To explore the limits of quantification as a form of rationalization, we examine a rare case of dequantification: race-based affirmative action in undergraduate admissions at the University of Michigan. Michigan adopted a policy of holistically reviewing undergraduate applications in 2003, after the US Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional its points-based admissions policy. Using archival and ethnographic data, we trace the adoption, evolution, and undoing of Michigan’s quantified system of admissions decision-making between 1964 and 2004. In a context in which opponents of (...) the system had legal avenues to engage a powerful outside authority, we argue that three internal features of the University’s quantified admissions policy contributed to its demise: its transparency, the instability of the categories it quantified, and the existence of qualitative alternatives. Our analysis challenges the presumed durability and inevitability of quantification by identifying its vulnerabilities and suggests that quantification should be understood as a matter of degree rather than a simple binary. (shrink)

In this methods-building article, I show how attention to long-term continuities in female enslavement patterns helps us understand the emergence of the Black Atlantic. Slavery, I argue, is one form of human parasitism. I extend Orlando Patterson’s theory of human parasitism to examine the phenomenon of parasitic intertwining, wherein the forced labor of women became integral to broader social projects including household functioning, elite status maintenance, and population expansion. The thousand-year period between the fall of Rome and the rise of (...) the transatlantic slave trade was once described as a rupture in European slavery, with serfdom gradually supplanting slavery. The mass capture, transport, and enslavement of women, however, continued even as male slaves and ex-slaves gained significant status changes. The entrenchment of women in zonal slave trades generated both a potent cultural logic and a structural blueprint for the transatlantic trade. (shrink)

The reissue of Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death provides an opportunity to reflect on developments in studies of slavery, postcolonial sociology, and comparative-historical sociology since the book’s initial release in 1982. In this special issue of Theory and Society, contributors from ancient history, anthropology, and sociology examine the book’s broader intellectual significance by situating it in Patterson’s corpus, covering a range of works including his fiction and scholarly publications, early work on Jamaican slave revolts, and private correspondence with key (...) thinkers. The volume’s ambit, then, is not a single book but rather a broader field of social thought. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the concepts and theories introduced by Patterson are still vital. In some ways, we argue, a Pattersonian sociology has only recently come to its full fruition, thanks to ongoing developments in postcolonial studies, critical race studies, anthropological and historical study of slavery, globalization studies, and feminist theory. (shrink)

Drawing on resources from both the Analytical and Continental traditions, Form and World argues that a comprehension of Kant's aesthetics is necessary for grasping the scope and force of his epistemology. Fiona Hughes draws on phenomenological and aesthetic resources to bring out the continuing relevance of Kant's project. One of the difficulties faced in reading the Critique of Pure Reason is finding a way of reading the text as one continuous discussion. This book offers a reading at each stage (...) of Kant's epistemological argument, showing how various elements of Kant's argument, often thought of as extraneous or indefensible, can be integrated. This incisive study, arguing for the centrality of aesthetics in philosophy, and within experience in general, challenges a blind spot in the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy and will contribute to a growing interest in the general significance of aesthetic culture. (shrink)

Although the focus of "Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights" is practical, Gould does not shy away from hard theoretical questions, such as the relentless debate over cultural relativism, and the relationship between terrorism and democracy.

Fiona Nicoll and Melissa Gregg met on the job at a new university having both moved from Sydney to Brisbane to take up their appointments. Here they share reflections on teaching a cultural theory course that they inherited from a prominent Australian Professor of Cultural Studies, offering the perspectives of two consecutive generations of cultural studies theorists now teaching in the field since the early 1990s. This situation gives rise to new interpretations regarding the value and uses of theory (...) in the classroom. Noting the subtle differences involved in teaching the same theoretical material in different cities, the ironies of teaching radical cultural theory in a conservative institutional environment, and the specific opportunities and challenges of teaching cultural studies theory as opposed to others, the article considers some of the silences teachers must also contend with in their classroom practice, drawing on and expanding the terrain established by Thorkelson's thesis. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Fiona Woollard presents an original defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, according to which doing harm seems much harder to justify than merely allowing harm. She argues that the Doctrine is best understood as a principle that protects us from harmful imposition, and offers a moderate account of our obligations to offer aid to others.

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing , touching, tasting, and smelling. But what makes the senses different? How many senses are there? How many could there be? Wha t interaction takes place between the senses? This introduction is a guide to thinking about these questions.

