Living in poverty is associated with high levels of protracted stress associated with health problems. Economic and food insecurity are particularly poignant aspects of poverty and condition the work of securing basic daily needs of families. Recent studies suggest that levels of stress increase as family food needs rise. This paper presents new findings which clarify the relationship of food provisioning to stress levels, by examining actual food provisioning strategies and food insecurity among the Northern Cheyenne Indians of southeastern Montana. (...) Results clearly show that stress varies by types of food acquisition strategies. Contrary to our expectations, more complex strategies, including relatively unpredictable and cumbersome food provisioning activities, are not linked to higher stress levels in our analysis. Controlling for food security levels, households using a combination of local programs and informal subsistence sources are the least stressed, despite the demands of managing a large number of food sources. Households primarily using Food Stamps are the most likely to experience high levels of stress. Interviews with Food Stamp recipients show that potential sources of stress include inadequate allocations of Food Stamps, difficulty achieving and maintaining eligibility, challenges to complying with paperwork and appointment requirements, as well as personal obstacles and community barriers to making food stamps last. Analyses indicate that contradictions between local cultural norms for food provisioning and the realities of food insecurity in this context promote strategies emphasizing greater independence from federal food programs. (shrink)

The paper "The Dirt on 'White Slavery': The Construction of Prostitution Narratives in Early Twentieth-Century America" analyses the development of white slavery discourses in Progressive Era newspapers, reform books and trial records. White slavery involved both gendered and racialized fears of coercive prostitution. These prostitution narratives are used to uncover early twentieth-century American perceptions of appropriate femininity, inherent female weakness, and the sexual threat of racial and ethnic minorities.

During the Philippine-American War, the Anti-Imperialist League was the organizational vanguard of an anti-imperialist movement. Research on this period of U.S. imperialism has focused on empire building, ignoring the gendered activity of anti-imperialists in the metropole. The author outlines the constitutive relationship between gendered structures and experience that informed anti-imperialists' “contentious politics,” using archival sources of the Anti-Imperialist League and anti-imperialist debates in newspapers. The author shows how anti-imperialist leaders informally included women's monetary donations, labor, networks, and reputations while formally (...) excluding their full membership. Finally, the author shows how masculinist ambivalence, or the pattern of the gendered inclusions/exclusions of anti-imperialists, explains the incremental transformations and reproductions of gendered structures in anti-imperialists' contentious politics. The author suggests masculinist ambivalence has theoretical utility for explaining gendered inclusions and exclusions in movements that are not explicitly about gender conflict or change. (shrink)

Many well-meaning “white” people adopt an antiracist agenda because we believe it provides the antidote to pernicious racialized inequity in the United States. Ironically, this schema maintains racism, strengthens whiteness as the measure of humanity, and inoculates us against imagining any alternative to racism’s logic. I argue that we can break the fetters of racism by framing whiteness as a principality and power. Perceived as a demonic force rather than an “identity,” we can perceive the goals of whiteness as well (...) as the spirituality that fuels it—and cast it out. We are then freed to “reinvent the future,” emancipated from racialized politics and its violence. (shrink)

What has a use in the future, unforeseeably, is radically useless now. What has an effect now is not necessarily useful if it falls through the gaps. In _For a Pragmatics of the Useless_ Erin Manning examines what falls outside the purview of already-known functions and established standards of value, not for want of potential but for carrying an excess of it. The figures are various: the infrathin, the artful, proprioceptive tactility, neurodiversity, black life. It is around the latter (...) two that a central refrain echoes: "All black life is neurodiverse life." This is not an equation, but an "approximation of proximity." Manning shows how neurotypicality and whiteness combine to form a normative baseline for existence. Blackness and neurodiversity "schizz" around the baseline, uselessly, pragmatically, figuring a more-than of life living. Manning, in dialogue with Félix Guattari and drawing on the black radical tradition's accounts of black life and the aesthetics of black sociality, proposes a "schizoanalysis" of the more-than, charting a panoply of techniques for other ways of living and learning. (shrink)

