating a work of art from an educational perspective: it identifies the types of knowledge involved and it also pinpoints the kinds of learning at each stage in the process leading to an understanding of the aesthetic object.In this model, the process of viewing and understanding a work of art is visualized as a two-phased type of informed experience. Through a process of experiential learning, the viewer first encounters the work of art and formulates an initial interpretation. Then, through a process involving theoretical learning, the viewer compares his or her first interpretation with a related body of external, scientific information. This second step in the learning process leads to a reconstruction of knowledge about the work of art. Tandem use of the two processes assists the viewer in furthering his or her understanding of the art object; it also promotes growth in his or her art viewing skills. In the course of each new encounter with an aesthetic object, the interplay of experiential and theoretical learning leads to additional development of the viewer's background knowledge in art, resulting in better preparedness to successfully engage the next work of art. 4 Theoretical Foundations of the Model Three different theories informed the development of the model. 5 By using anecdotal evidence obtained from a group of fifty-two museum professionals, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Rick E.Robinson were able to identify the four major dimensions of aesthetic experience: intellect, communication, perception, and emotion. Each one of these dimensions constitutes, to some extent, a challenge that the work of art addresses to the viewer. According to these researchers, the intellectual dimension of aesthetic experience consists of all aspects of the viewer's attempts to use knowledge in order to find meaning in the work of art (TAS, 27-71). Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson also propose a model that describes the aesthetic encounter in terms of an interaction between the viewer, the work of art, and the artist. To this encounter, the viewer brings his skills in aesthetic appreciation; these may be... (shrink)