Which objects and properties are represented in perceptual experience, and how are we able to determine this? The papers in this collection address these questions together with other fundamental questions about the nature of perceptual content. The book draws together papers by leading international philosophers of mind, including Alex Byrne (MIT), Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley), Tim Bayne (St Catherine’s College, Oxford), Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin), Richard Price (All Souls College, Oxford) and Susanna Siegel (Harvard University) Essays (...) address the central questions surrounding the content of perceptual experience Investigates how are we able to determine the admissible contents of experience Published in association with the journal Philosophical Quarterly . (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that God has been put to rest. Naturalism is the default position, and the naturalist can explain what needs to be explained without recourse to God. This book agrees that we should be naturalists, but it rejects the more prevalent scientific naturalism in favour of an 'expansive' naturalism inspired by David Wiggins and John McDowell. Fiona Ellis draws on a wide range of thinkers from theology and philosophy, and spans the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy. (...) She tackles various philosophical problems including the limits of nature and the status of value; some theological problems surrounding the natural/ supernatural relation, the Incarnation, and the concept of myth; and offers a model to comprehend the relation between philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)

I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of (...) the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be. (shrink)

There existed a tradition of mimetic experimentation in the late nineteenth century, whereby morphologists sought to scale down sublime natural phenomena to tabletop devices in the laboratory. Experimenters constructed analogs of the aurora, attempting to replicate the colors and forms of the phenomenon with discharge tube experiments and electrical displays, which became popular spectacles at London’s public galleries. This paper analyses a closely allied but different kind of imitation. Between 1872 and 1884, Professor Karl Selim Lemström (1838–1904) attempted to reproduce (...) the aurora borealis in all of its complexity atop four mountains in northern Finland. Crucially, his “artificial aurora” was to materialize at the same scale as the original phenomenon and in its natural habitat in the polar atmosphere. With his experiment Lemström hoped to uncover the workings of the aurora and the electrical currents that he believed were always present within the atmosphere; his epistemological framework was one of learning by making. This paper sheds light on the broader problem of what it meant to authentically replicate a phenomenon that remained largely enigmatic, and, most importantly, how this replication could be verified. This prompts a discussion as to whether model experiments needed only to appear visually similar to the objects they purported to imitate, were required to preserve their form, or needed to be materially identical in order to the original to be identified as legitimate “reproductions” in the late nineteenth century. (shrink)

Introduction -- The ethics of care and global politics -- Rethinking human security -- 'Women's work' : the global care and sex economies -- Humanitarian intervention and global security governance -- Peacebuilding and paternalism : reading care through postcolonialism -- Health and human security : gender, care and HIV/AIDS -- Gender, care, and the ethics of environmental security -- Conclusion. Security through care.

According to Brad Hooker's rule-consequentialism, as well as ordinary moral prohibitions against lying, stealing, killing, and harming others, the optimific code will include an over-riding “prevent disaster clause”. This paper explores two issues related to the disaster clause. The first issue is whether the disaster clause is vague—and whether this is a problem for rule-consequentialism. I argue that on Hooker's rule-consequentialism, there will be cases where it is indeterminate whether a given outcome counts as a disaster such that it is (...) permissible to infringe a given prohibition to avoid that outcome. I argue that it counts in favour of Hooker's rule-consequentialism that it makes this space for vagueness. The second issue is how to understand the disaster clause so that it does not make rule-consequentialism intolerably demanding—and more particularly whether avoiding over-demandingness requires the rule-consequentialist to place a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. I will argue that rule-consequentialism can avoid over-demandingness without placing a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. (shrink)

This powerfully iconoclastic book reconsiders the influential nativist position toward the mind. Nativists assert that some concepts, beliefs, or capacities are innate or inborn: "native" to the mind rather than acquired. Fiona Cowie argues that this view is mistaken, demonstrating that nativism is an unstable amalgam of two quite different--and probably inconsistent--theses about the mind. Unlike empiricists, who postulate domain-neutral learning strategies, nativists insist that some learning tasks require special kinds of skills, and that these skills are hard-wired into (...) our brains at birth. This "faculties hypothesis" finds its modern expression in the views of Noam Chomsky. Cowie, marshaling recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, computer science, and linguistics, provides a crisp and timely critique of Chomsky's nativism and defends in its place a moderately nativist approach to language acquisition. Also in contrast to empiricists, who view the mind as simply another natural phenomenon susceptible of scientific explanation, nativists suspect that the mental is inelectably mysterious. Cowie addresses this second strand in nativist thought, taking on the view articulated by Jerry Fodor and other nativists that learning, particularly concept acquisition, is a fundamentally inexplicable process. Cowie challenges this explanatory pessimism, and argues convincingly that concept acquisition is psychologically explicable. What's Within? is a clear and provocative achievement in the study of the human mind. (shrink)