Issues of race and class have long been at the center of discourses involving the American public education system. Although contemporary discourse regarding issues of race and power in American schools may be less overt in racist ideology than in previous decades, the impact of coded racist discourse can be equally powerful and dangerous. A need exists to identify racist and classist discourse in educational contexts so that the ideologies and practices these discourses reflect can be challenged. This paper uses (...) critical discourse analysis and Critical Race Theory to examine how the discourses of race, class, and power are enacted within a discussion of educational programing and child well-being in a predominantly White, upper-middle class suburban public school. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Spirit of Settler Colonialism and the City Streets:A Response to Mishuana GoemanErin C. Tarveri want thank dr. goeman for her excellent paper and for introducing us to these extraordinary artists. Their work is beautiful and important, and I am grateful for the opportunity to witness it and think about it and to consider in particular in its relation to its setting in Los Angeles.In what follows, I want (...) to consider that setting—a city, as Dr. Goeman notes, containing some of "the most expensive real estate properties in the United States," commercial areas officially defined by "colonial encompassing property logics," and marked by "noise and [the] reverberation of mass consumerism" ("Caring for Landscapes 57). My interest will be in putting Dr. Goeman's analysis of these works and the Indigenous artist-activists who create them in dialogue with Jane Addams's diagnosis of the problems of early twentieth-century American urban life in her book The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. I will suggest that Dr. Goeman's paper illuminates the limitations of Addams's approach to responding to the alienation of modern urban life—which, while rightly critical of the harms of mass consumer culture and the reduction of city life to economic productivity in conditions of industrialization, does not grapple with its own implication in settler colonialism and dispossession, and therefore cannot care for the land or its inhabitants as these artists invite us to do. I will also invite her to reflect on whether Addams's suggestion that play and recreation are essential components of urban human flourishing is borne out in the work of these artists.Jane Addams, in 1909, discussed the problems of urban life in post-Industrial Revolution Chicago in similar terms to those Dr. Goeman uses to describe the contemporary landscape of Los Angeles. The contemporary city, Addams writes, in forgoing spaces for public play, art, creativity, and non-production, has "entered upon a most difficult and dangerous experiment … at the very moment when the city has become distinctly industrial, [End Page 71] and daily labor is continually more monotonous and subdivided" (4–5). In this context, young people are increasingly alienated and isolated, valued solely for the products of their labor, and desperate for social connection. The playfulness and creativity of youth cannot be entirely stifled, yet without clear public spaces or institutions for outlets, young people become easy targets for capitalists who promise pleasure and self-actualization through consumption—of liquor, of fashion, of music, and so on. Lamenting the impoverished state that the city of mass consumption leaves us in, Addams writes:The spontaneous joy, the clamor for pleasure, the desire of the young people to appear finer and better and altogether more lovely than they really are, the idealization not only of each other but of the whole earth which they regard but as a theater for their noble exploits, the unworldly ambitions, the romantic hopes, the make-believe world in which they live, if properly utilized, what might they not do to make our sordid cities more beautiful, more companionable? And yet at the present moment every city is full of young people who are utterly bewildered and uninstructed in regard to the basic experience which must inevitably come to them, and which has varied, remote and indirect expressions.(15–16)There is, for Addams, a basic human need for play, creativity, and connection—to a community and to the natural world itself—whose unsatisfaction in a city devoted entirely to industry is nothing short of dehumanizing. So basic are these needs that they cry out for fulfillment in the most unexpected moments. She quotes a young man who describes his experience thusly:I never had a chance to go into the country when I was a kid, but I remember one day when I had to deliver a package way out on the west side, that I saw a flock of sheep in Douglas Park. I had never thought that a sheep could be anywhere but in a picture, and when I saw those big white spots on the green grass beginning to move and to turn into sheep, I... (shrink)