This book challenges readers to rethink rural health ethics. Traditional approaches to health ethics are often urban-centric, making implicit assumptions about how values and norms apply in health care practice, and as such may fail to take into account the complexity, depth, richness, and diversity of the rural context. There are ethically relevant differences between rural health practice and rural health services delivery and urban practice and delivery that go beyond the stereotypes associated with rural life and rural health services. (...) This book examines key values in the rural context that have not been fully explored or taken into account when we examine health ethics issues, including the values of community and place, and a need to “revalue” relationships. It also advocates for a greater attention to meso and macro level analysis in rural health ethics as being critical to ethical analysis of rural health care. This book is essential reading for those involved in health ethics, rural health policy and governance, and for rural health providers. (shrink)

What does it mean to understand the world religiously? How is such understanding to be distinguished from scientific understanding? What does it have to do with religious practice, transfiguring love, and spiritual well-being? New Models of Religious Understanding investigates these questions to set a new and exciting agenda for philosophy of religion. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the volume cuts across the supposed divide between analytic and continental approaches to the subject and engages the interest of a (...) broad range of philosophical and theological readers. (shrink)

This article draws on Kristeva's theories of the foreigner within the national boundaries and, combining this with her earlier work on the abject, considers the challenge posed by the individual who is rejected as foreign, to the boundaries which constitute collective and individual identity. With reference to Prévost's Le Passé sous silence, it argues that the solutions posited by Kristeva are of limited value within contemporary French society, and concludes by considering the potential of literature as an alternative means of (...) reconciliation with otherness. (shrink)

I examine Roger Scruton's account of the religious and soteriological significance of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde . The relation between Scruton and Wagner remains unclear, and the position at issue is a curious amalgam of the two. I refer to its author as ‘Scruton's Wagner’. Scruton's Wagner argues that erotic love has religious and soteriological significance, and that the notions of religion and salvation are to be defined in terms which are shorn of any reference to God. I argue that (...) there may be good reasons for setting these limits short of God, but that Scruton's Wagner does not provide them. (shrink)

In this paper we trace the historical exclusion of women from the legal profession in Canada. We examine women’s efforts to gain entry to law practice and their progress through the last century. The battle to gain entry to this exclusive profession took place on many fronts: in the courts, government legislature, public debate and media, and behind the closed doors of the law societies. After formal barriers to entry were dismantled, women continued to confront formidable barriers through overt and (...) subtler forms of discrimination and exclusion. Today’s legal profession in Canada is a contested one. Women have succeeded with large enrolments in law schools and growing representation in the profession. However, women remain on the margins of power and privilege in law practice. Our analysis of contemporary official data on the Canadian legal profession demonstrates that women are under-represented in private practice, have reduced chances for promotion, and are excluded from higher echelons of authority, remuneration, and status in the profession. Yet, the contemporary picture of the legal profession also reveals that women are having an important impact on the profession of law in Canada by introducing policy reforms aimed at creating a more humane legal profession. (shrink)

The correct positioning of organs during embryonic development requires multiple cues. The Xenopus cement gland is a mucus‐secreting epithelium that is a simple model for organogenesis, allowing detailed analysis of this complex process. The cement gland forms at a conserved anterior position, where embryonic ectoderm and endoderm touch. In all deuterostomes, this region will form the stomodeum (primitive mouth) and, in some aquatic larva, will also form a cement gland. In recent years, a model has been put forward suggesting that (...) an intermediate level of BMP signaling in the ectoderm leads to cement gland formation. We propose an alternative model whereby, during gastrulation, the cement gland (CG) is positioned by the overlap of three domains, corresponding to anterodorsal identity (AD), ventrolateral identity (VL), and ectodermal outer layer identity (EO), defining the equation (AD + VL + EO = CG). Anterodorsal identity requires a contribution by the transcription factor Otx2 while ventrolateral identity requires the BMP4 signaling pathway. These postional cues are integrated to activate cement gland differentiation. This integration appears to require intermediate steps, including expression of pitx genes, and members of the ATF/CREB and Ets transcription factor families. BioEssays 25:717–726, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed feeling professionally and politically silenced. Guided by a philosophical framing of the contradictions and jostling interplays between (...) dialogism’s in-betweenness and dialectic’s one-ness, excerpts are analysed from a doctoral study involving 10 Victorian, Australian ECE teachers. This framing and analysis signal the potential ramifications of a dialectical closing down of ECE teachers’ political dialogues in addition to how dialogism’s in-betweenness fosters openness. Contemplating these language strategies, the paper highlights how a silencing divisiveness may transpire, prompting a need for genuine listening in the threshold in-between the self and other. (shrink)