Understanding many white football fans' responses to football players' protests against police brutality requires recognizing the historical and contemporary role of football fandom in managing racial and gendered anxieties. In this article, I analyze three distinct uses of memory by white football fans as they work through the anxiety that results when the sport fails to work in the way they expect. My analysis draws on the opposing views of football taken by the American philosophers Josiah Royce and George Santayana (...) and on contemporary social science research on the behavior of sports fans. I show that contemporary fan hostility to protesting players is consistent with the social ills that have surrounded football since the era of Royce's critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rethinking "Intersectionality":Michelle Obama, Presumed Subjects, and Constitutive PrivilegeErin C. TarverIn February 2008, Michelle Obama famously said to a gathering of supporters, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." (Associated Press 2008). Her comment was swiftly seized upon by journalists and members of rival political campaigns, who used it to portray Mrs. Obama as "angry" and unpatriotic. In the weeks that followed, (...) Mrs. Obama's undergraduate sociology thesis on black students at Princeton was cited as further evidence of her supposed racial resentment and lack of patriotism, and there were widespread rumors that an audiotape existed of her using the word whitey.1 Around the same time, Fox News ran a headline referring to Mrs. Obama as "Obama's Baby Mama" (Koppleman 2008). Subsequently, there was a concerted effort on the part of Mr. Obama's campaign to "soften" her image through appearances on the shows The View and Paula's Party, and a speech at the Democratic National Convention that highlighted her motherhood and adoration of her husband, and avoided mention of her own career or political work. Despite such efforts, and perhaps in tension with the Obama family's general popularity following Mr. Obama's election, Mrs. Obama was later characterized by a cable news pundit as being reminiscent of "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress" (The O'Reilly Factor 2009) and thus as a potential political liability for the Obama administration.While some feminists decried the "momification" (Traister 2008) of Michelle Obama as an act of appeasement by an administration that would [End Page 150] capitulate to the oppressive expectations of a public unwilling to find expressions of independent thought or professional ambitions appropriately First Lady-like, other critics noted that Mrs. Obama was being reviled more for daring to suggest that the United States' racial history was far from being strictly historical, opening her to the charge of being an angry Negro—while, ironically, being accused of "playing the race card." Others have pointed out that specific formulations such as "baby mama" are illustrative of the fact that such representations of Mrs. Obama are not easily classifiable as either sexist or racist, but instead draw on both sorts of tropes, as have such familiar representations of black women as promiscuous, or as militant, emasculating mammies.In this article, I consider methodologies for theorizing the function of such oppressions in the public discourses surrounding Michelle Obama, and suggest that a consideration of their manifestations in this context illustrates the need for more complex theoretical tools that can problematize the constitutive effects of such discourse for a multiplicity of subjects. Through parallel analyses of Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Fanon's Black Skin White Masks, I foreground the theoretical pitfall the consideration of sex- or race-based oppressions tends to occasion: the tacit presumption of some ostensibly "neutral" subject whose constitution is inadequately addressed. I suggest, with theorists of intersectionality, that this problem will not be solved merely by the addition of alternative explanatory frameworks (e.g., adding racism to sexism as a discrete phenomenon), since doing so is neither adequately representative of the experience of oppressions nor sufficient to the task of undermining the normative/perverse dichotomy or presumption of generic subjectivity that sustains them. However, I also argue that the work of intersectionality theorists should be taken farther than it has frequently been in the past (which, though given lip service by much of the feminist community, has not always been taken to imply the need for a major methodological shift), extending its insights to offer a critique of foundational subjectivity. Concomitantly, I argue that a failure by feminist philosophers to offer this critique could unintentionally result in the reinscription of the normativity of particular sorts of subjects—which is precisely what theorists of intersectionality have been concerned to call into question. I suggest that an analysis of the discourse surrounding Michelle Obama demonstrates that insofar as the intersectionality paradigm is understood merely to require the interrogation of overlapping oppressions on a given subject or subjects, and thus as leaving uninterrogated the constitutively privileging and subjectivizing effects of oppressive discourse, uses of intersectionality will reiterate... (shrink)

This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment, implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations “accommodate” individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women’s and men’s responses reveal about the persistent ways (...) that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees’ responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status. (shrink)