I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of (...) the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation. (shrink)

Do some people have a paranormal power to ‘see’ into the future? There are innumerable anecdotes of events foretold, of course. But is there any scientific evidence of the ability? Fiona Steinkamp, a leading investigator of the paranormal, believes there is.

It is widely held that in Plato's Sophist, Forms rest or change or both. The received opinion is, however, false—or so I will argue. There is no direct support for it in the text and several passages tell against it. I will further argue that, contrary to the view of some scholars, Plato did not in this dialogue advocate a kind of change recognizable as 'Cambridge change', as applicable to his Forms. The reason that Forms neither change nor rest is (...) that they are purely intelligible entities, not susceptible to changing or being at rest. Since Plato continues in the Sophist to treat Forms as causes, it follows that Forms are changeless causes. I ask what conception of cause might allow for this view, and reject the suggestion that Plato was some kind of proto-dispositionalist about causation. Instead I suggest that he understood causation to incorporate a notion of structuring, such that Forms can be seen to structure their participants and so cause them to possess the attributes they possess. (shrink)

I initiate the concept of ‘making-remote’ to capture various strategies for representing the human in late Palaeolithic cave art. Drawing out the role of remoteness within phenomenological accounts of perception (Husserl and Merleau-Ponty), as well as offering an analysis of a wide range of archaeological evidence, I argue that realism does not capture the specificity of these human representations. In contrast to naturalistic animal representations, humans are consistently represented with a high degree of abstraction e.g. schematisation and abbreviation. I also (...) argue for a site-specific distinction between deep caves and rock-shelters. Following Bourdier (2010) and Pinçon (2012), art at sites such as Roc-aux-Sorciers is best understood as stylised ‘public art’. Meanwhile, the highly expressive and realist art of La Marche is domestic in contrast to the exclusively symbolic art of deep caves. In conclusion I argue that ‘making-remote’ in cave art’s human representations exhibits complex relations to self and others. (shrink)

Twenty-seven semi-guided conversations between lecturers and Spanish-speaking undergraduate students were recorded at five different universities in Europe where English is the medium of instruction. Examination of the metaphorical language used in these conversations revealed that SIGHT plays an important role in academic mentoring in English. Lecturers often frame their advice to undergraduate students in terms of what has been called “UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING,” on the face of it a somewhat unsurprising finding. If one takes it that the correlation between mental (...) and visual activity is somehow “primary” then this way of reasoning about learning and knowledge should be common ground in conversations between English- and Spanish-speaking interlocutors. However, we found no such alignment between the two groups of participants in an academic setting. The Spanish speakers not only used words and terms associated with vision significantly less frequently t.. (shrink)

BackgroundConcerns about decision making related to resuscitation have led to two important challenges in the courts resulting in new legal precedents for decision-making practice. Systematic research investigating the experiences of doctors involved in decisions about resuscitation in light of the recent changes in law remains lacking.AimTo analyse the practice of resuscitation decision making on hospital wards from the perspectives of doctors.DesignThe data presented in this paper were collected as part of a wider research study of end-of-life care in an acute (...) hospital setting. Data collection comprised ethnographic non-participant observation on two acute hospital wards and individual interviews with patients, relatives and healthcare professionals caring for patients thought to be approaching the end of life. Data were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach.ResultsDiscussions and decision making about resuscitation present many challenges for those involved on acute medical wards. The data highlight the potential for multiple interpretations of legal precedents, creating misunderstandings that may impact patient care in less positive ways.ConclusionsThis paper provides unique insights into how doctors respond to the changing medico-legal culture and the subsequent effects on patient care. It demonstrates how the juridification of medical practice can occur. It highlights the potential benefit of a structure to support clinicians, patients and relatives in discussing and navigating decisions around care at the end of life in line with the patient’s wishes and preferences. Recommendations for future research are made and legal ramifications are discussed. (shrink)