The ethical principle of ‘respect for persons’ in clinical research has traditionally focused on protecting individuals’ autonomy rights, but respect for participants also includes broader, although less well understood, ethical obligations to regard individuals’ rights, needs, interests and feelings. However, there is little empirical evidence about how to effectively convey respect to potential and current participants. To fill this gap, we conducted exploratory, qualitative interviews with participants in a clinical genomics implementation study. We interviewed 40 participants in English or Spanish (...) about their experiences with respect in the study and perceptions of how researchers in a hypothetical observational study could convey respect or a lack thereof. Most interviewees were female, identified as Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic white, reported annual household income under US$60 000 and did not have a Bachelor’s degree ; 30% had limited health literacy. We identified four key domains for demonstrating respect: personal study team interactions, with an emphasis on empathy, appreciation and non-judgment; study communication processes, including following up and sharing results with participants; inclusion, particularly ensuring materials are understandable and procedures are accessible; and consent and authorisation, including providing a neutral informed consent and keeping promises regarding privacy protections. While the experience of respect is inherently subjective, these findings highlight four key domains that may meaningfully demonstrate respect to potential and current research participants. Further empirical and normative work is needed to substantiate these domains and evaluate how best to incorporate them into the practice of research. (shrink)

Decisions regarding life-sustaining medical treatments for young children with profound disabilities can be extremely challenging for families and clinicians. In this study, Brick and colleagues1 surveyed adult residents of the UK about their attitudes regarding withdrawal of treatment using a series of vignettes of infants with varying levels of intellectual and physical disability, based on real and hypothetical cases.1 This is an interesting study on an important topic. We first highlight the limitations of using these survey data to inform public (...) policy and then offer a different interpretation from the authors’ regarding their findings about the value the public appears to place on relational capacity. The authors asked members of the lay public to interpret a disabled child’s best interest in a series of vignettes. The respondents were 92% white; 59% were atheist or reported no religious affiliation. Though the authors note this lack of diversity as a limitation, we would add that this limitation is particularly problematic in this context. Minority views on this issue may differ significantly from the majority perspective. When the stakes are high (as is the case for questions about withdrawing life-sustaining therapy from infants over parental objections), use of public opinion data to directly inform policy requires, at a minimum, a representative sample reflecting both the true diversity of views within the public and a method to justly account for the alternate views of the minority. Even if the sampled population were more …. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections parallel to those (...) Bykvist and Hattiangadi advance, although it might initially appear to be. In closing, I consider what bearing the preceding discussion has on important questions concerning the natures of believing and of truth. (shrink)

Objective reasons are given by the facts. Subjective reasons are given by one’s perspective on the facts. Subjective reasons, not objective reasons, determine what it is rational to do. In this paper, I argue against a prominent account of subjective reasons. The problem with that account, I suggest, is that it makes what one has subjective reason to do, and hence what it is rational to do, turn on matters outside or independent of one’s perspective. After explaining and establishing this (...) point, I offer a novel account of subjective reasons which avoids the problem. (shrink)

That truth provides the standard for believing appears to be a platitude, one which dovetails with the idea that in some sense belief aims only at the truth. In recent years, however, an increasing number of prominent philosophers have suggested that knowledge provides the standard for believing, and so that belief aims only at knowledge. In this paper, I examine the considerations which have been put forward in support of this suggestion, considerations relating to lottery beliefs, Moorean beliefs, the criticism (...) and defence of belief, and the value of knowledge. I argue that those considerations do not give us reason to give up the truth view in favour of the knowledge view and, moreover, that reflection on those considerations gives us some reason to reject the knowledge view. Thus, I conclude, we can continue to the take the apparent platitude at face value. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend against a number of criticisms an account of slurs, according to which the same semantic content is expressed in the use of a slur as is expressed in the use of its neutral counterpart, while in addition the use of a slur conventionally implicates a negative, derogatory attitude. Along the way, I criticise competing accounts of the semantics and pragmatics of slurs, namely, Hom's 'combinatorial externalism' and Anderson and Lepore's 'prohibitionism'.

Invited contribution to The Aim of Belief, a special issue of Teorema, guest-edited by J. Zalabardo.

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The view that truth is the norm of assertion has fallen out of fashion. The recent trend has been to think that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Objections to the knowledge view proceed almost exclusively by appeal to alleged counterexamples. While it no doubt has a role to play, such a strategy relies on intuitions concerning hypothetical cases, intuitions which might not be shared and which might shift depending on how the relevant cases are fleshed out. In this paper, (...) I reject the knowledge view on principled grounds. More specifically, by appeal to a principle which is motivated independently of the debate over the norms of assertion and which is already accepted by many proponents of the knowledge view, I show the knowledge view to be false while simultaneously accounting for why it might seem to be true. In doing so, I provide a novel defence of the unfashionable truth view. (shrink)

This book contributes to two debates and it does so by bringing them together. The first is a debate in metaethics concerning normative reasons, the considerations that serve to justify a person’s actions and attitudes. The second is a debate in epistemology concerning the norms for belief, the standards that govern a person’s beliefs and by reference to which they are assessed. The book starts by developing and defending a new theory of reasons for action, that is, of practical reasons. (...) The theory belongs to a family that analyses reasons by appeal to the normative notion of rightness (fittingness, correctness); it is distinctive in making central appeal to modal notions, specifically, that of a nearby possible world. The result is a comprehensive framework that captures what is common to and distinctive of reasons of various kinds: justifying and demanding; for and against, possessed and unpossessed; objective and subjective. The framework is then generalized to reasons for belief, that is, to epistemic reasons, and combined with a substantive, first-order commitment, namely, that truth is the sole right-maker for belief. The upshot is an account of the various norms governing belief, including knowledge and rationality, and the relations among them. According to it, the standards to which belief is subject are various, but they are unified by an underlying principle. (shrink)

Hume’s moral philosophy is a sentiment-based view. Moral judgment is a matter of the passions; certain traits of character count as virtues or vices because of the approval or disapproval they evoke in us, feelings that express concern we have about the social effects of these traits. A sentiment-based approach is attractive, since morality seems fundamentally to involve caring for other people. Sentiment-based views, however, face a real challenge. It is clear that our affections are often particular; we favor certain (...) persons over others. This poses a problem when it comes to determining the proper content of morality. The ties of sentiment would seem to be in tension with the aspirations of morality toward impartiality and universality. (shrink)

What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning the nature (...) of appreciation and the constraints to which it is subject. In closing, I note some limitations on the analogy between aesthetic appreciation and morally worthy action. (shrink)

Abstract: The ‘feeling theory of emotion’ holds that emotions are to be identified with feelings. An objection commonly made to that theory of emotion has it that emotions cannot be feelings only, as emotions have intentional objects. Jack does not just feel fear, but he feels fear-of-something. To explain this property of emotion we will have to ascribe to emotion a representational structure, and feelings do not have the sought after representational structure. In this paper I seek to defend the (...) feeling theory of emotion against the challenge from the object-directed emotions. (shrink)

Call the view that it is possible to acquire aesthetic knowledge via testimony, optimism, and its denial, pessimism. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for pessimism. It works by turning attention away from the basis of the relevant belief, namely, testimony, and toward what that belief in turn provides a basis for, namely, other attitudes. In short, I argue that an aesthetic belief acquired via testimony cannot provide a rational basis for further attitudes, such as admiration, and that (...) the best explanation for this is that the relevant belief is not itself rational. If a belief is not rational, it is not knowledge. So, optimism is false. After addressing a number of objections to the argument, I consider briefly its bearing on the debate concerning thick evaluative concepts. While the aim is to argue that pessimism holds, not to explain why it holds, I provide an indication in closing of what that explanation might be. (shrink)

The rationality of concern for oneself has been taken for granted by the authors of western moral and political thought in a way in which the rationality of concern for others has not. While various authors have differed about the morality of self-concern, and about the extent to which such concern is rationally required, few have doubted that we have at least some special reasons to care for our selves, reasons that differ either in degree or in kind from those (...) we have to care for others. The rationality of prudence as traditionally conceived was thus taken to be threatened by Lockean accounts of personal identity. For taking a person’s identity through time to consist in psychological continuity is often thought to result in the numerical distinctness of his present and future selves, thus leaving his present self in the unsavoury position of having to ask, “Why care specially about my future self, if he won’t really be me?”. (shrink)

A number of emotion theorists hold that emotions are perceptions of value. In this paper I say why they are wrong. I claim that in the case of emotion there is nothing that can provide the perceptual modality that is needed if the perceptual theory is to succeed (where by ‘perceptual modality’ I mean the particular manner in which something is perceived). I argue that the five sensory modalities are not possible candidates for providing us with ‘emotional perception’. But I (...) also say why the usual candidate offered – namely feeling or affectivity – does not give us the sought-after perceptual modality. I conclude that as there seems to be nothing else that can provide the needed perceptual modality, we should reject the perceptual theory of emotion.1. (shrink)

Subjects appear to take only evidential considerations to provide reason or justification for believing. That is to say that subjects do not take practical considerations—the kind of considerations which might speak in favour of or justify an action or decision—to speak in favour of or justify believing. This is puzzling; after all, practical considerations often seem far more important than matters of truth and falsity. In this paper, I suggest that one cannot explain this, as many have tried, merely by (...) appeal to the idea that belief aims only at the truth. I appeal instead to the idea that the aim of belief is to provide only practical reasons which might form the basis on which to act and to make decisions, an aim which is in turn dictated by the aim of action. This, I argue, explains why subjects take only evidential considerations to favour of or justify believing. Surprisingly, then, it turns out that it is practical reason itself which demands that there be no practical reasons for belief. (shrink)

It is commonplace to claim that it is good to believe the truth. In this paper, I reject that claim and argue that the considerations which might seem to support it in fact support a quite distinct though superficially similar claim, namely, that it is bad to believe the false. This claim is typically either ignored completely or lumped together with the previous claim, perhaps on the assumption that the two are equivalent, or at least that they stand or fall (...) together. Such assumptions, I argue, are mistaken. While it is not always good to be right, it is always bad to be wrong. This is an interesting and overlooked asymmetry, which calls for further investigation. (shrink)

In her essay collection First, Second, and Other Selves: Essays on Friendship and Personal Identity, well-known scholar of ancient philosophy Jennifer Whiting gathers her previously published essays taking Aristotle's theories on friendship as a springboard to engage with contemporary philosophical work on personal identity and moral psychology. Whiting examines three themes throughout the collection, the first being psychic contingency, or the belief that the psychological structures characteristic of human beings may in fact vary, not just from one cultural (...) context to another, but also from one individual to another. The second theme is the belief that friendship informs an understanding of the nature of the self, an idea that springs from Whiting's uncommon reading of Aristotle's writings on friendship. Specifically, Whiting explains a scenario in which a "virtuous agent" adopts a kind of impersonal attitude both towards herself and towards her "character" friends, loving both because they are virtuous; this scenario ties in with an examination of the Aristotelian concept of the ideal friend as an "other self," or a friendship that evolves from character rather than ego, as well as Whiting's meditation on whether or not a virtuous individual should have a "special" sort of concern for her own future self, distinct in kind from the concern that she has for others. The third theme is that of rational egoism, a concept that Whiting critiques, especially in the context of Aristotle's eudaimonism. The central tenet of the collection is the message that taking "ethocentric" attitudes both towards ourselves and towards our friends sheds light on the nature of personal identity and helps to combat ethnocentric and other objectionable forms of bias, a message that is becoming increasingly urgent in light of the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. (shrink)

Aristotle's requirement that virtuous actions be chosen for themselves is typically interpreted, in Kantian terms, as taking virtuous action to have intrinsic rather than consequentialist value. This raises problems about how to reconcile Aristotle's requirement with (a) the fact that virtuous actions typically aim at ends beyond themselves (usually benefits to others); and (b) Aristotle's apparent requirement that everything (including virtuous action) be chosen for the sake of eudaimonia. I offer an alternative interpretation, based on Aristotle's account of loving a (...) friend for herself, according to which choosing a virtuous action for itself involves choosing it on account of those features of it that make it the kind of action it is, where these features include its intended consequences (such as the benefits it seeks to provide to others). I then suggest that Aristotle may take these consequences (including benefits to others) as contributing (and contributing non-instrumentally) to the agent's own eudaimonia, and that there is no conflict here with Aristotle's view that eudaimonia is an activity of the soul. For just as my activity of teaching is actualized in my students (provided they learn from me), so too my virtuous activity can be actualized in its beneficiaries. If this is right, then Aristotle's view is far from the Stoic (and proto-Kantian) view often attributed to him. (shrink)

According to inferential role semantics, for any given expression to possess a particular meaning one must be disposed to make or, alternatively, acknowledge as correct certain inferential transitions involving it. As Williamson points out, pejoratives such as ‘Boche’ seem to provide a counter-example to IRS. Many speakers are neither disposed to use such expressions nor consider it proper to do so. But it does not follow, as IRS appears to entail, that such speakers do not understand pejoratives or that they (...) lack meaning. In this paper, I examine recent responses to this problem by Boghossian and Brandom and argue that their proposed construal of the kind of inferential rules governing a pejorative such as ‘Boche’ is to be ruled out on the grounds that it is non-conservative. I defend the appeal to conservatism in this instance against criticism and, in doing so, propose an alternative approach to pejoratives on behalf of IRS that resolves the problem Williamson poses. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of Cavendish’s contemporary, Henry More. While (...) there are passages in Cavendish’s work that might seem to count against my reading—specifically, passages on disagreement in aesthetic judgement, on the power of beauty to elicit the passions, and on our inability to specify the nature of beauty—I show that, when situated against the background of Cavendish’s broader metaphysical and epistemological views, those passages in fact support the realist interpretation. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Preliminary Note Eudaimonism and Rational Egoism NE VIII.1: Nicomachean Context and Platonic Background NE VIII.2: Aristotle's Preliminary Account NE VIII.3–4: Three Forms of Philia? NE IX.4–6: Ta Philika versus the Defining Features of Philia Digression on Dia: Efficient Causal, Final Causal, or Both? NE IX.7 (VIII.8 and 12): Benefactors, Poets, and Parents Ethnocentrism and Aristotle's Ethocentric Ideal NE IX.9: The Lysis Puzzle Revisited Contemplative (versus Engaged) Pleasures Conclusion: Eudaimonism Revisited Conclusions Notes Reference.

Knowledge seems to be a good thing, or at least better than epistemic states that fall short of it, such as true belief. Understanding too seems to be a good thing, perhaps better even than knowledge. In a number of recent publications, Duncan Pritchard tries to account for the value of understanding by claiming that understanding is a cognitive achievement and that achievements in general are valuable. In this paper, I argue that coming to understand something need not be an (...) achievement, and so Pritchard's explanation of understanding's value fails. Next, I point out that Pritchard's is just one of many attempts to account for the value of an epistemic state – whether it be understanding, knowledge, or whatever – by appeal to the notion of achievement or, more generally, the notion of success because of ability. Tentatively, I offer reasons to be sceptical about the prospects of any such account. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

Encourages Christian teenage girls to explore and discover Truth.

In this paper, after outlining the methodological role Wittgenstein's appeal to language-games is supposed to play, I examine the picture of language which his discussion of such games and their relations to what Wittgenstein calls forms of life suggests. It is a picture according to which language and its employment are inextricably connected to wider contexts—they are embedded in specific natural and social environments, they are tied to purposive activities serving provincial needs, and caught up in distinctive ways of life (...) which creatures of a certain sort enjoy. In the remainder of the paper, I consider whether Wittgenstein's emphasis on the link between language and the circumstances surrounding its use points in the direction of an influential view widespread in contemporary philosophy of language, namely, semantic contextualism. I examine carefully a number of passages which scholars have appealed to in support of the claim that Wittgenstein advances contextualism and argue that they in fact provide no such support. The connection which Wittgenstein sees between what is expressed in the use of words and the circumstances in which they are used is not the connection the contextualist insists on. (shrink)

In a paper in this journal, I defend the view that truth is the fundamental norm for assertion and, in doing so, reject the view that knowledge is the fundamental norm for assertion. In a recent response, Littlejohn raises a number of objections against my arguments. In this reply, I argue that Littlejohn’s objections are unsuccessful.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings are dominated by remarks on language. However, while the textual analysis of Wittgenstein's writings is presently a booming industry, the tendency is to focus narrowly on exegetical matters with little attention to their bearing on philosophy at large. Moreover, one finds in contemporary philosophy of language various ideas with a distinctively Wittgensteinian ring to them but whose pedigree is uncertain. This volume brings together distinguished Wittgenstein scholars and renowned philosophers of language in order to (...) examine just what Wittgenstein has to say about language and to assess its significance for current philosophy. The topics discussed include the connection between the meaning of a word and its use, the bearing the context of utterance has on how words are to be understood, the role of rules in the employment of language and whether Wittgenstein's reflections on these issues encourage sceptical or relativist thoughts."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)